MEMORIES OF MARTHA

MEMORIES OF MY LIFE

By Martha June Kidd Blackman, 1950 - 2006
(written circa 1998)

Like most kids I guess, I don’t remember a lot of when I was very young before age four or five. But I do remember growing up, we didn’t have modern air conditioning like we do now. In the summer we stayed pretty much outside most of the time because it was too hot in the house. All of us got brown as could be. With having only boys to play with I was a real tomboy. Had to be if I wanted to play with someone. For most of my growing up years in Smithfield my playmates were my oldest brother, Kenneth, my younger brothers, Jim and Freddie when they got older, and three male cousins, Bobby and Larry Austin and Clarence Ray Kidd who was only three months younger than me. When we started school with both of us being blonde and having the same last name and usually always in the same classroom, the teachers always thought we were twins. Which we could have passed for brother and sister for sure.

At age six I was put in Cooks Children's Hospital with Rheumatic fever. I was there nine days and I hated it. I remember one of the rooms that I was in at the beginning had a stuffed animal head on the wall and it scared me silly. And the room was at the very end of the hall and I couldn't see anyone passing by so I bawled a lot because I thought I was alone. After about three days of that the nurses decided to move me to a room next to the nurses’ station so I could see people passing in the hall and I quit bawling. The hospital at that time would keep parakeets in cages and there would be one in each room for the kids to look at while they were confined to bed.

I can remember my joints hurting while I was there. One side of my body would hurt one day and the opposite side the next day. Mom and Dad were there nearly all the time. Mom during the day and Dad would be there at night until late and after I was asleep. The doctors told Mom that when it was time for me to eat that I had to sit up on the side of the bed. I can remember crying every time Mom or Dad had to help me sit up and put my legs through the railing of the bed because it hurt so bad to move. And the breakfasts are about the only thing I can remember about the food. They always had oatmeal or cream of wheat for breakfast which isn't so bad but by the time I got mine it wasn't real hot. When you stirred a little milk into it then you got lumps and it took me a long time before I could even look at a bowl of oats or cream of wheat. To this day I will not bite a lump of any kind of hot cereal.

The only other times that I remember being hospitalized as a child is when I had to have my stomach pumped because Clarence Ray, my cousin, and I decided that we'd try Uncle Butch's heart medicine. It's a good thing that my aunt found us or we both would have probably been dead. And the last time that I remember being in Cooks Hospital was when my brother Jim and I had our tonsils out at the same time. He was two and I was seven. Mom figured that she wouldn't have any trouble out of Jim because he was so little. Wrong! For the first two hours or so after we came back from surgery he wouldn't eat anything. You want a popcicle? No, I'm sick. You want some ice cream? No, I'm sick. By midday Momma couldn’t keep him in the bed. He was running up and down the hall and Momma was chasing him. I was the one that was sick. I vomited every time I opened my eyes. Mom and Dad had a TV put in the room for Jim in hopes that that would keep him occupied (in the 1950’s TV was not finished with the room as they are now). I can remember waking up and seeing what was on television, vomit and go back to sleep. Was I ever glad to get out of there!

But all in all, those years were definitely what you could call a carefree childhood for us. My best friend was a girl named Kathy Petty. She was two years older than me but only in age. When she was born, she had a heart defect and it wasn't until the early fifties that medical science could repair the damage. She had a hole in her heart that would have been repaired immediately if she had been born in this day and time. But she was one of the first children that went to San Antonio to have that done. And from then on she was as normal a child as we were. It did set her back in schooling and emotionally in some ways. Kathy and I got to be friends when we were in the same Sunday School Class together. We spent the night with one another and more than once she went with me when the family went on vacation. I didn't go with her family on a vacation because there were already five kids and that is crowded. She was the sister I didn't have at home. She married in 1970 to a man that lived in Stephenville and one year to the day that she and Gary married she gave birth to a baby boy and named him Troy. She had to have him c-section because she was a small woman and the baby was pretty good size. Later that evening a blood clot broke off and went to her lungs and killed her. That was not one of my better days. She was buried in Stephenville. Katie was named for her.

When we moved to Gatesville, I made friends with people that had lived there all their lives and with some that had just moved into Gatesville like we had. Dad had transferred to Gatesville because the Fort Worth Army Depot Quartermaster was being closed down and the only place that they could offer Daddy at the same rate of pay was for us to move to Atlanta, Georgia and in 1964 you didn't want to be in Atlanta with all the racial riots that were going on. So he looked around and found an opening here at North Fort Hood at the motor pool. It was at a lower rate of pay but we didn't have to leave Texas. Kenneth and I graduated from Gatesville High School, he in 1967 and me in 1968. In 1970 Dad; Mom, Jim and Freddie moved back to Smithfield when a job opening became available there.

In the time before they moved back Kenneth and I both married and stayed in this area. Kenneth and his family now have lived in Waco for quite a few years and I've been living in Gatesville, Texas for 34 years. Most people now don't really realize that I'm not a native of Gatesville. Keith Blackman and I married on November 14, 1969 and were divorced December 23, 1992. Kate was born on August 15, 1976, the year of the Bicentennial and Cristy was born on August 24, 1979, the International Year of the Child. I have been a part of civic activities when the girls were growing up. For ten years I helped coach a girls softball team and was a Girl Scout leader for 5 years.

The closest friend I have made since I've lived here in Gatesville is Sharron Powell Moore. Her second husband was a man named Randy Dunahoo and he and Keith were working for the same man and that's when Sharron and I became friends. We had actually gone to school together but I was a grade ahead of her. She graduated in 1969 with Keith. Sharron's son David was a little over two years old and Katie was about 16 months old when we started running around together.
As friends we've survived the death of one of her children, the breakup of her second marriage and the breakup of my first marriage and a lot of stuff in between. She and I coached the ball team and took eighteen girls camping in the Girl Scouts for 5 years. We have so much in common, she is the only daughter in her family as I am. We are the two sides of a coin. She is as close to me as Kathy was and is the only sister that I've ever had. We know that as long as we are together that there isn't anything that we can't get through.

I've worked at varying jobs since I got out of high school. I worked at the Rotunda Nursing Home for over a year until I married. Then when Keith and I married in November 1969 we moved to Temple where he was going to college, I worked at the Southern Manor Nursing Home. After we came back to Gatesville, I worked at Mencsh's Nursing Home on Saunders Street. In 1978 we moved into a housing addition that was in the process of being developed. There were two streets above us at the highway and we live at the back of the addition. I watched the rest of the addition go in and when the housing started going in Sharron and I did the final cleanup on the houses for the man that was building them. We could do this because our kids were little and it was ideal because they could go with us.

Sharron went back to work to kill time before I did and we still did cleanup when she got off work from the school system where she was working. I also did childcare for a while after Sharron went to work and before her daughter Missy started school. Later I started working with Sharron's husband Randy as a trim carpenter as Cristy was in kindergarten. In 1984 1 started work at the Gatesville Elementary School in the kitchen. I was with the school system until January of 1994 when I left there to go to work for Hughes Unit TDCJ-ID in the count room and am now currently in the Garment Factory there.

During all the years that I was married I did quite a bit of ranch work with Keith. He was working for Charles Graham and on the weekends and in the summer the girls and I did do what we were able to help the work along. The only things that I refused to learn or do was I wouldn't drive a tractor and I wouldn't help cut the bull calves that came in to the ranch. I've helped to drench sheep, vaccinated calves that were being worked, ear marked them, etc. I've even ridden horseback when I was younger and first married helping to pen or gather cattle. I enjoyed it for the most part.

With Katie and Cristy now grown I've got most of my time for myself and the boyfriend that I’ve had for a long time. I met Gaylon Simmons several years ago and we hit it off quite well. We do really well, I'm divorced and he is a widower and neither of us has the yen to get married again. We maintain our own homes and it works out really well. We go motorcycle riding when the weather is nice and go where we want to go and enjoy ourselves. Our children all get along together and that makes it all the better.

I intend to live long enough to make both my children crazy and to an age of at least 110. I wouldn't want 'em to get off easy!

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Nova Development Art Explosion



	MEMORIES OF MY LIFE
	By Martha June Kidd Blackman, 1950 - 2006 (written circa 1998) Like most kids I guess, I don’t remember a lot of when I was very young before age four or five. But I do remember growing up, we didn’t have modern air conditioning like we do now. In the summer we stayed pretty much outside most of the time because it was too hot in the house. All of us got brown as could be. With having only boys to play with I was a real tomboy. Had to be if I wanted to play with someone. For most of my growing up years in Smithfield my playmates were my oldest brother, Kenneth, my younger brothers, Jim and Freddie when they got older, and three male cousins, Bobby and Larry Austin and Clarence Ray Kidd who was only three months younger than me. When we started school with both of us being blonde and having the same last name and usually always in the same classroom, the teachers always thought we were twins. Which we could have passed for brother and sister for sure. At age six I was put in Cooks Children's Hospital with Rheumatic fever. I was there nine days and I hated it. I remember one of the rooms that I was in at the beginning had a stuffed animal head on the wall and it scared me silly. And the room was at the very end of the hall and I couldn't see anyone passing by so I bawled a lot because I thought I was alone. After about three days of that the nurses decided to move me to a room next to the nurses’ station so I could see people passing in the hall and I quit bawling. The hospital at that time would keep parakeets in cages and there would be one in each room for the kids to look at while they were confined to bed. I can remember my joints hurting while I was there. One side of my body would hurt one day and the opposite side the next day. Mom and Dad were there nearly all the time. Mom during the day and Dad would be there at night until late and after I was asleep. The doctors told Mom that when it was time for me to eat that I had to sit up on the side of the bed. I can remember crying every time Mom or Dad had to help me sit up and put my legs through the railing of the bed because it hurt so bad to move. And the breakfasts are about the only thing I can remember about the food. They always had oatmeal or cream of wheat for breakfast which isn't so bad but by the time I got mine it wasn't real hot. When you stirred a little milk into it then you got lumps and it took me a long time before I could even look at a bowl of oats or cream of wheat. To this day I will not bite a lump of any kind of hot cereal. The only other times that I remember being hospitalized as a child is when I had to have my stomach pumped because Clarence Ray, my cousin, and I decided that we'd try Uncle Butch's heart medicine. It's a good thing that my aunt found us or we both would have probably been dead. And the last time that I remember being in Cooks Hospital was when my brother Jim and I had our tonsils out at the same time. He was two and I was seven. Mom figured that she wouldn't have any trouble out of Jim because he was so little. Wrong! For the first two hours or so after we came back from surgery he wouldn't eat anything. You want a popcicle? No, I'm sick. You want some ice cream? No, I'm sick. By midday Momma couldn’t keep him in the bed. He was running up and down the hall and Momma was chasing him. I was the one that was sick. I vomited every time I opened my eyes. Mom and Dad had a TV put in the room for Jim in hopes that that would keep him occupied (in the 1950’s TV was not finished with the room as they are now). I can remember waking up and seeing what was on television, vomit and go back to sleep. Was I ever glad to get out of there! But all in all, those years were definitely what you could call a carefree childhood for us. My best friend was a girl named Kathy Petty. She was two years older than me but only in age. When she was born, she had a heart defect and it wasn't until the early fifties that medical science could repair the damage. She had a hole in her heart that would have been repaired immediately if she had been born in this day and time. But she was one of the first children that went to San Antonio to have that done. And from then on she was as normal a child as we were. It did set her back in schooling and emotionally in some ways. Kathy and I got to be friends when we were in the same Sunday School Class together. We spent the night with one another and more than once she went with me when the family went on vacation. I didn't go with her family on a vacation because there were already five kids and that is crowded. She was the sister I didn't have at home. She married in 1970 to a man that lived in Stephenville and one year to the day that she and Gary married she gave birth to a baby boy and named him Troy. She had to have him c-section because she was a small woman and the baby was pretty good size. Later that evening a blood clot broke off and went to her lungs and killed her. That was not one of my better days. She was buried in Stephenville. Katie was named for her. When we moved to Gatesville, I made friends with people that had lived there all their lives and with some that had just moved into Gatesville like we had. Dad had transferred to Gatesville because the Fort Worth Army Depot Quartermaster was being closed down and the only place that they could offer Daddy at the same rate of pay was for us to move to Atlanta, Georgia and in 1964 you didn't want to be in Atlanta with all the racial riots that were going on. So he looked around and found an opening here at North Fort Hood at the motor pool. It was at a lower rate of pay but we didn't have to leave Texas. Kenneth and I graduated from Gatesville High School, he in 1967 and me in 1968. In 1970 Dad; Mom, Jim and Freddie moved back to Smithfield when a job opening became available there. In the time before they moved back Kenneth and I both married and stayed in this area. Kenneth and his family now have lived in Waco for quite a few years and I've been living in Gatesville, Texas for 34 years. Most people now don't really realize that I'm not a native of Gatesville. Keith Blackman and I married on November 14, 1969 and were divorced December 23, 1992. Kate was born on August 15, 1976, the year of the Bicentennial and Cristy was born on August 24, 1979, the International Year of the Child. I have been a part of civic activities when the girls were growing up. For ten years I helped coach a girls softball team and was a Girl Scout leader for 5 years. The closest friend I have made since I've lived here in Gatesville is Sharron Powell Moore. Her second husband was a man named Randy Dunahoo and he and Keith were working for the same man and that's when Sharron and I became friends. We had actually gone to school together but I was a grade ahead of her. She graduated in 1969 with Keith. Sharron's son David was a little over two years old and Katie was about 16 months old when we started running around together. As friends we've survived the death of one of her children, the breakup of her second marriage and the breakup of my first marriage and a lot of stuff in between. She and I coached the ball team and took eighteen girls camping in the Girl Scouts for 5 years. We have so much in common, she is the only daughter in her family as I am. We are the two sides of a coin. She is as close to me as Kathy was and is the only sister that I've ever had. We know that as long as we are together that there isn't anything that we can't get through. I've worked at varying jobs since I got out of high school. I worked at the Rotunda Nursing Home for over a year until I married. Then when Keith and I married in November 1969 we moved to Temple where he was going to college, I worked at the Southern Manor Nursing Home. After we came back to Gatesville, I worked at Mencsh's Nursing Home on Saunders Street. In 1978 we moved into a housing addition that was in the process of being developed. There were two streets above us at the highway and we live at the back of the addition. I watched the rest of the addition go in and when the housing started going in Sharron and I did the final cleanup on the houses for the man that was building them. We could do this because our kids were little and it was ideal because they could go with us. Sharron went back to work to kill time before I did and we still did cleanup when she got off work from the school system where she was working. I also did childcare for a while after Sharron went to work and before her daughter Missy started school. Later I started working with Sharron's husband Randy as a trim carpenter as Cristy was in kindergarten. In 1984 1 started work at the Gatesville Elementary School in the kitchen. I was with the school system until January of 1994 when I left there to go to work for Hughes Unit TDCJ-ID in the count room and am now currently in the Garment Factory there. During all the years that I was married I did quite a bit of ranch work with Keith. He was working for Charles Graham and on the weekends and in the summer the girls and I did do what we were able to help the work along. The only things that I refused to learn or do was I wouldn't drive a tractor and I wouldn't help cut the bull calves that came in to the ranch. I've helped to drench sheep, vaccinated calves that were being worked, ear marked them, etc. I've even ridden horseback when I was younger and first married helping to pen or gather cattle. I enjoyed it for the most part. With Katie and Cristy now grown I've got most of my time for myself and the boyfriend that I’ve had for a long time. I met Gaylon Simmons several years ago and we hit it off quite well. We do really well, I'm divorced and he is a widower and neither of us has the yen to get married again. We maintain our own homes and it works out really well. We go motorcycle riding when the weather is nice and go where we want to go and enjoy ourselves. Our children all get along together and that makes it all the better. I intend to live long enough to make both my children crazy and to an age of at least 110. I wouldn't want 'em to get off easy!

		To include your stories and other information in this site, Email us at Webmaster.
Comments, suggestions, additional info are always welcomed., Please contact: Webmaster