IMMIGRANT DAUGHTER 36

I talked about our living in Arkansas. We lived in Arkansas more than any other place in our married life while our kids were growing up. We moved from New Jersey when our kids were still in school. We our moved South because of the problems New Jersey was having in the school system, with kids sniffing glue and smoking pot. New Jersey was considered going to the shore when the people came down to their summer cottages on the weekends from Philadelphia and New York City.

My brother was working for IBM Service Bureau in Little Rock and told us Arkansas was at least 2 years behind the New Jersey Schools. He was having a hard time filling his employee rooster with capable people. In the East everything moved at a fast pace and in the South everything moved at a slower pace. I myself had to learn to slow down. I was always the last person to get my food and the first person to finish eating. My family use to kid me about eating too fast. They had a name for me gobble guts. But when you had to wait on customers while trying to eat you learned to eat fast to eat it while it was warm.

I was one that could look at something to be done and do it no matter what the job within reason. I could do it, always wanting to be kept busy. The job that sales people hated to do was putting the merchandise back in stock but I sort of liked it because it kept me busy. I was not a person that would stand around just participating in small talk. When I worked in the Chicago area for Motorola at coffee breaks and lunch most of the time I walked instead of sit and talk. They use to love to talk about their husbands and one day one of the ladies remarked that I never said anything about my husband. I told them I didn’t have the problems like those women at the table did, my husband loved me and I loved him and our private life was just that… private. They revealed too much of their private lives and rarely said anything good.

1982 this was our second move to Arkansas, our children were grown and the picture above was taken on our porch that was attached to our Mobile home. We uprooted our life to come down to Arkansas from Chicago because our son asked his dad Carl to come and help him in the produce business manning the office keeping things in order. But my son was not really meaning that and his dad was most unhappy because every time he questioned a transaction our son would comment; “you just don’t know the business”. So it was easy for Carl to say goodbye.

Carl loved to ride the lawn mower and he enjoyed tinkering with it to keep it running. He put in vegetable garden and a smallorchard of fruit trees. I had to learn how to can once again and I have to admit that is not my thing and I like the canned fruit in the store better only because I grew up with it. He had more than enough to keep him busy and we watching our grandson grow up. Here is a picture of our grandson as a little farmer.


I am taking a pause here because I am having a bit of difficulty thinking and writing it down. I have a terrible cough it a good thing you can’t hear my voice it is very raspy and sort of hoarse and I think every bone in my body hurts.

This is the next day and its not much better. I am not one who can lay in bed. I hate it sometimes but that is the way it is. My DIL calla me every morning to let me know she is leaving and to make sure I am awake, most times I am. I will end this here so she can post for me. I know the Lord won’t give me more than I can handle but I do feel, enough now. Until next time, I am Immigrant Daughter.