A Lifetime of Regrets

By C.J. Rowley

A Lifetime of Regrets is a true story about a young girl named C.J. who begins her life on a military base in Kansas, then moves to Nebraska where her mother is from. Her father soon tires of city life and yearns to go back to his roots in Missouri. He finds some land in Southeast Missouri and moves his family there to begin a new life in the country. C.J. takes you back through all her childhood memories and adventures she went through growing up. She finds out life is not as innocent and carefree as before. Her school years become difficult to deal with as she tries to cope with her deformity and insecurities. After school she jumps right into the work force and discovers herself in a world of free love and promiscuity. She searches through life for the one man who can give her the love she so desperately needs. As she looks for the life she thinks she wants, she runs head on with one disaster after another. Her addictive behaviors eventually take her to a dark and evil world. Her mistakes lead her to nothing but sadness and shame. She struggles to break free from it and regain her Christian life back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452088266

C.J. Rowley

C.J. Rowley has lived in the Ozarks since the late 1950’s and enjoys all the four seasons as they arrive. She has moved away a few times, but always returns to her roots there. She shares her home with her feline friends Maxwell, Elizabeth and Joey and has four beautiful grandchildren whom she loves dearly. C.J. still works for Wal-Mart and has just finished celebrating 25 years with them this year. When not working, she enjoys her favorite hobbies of fishing, gardening and quilting. Since she enjoyed writing this book so much, she intends to start on another one very soon.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I want to begin by saying this is a true story about my life. I have not used anyone’s real names in it so I can protect my family and friends. Even they don’t know some of the things I’ve been through. I will start at the beginning and tell you most of what I recall. I was born in Coffeyville, Kansas in the early 50’s. My father was stationed at the airbase there. My folks already had three boys and my mother had miscarried before me. She had taken some drugs during her pregnancy with me for morning sickness. So when I was born, I had a deformity to my left hand. A lot of babies born during this time had similar problems. So the drug was eventually taken off the market.

After Dad got out of the military, we moved to Nebraska. My mother’s family all lived there. My grandparents had moved out of their old house and rented an apartment. My family moved into it and it was a huge place with a basement and a big back yard. Mom loved to select her switches from the trees in the back. I remember getting a few whacks on my bare legs from them. They stung for days. Dad even raised parakeets for awhile. I can remember opening the basement door and hearing all those screeching birds. They were quite noisy at times. He had all colors and they were so much fun to watch.

The winters were so cold and the wind would whip right through you. I remember having to bundle up in a heavy wool snowsuit. I could hardly move or walk when I had it on. But it was very warm and great for playing outside in the piles of snow. My brothers were so mean and would pelt me with hard packed snowballs. They felt like ice hitting me and really stung my bare face. Soon I would be running back inside crying to my mom and telling on them. I would have so many layers on under the suit, it took some time to get everything off just to go to the bathroom. We would play for hours it seemed and my hands would feel like they had needles stinging in them when we would finally go inside to warm up.

My grandparents were quite the couple. They both were very short, but my grandpa was thin and my grandma was very heavy. They both had a great sense of humor, I guess that’s where I got mine from. Grandma was a very good cook and she made the best barbecue beef sandwiches in the world. We always loved to go places with her, because we always got to stop at the ice cream shop on the way home. Grandpa on the other hand had quite the temper at times. When he watched the news on TV and heard something he didn’t agree with, he was up and cursing them and calling them Communists. Everyone he didn’t like was a communist and at that time, I was too young to understand what that word meant. He had his good side, though. I remember sitting on his lap and he would bounce me up and down and he would laugh and have a big grin on his face. He loved to watch football on TV. He was quite the Huskers fan and so was his son. My uncle and his wife and her two boys from a previous marriage, lived here too. They would come over and visit a lot. All of us kids would have a good time playing together. My aunt and uncle eventually had a little girl. She had the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen. She had her daddy wrapped around her little finger.

My grandpa and my uncle ran a dance hall together on the outskirts of town. They had a pretty big place with a raised stage for live bands to come and play. I remember my grandma getting all the big banners ready to put out on billboards and in stores to advertise all their events. They had some very big names come to play there. I met a lot of famous musicians and singers in my younger days but didn’t know it at the time. My folks would get out on the dance floor and have a really good time together. My dad would let me stand on his feet and he would take me for a spin sometimes. We didn’t get to go out there very often, but I can still remember the lively polka music and all the jazz playing. Maybe that’s why I love jazz today. The place was usually packed with couples drinking and dancing the night away. They had a coat check lady that took care of everyone’s jackets. I remember all the beautiful fur coats that came through there. I loved touching them and feeling how soft they were and wishing that when I grew up I would have one, too. On Sundays, we would go out to clean up after the parties. The place smelled so strong of cigarettes and booze, it would make you sick. But I loved looking for lost coins under the tables. I got to keep whatever I found. Usually my folks left us with babysitters when they would help out on the weekends there. They would bring candy for us and let us stay up and watch the Alfred Hitchcock show. I would always be scared and hide my eyes when the boogieman appeared.

My dad worked different jobs in his life. He worked as an ice man for awhile and I remember him working for the bread company delivering Aunt Betty’s Bread. He was a machinist, too and he made all kinds of things. He eventually moved us into a brand new home. It had three bedrooms, a basement and a fenced in yard. We had to make new friends and I started kindergarten there. I hated going to school and I had to walk with my brothers. It was a long walk for my little short legs. My mom would pick me up at noon if I made it that long. Sometimes I would just leave after sandbox time and walk home by myself. The teacher would discover me gone and call my mom to be on the lookout for me. It was quite dangerous for me since I had to cross a very busy street. But times were different then. We could run and play all over the neighborhood without anyone worrying. We just had to be home by a certain time or else. We used to play outside with the garden hose and spray each other and run through the wet yard. We threw water on each other with old coffee cans or buckets and once I fell on a can and cut my knee open. I had to go to the hospital to get stitched up. One time I slipped on the basement floor when it was wet and I cut my head on the concrete. Back to the hospital again for more stitches. I had to be held down because I was so afraid of needles. I can remember stepping on some glass and my mom had to hold me down on the bed so she could remove the slivers. That hurt so bad and she made me bite the pillow to keep from screaming.

I had a friend named Debbie who came to play with me. Her brothers were friends with my brothers. They were always getting into trouble. One day they brought home a baby skunk. It smelled so bad and my mom threw a fit. She told them to take it back to the field where they found it. Another time they caught a bunch of snakes and turned them loose in the house. They finally caught most of them and released them outside. Debbie was a little older than me and she was my first introduction to sex. We would play doctor and nurse and she always wanted me to get into the closet with her. I never thought much about my body until she had me take off my clothes and she touched me in my private spots. My mom walked in on her one day and discovered her naughtiness to me and she told her to go home and never come back. I felt so ashamed and knew I had been a part of something very bad. I had to make new friends after that. Sometimes my cousin Ricky would get to come over and we were close to the same age. He was so much fun to play with and I thought he was so cute. When he smiled he had the biggest dimples I’d ever seen. I always wanted to kiss him and he would play hard to get with me and make me chase him. Then he would let me kiss him. He was my uncle’s stepson, so we really weren’t blood relation. I always thought I would marry him when I grew up.

I was always afraid of the dark. Most nights I would wake up during the night and run and jump in bed with my folks. They grew tired of this since I kicked them in my sleep. They usually carried me back to my bed sometime during the night. One night I awoke and saw a horrible looking man standing beside my bed. He was so scary and ugly looking and I‘ll never forget the way he was looking at me. I jumped up and ran screaming into my folks bedroom. They told me that there was no one in my room and that I probably had a bad dream. To this very day I can still see that man’s face in my mind. I had a professional person tell me that children don’t usually remember such vivid dreams all their lives. They tend to forget after awhile. He said that possibly it did happen. I do remember the neighbors talking about a man breaking into homes in our area. I still don’t have an answer to whether it happened or not. I was always very bashful and I would cry when men tried to talk to me. I would hang onto my mother’s skirt everywhere we went. She didn’t have to worry about me getting too far away.

One time when the babysitter was there, my brothers went downstairs to the basement and found a box with samples of wine bottles in it. My dad had received them as a Christmas gift from an employer. My brothers opened them and drank a lot of it and ended up getting very drunk. They sure got in trouble when the folks got home. I bet the sitter got an earful, too. My brothers were so sick for days after that.

My brothers were cub scouts and my mom was the leader. They would meet in the basement for their meetings and learn how to make things. I liked getting to be there and see all the boys and I had a crush on one of the older boys. He would talk to me and pay attention to me. They learned how to tie knots and earn badges to sew on their shirts. I was just a tom-boy and tried to keep up with them. I didn’t know how to be ladylike.

Once my brothers were in the kitchen and I always had to be up in there business and see what they were doing. My brother Jerry had something cupped in his hand. He held it out and told me to smell it. So I took a big sniff and inhaled a handful of black pepper. Oh my, did it ever burn. I went to sneezing and my eyes were burning. The boys all started laughing and my mom came running in to see what was going on. After I told her in between sneezes, she held me over the sink and started pouring water in my nose and tried to relieve my agony. They sure got in trouble that day. Another time they were in the kitchen making a chocolate cake and they had mixed the cocoa with water. Dad came into the kitchen and they ask him if he wanted to taste it. He didn’t know they hadn’t put sugar in it yet. He took a big bite and lo and behold, cocoa water went flying out of his mouth everywhere. They spent another night in their room.

Every May 1st, we always celebrated May Day. I got to decorate little baskets and put candy or flowers in them. Then we would take them around to all the houses in the neighborhood and leave them on peoples front porches and ring the doorbell, then run and hide. It was so much fun to see their surprised looks when they opened the door and no one was there but a nice gift. We did so many things as kids that no one does today. We had to make fun with what we had. At Christmas we always got together with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle and their kids. We all put up trees and decorated them with glass ornaments and threw tinsel all over them. We would string popcorn and put it on the tree. I can remember some of my first gifts from my family. I always got a baby doll and I really liked my xylophone my aunt gave me. I hated when my brothers would grab my dolls and tease me with them. Most of them ended up having moustaches drawn on them. My dad always had the movie camera rolling during most of our get togethers and outings we went on. We had so much fun watching them on film over and over. When the movie screen was damaged, we just put a sheet on the wall and kept on watching. I was pretty happy back then, except for the teasing from time to time. They were truly just being boys. We played hide n seek, barbecued in the homemade pit Dad had made, went out to drive-in movies for a special treat and enjoyed being with family. My folks would take us to the park to play and there was a big metal statue of a buffalo that I loved to get up on.

On most Sunday mornings, Mom would dress us up in our good clothes and take us to church. Dad never went with us. We always had to sit in the balcony so if my brothers got rowdy, they wouldn’t be heard down on the main floor. They would accidentally drop things over the side. I can remember hearing things hit down below and Mom would be furious with them. All in all, I thought we were just a normal family. Dad worked, Mom stayed home, my brothers picked on me and we enjoyed just being kids.

Chapter 2

Most of my dad’s family lived in the boot heel of Missouri. People there farmed cotton, soybeans and melons among other things. It was flat and sandy everywhere and the mosquitoes were so big they could carry a small child off. We used to go visit my grandparents there quite often. They had a big old house with a big porch that wrapped around part of it and if you wanted to use the bathroom, you’d better be prepared to hold your nose because it was out behind the garden. You had to duck and weave to miss the wasps hanging out there in the outhouse. Sometimes the spider webs would catch you off guard, too. Grandma had to wash clothes on a wash board out on the porch and she had to carry in the water for bathing and for washing the dishes. No plumbing of any kind there. They were very poor, but very happy and blessed with what they had.

Grandpa’s pride and joy was his big garden. I can remember the corn stalks being so tall and they seemed to reach up into the sky. But I was so short that everything was huge to me. I was sort of afraid of my grandpa. He always made a growling noise and tried to grab at me when I walked by him. He was only teasing me, but it scared me anyway. I was so shy that I tended to be more partial to my grandma. She was kind and quiet and oh so loving to me. But she had a way to make you mind, too. She only had to give you that look with her eyes one time to know she meant business. Grandma would sit on her stool in the bedroom and undo her braid, then brush her long hair before she went to bed. She was a quilter, too and would sit for hours in her chair sewing together pieces for her quilts. She also did tatting and embroidery and I never could figure out how she could make all those little stitches in her doilies.

Her mother died when she was young and she never knew who her daddy was. She was what they used to refer to as a Cabbage patch baby. She went to live with her uncle and they raised her. My grandma was a church goer. They would invite the pastor over for dinner after service on Sunday. She would get the boys to ring a chicken’s neck and bring it in to be cooked. My grandparents ran a restaurant in town for years when their kids were young. All the kids had a job to do there. I guess that’s where my aunts learned to cook so well. My grandma was a hard working woman. She would work in the cotton fields with my grandpa and the older kids. When she was pregnant, she would work right up until time to deliver, then afterwards she would return right back to the fields. My aunt would take care of the younger children. One of her younger boys died right there in the field after his appendix burst. Doctors were far and few between back then.

My dad’s brother and his family lived in the same town. My uncle had a huge garden, too. He worked as a butcher and my aunt ironed clothes for people to bring in extra money. They had three girls and a boy, all younger than I. So when we went to visit them, I always had someone to play with.

I think my dad always yearned to move back to Missouri. The boys were always getting into trouble in the city and Dad wanted a farm of his own. So one day we found out Dad had put the house up for sale. We started packing and a big moving van came and packed our belongings up to make the move to Springfield, Missouri. I think we left a few snakes behind in that house. My brothers said later they turned some loose as a joke for the new owners.

We finally made it to our new home and the van was close behind. Dad had visited the place previously and found a rental house while he looked for some land to buy. I had to meet new friends and begin a new school there. We had to walk to school once again and the boys always managed to try to lose me on the way. I didn’t much like my teacher there either. She yelled out commands like we were soldiers or something. I tried to go up to her desk one day to tell her I needed to go to the bathroom and she swung a big book around and hit my bottom with it and told me to sit down. I think I wet my pants that day. I hated her for embarrassing me. One boy used to chase me around on the playground. I didn’t like him so I always tried to make him mad so he would leave me alone. My brothers told me that the principal had a special room for bad kids. He had a giant board that he would whip kids with if they got in trouble. So I was always trying to be good so I would never have to go to that room. Some kids said they just made that up, but I didn’t want to take that chance.

I was always told not to talk to strangers or get into any strange car. One day when I was walking home, this bad dog who always ran out barking at me, came too close and bit me on the leg. I tried to run away and was crying so hard. He finally stopped chasing me and I stopped to rest. I wasn’t hurt real bad, but I was scared. A man stopped his car when he saw what had happened and asked me if he could take me home. I said no and started for home again. He just drove away. When I got home, Mom was waiting and told me the man was a neighbor and had told her what had happened. She praised me for not getting into his car and for doing what I had been told not to do.

The house we lived in was a two story house. It was on some farmland in the middle of town. It had a barn and cows and a shed in the back. We used the shed for playing in. The boys used to tease me and always tried to get me to do bad things. One day we were up in the hay loft and they told me to back up, so I started backing up and fell down through a hole where the ladder was and landed pretty hard on the floor below. It’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck. Another time they had a garter snake and told me it wouldn’t bite. So I stuck my finger up to his mouth. Ouch. It felt like a thousand needles in my finger. I ran to the house and told Mom what they did. They got into more trouble in those days. They would take their friends back to the shed to hangout. I was always trying to see what they were up to. Then they would take off down to the creek behind us and catch crawdads to go fishing with. They were always bringing catfish home for us to eat. There were pear trees in the front yard and I ate my share of them. They attracted so many butterflies and I became interested in catching and keeping them. There were so many different colors and sizes. It was a challenge to catch them without hurting them. It was so much fun there and I was anxious to get to move to a real farm. Dad would sit and hold me on his lap and tell me stories about what we would have on our farm.

I never much thought about my deformity until now. The kids at school would ask me why my hand was like that. They would point at me and giggle at me and made me feel different from them. I asked my daddy why I looked this way and he told me that God made me special that way. He told me to keep bending the tips of my fingers and maybe some day they would look like everyone else. My two middle fingers never formed and my index finger and little finger were straight with no joints in them, but my thumb was normal. So I would sit and bend the tips like he told me to. Little did he know that he did me a favor. Now I can grip things since the tips have a curve to them. I was Daddy’s little girl and he was always my hero.

One day I went downstairs and saw my mom going out the backdoor. I thought I’d play a trick on her and lock the door. She tried to get in but couldn’t so she went around to the other door. Well, I locked it, too. Then she started to get angry and yelled at me to open the door. She was getting furious and I became very scared, so I ran upstairs. She kept banging on the door and calling out my name and I started smelling something burning. I went down and opened the door and she ran to the stove to take out a very burned lemon meringue pie. Boy I knew I was in trouble now. My trick had backfired on me. She told me to go to my room and stay until she called me to come down. When she did, she was waiting in the living room for me. Across her knees I went and down went my pants and oh what a spanking I got that day. No more locking doors for me.

My bedroom was upstairs to the right and my brothers were to the left. In between our rooms was an attic. It was scary to me and I never went in there. I thought there were spooky things in there and I hated the dark and always slept with a night light on. I never wanted to get out of bed at night, because I always thought something was under there and it would grab my legs. So when I would wake up and be scared after a bad dream, I would jump as far as I could from the bed and run down to get in bed with my folks.

My dad found some farm land in a little town close by. It had an old barn and a little shed on it but that was it. He went to work trying to start building a house on it. My uncle came to help him out and they managed to get it up pretty quick. Dad was working his regular job and trying to work on the house, too. So he was always tired and cranky. The first time Dad took us out there to see the place, I jumped out of the car and ran up on some boards and stepped on a rusty old nail. So Mom had to put us in the car and drive to the doctors’ office. He cleaned it up with some smelly stuff and gave me a tetanus shot. Oh how I hated that needle. I’m sure my folks were scrapped for money then and didn’t need this added expense.

It took some time to finish the inside of the house enough where we could think about moving in. Dad wanted to get it done before school started in the fall. We always went out on the weekends to help work. Dad had a man come to dig us a well. First he had to find the water. I remember the man had a funny looking stick that was forked. He walked all over the place back and forth. Soon the stick started moving funny and he said that’s where they would dig. I never knew you could find water with a stick. The house was finally ready and we had water. We had a concrete floor and a tin roof, but it looked fine to me. I was ready for my new home and eighty acres to explore. We finally got everything moved in and were ready to begin our new life on the farm.

We met our new neighbors that lived down the road. What do you know, but they had a girl the same age as me. Her name was Katie and she was tall and thin, with long brown hair. She had two sisters that were twins and they were my brother Larry’s age. Then she had an older brother named Kent. He sure was a good looking guy. I was very bashful around him. But he had a girlfriend and wasn’t home very much. After Katie and I got to know each other, we were inseparable. We were like sisters. I was at their home all the time and her momma treated me just like one of her girls.

I was liking our new home very much. There was always something to do outside or go exploring in the woods. But I hated to go in the woods alone. I always felt like someone was watching me. We saw some coyotes come out of the woods one day and came close to our yard. So my mom told me to be careful and always watch out for wild animals. We had rabbits, squirrels, skunks, raccoons and deer all around us.

Dad sold cookies for a company there. He had a big white panel truck he hauled them around in. He cleaned up the old shed and put boxes and boxes of cookies in there to store. Sometimes he had to go to other towns to deliver them and came home real late at night. He would let me go with him if it wasn’t an all day drive. It was fun meeting different people in the stores, but it was a long hot drive in that old truck. It seemed like we hit every bump in the road. Oh course with all those cookies in the shed, it attracted a bunch of mice, so we were always finding packages with holes in them. He couldn’t sell them, so we got to eat what was salvageable.

It was quite a different life now. Not like the city at all. But I had a new friend that I loved to be with. My brothers had to do a lot of work around there. They weren’t as happy as I was.