Little Miss Know It All - Betty

By David Dawn

This is a great short story with very good reviews. This book is about a mixed Irish and Dutch teenager who was raise in the Roaring 20's and ran away in the late 1920's.Only to run into the Great Depression of the 30's. She lead her life following her emotions which got her into a lot of trouble. Betty had 8 children and raised 6 of them on her own. Always moving... being chased by bill collectors and the police. The Woman's Rights era in the 20's to the 60's influenced her life. They fought for equality on the job and in the home. The organization help give her the strength to change in a world of negativity from a bias male driven society. Later in life she started controlling her emotions and thus led a better life for her self and her children. Betty became a great community leader and was highly respected from the community business owners.

Betty wanted teenagers and young adults to know that they are the only thing holding themselves back from doing what is right and living a productive life. To achieve this young people need to realize that their negative thoughts and habits keeps them in a self-created ego prison molded out of mental bars that keep them in fear of success as a well-rounded adult. It is very hard to change habits and it takes true and continued commitment. It can take up to to several years to truly make the change but it greatly depends on how determined you are to make the change. Remember each new day gives a person another chance to continue their fight for changing to be the person who they really want to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669828020

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by David Dawn.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/31/2023

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

840054

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1ST Chapter

Little Miss Abercrombie

2ND Chapter

Living the Real Life as an Adult

3RD Chapter

Making Babies

4TH Chapter

Hard Times Raising Children

5TH Chapter

Growing Pains

6TH Chapter

The Move to Seattle

7TH Chapter

The Golden Years

8TH Chapter

A Commentary from the Author

Appendix A

Teenagers Coming into Adulthood

Appendix B

Mental Disorders (ADHD)

Appendix C

The Suffrage Movement for Women Civil Rights

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I sincerely thank everyone for their time, concern and support giving their input into the remaking of this book:

Ethel

Phyllis

Ed

John

Donna

Steve G and Eileen

David

Jack

A special thanks to Steve G and Phyllis who helped in editing (aka ghostwriters).

I must say, Steve is my mentor and teacher in writing.

Last but not least . . . Mom.

Without these people this book would not be a really good short story. Thank you for all of your help in making this happen. Bless you all.

INTRODUCTION

This book is based on a true story of a woman named Betty. This story is taken from Betty’s life events and situations. All of the names of the people from her past have been changed.

Betty’s story is presented in her later years as a conversation between her and a young teenage runaway girl, who was pregnant and homeless. Betty was raised in the roaring twenties. As a teenager, she was influenced by all the new machines and gadgets of the era. This introduced new ideas in dressing, thinking and social speech. Betty ran away from her home to seek out a new life for herself sometime between the end of the roaring twenties and during the beginning of the Great Depression. This was not good timing for Betty, as it made her life even harder for her coming into adulthood.

The 1930s was an especially interesting period because the Great Depression took center stage. Living through that period while (a) facing societies discrimination from different races and (b) the different classes of a race was especially difficult for many women. Betty was one of the lucky ones because she was a white woman who stayed away from drugs and the criminal environment (aka the street life). However, she made very poor decisions when it came to selecting men. These decisions made living life very hard for her and her family due to:

• Following her emotions to the extent of creating a negative living condition.

• Betty’s immature ways of thinking and the belief that she knew it all backfired most of the time and the idea of her being wrong didn’t even cross her mind.

Most teenagers who run away from home come to find out that they have made a mistake. Unfortunately, a lot of them were like Betty, who had too much pride to go back home.

All teenagers go through the emotional choices which include:

• Being rebellious to the basic standard of their family rules.

• Being self-centered and not caring for other people’s thoughts and wishes.

• Wanting to experience all the different situations life has to offer.

• Refusing to follow the rules of society that she knew was for her own good.

Many teenagers do not realize that in most of the cases it is never too late to go back home and finish growing up to become a young adult, with the added wisdom and knowledge of their parents. Most teenagers only have three or four years to live with their parents before they turn eighteen. At that time, they can legally move out on their own with the support of their parents. This is actually . . . the most important part of life for a teenager. At this time of life, new adult experiences happen. Having the support of family to consult as different events arise is important. It can help a person make the right decisions without really having to worry about eating, sleeping and having a safe place to relax. The wisdom from these events will help mold a young adult into becoming a well-rounded productive citizen in our society. The rebellious ones and their families will suffer by living in a financially deprived and unsupported environment.

Some people say that we are living here for a reason, and we will not die until we have fulfilled our reason for being. Betty strongly believed in this. She raised her kids to be hardworking, loving adults, and showed them that people can change the negative cycles and bad habits that are in their lives. It doesn’t matter the age of the individual because they still can work on making these changes with each new day. This gives a person another chance to continue their fight for changing themselves to become the person they really want to be.

For a person to achieve the goal of moving their family into a higher class of citizenship in the future, that person should continue their fight without succumbing to negative cycles and habits. In order to do this, a person must learn their real history by knowing where and how their family lived in the past. The family history will explain the reason why the family has negative habits and cycles, which includes (a) how they think, and (b) their beliefs and morals in life. With this knowledge, a person can break the negative cycles of their family history and create positive cycles and habits while creating a stronger family structure. All that is needed to make these changes are:

• Getting the complete and true family information.

• Understanding the family information this is the key to having the wisdom to make the needed positive changes.

• Making a person’s drive greater to succeed;

• Making a person’s determination greater to achieve a desired goal.

• Making a person’s commitment to family and self to succeed.

This is what Betty did in the mental aspect of her life. This is also what a young adult must have in their life to be a well-rounded individual.

Betty lived through the Great Depression. She watched and joined the way people were really being treated on a daily basis. There is many women making great sacrifices in every aspect of life. The factory workers during the war were called Rosie’s. There are a lot of ladies today who do not even realize these sacrifices the ladies of the Suffrage Movement had made to allow today’s modern women to be accepted in society as an equal individual. This had a critical impact on Betty’s life as she learned about how the movement was organized and played out within her lifetime. She began to understand that women across the nation had fought to have a choice and a voice. Ladies had to fight for equal respect in the home and on the job, even though the American public was very critical of women working and mixing with non-white races. All these issues affected Betty and her family during several periods of her life.

These many sacrifices in all the different aspects of life included:

• mental

• physical

• social

• financial

• spiritual

Betty experienced firsthand these categories of great sacrifices that affected all the women’s friends and family members, as well as millions of other people in every way thinkable. This was done for themselves and for the generations to come so that our grandbabies could have a better chance making a good wage and to have some of the things a family really needs to live a well-rounded life.

Betty learned that individual parents have different techniques in raising children due to the different lifestyles and the way they were raised as children. She knew we must keep an open mind to new ideas and techniques as the children grow and change. Keeping the door of communication open will work wonders in running a family. As good parents, we must work on changing the negative cycles that have stayed with us and our parents for the good of our own families. This is important in order to have a well-rounded child, and to show the children what is needed to be a proud citizen of a hardworking community. That has a well-rounded family.

Betty turned to a deep state of depression due to the many different events that unfolded due to her misjudgment. All the different classes and races must go through life’s struggles due to one reason or another, which creates emotional problems that can slowly lead to:

• Self-anger against family and community.

• A buildup of an individual’s frustration.

• A person not caring and receiving a less quality education.

• Being a prospective employee and not obtaining a good paying job.

• Always choosing the easy way out. On the job or with the family.

• The lack of the individual having self-discipline.

• The effect is the family structure is weakened.

• A loss of self and family values.

• A lack of social mannerism skills.

• Very weak respect for self, family, and society.

Betty hopes that this story will give the reader a strong sense of self-worth that creates the willpower to improve themselves and those around them. The lower classes need to be teaching, training, and showing the way to develop a strong respectful adult relationship among married couples, and teaching teenagers the means to change the cycles of all the negative emotional habits that keep our souls earthbound in a self-created ego prison with the bars molded out of negative thoughts and bad habits. Any limitations that we perceive are only in our minds. If we change our thoughts, we will change our lives in developing a positive and successful self. This will help in combating generations of Economical Weathering. Which creates negative emotional problems of self-anger against the family and community. By not having the money to raise a well-rounded family and living month to month all your life.

1ST CHAPTER

Little Miss Abercrombie

Puget Sound is one of the most beautiful bodies of water, with its cities located on the waterfront. The cities are backed up with green rolling hills and two snowcapped mountain ranges on each side of the body of water. Seattle is one of the waterfront cities which is the largest city in the northwest. Betty’s story starts in Seattle and refers to the challenges and hardships in her life. These challenges include having eight children (and raising six of them as a single mom for most of their years) while moving from town to town, with various bill collectors in pursuit.

As time went on, Betty really did not start trying to change her habits until her late twenties. That was about the time when she really realized that she had several negative ways that needed to be dealt with. She had to fight for the next twenty years to replace these negative cycles with positive habits, thus changing her whole personality. Betty had to learn to be resilient and more positive in her ways of thinking. This was due to the fact she had the responsibility of her children to consider before her own needs.

As Betty sits by her window, watching the traffic going through the intersection below from within her apartment, she reflects:

I have a beautiful view. I can see the Space Needle to the north, part of the south end of Queen Ann Hill, and, most beautiful of all, a part of Puget Sound. I enjoy seeing the sailboats float by and the speed boats cutting through the water. Occasionally, I will see the fireboats spraying out their beautiful streams of water into the air. I also enjoy hearing the ferryboat horn sounding as it enters or leaves the station. I have seen a lot of tall and large ships go by with the containers loaded highly on the ship, coming and going. All of this is backed up with the beauty of the snowcapped Olympic Mountains on the other side of Puget Sound with their beautiful sunsets showing off the golden clouds all year round. It is not a wide view of the mountains because of the buildings lining the street, but it still is a great view of the mountains and Puget Sound.

Today started out to be a beautiful sunny morning. As I looked at the mountains, I noticed very dark and thick clouds beginning to roll over the Olympic Mountains. They were heading straight for the city. It was rain coming my way, for sure. Then I recalled hearing a neighbor telling another that there will be a real big storm coming in today. Oh Lord, they were right. Then, gees, all of a sudden, I could feel my stomach growling loudly which gave me the urge to run out and get something to eat. I figured I might have enough time to go down to the local café for a quick breakfast.

As I was putting on my coat, I could hear the sound of fire engine sirens going off at the nearby fire station. I loved to watch them go up the avenue with their lights flashing. One of the advantages to living in a high-rise is sometimes you get a good view, and that is what I had. I could see all of the way up Third Avenue to the Space Needle and Queen Ann Hill. I had always wanted to be the driver of a fire engine. I always pictured myself driving one, as I watched the hook and ladder fire engine, hose fire engine, first aid truck, and the fire chief’s SUV winding through traffic with their lights and sirens on. It was always a joy to watch. I watched them for at least ten minutes as the fire equipment went out of view uptown.

My stomach soon reminded me of breakfast with another big growl. I wanted to be back before the rain came because I really did not want to get caught out in the wind and rain. As I was walking to my favorite cafe, I noticed a young girl who looked about five months pregnant. She was just sitting on the park bench wasting time, and then I remembered seeing this young lady in the neighborhood for the last week or two. She reminded me of myself when I was young and dumb. The closer I got to the café the stronger the wind was getting. I could smell the rain in the air. I was glad to get to the café. I greeted some of the other regulars and Ms. Loretta Johnston, the owner who I befriended my very first day in Seattle. I was lucky to get my favorite seat next to the window. I liked to watch the world go by while eating my meals.

I noticed the same young pregnant girl that was at the park walking by the window. She was pulling a big suitcase on wheels. The girl then entered the café to get out of the wind. She and I made eye contact, and I waved to her to come over to me. As the girl approached, I asked her if she would like to join me at the table. The girl accepted and golly, lo and behold, the conversation was on. We introduced ourselves, and the young girl’s name was Sue. I was surprised that we formed a strong connection as if we knew each other for years. I told Sue about me being the same as her—a runaway, which got me in trouble, and having a lot of kids. I discussed with her how raising all the children by myself made life hard. I kept mentioning to Sue how the hardships of raising the kids made me batty at times. We continued into small talk and seemed that if one of us was not talking, the other one was.

Sue thought for a moment, and then asked me, "What was it like raising children on your own? What