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Mom and DadAl Dorr Earnest Albert Dorr
-Introduction
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Pictures of Memory By accident or by the design of my creator, I have always accepted an unpleasant situation with a certain degree of agreeable tolerance. This was first made manifest to me from an experience I had when I was about 11 or 12 years old. Mother and I had gone from Wakenda, Missouri to Carrollton, Missouri to do some shopping, which she attended to. We had driven a mule team named Barney and Dutch hitched to a spring wagon. Late in the afternoon we started home from Carrollton and as it looked very much like rain, we had driven in a trot and the mules had become very warm and sweating. When we hit the Gumbo Bottom the lightning split the low black clouds. The thunder thundered and the dark clouds emptied their torrents of water over us. And then the catastrophe happened – Dutch began to stagger, then went down. I jumped from the spring wagon rapidly, unhitched Dutch and by pulling and coaxing, I finally got Dutch to get on his feet. Mamma, in her acute desperation, was crying, saying that what if Dutch dies. In back of that cry were innumerable elements that meant so much to her and to us all. For we were poor, oh so poor, and Dutch and Barney meant work. Work meant food for Mamma, Daddy and their brood of which I was the oldest. As I thought then and I realize now, the agony of my mother then. |
