I can remember my mom telling me that the streets where lined with ambulance as her voice trembled and her eyes filled with tears. She said she knocked on the door so hard and screamed so loud that it should have woke the dead. Mom said she was crying and yelling At the same time, she had been to a club meeting, Mom belong to a club with some of her friends. They wore green skirts and white blouses very pretty dark green tailored skirts. Mom had very fair skin with freckles; she was German Irish about five, six large frame very well proportion. In all the right places if you know what I mean. I have never seen mom wear slacks of any kind she said ladies didn’t and don’t wear pants, When she came home from one of her meetings. My brothers, and sisters and I was at home .all of us were unconscious in a big living room chair that was in one of the bedrooms .Some slept holding each other on bunk beds . Mom said she was so scared she had lost her babies. She said she called out our names as they picked us up and carried us out to the awaiting ambulances. She said she couldn’t stop shaking and praying. We lived in East Saint Louis Mo. In what is known as a shot gun house, for those That doesn’t know if you stand in the front door you can see all the way throughout the house.
All the way in the back yard, on the back porch was the outhouse we didn’t have a bathroom like most of you know in the house with lights and toilet that flushes.
We had a back porch with an outhouse shed on it. A shed is three walls and a door. Ours was made of old scrap wood not a solid foundation. Just a shed with as few nails as possible, Not smooth nice finish woods on any part of this place. In the shed was a long board with A whole in it no lights couldn’t flush it. When you sat down if you were not careful, you could get a splendor. In a very bad spot if you know what I mean. In the dirt back yard was a big metal tub which was for bathing in the summer and washing clothes and for making lye soap. Mom was a very smart lady that had a lot of responsibility, which she carried her part plus .she took care of us as best as she knew how. Mom would get up early sometimes it would still be dark and make a fire under the tub fill the tub with water washing our clothes in the lye soap water mom made boiling hot, no washing machine unless you call a scrub board or washing board what ever you call it.
Call us including mom the motor we washed by hand and a scrub board. Mom did most of the washing as I remember. The older brothers and sisters hung out the clothes, help to bath the younger ones. I love the smell of fresh clean clothes hanging out side to dry. Then Mom had times she would iron our clothes. First she had sprinkles them with water, and folded them they would be damp. We had lots of clothes we shared and didn’t mind sharing. Not out loud, we did want mom or dad to hear. Or you couldn’t set down for a while with out a pillow.
Getting back to what happen, we used coal for everything including cooking and heat. We had two stoves that used the coal one was in the kitchen and was made of iron with four round holes with lids to cook on top of. And a heavy iron oven door with a big oven that was not big enough mom always said when she cooked. To heat the stove you had to put coal under the lids on top of the stove and under the oven to heat the oven. Daddy would take small pieces of wood and ball up paper and make a layer of it and add the coal. Daddy really knew how to make a fire; it would be red hot. Mom made hers a little different she used more wood chips than Dad did, but hers was just as hot. They always said keep the little ones away from the stove. And that it was very dangerous. But this night, First we got hungry and tried to start a fire in the coal stove in the kitchen the stove was a tall stove hard to reach but of course we found a way.
We went out side and gathered small pieces of wood we found. We finally got the wood and coal to start the fire and if you didn’t put the led on all the way coal gas smoke, which is very toxic.
Would get out and of course it was poison. Yes mom said don’t touch the stove, and was not freezing out side but it was cold first we got under the cover to keep warm but that was not enough for us, cant you just see these kids from about sixteen to two the last two children had not been born. Let me also explain that this house had four rooms to the right was a small room we called a bedroom to the right was a room we called mom’s bedroom and living room. The middle room was the big bedroom where most of us slept; we had a potbelly stove in there also, a cast iron stove that helped to heat the whole house. The people rushed in to get us out of the house to the waiting ambulance we had to go to Saint-Louis to the hospital we didn’t have a hospital for BLACKS in East Saint Louis. The doctor said a minute longer and we would All been dead, HOW MANY MIRACLES CAN I HAVE?