Granny Bought Us A House

By Jan Bylaska

This book is a collection of memories from age eight through sixteen, mostly in Georgia, then Florida, in later years. Some of the stories are sad and some are funny. Most of the stories are about people and some involve animals, but they all happened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645842255

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Granny Bought Us A House

Jan Bylaska

Copyright © 2019 Jan Bylaska

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-64584-224-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64584-225-5 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Preface

Over the years, I have told about some of the happenings during my childhood in South Georgia to my children, husband, and some close friends. Their response quite often was, You should write a book, so I started writing down the episodes whenever I remembered them. I also prodded my older brother for whatever he could remember about those times, recording them also. The bits and pieces have been arranged in, hopefully, a reasonably accurate order of events. So to all those who said, Write a book, here it is.

The places named in this story are real. The people are real also, but their names are not. The events actually happened. Some are funny, some serious, and some would get people thrown in jail these days.

It was the summer of 1946, and my sister, Rita, was crying. I heard Dad say to Mom, You will stay home and take care of Rita. You are not sending her off every week and leaving her. Mom had left her all week with some people she knew, while she worked at a cigar factory in Valdosta. She picked Rita up on Friday night and was going to take her back there on Sunday night, but Rita was upset and so was Daddy.

As a result of all this, Mom told me and my brother, Hubert, to take Rita over to the sitter’s house Monday morning before school started because Mom had a ride to work before daylight. It was a mile to the sitter’s house and a mile the other way to school.

On Monday morning, Hubert said, I’m not walking that far. Since I could not leave Rita home crying, I dressed her and took her to school with me. I did the same thing the next day and again on Wednesday, all the time under threats from Mom because I did not take her to the sitter’s.

The teacher told me on Wednesday that Rita could visit the third grade with me occasionally, but I could not bring her to school every day. So I did not go to school on Thursday or Friday.

Mom and Dad had a big fight that weekend, and Mom quit her job. I did not get close to her for a long time, since I thought she would be looking for someone to lash out at, and I did not want to be her target!

I often acted like a skittish yard dog, hiding out a lot whenever Mom was around. This was probably because I was handed the responsibility to take care of my younger brother and sister since I started second grade, and if I failed to follow directions, I caught hell with a backhand to the face.

During the summer, I wouldn’t see either parent for two or three days at a time. Oscar and Rita would cry from hunger so I would drag them to a neighbor’s house and ask for a cold hunk of grits or a biscuit. I got run out of a plum tree in a yard I sneaked into, and run off from a pecan tree while getting food for my younger brother and sister.

When the old mulberry tree out back put on berries in the late summer, Oscar stayed in it eating berries. I can still see hundreds of little bugs all over those berries, but Oscar didn’t seem to pay them any attention. Down the hatch they went! He did appear to be the healthiest of us kids, though.

I developed big sores on my legs, and it was so hard for me to remember things (signs of malnutrition, I later learned). Mom found out I was asking for handouts (I only did it when I couldn’t take the crying for food any longer), and she threatened to beat me to death. It was very stressful on me since I was the cause of not taking care of things. Someone finally reported us to the Welfare Department. Mom then had to stay home with us and give us hookworm treatments and iron tonic—and feed us every