A Story of the Past

Dear Readers

From time to time, I plan to recall stories from the past and let you have a look at them. Some of these you may have heard previously and some may be new to you. I've been writing a family history of the Warren family and I have found that there are few stories that reveal the past. Maybe you will contribute something to this blog since you are all authors.

Life on North Main Street

In the year 1939, my mother and father divorced. I was about 12 years old. My father didn’t seem to care about the children that were left for my mother to care for, as he made no effort to contribute to our financial support, let alone emotional support. From that time forward, my father was not part of my life nor of my siblings. I did not see him nor did we have any contact with him the balance of his life with one exception. That divorce was literally a divorce from the Brooks side of the family. I never made contact with my grandmother Brooks nor any of my Brooks aunts or uncles until late in life when I became interested in my family history. It is interesting to reflect back upon a period of time after I was married and moved back to the town that I was born in and where the Brooks family lived. I lived there with my family for a period of five years and not at any time did I visit my grandmother Brooks. I guess it illustrates how deep the divorce was between the Brooks’ and my mother’s side of the family, the Gibson’s.

At the time of the divorce of my parents, there were four of us children and the country was in the midst of a depression. My mother finally got a job working for Riverside County. With the help of her siblings, Aunt Martha and Uncle Jim and Aunt Bertha and Uncle Bill, my mother rented a small house with some acreage on North Main Street in Riverside. This was a happy time for us we were able to acquire rabbits and chickens and to have a garden area. In fact, about one acre was planted in tomatoes. All of this was through the help of my Mother’s siblings. As mentioned we were happy here. I rode the bus to school. I was called “Indian” by my school friends and I could run like the wind and there was not one that could catch up to me in running. Oh, how I loved to run.

When I would come home from school, mother would frequently ask me to slaughter a rabbit or a chicken for dinner. I learned how to do this early after living there from my uncles. I learned to dress rabbits and chickens and use an axe to decapitate the head of the chicken and then scald them in hot water to remove the feathers. I never quite got used to killing rabbits. They would have to be skinned and the dressed by hanging the by their hind legs for the cleaning. In fact even now, it is difficult to eat rabbit because of that memory.

My brother, Loren, was a very entertaining boy at that time and still has that attribute to this day. During the times mentioned above, he was about 6 years old. We had a large round dining table in the kitchen. The house was very small; several bedrooms with a large kitchen and back porch. Radio was our favorite pass time of listening to mystery programs, like the “Green Hornet”, comedy like the ” Amos and Andy” show and many others. My brother, Loren, would at times locate himself under the dining table around the center pedestal and act out the radio announcer or other persons that he heard on the radio. I remember setting with my mother and getting the biggest laughs of the day listening to him chatter playing “Radio”.

How long we lived on North Main Street, I’m not sure, but our next move was to live closer to my Grandma and Grandpa Gibson and my Aunt Bertha and Uncle Bill. Since we were living near to them when war was declared against Japan on December 8, 1841, we probably only lived on North Main less than a year.

Kimberly's new baby girl, Kaylee Brianne McAdams shown above. (see phpGedview).

RHB