Granny Pearl must have felt guilty leaving Daddy with her sisters, so she did spoil him a little. Case in point, this pony, which she bought for him after a successful performance. I guess he wanted to learn how to do tricks with the pony, so they set him up on it for a photo (c. 1925). Good thing the pony was tamed. I guess he saw that in a movie. He wasn't too comfortable doing that. Pearl also tried to teach Daddy the piano, which he never picked up on, but he did learn to play the ukelele. He loved to play and sing "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue" which was a pretty good description of his mother, Pearl.

Cameo Performance

You can clearly see the resemblance to Aaron Burr from this photo of Grandmother Pearl D. You can also see the effect of the sinus infection in the puffiness of her face. Eventually she had an operation on her pituitary which changed her appearance, and afterwards she wore dentures which greatly improved her stage career. She played the piano and sang. There is a piece in which she performs. You can order it for yourself on the internet. She wasn't fantastic, but the piano thing did launch her career, that is marrying well twice.

Many writers knew Pearl read manuscripts for her husband, so I have noticed several books that made reference to her. One even did a line portrait of her for the cover. At least that is my presumption because no actual credit is given. It was sort of like sending an anonymous love note or note of appreciation. Whether she caught on or not, I do not know. I do know her husband used to like to put her in shows that made her look like a slut. He never divorced her, so I guess she proved to be a good wife in many ways.

I know Pearl must have been an expert house cleaner, though she eventually had a maid. Her sister, Aunt Faye was so proud of her oven after twenty years of use, it was spotless as was the rest of her house. Often wondered what was in those picnic baskets that were prepared for the sick. She was big on home visits of the sick in her church. She was very active. I know Daddy always wanted us to eat with Faye's brother Jamie.

When Great Granny Ida Jane Burr D. died, she left me some baby blankets that belonged to Daddy and a cameo ring that Pearl wore. The ring was smaller than a size 5, which is the smallest adult woman's size. I wore it to my girlfriend Jane's house and left it on the window sill, when I washed the dishes, and her maid lifted it.

Now Jane's maid was a very spritely young black woman, who used to pick cotton for extra money so she could go to NYC, and she loved to tell us stories about that. She also had rich friends who hired her seasonally in New York City. She was great fun. She wore a cotton bandana around her head and an old cotton dress with hose turned down. Her feet were flat, as were most black people's, who worked the fields in those days in the south. So, for some reason I saw Pearl's ring in a silly movie on the finger of a twelve year old. Isn't that strange. Call me and I will tell you how to find these videos of interest to the family. My cameo performance.

Vice President Aaron Burr

If you're going to be descended from a famous man, might as well be one with no known descendants. Aaron Burr's only daughter died in a ship wreck before she had any children. He did live in Europe for several years and that is where our family originated, unknown to the Americans and considering his bad luck in America, Burr wasn't talking. Burr was known as a lady's man, but Granny did carry his name, so he must have married in Europe. Burr's father was a Presbyterian minister and his portrait clearly shows tightly curled hair, like Granny and Great Granny had. The ethnic origins of that aren't clear. Just a Burr family trait, I guess. Hasn't showed up since Granny.

Ida Jane Burr D., Pearl's mother

We called her Pearl with John Wesley Jr.

In one of my favorite pieces of her's you can see Granny Pearl sitting like this.

John Jr.'s artwork---maybe not a Van Gogh

Daddy, John Wesley Goodsell Jr. did several of these drawing while Grandmother Pearl was doing her performance work. There is one of pretty women, one of the women being larger than the others. They were wearing tutus and something on their heads. He did another one of Pearl in black hose, and I have seen pictures of her in black hose.

He also wrote sweet letters to her, when he was staying with her family in Mississippi, thanking her for things she sent him, including school clothes and a dog. There is a picture of him in a pith helmet on a pony she bought for him, and another in his complete cowboy outfit. Yes, I guess they were spoiling him, but life certainly unspoiled him. He was a good Daddy to me.

I heard Pearl (who had changed her name for the stage) fell apart when her brother accidentally hurt John Jr. and sent him to the hospital around 1930. Someone else had to receive a much publicized award for Pearl. You never know what publicity can do.

Pearl was very upset and so was the rest of the family. The Goodsell family in West Virginia came and got him and took him back for Granddaddy Goodsell to spoil for a while leaving Pearl's family to make money some other way.

As American as Apple Pie

Auntie Annie and Aunt Faye raising little John Wesley Goodsell while his mother dances, sings and plays the piano in New York.

You Can't Tell a Book by it's Cover

Are you in favor of ending the practice of tatooing or marring the body in any way to end the practice of war (except ear piercing and small pox vaccination) . I will explain what I think Frost meant by "the way less traveled" which makes "all the difference".

Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken (1915)

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

Thank you to http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/frost_road.html

I'm sorry I don't have a picture of Aunt Gayle. I remember her the year that James was born. We were there on Christmas a couple of years after his birth and the bubbling glass tubes mimicking candle lights on the tree were mesmerizing.

She had moved to Hendersonville with one of the Italian men Granddad had imported to work on the trains and tracks. Grandad found that the horses were not as efficient as trains in moving timber off the mountains, so Grandad and company helped the horse teamsters he had hired get started in Chicago. Have you ever heard of the Teamsters Union. The C&O railroad ran from Durbin WV to Chicago and to New York. You have to belong to the Teamsters to work at Rockefeller Center.

Gayle's husband was named Latt and with Grandad's help he built a timber operation in the mountains of North Carolina near Hendersonville. Along with the lumber he also operated a hardware store and his son, John G. was a contractor, building homes in the area. You can see these old homes on Realtor.com.

The point is Aunt Gayle told us they had built a home for Robert Frost in the mountains of North Carolina. You won't find this anywhere on the internet. But even as a child I clearly remember that name, Frost.

I have pondered that important poem above and the world needs to know about this.

If you take the road from Staunton, Virginia,(birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, and near the home of Thomas Jefferson) which is Route 250 towards West Virginia, you will end up, after a rigorous drive thru the woods and mountains, at an intersection where you will see a row of giant evergreen trees, the type they used to tan leather. These trees are awe inspirting.

Route 250 ends there at the Hemlock Trees. You can either go right or left. If you go left you will go past Bartow on to Cass where you will find the Cass railroad up the unusually steep grade of Cheat Mountain. Continue on around and you will find Route 66 which follows a mountain stream leading to Snow Shoe ski resort.

If you go to the right, you will go to Frank and into Durbin. Very small towns, but monumental in what they have contributed to this country. Were it not for the durable thick soled shoes produced by the Pocahontas Shoe Sole Company in Durbin, the USA might have lost the First and Second World Wars. (The South lost the Civil War because of their lack of good shoes.)

But of more interest to poets, there is something poetically extraordinary in the town of Durbin. If you stand on the steps of the Methodist Church in the middle of the tiny town of Durbin, WV and look at the mountain in front of you, you will see an extraordinary resemblance to the pyramid on the dollar bill, revered by the Masons (American Revolutionary Masonic Lodge). At that magical location (remember John Wesley was named for the founder of Methodism) you will see this pyramid shape with a ridge going straight over to the apex of the pyramid mountain.

That is why they named the mountain Cheat Mountain. The founding fathers followed the concepts of the Masons, which gave their members steps of the pyramid that they had to progress to make it to the top. These steps represented the troubles in life that you have to transcend to get to the top where you have the wisdom to oversee the world below you.

They were so fanatical about these steps, that the early Masonic carpenters that built houses in Virginia, put hints into their staircases and houses. It is a treat to study such old 1700's houses to find the hints that these prerevolutionary men left behind for posterity. I found one such house that had thirteen steps to get upstairs and on the ninth step there was a small defect cut into the stair.

In other words, the stairs were a representations of the trials and tribulations that mankind has to undergo thru life to achieve wisdom. The point of Cheat Mountain, is that there is another way. Just walk the ridgeline and you'll get to the top without all the pain and suffering life has to offer. The American Way. Cheat pain and suffering. Cure diseases, save lives and take something for pain. (This is not a advertisment for drug addition.)

When Grandad John Wesley came to America, he was the child of one of the inventors of aspirin, one of the first drugs to relieve pain, and he was seen as a hero, to such men of insight. So John Wesley's Methodist Church was built on the site where cheating pain and suffering is commemorated.

To get there you had to turn towards the tiny town of Durbin, the road less traveled by, not towards the relatively bigger timbering town of Cass which had the giant country store with millions in sales per year and where they hired 2000 men to timber the mountains in the early 1900's.

Someday, it will come out that Robert Frost had a home built in Hendersonville, NC in appreciation for what our family did for them and you will remember what I have told you here. You will find out this concept has made all the difference for many people. Ideas, philosophies make a difference in people's lives.

The very best designer genes.

Uncle Jamie (below) was very beloved to my family. When we came to visit him on his dairy farm in Mississippi the tame dairy cows would walk up to greet us when we got out of our car. They had such big brown eyes and long lashes, but the large creatures were a little scary. They just stood there looking at us, chewing their cudd.

Jamie used to tell us stories about the old days, when granddaddy used to work for granddaddy John Wesley in West Virginia. He retold the Hatfield and McCoy stories he heard from his father James. We would sit at the dinner table with a very large, really delicious country meal made by Aunt Cora Gates and her daughters with all fresh ingredients from their farm place on a lazy suzan so we wouldn't have to interrupt his stories to ask for something. The milk used to be so fresh it was warm selling like cow in the refrigerator. Eventually the cream would rise and you could make butter.

Uncle Jamie's and Granny Pearl's mother was kin to Aaron Burr associated to Princeton. You can see the relationship to William I of Orange. I know, that and a dime... Pardon me but, you need proof (genes) when you say you descended from Aaron Burr, because his only American offspring died in a shipwreck. So Burr never told anyone about his European children.

Uncle Jamie (Pearl's brother) Silent Never!

Grandmother Pearl's sister, Aunt Faye was very talented in her own right as a concert pianist. When the family moved away from West Virginia, taking young John Wesley with them, they bought 300 acres of prime Mississippi bottom land. Now granddad being such a famous character with the newspapers, having informed them about the Hatfield's and the McCoys, he found himself in a revolutionary hotbed of rural dissent in Okolona, Mississippi.

In the decades before, there had been a famous newspaper published for farmers in this small town. It led farmers to unite against something or other. I guess economic fluctuations were a major problem for farmers. Anyway, with the revolutionary power generated by this Okolona newspaper, the Federal government decided to subsidize farms to make things more stable for the farmer, so economic fluctuations didn't hurt them that much.

I don't think granddaddy James Darnell did much writing that I know of, but he strung barbed wire and raised John and some dairy cows. Oh, yes, that picture above is of Aunt Faye, made famous by Al Capp as Sadie Hawkins. She had a hawk like nose. She also was a very accomplished concert pianist. She played her baby grand piano faster and more accurate than any famous pianists I heard during my college career. What a waste in rural Mississippi!
Loved Aunt Faye is on the right. You can see her hawkish nose. That is our beloved Auntie Annie, Granny Pearl's best friend. She was no kin, but she took a major roll in raising John, and never married, devoting her life to Daddy John Wesley. As American as apple pie.
That's Aunt Faye after having some work done, in the silk dress with the orchid. She was being solicitous to casually dressed John Wesley. One book said she took John out behind the wood shed for photos, because she treasured her beautiful brick house, built with the money sent to her by Pearl's estate for John Wesley implying she was concerned that the house would be taken away from her. I guess she was showing off her skills as a manipulator, because she has the kittens for youthful John to abuse, so she could keep the house for herself. Bad, bad little boy didn't deserve a house, I guess. How clever!

When I met her, I was in college some 40 years later, her beautiful brick home was frozen in the 1920's, never having recieved any more funds for John's care after this photo. There was the baby grand piano in the large living room and a bright red velvet 1920's couch straight out of an old movie. I guess she was not as clever as she thought. She was a brilliant pianist and it is ashamed that talent went to waste, when her sister, Pearl, did well even though she wasn't half as talented or accomplished as Faye. Faye never even had any children of her own but she kept her house spotless, but John Wesley never learned to play the piano. True love is always stronger than a broom.

James Clarence--What me Worry? Not at all Mad

Granddaddy Hired Van Gogh!

Photo from "Tumult on the Mountains"
Do you see Vincent Van Gogh in this picture of loggers in West Virginia. Granddad Darnell is sitting down on the job in the front row.
Here is Granddad James Darnell (left) getting very affectionate with one of his fellow loggers, knee to knee. Granddad was famous for his Shakespearean tales of the feuding Hatfields and the McCoys. One wonders, since one of the tales is almost identical to Romeo and Juliet, if he didn't actually make most of it up. The New York newspapers got wind of it and sent a reporter and the Darnell story got national coverage making the West Virginia story famous. As for grandpa's love interest; I saw him in a later photo at the Hearst Castle in California with a few movie stars. Granddad retired to Mississippi where they started a dairy farm.

Brother John Averting Nuclear War

When John Franklin G. was in the a Naval Reserves during the cold war, he was approved for nuclear submarine duty. He was deep under the ocean when a Russian submarine started following them around making everyone very nervous. They wanted to keep track of the whereabouts of the Russians, when one piece of their equipment malfunctioned. The pinger. They were concerned they would run into them unawares.

They called in John Franklin to solve the problem of not being able to tell where the other submarine was. John simply turned on the missile target finder to find the whereabouts of the Russians. When the Ruskies heard the different sound they realized what it was and decided they would rather find different hunting grounds. They immediately left. John became the best friend of the captain of his ship at that point. The pinger was repaired and nuclear war was avoided.

John Franklin Goodsell 1949. The aunts were spoiling him and it shows. Nothing but the best.

Born 1860 JWG was born in Europe to a scientific family. He learned some neat chemical tricks from his scientific family at the Bayer Lab in Germany. They became insanely rich when they marketed aspirin, but they weren't happy with the way they were being treated in Germany. The family decided to send John to America with the chemical formula for basic polyurethane, which they used as a glue for shoe soles. Now this is before polyurethane was patented.

Polyurethane wasn't John's only formula, because he could also make plastics, but everything was kept a secret in their lab notes, because of the arch way they were being treated in Germany, with pushy unwelcome lab observers and catwalks over the lab so they couldn't have any privacy. John's family insisted animal experiments be done on aspirin before it was released to the public because they were concerned about the bleeding side effects. These young new lab partners brought in dogs which they allowed to run free in the lab, pissing on the table legs. You can see this in a photo from the Bayer Lab. You will also see in this photo John in his teens.

Anyway, they trained John to speak English along with German and French. Then they sent him to America where he was adopted by the Goodsell family in Olean, NY. There he learned how to run a shoe sole leather factory. Some tanners in West Virginia who were of German descent, found out about John and their plans. They offered to help.


John told his relatives that a shoe sole operation was much more complicated than just running a factory. You have to also tan the leather. To tan the leather, you need the tannin contained in tree bark. Many trees were being cut down at that time and stripped just for the bark, which was a waste of good wood, so JWG recommended that a timber operation also be put into place in conjunction with the leather factory. Many different people would have to be involved.

Well, if they were going to sell timber too, why not also sell scrub wood to a paper factory. The Goodsell family of Associated Press wanted this additional factory. Thus the "skunk works" were born. Paper was needed for newspapers.

JWG traveled all over the country, building leather factories until he discovered West Virginia. He fell in love with the area. There the virgin forests had large trees 15 feet around on steep hills and plenty of rivers to carry the timber to processing plants. Trees with high tannin content in their bark were numerous in West Virginia. The steep hills were very thinly populated so buying large tracts of land to timber was easier.


This photo of a West Virginia factory was published in "Tumult on the Mountains: Lumbering in West Virginia 1770-1920"

John wrote home about beautiful West Virginia. He didn't feel comfortable running such a hugh operation himself because of his English skills, so he got a boatload of money from his Bayer family to finance a bank which he built in West Virginia.

John Wesley loaned money to various people to build tanneries, to buy up land that they could timber, and build all the processing plants for tannin and saw mills. He also managed one tannery, Pocahontas Tanning, where he could use his special secret glue with a polyurethane base for making durable thick shoe soles. Pocahontas was financed to the sum of one million one hundred thousand dollars in 1917.

John liked the name because he claimed to be kin to the princess, Pocahontas. He used to endear himself to the children of his employees by handing out old Indianhead pennies. The design for the penney was made into gold coins, which were produced after his death in 1931 with the feathers cut off in the art so you would think of West Virginia, (WVWVWVWVWVWV).

Now if you go to a thrift shop or an antique store and look at the soles of old shoes. You will immediately see the difference JWG's special formula made in the manufacturing of shoe soles. Shoe sole leather was friable (you could easily tear off bits of leather so the old leather wasn't very durable) and the soles often were very thin because they couldn't reliably build up layers of leather to make thick soles. The soles of old children's shoes were thin like moccasins. They were not water resistant.

JFG's formula made leather soles so much better than other factories that the factory John managed became the foremost producer of leather soles in the US. Jealous owners who had been put out of business by his factory, were eager to find out his special formula. John Wesley Goodsell became famous in an odd sort of way. First the family and associates became the inspiration for Al Capp's newspaper cartoon, Lil Abner. Maybe you will recognize John's resemblance to the patriarch of the Beverly Hill Billies.

Early Education--pre pre school

You can see in this photo of Mother (Dorothy) the evidence of body modeling that Granny Chimma did to her little ballerinas. Mother was one year younger than the Dorothy that she replaced. I guess Chimma worked on her younger than Mother could remember, because Mother never messed with me in the same way. She did try to teach me ballet, but I'm a klutz.
Now, don't you think I deserve a seat at the Oscars you lovely ladies, since you can't thank Chimma herself.

Bonnie Pearl goes to the Big City

When I was working as a free lance artist in New York City, I picked up my work, driving to the various skyscrapers in the afternoon with Doug in the car. He drove around while I was conferring about the work. We often saw Mr. JC Penney's Mercedes parked on the sidewalk, which he owned (yes, he owned the sidewalk) in front of his skyscraper. It's hard to find a parking space in NY. Then we drove back to my luxury apt (2 BR & 2 baths! on the sixth floor in a walkup) where I drew advertising pictures all night and delivered them in the morning. Don't ask me when I slept. It was like magic to them. They give me the work and immediately get it back the next morning.

Usually, I was exhausted, so I didn't have time to do anything to my hairdo, so I wore hats. The hats eventually got bigger and bigger, until I found a giant black beach hat like the type worn in Mexico for naps. I turned the up turned edges down to make the hat more stylish. It was about two and 1/2 feet across and I wore it to pick up the art photos.

I had to go to JC Penney's which was right next to the Hilton and the Time-Life Building. There was always big crowds, but no one bumped me, when I was wearing my big black hat. Too bad I couldn't catch a nap in my sombrero, but I was able to take one month off in the Spring to recuperate.

I loved my work, and the people of New York, but one thing convinced me to retire back to the country life. One day one of the talented older artists I saw everyday, called from the emergency room with a heart attack. He was admitted to the hospital for exhaustion and on a heart monitor, but his boss didn't give him a chance to rest. They sent his model over to his hospital room where she posed for him, so he could do the artwork for the Sunday Special Edition.

At that point I started saving money for a little farm in the country where life was slower and you can get some rest and people really care about you. Funny.

Bonnie Pearl's Comic Relief

Bonnie Pearl drawing clothing for advertisements in New York City wearing a mini skirt in cold weather---with a long long coat. I used to keep the girls entertained with my silly puns. Should have gone into stand up comedy.
James & Bonnie in New York City. Jimmy was getting ready sail to Africa with his guitar.

Daddy, John Wesley with his mother Pearl. He rarely got to see her because she had to work to support herself and John. Eventually, she remarried a well-to-do younger man and John became an embarrassment, because he showed her age. She did not forget him though, because she continued to send money home. A nursing home was built in their hometown of Okolona, Miss.
Daddy's Mother Pearl. When she arrived in West Virginia where her father got a job working for a timber crew, she was a teenager. They lived in a hotel and then they built a big Victorian style house, where she and her sisters had a piano. She had dark tightly curled hair and blue eyes. She got her hair from her ancesters, the Burr family of Princeton.

She was very popular with the loggers, but she fell for Clarence, our grandfather. She and Clarence were married and they moved to her hometown in Cleveland, Ohio. Daddy (named John Wesley after his grandfather) was born Oct. 1916. He was such an impudent hand-full as a toddler, that the fledgling family did not survive.

After Pearl and Clarence were divorced, Daddy stayed with Pearl's large family while Pearl went to Chitaqua, New York where she performed and taught piano. Lucille Ball was raised near Chitaqua and may have taken piano lessons from Pearl. Pearl used to send money to her sisters to cover their expenses for Daddy's education. Aunt Faye bought a nice house, furniture and a baby grand piano.

My dear Mama, Dorothy II

Bonnie Dorothy in Augusta, Georgia. She stayed up all night the day I arrived from New York, delivering her 500 papers starting in the middle of the night. She still looks cool and beautiful.
Oh, Oh Baby, Stay off of those shoes. Wedding day for Mom and Daddy in Okolona, Miss. near Elvis' birthplace. 1940. That car was given to Daddy for free by a grateful employer for something he did. Who knows what that was. Daddy didn't talk much. He studdered and could barely get a sentence out. Doubt if it was illegal, he got a top secret clearance during the war. He worked at Oak Ridge, keeping all their secrets too.

Sweet Mama, Bonnie Dorothy had a way of always taking over where ever she worked. When she worked for the Boy Scouts central office in Augusta, GA she took over. When she was in her 70's she delivered papers and never missed a day, no matter how heavy the paper or how it was raining.

Her wealthy customers loved her and invited her in to chat, but she delivered all her papers first. One day she got a flat tire in the middle of her paper route at 4 AM. She had to change the tire herself, it was so early. Remember she was in her 70's. She couldn't turn the lugs, so she jumped on it, breaking her leg. That ended her showing off how she could do the splits but she could still tap dance..

This is Mama with Johnny, her eldest son. He was refurbishing these airplanes. When Johnny was a teen, Mama used to spend hours talking him thru his teenage problems. She had a way about her, which would have made her into a great interviewer. She could get you to tell your deepest, darkest secrets. She appeared to be very uncritical, never reacting to anything you said in a negative way. Then about an hour after you told her all, she would turn it all on you using your secrets against you, making you sorry you spilled the beans. She taught us to be careful what you tell people. So, if you think you are learning all my secrets--ha!

Bonnie Pearl's Family Photos

Sorry about the errors. If you don't get it right the first time, if you are in a hurry, you can't save it until later, at least, I haven't found out a way yet. So some of the pictures turned out too big for the page, so you don't see it all.
If you click onto the picture you can see the whole thing by scrolling over it with the lower scroll.
Pardon the uncorrected spelling errors, sometimes I have to run to work, so errors in this format are uncorrectable after the page is saved. Sorry.

Granny Chimma and her Ballerinas

This is Daddy Tom King and Chimma, adopted grandparents who raised mother in Okolona, Mississippi near where Elvis Presley was born. Daddy Tom was a rail road engineer. He is tickling tall, lanky Chimma to get her to smile for the photo. She was a dancer in her younger days and taught mother to dance at a very young age. Chimma was related to the Munson family.

This is an advertisement for the Munson Steamship Line painted by the famous artist N. C. Wyeth. The Munson family (descendents of Norway's Vikings) bought up old ships, refurbished them and sailed them to Cuba and South America to transport sugar. Eventually they tried to run luxury liners. They had ships that sailed from New York to Atlantic City to Cuba.

The family story goes, that two of the Munson boys became tinkers (tinkers shun wealth) and left the family to adventure out west. One boy made it as far as the Mississippi River and threw his tinker's pots and pans into the river and said "this is the place" and settled down in Mississippi. He was Chimma's father.

The Steamship Line eventually went broke (they bought one ship that was so bad it sank in the harbour before they could fix it up). They had labor troubles during the period that the unions were gaining strength, because they were not so nice to their crews. According to a union organizer (a tinker, no doubt), the Munson captains made their sailors sleep on straw cotts and they could only eat one hot dog each meal. If anyone complained, wanting more than one hot dog, they were put out at the next port, no matter how far that was from home! The Munson family didn't captain all their ships, of course, but such behavior did put them out of business because the unions backballed them.

The Munsons were reputed to be a good Christian family who were very charitable. The Cuban immigrants love the Munsons for taking them on their sugar ships to safety from the Cuban Revolution. There are many photos of these ships and crews online because of the Cubans. The Munsons now have a trucking company. You can see their trucks with Munson on the side.

The above picture is one Mother thought was of herself, but it is actually of the abducted little Dorothy who had thick curly hair. Chimma used to make little outfits using handkerchiefs that she twisted and tucked as you can see at the shoulder. I guess that is from the "dance of the seven veils" showing what kind of dancer Chimma must have been. We are getting into really old culture now. Mother used to put me in such skimpy stuff. Mom could make a bathing suit with two handkerchiefs artfully twisted and tied inspiring some sun tanning lotion ads. Check out the vegetation which is the same as in the photo of Chimma with the dogs below.

The photo above is of Mother at about two or three years old sitting on a vanity the day Emma dropped her off with her mother Chimma. You can see Emma is dressed in her Carnival outfit. She must have been a "hoochie coochie" dancer of sorts, I guess. Probably pretty tame in those days. You can see her relection in the mirror, looking at Mom with disappointment in her face. Her own daughter had been kidnapped and mother was left in her place. She left Mom and never saw or spoke to her again. Mother told me Chimma told her that her mother was a writer and had published magazine articles. I found on the internet an Emma Meaks or Meeks who wrote charming articles about the Appillachian peoples who lived in Tenn. Chimma told mother that her mother was an "invalid" and that was why she gave her up. It is clear she was not talking about this Emma, because she is no invalid here or in the Sunday School picture below. She was dressed to dance. No wheelchairs in Carnivals. Wow, these kidnappers were so helpful and informative weren't they. Daddy Tom and Chimma were really something!

They were good to mother, teaching her how to tap dance and ballet. She had a great vocabulary and could spell anything. She graduated with honors from high school and was elected to participate in the Miss America contest. She made it to the finals of the Miss Mississippi contest and won second runner up. She tapped as her talent. She could sew her own clothes and she could take beautiful photos with her Brownie Camera, which she processed herself with her own dark room. She did some tricks with photos making sillowets of a fisherman in from of grey tone of the willows in the park and the lake. She was very talented. Daddy wouldn't let her work.


The photo above is of Chimma Munson King with her pure bred Pekinese dogs she raised to sell. Mother said they was nippy little animals. She also made "bathtub gin" during prohibition to make money and mother said she met all the local politicians who were Chimma's customers.
Notice the plants we called elephant ears with the big leaves.


Mother told me this was a picture of herself, but I got to looking closer at this photo and I realized, it was a photo of the abducted Dorothy, actually sent to her grandparents, the Kings, to let them know that Dorothy was well cared for and living in a nice place.
Nice kidnappers! (She is too old to be photoed after the picture of mother on the vanity. She is not my mother who had thinner hair.)

Chimma must have been a dancer, because she taught her girls ballet at a very young age. Mother tried to teach me, but she did not turn my legs into the first ballet position like was done to her and to this little girl. This youthful body molding caught on in Hollywood.

This girl probably became a big star who I won't name here. She looks very much like Mother. Daddy Tom was related to the King family in Texas. You may have heard of the King ranch. His family owned a bank. My guess is this was dirty politics having to do with the Carnival crowd, rather than anything to do with the Kings being social climbers. See "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." Also see "M", a European film about abducted children in Nazi Germany. The children run free in Brooklyn--a little insight as to the significance of freedom in America from such influences as in "M". We have lost that war. Our children are no longer safe to run the streets like they did in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn".





















Above is a picture of Momma and Daddy dancing at a Jackson School Dance. The little town of
Jackson, South Carolina had appeared on the map when Dupont built the Savannah River Project where they enriched uranium. Daddy had worked during the war at Oak Ridge (they didn't want to send him into battle because he studdered--said he couldn't relay commands), so he decided to continue working in the nuclear field. That is little brother Jimmy and Johnny in the far mid picture. That dancer above the chair is not smoking in the school. Photo error. He became a lawyer and his brother a doctor.




This is a Sunday School Picture of
Emma (second row from bottom-far
right). She does not look very happy.
She never got over losing her little
Dorothy. I guess that is her husband
in the top row in front of the middle
column. He was an electrician.
Mother never had anything to do
with either of them, but she did inherit
their property when they died. I guess
they never had any other children
after they lost Dorothy. They retired
to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Emma
was kin to the Munsons who had a
steamship line. She had Viking blood
in her, so she liked being around boats
and the water I guess.

Idea for Horror Movie

Ma is nurse and Pa is just retired. Happy couple but at a change in their life

Pa is bored being home alone so Ma agrees to take a girlfriend's elderly father into her home.

Elderly gent is quiet and no trouble but is kind of spooky. Has a weird effect on the family.

Strange things start to happen around the house.

Ma wakes up with the feeling of chocking. She has marks on her throat.

A picture of the demon is carved into the floor in front of the fireplace.

Pa starts becoming distant and starts to stay in the basement a lot.

Ma starts to get cuts on her fingers and bruises on her body. Ma thinks the elderly man, who she is nursing, is hurting her and vandalizing the house. But she is not sure and they need the money so she doesn't send him away.

Pa is more and more distant emotionally.

Ma thinks Pa is having an affair. She starts to watch him and follow him around spying on him.

He has made a bed of cardboard boxes in the walk out basement. She see footprints in the snow leading up to the back door to the basement. She watches the beautiful young girls who walk past the house.

Ma continues to take care of the elderly gentlemen who requires more and more of her. She feels she is loosing her husband.

Ma finds Pa in the basement in a comma and takes him to the hospital. She thinks he is exhausted from the love of a young girl.

When Pa comes home he still is drawn to the basement. She is furious and jealous. She watches the young girls, ready to attack to save her husband from his foolishness. She follows one around. One girl seems to be the guilty person. She steals her shoes to see if she is the one who is ruining her husband. She becomes so furious, she also buys a gun.

Ma follows Pa and spies on him in the basement to find out which girl is exhausting him.

One night Ma sees him with a demonic woman, transparent and glowing. Pa grabs the demon woman and prevents her from going upstairs. He is sacrificing himself to save his family from the abuse the demon has been heaping on them.

The demon is sucking the life out of him, so Ma drags him out to the car and escapes to the hospital. They move out of the house to another town. You see the demon hoovering over the roof of the new house.

More Cures for Writers' Block

I was new in town. We had found a little place near the public park, so our lack of backyard was not so bad, since we had all the swings and slides we could possible use. I was feeling kind of lonely, not knowing anybody in school. My parents were stressed out and I was really feeling like noone cared about me when he appeared. I was going from bar to bar, proud of my ability but had noone to brag to so his soothing voice was very welcome. We were seven years old and I still remember him so clearly. It was not what he said, but the way he said it. He was so calm and his voice so smooth and free from motive. No teasing, no prodding, which was what most boys that age were doing. He could hug you with his voice, though we never actually touched each other that I can remember. He made me feel loved again. Wanted again. He may have saved my life.

Years later I found him again. His amazing voice had turned into a deep baritone with such a soothing quality about all of his movements. He was unforgettable. We were married and he saved my life again.

Great Ideas to Cure Writer's Block

We lived in a trailer in Pine Shade Trailer Park in South Carolina. Mother used to sit on the bed and cut out pictures in magazines and arrange them on the bed. She would take a photo of a Mother and I took a picture of a child and we became those photos. We play acted for hours until Daddy came home from the bomb plant where he worked making atomic bombs. We were out in the boonies, where everyone had to have security clearance just to shop in the local grocery store.

We weren't as isolated as you might think. Every nations and organization had their representative spies. No joke, I was surrounded by nearly as much education and culture in the sand and pine trees of rural South Carolina than you can find around the Metropolitan in New York. Everyone wanted to send their most intelligent and experienced spies to keep an eye on the facility where they were moving around those radioactive hot rods. My father once bragged he got a massive dose of radiation from handling uranium rods, but he was in his senility and I think he probably made up the story in his sleep from worry from working with the dangerous stuff.

When he did work at the bomb plant, he never told anybody anything. He studdered and could barely get a sentence out unless it was set to music. He had a gorgeous baritone voice that made out car outings operatic masterpieces when he would sing, "On the Road to Mandalay" at the top of his voice.

Maybe he sang to shut mother up. My, how that woman could talk! If anybody was looking for state secrets, they just hung around mother and eventually, she would spill the beans. She knew everyone in town, and she knew the dirt on everyone too and loved to tell it. And we did have some interesting characters hanging around our house too, and they got an ear full too from Mom.