Personal History File

This is the notorious car in the background (a 1938 Studebaker) that I fell out of at age two and four years old. There were stories of me having been left behind once when I was two years old. Beebe told my mother I fell out of the car back in downtown San Antonio. She asked where I was when they got home at the Portland Road house in a rural area of San Antonio. Mama was mortified and the wheels barely touched the ground as she drove back to downtown at College and Broadway Avenues.

My mother's friend, Ruby Elizondo told me that version when I reconnected with her about six years ago. She was actually there in the car when this incident happened. She was Mama's next door neighbor and good friend. It sounded more to me that I was pushed out of the car and Mama wasn't aware of it until Beebe said he was afraid to tell her at the time. Ruby said when they got back to where he said I "fell out" of the car, there I was sitting on the side of the street sitting on the curb crying. I was safe, and that is what mattered to Mama.

The other story about my falling out of the car was the only one I remembered. Mama was driving after we visited Tia Amparo and Tio Reynaldo Canchola across the street from Buelito's house at the cement plant. Martha was lying in the back seat bundled in blankets. I was sitting in the front seat on the passenger side. She told me to hold on and I held onto the door handle. It opened as we rounded the turn in the middle of the street to head home, my hand pulled on the door handle and it opened with me hanging onto it. I let go and fell to the graveled road. I rolled out, my felt hat tied under my chin and my brown heavy cape probably protected me from skinning my knees or bumping my head on the ground. Someone carried me back into the Canchola's house.

Tia Amparo gave me a cube of sugar to suck on and distract me from the trauma. It did the trick as we got back in the car and rode home to pick up the boys from school. Thank goodness Mama had recycled that brown cape from a larger sized coat. The coat and hat protected me from physical harm; I was just stunned by the jolt of dropping out of the car so abruptly. And this is the only story I ever known that my mother had told me. She never told me about the other one when I was two.

I seem to have had other traumatic incidents where my life was spared, once at eleven months old when I was bitten by the German Shepherd, the other was when a large rock fell through the roof on the sofa where I had been sleeping during a summer rain storm at the house on Portland Road. I awoke crying and went to get in bed with my mother and later that night the heavy rock came through the roof where I would have been asleep. My life was spared both of the those times and I had not even reached three years old yet.

I am the little baby in the middle of the darker (Chelo's) people-- my cousins, Bessie and Gracie with my brothers on both ends. Charlie is on the right and Beebe is on the left.

This photo was taken in 1944. I wasn't quite walking yet, my mother is on the left and Aunt Helen on the right. It is another one of me as a cute, (almost) toddler. I wasn't walking yet. My mother said I didn't walk until I was fifteen months old, after my dog bite accident at eleven months old.



It sounds to me from these stories I have written that there is a familiar thread in this tapestry of life. The hand of God has always taken care of me even as a 'wee babe'.

I am thankful for his tender mercies and loving care as He cares for each one of us and I am aware at how much He loves me. I know how important it was for me to survive these incidents, and I have eight children who can attest to this. Right?

Love, Mom