Mrs. Smith's Cat

Every winter we hear about tragic situations with cats or dogs seeking shelter from the elements under or around a car with sad outcomes. However, this incident is hilarious, to me. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were Bridge players. I've never played Bridge and don't want to. Doesn't sound like much fun to me. Because we lived in a rural area, there were few Bridge players, but with gas being less than a dollar, traveling (or cruising) wasn't out of the question. Mr. and Mrs. Smith drove over to the Pickett's for Bridge one Thursday night. Going from their house to the Pickett's was about a twelve mile drive, one way. The Pickett's house was in a historical neighborhood, with stone or clapboard houses almost being townhouses, right up on the sidewalk with parallel parking in front. They settled in with their drinks into the chairs around a square card table in front of the window facing the street. It got dark earlier at that time of year, so it was fully dark and cool outside. They were well into their card game when Mrs. Smith noticed a grey tabby cat standing on the window sill outside, looking in. She said, 'That looks just like our cat!." Well, come to find out it was their cat. She had ridden all the way, twelve miles, somehow under, in, or around the car, all the way to their card party. Now standing on the window sill, looking right at her and meowing.

Pamela & Lynn Carol

Lynn Carol was born in September 1945
Betty married Jim in June 1946
Pamela was born in May 1947.

Lynn Carol and Pamela were half-sisters but neither knew it for decades, believing they were second cousins. How this remained a secret I'll never know. Lynn Carol was a carbon copy of Betty. Her mannerisms were identical. Her preferences were exactly the same. When Lynn Carol found out who her birth mother was, she was recently widowed and in her late fifties. She assumed that Pamela knew all along that she was her sister and had chosen to never mention it whenever their paths crossed, which in later years turned out to be fairly frequent.

How this was kept a secret in this family, in this community, is astonishing. Our family likes to present truths at the most embarrassing times, with the best audiences for dramatic effect, like at a family reunion or wedding. We all knew; my own mother would bring it up from time to time, just itching to call Pamela and tell all. She never did. My dad would talk her down, and we wouldn’t hear about it for months, years. Until the next time.

When Betty discovered she was pregnant in 1945, she was living at home and doing odd jobs, like cleaning houses, baby-sitting, running errands or cooking for people in the small farming community in down-state Illinois. The alleged father of the child was a married man, in the Army but stationed near there. He had three children in Maine, or that is what I was told, might have actually been Ohio. She would use her sisters as foils to get out of the house to rendezvous with her lover, while her sisters went to the movies or a local dance. The illicit lovers would utilize any convenient location or a car because they couldn't go to where he stayed in the barracks and she couldn't bring him home. They certainly couldn't 'date' because he was a married man and how would that look? They never ate out or went to see a movie. Sneaking around was their only way.

Birth control being what it wasn't in the mid-40s, she eventually got pregnant. Kids happen. She really had nowhere to turn, except her own mother. At that time my mother lived in Chicago, with roommates, and had a decent job at a nationally known company, coming back home some weekends on the train. Betty told her mother and her mother told no one else. Abortions were illegal but could be done; however, Betty would not go that route. She just couldn't. The two decided the best place for Betty would be to move to Chicago, away from prying eyes and nosy neighbors, in with my mother, Betty's younger sister. She would get a job to pay her fair share of room and board. It was now set that she would go; the sooner the better. Not a word was said about Betty's delicate situation, to anyone. While Betty was in Chicago, she told her lover about the pregnancy and he gave her money for an abortion. He never even came up to the apartment, handing her an envelope with cash while in the car parked at the curb. She instead spent the money on rent and new clothes, and she never saw him again.

My mother got Betty interviews at the job and she was secured with a position working in the front office. Up close and personal with the big shots. As with any pregnancy, eventually someone is going to notice that you're putting on weight, looking different from the rear or some other indicator. Some months after she had settled into her new job, another woman asked my mother if her sister was expecting, that being the correct word usage at the time. My mother was stunned and said something witty, like "How could she be? She's not even married." Should I tell you how that went over within the family, too? My mother was absolutely horrified, embarrassed, disappointed, crushed, and even worse, felt betrayed by her own mother that never breathed a word about Betty's 'condition.' If she had known she certainly would not have gotten her a job where all of her co-workers could see the scandalous breakdown of family values and virtue.

Soon after that Betty had to quit her job. Now that 'everyone' knew, she moved in with her mother's sister, Aunt Jesse, who ran a boarding house in Chicago on Cicero Avenue. With Betty now out of my mother's apartment, moved into her aunt's boarding house, in Chicago, she spent the rest of the time lying around the place, waiting for the blessed event. She gave birth to Lynn Carol at Cook County General Hospital in September, listing her self as the mother, but leaving the space for father blank. There is no way Lynn Carol could ever find her real father, or her three half-siblings, now forever lost to the ages.

The boarding house also was where she met her future husband, who was a boarder. My uncle Jim was a long-distance truck driver, had been a truck driver for General Patton in Italy, and was frequently on the road. They never dated, either, but he agreed to marry her, and they did get married the following year. He did not want to adopt her baby and he didn't.

It took some time, actually a long time, before my mother 'forgave' her own mother for setting her up. It was a rotten thing to do, but that was how things were dealt with at that time.

Lynn Carol was adopted by my Grandmother's brother, Don, and his wife. Marion and Don had been married many years; he had a good paying, stable job and Marion was so far unable to have a baby, so they took Lynn Carol as soon as she was released from the hospital. And the secret lived for decades, nearly 60 years. I honestly don't know how this didn't become common knowledge, but it didn't. Betty told Pamela that she met Jim through my own mother, who was dating him. This was a lie. My mother never dated him. Betty also said she had dated my own father, which was never true. My dad didn't like Betty, barely tolerated her and thought she was stupid. She also told her daughter she was a cheer-leader in high school. She wasn't, my mother was. Her yearbook picture had been cut out, which she blamed on another sister, when in fact she had cut out the picture to give to her married lover. No body knows his name.

Keep building that liars' den.