How It Was and Is for Me

By Judy Walters

How It Was and Is For Me chronicles the life of author Judy Walters. At the books beginning, she is 6 weeks old and living in a travel trailer in Arkansas about to move on to another town in another state where her alcoholic mother and father can find work. This is just one of the patterns that keeps repeating itself over and over again.

Throughout the book, Judy details the struggles she endures growing up in an alcoholic family. She also shares about the tragic loss of one of her own sons to the disease of alcoholism as well as the poignant memories of she and her brother, Casey and half sister, Ruthann, building sand forts in Arizona.

Judys life is a testament to the fact that patterns keep reemerging, but can also be broken as after years of chaos, abandonment and basic survival as a child, to marriage, divorce and loss in adulthood, Judy sets out on a path to break free of the chains of the past and find the beauty, joy and love life holds in the form of children, grandchildren, spouse, family and of course, dogs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462055647

Judy Walters

Judy Walters lives with her husband and various rescued cats and dogs in rural central Arkansas. She spends as much time as she can with her children and grandchildren and continues her rescue work.

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Copyright © 2011 by Judy Walters

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-5094-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-5093-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-5564-7 (e)

Front cover art by

Mary Kathleen Couch

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 10/12/2011

Contents

Acknowledgments:

How It All Began

The Early Years

Grade School Years

Grade School Years Continued

More Grade School years

Christmas at Grandma’s House 1956

The Big Move

The Accident

Summer At Sissy’s House

The Worst Year Of My Childhood

8th Grade Year continued

Eighth Grade Finale

The Rescue

Summer at Mrs. Seats house

Moving Again

Ninth Grade

Hope For A New Life

Hopes Dashed

Married Life

Baby Makes Three

Playing House

My Little Monkeys

In Over Our Heads

All Consuming Religion

Going Back To School

Counseling

Learning To Live Alone

Relationship Fiasco

Stuck

Finding My Way

Farm Life In The Smokies

Home Alone Again

Perry Is Home

Trying To Control Alcoholism

Richard

Getting To Know Richard

Plans for Perry

Getting Perry Patched Up

One Last Try With Perry

My Greatest Fear

Saying Goodbye

Learning To Live Without Perry

How It Is

My Rescue Work/My Recovery

Author’s note:

Some of the names of the persons included in this memoir have been changed.

Dedication:

To my children and grandchildren,

I love you very

much.

Acknowledgments:

Thanks to all those people who stepped in to care for me when my parents were unable to do so. And to two very special home economics teachers who taught me so much. I don’t remember any of their names but I remember them just the same.

And thanks to my recovery family worldwide in Adult Children of Alcoholics, for always being there to share their story and listen to me share mine. I owe them my sanity.

And a special thank you to my good friend, Lise Kirk, for her encouragement and support through the writing of this book. Thank you, too, for your talent and skills in finding homes for hundreds of dogs and cats that will have a chance at a wonderful life because of your dedication to rescue.

How It All Began

It all started back in 1949 in a small town in central Arkansas. My parents had each moved back home to live with their parents after divorcing their previous spouses. My dad had left a family in Long Beach, California and nobody seems to know where my mother had been. She just showed up at my grandparent’s house with a new baby girl named Ruthann.

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Daddy’s Army picture before he met my Mother

Already living with them was my mother’s first daughter, Donna. My mother had given birth to her a couple of years earlier and my grandparents adopted her. Donna remained with them until she married.

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Mother, age 16

One day, my mother and father spotted each other from across the street. It just so happened that each set of parents lived across the street from each other. There must be some kind of special radar that attracts dysfunctional people to each other, because it sure worked its magic that day. Before long, they were dating. Both of my parents were alcoholic, so the dating was primarily just drinking together. They soon married, and in a very short time, I was born in 1950.

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Me on the couch of the travel trailer where we ate and slept

I’m told they stayed in that little town until I was 6 weeks old. They then began traveling around the country as my father found work at different types of jobs. Neither of my parents had graduated from high school, but my mother had gone to beauty school so she could usually find work in a beauty shop. My father would find some kind of construction work. They had purchased a small travel trailer for us to live in that my dad was able to pull behind his pick up truck whenever we would move.

When I was fifteen months old and we were living in Kentucky, they had another baby they named Casey. Now with 3 children in tow, they began years of traveling from one construction job to another from the South to the West. At the time, there was a lot of construction going on in New Mexico and Arizona. Small towns would actually spring up around construction sites. My father got a job moving mobile homes to those areas where trailer parks housed the construction workers and their families.

The Early Years

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One of the many trailer parks we lived in. Our travel trailer first in picture, Indiana 1950, I was 8 months old.

We moved around a lot. I can’t even remember all the places we lived. What I do know is that we didn’t stay in any one place very long. There are a few pictures of us growing up in trailer parks. My memory of places we lived really begins when I started going to school. I can remember where we were for each school year and each summer between school terms.

I started first grade in Albuquerque, NM. We moved there from Alamogordo, NM. What I remember of Alamogordo was that it was very hot, dry and dusty. The only shade we had to play in was the shade from the travel trailer. I know that my mother hated Alamogordo because she complained everyday about how awful it was there. Just before school started, we moved to Albuquerque. Daddy sold the travel trailer and we moved into our first house. It seemed huge. Mother purchased a piano and Daddy purchased a milk cow. We began to look like a regular family.

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Me and the travel trailer

I’m not sure why I didn’t thrive there, but starting school was very stressful for me. I was not very well socialized and was a very nervous child. I stuttered and was so afraid that someone was