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It wasn't the best life for a young man, but it was better than the one he left behind. His parents died when he was a baby. He was raised by family for a time but wound up in an orphanage. He was forced to earn his own way at an early age and nearly lost his arm in a sawmill accident. When he saw his chance, he left. He had little education and no money.

As a young adult he met my mother. She was raising two daughters alone. They married and several years later I was born. About two years after my birth, mother died; and he was alone with three girls to care for and lots of medical bills to pay. Dad later remarried, my sisters left home, and a new phase of his life began. Most of his adult life was spent working in gambling casinos in Las Vegas, as a dealer or a pit boss. Most of my childhood was spent around the casinos watching the lights, the tourists, the gambling, and my father standing in the pit (center of the casino) looking for signs of cheating either on the player or dealer side of the tables that surrounded him. I can still see him in his dark suit (not a wrinkle or a hair out of place) with his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes missing nothing in that noisy, crowded room.

You would think that someone with such a tough childhood and little education would be very rough aroung the edges. I suppose as a younger man he was. By the time I was old enough to see him as a person, he was a quiet, well-mannered, well-dressed man. He could converse as easily with a celebrity in the casino as with a down-on-his-luck gambler, and he was known to offer his help to both. He was liked and respected by all who knew him. He earned a good salary and had a comfortable life style. The end of his life was as difficult as the beginning. Diagnosed with Parkinson's, he soon became too ill to work and was fired (no unions in Las Vegas in those days). As his life crumbled around him, he faced it and dealt with it as best he could before his death at the age of 57 in May of 1963.

A difficult childhood becomes either a boulder over which an adult climbs on his way to the top of his mountain or the boulder he stands behind and uses as an excuse for not reaching the top of his mountain. My dad chose to climb.

Joel 2:7 They run like mighty men, they climb the wall like men of war . . .

Exerpts from
"Crazy Quilt of Memories"

GRANDMA MATTIE AND THE SNAKE

Our first home in Kentucky was a small house in Melber (four rooms and a path). Don's grandmother, Mattie Lloyd Cruse, lived across the street in an old grocery store/house combination building. The store part had been closed for many years, but it was interesting in a scary sort of way. Don was busy keeping a roof over our heads, and his parents were mostly in St. Louis taking care of Lowell. I was extremely young, homesick, and pregnant at the time. Shortly after we settled in, I began spending part of each afternoon at Mattie's watching our "soap" and chatting a lot about life in general and quilts and family, in particular. As often as not, her daughter, Mary Sullivan, was there joining the conversation and piecing her current quilt top. We talked about a great many things, most of which I don't remember; but one story Mattie used to tell is engraved on my memory forever.

Mattie and Dave had lived on a farm with their seven children Lowell (Don's dad), Laurine, Rubel, Lloyd, Mary, Ernest and Jimmy. On this particular day, Mattie was outside working when she saw a large snake slithering toward the barn. Her first impulse was to run for cover to the house and stay there until Dave could come home and kill the snake. Then she remembered that the barn was always the children's favorite place to play. What if Dave couldn't find the snake and kill it? What if the snake attacked one of the children? Resolutely turning back toward the barn, Mattie picked up a hoe, confronted the snake, and killed it. I'm as scared of snakes as Mattie was. I can and have worked up enough courage to face a couple with a pistol (missed one, killed one). But I do not believe there is a hoe handle in existence that is long enough to be the only protection between me and a moving snake. My solution would have been to lock the kids in the house with me till the man of the house killed it or till I knew it had died of old age! I've always admired the fact that her love for her children gave her the courage to overcome her fear of the snake.

FREIGHT TRAIN TO AFRICA

Sometime during his mid-teen years, my father ran away from home and caught a freight train, expecting to ride it to Africa. He never did make it to Africa so it must have been the wrong train. Instead, he spent the next few years riding to different places, living among the hoboes. His main concern was to stay out of sight of the yard bosses who carried big sticks with which to beat the free riders as they threw them off the trains. He got caught only once. He worked a lot of different jobs in a lot of different places.

Having courage is kind of like owning a brand new fire extinguisher. It sits in a corner, bright, shiny, and totally useless until a fire breaks out. Then, as you pull the ring and aim, you pray that it isn't a one-in-a-million factory dud with a faulty nozzle or no foam. And when a personal crisis breaks out, you take out your courage, dust it off, and pray it doesn't turn out to be empty or faulty either. We have a cross-stitch picture on one wall that says "Courage is fear that has said its prayers." I think Mattie must have said her prayers. I hope I have said mine.

Deut. 31:6 Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them. . .