Now that they are both deceased, I decided to reflect on my parents’ lives and on my relationship with them, along with some family history as well.
My mother, Jeannette Agnes Wilson-Poston Amos Townsend McNeill, lived in South Bend, Indiana her entire life and even lived in the same house for 80 of those years. Mother grew up as an only child but eventually discovered many years later that she had a half-sister living right in town with her, my Aunt Betty, and a half-brother, whom neither of us ever met, from their common father, Willard Wilson. She and Betty even used to play together as children, not knowing, at the time, that they were sisters!
For some time Mother had known, or at least strongly suspected, that she was adopted but had not been told the specific circumstances, until a niece of her birth mother contacted her some years ago and filled in most of the details. It turns out that my real grandmother, Muriel Piatt Poston Williams Crew, was only 15-years-old when she gave birth to my mother in 1924, and against her own wishes, her parents would not let her keep her baby.
How is this for hypocrisy? Muriel’s grandmother was a German white woman who apparently had mated with a black man, and being the times and all (the 1860s), even though it was the North, they never married, but the mother got to keep her child anyway. So along comes my mother also born out of wedlock, and Granny insisted that the baby be put up for adoption, to avoid another scandal in the family, I suppose. She even sent the pregnant Muriel from her home in Ohio to stay with Muriel’s older sister in Niles, Michigan while she had her baby. Then the family arranged a direct adoption with the Amoses, and for years nobody, especially my mother, was the wiser.
She once suspected that she was at least “Papa” Amos’ real daughter by another woman other than his wife, but she couldn’t verify it. When she did confront him once years ago with her adoption suspicions, he flatly denied it. So she just let it go and didn’t pursue it. Up until the day he died, Papa never confessed to my mother the real truth of her origin.
Muriel herself, after she got grown and was living in South Bend, did not ever try to contact my mother, even though she knew who she was and where she lived. We learned later that Granny would sometimes observe Mother from a distance when she was at church or on the street somewhere, but she never revealed herself to her. Grandmother Muriel was married twice (her first husband was the father of a friend and colleague of mine!), and we learned that she had another child while still a teenager, but it didn’t live long.
It was originally reported that Muriel died in 1964 of untreated diabetes at the ripe, young age of 54. I have since learned, however, that Granny fell in her kitchen one day and banged her head on a counter as she went down. So it was probably the resulting concussion she received that killed her. She did have brothers and sisters however, so now I have a whole slew of resultant cousins whom neither my mother nor any of us knew anything about, living in South Bend, Niles and the Cleveland area. Mother eventually found out that some people in town whom she had known all her life turned out to be our cousins! She really regretted not knowing her mother while she was alive. At this time we know nothing about the family of my mother’s birth father.
Then there is my mother’s adopted family, the Amoses, which I had claimed as my own all my life, until we learned the other real story.
“Papa” Mark, from Columbus, Mississippi, was one of 14 children. Although their mother was a full-blooded Cherokee and I believe that his father was part-Indian as well, when asked about my American Indian heritage, I always gave “Blackfoot,” as a joke.
Papa died in 1986 at the age of 92, having outlived all of his siblings by several years. During his last years, though, Papa had succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. One cold, winter’s day, during which he was confined to a nursing home (and where the staff there was not watching him too closely, evidently), he ventured out into the snow, barefooted, intending to go “home.” I suppose that means the house where he lived for all those years and where I and my siblings grew up with our mother. Well, he was eventually recovered and brought back to the other place, but his little escapade caused him to get frostbite cum gangrene in both his feet, which subsequently required him to have his legs amputated. Papa had always been an active, energetic person until he got sick. He remained in that nursing home until he died.
Three of his brothers were named Matthew, Luke and John, incidentally. You get the idea. I knew only a few of Papa’s siblings before they died. His sister Mary visited us once or twice and his younger brother William (Uncle Bill) a few times, but it was the family of Uncle Mack (which is what we called his brother Matthew) that we were closest to. His son, Willie B., who with his 13 children (10 girls and 3 boys [there was another boy who died in infancy]), were frequent visitors to our house (not all at once, thankfully) while we were growing up, and we went to see them on several occasions at their big, three-story house in Chicago Heights, Illinois. Willie B. and his brother Alfred were avid golfers, and they liked to play at the golf course in South Bend. Only about half of the “cousins” (mostly girls) were in my brother’s and mine age group, and those are the ones with which we hung out and played.
Papa’s wife, nee Mary Neal, was from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she grew up as a cotton picker and field worker. I don’t know for sure if she had any formal schooling, but she could at least read and write. Other than that, I know next-to-nothing about her family background. Neither of my parents or grandparents (the ones I knew) were “professional” people. They were all just your basic laborers. From the time before I was born until he retired, Papa worked as a custodian at the South Bend YMCA. I don’t know if Grandmother Mary ever worked outside the home. The whole time we knew her she was always there to watch my brother and me while my mother was working. She eventually succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease herself and arteriosclerosis and was confined to a hospital in Westville, Ind., where she died in 1960.
My mother first met my father, Earl Maize Townsend, in 1945 at the Chez Paree, a popular, local nightspot in South Bend, where their friends used to hang out on a regular basis. The place served liquor, had a jukebox and allowed dancing. Think of it as sort of a primitive discotheque. Mom was 20 and Dad was 24. Against everybody’s wishes (everyone thought that my mother was too good for my dad), they started dating and before too long, Mother was pregnant with Earl Jr. (Like mother, like daughter, huh?) Then they were pressured by her parents to get married, although neither one was really in love with the other. It was only about sex, although Mother admitted to me that sex with my dad never was all that great anyway. My parents were married in the living room of our house by Rev. Saunders, the preacher of our church at the time.
This was actually Dad’s second marriage. His first brief marriage, to a woman named Helen, ended abruptly when Dad returned home from military service and walked in on Helen, in bed with another woman! It was only a couple of months after my brother was born that Mother found herself pregnant again, with me this time. Junior and I are only eleven months apart in age.
I think that originally everybody expected me to turn out to be more like my father. I looked more like him, and Earl Jr. looked more like our mother, but it soon became obvious that I was more like our mother, in personality and temperament, and Junior was more like our dad. They were into sports, for one thing, and I wasn’t, and they are/were both Libras. Dad’s birthday is September 28, 1920 and Junior’s is October 4, 1946. My father had a gambling habit and was a womanizer, neither of which I have any interest in. He became involved, openly, with another woman and was never home with us anyway, so my mother, not so keen on the marriage herself, readily agreed to the divorce when he asked her for it. Mother and I had that in common, too, that we don’t want to stay with anybody who doesn’t want us.
My parents were married for only about four years and divorced when I was three. I suppose this may be why I never suffered the trauma of parental divorce that a lot of older children go through. It happened before I was old enough to know him as a live-in father. We didn’t really miss having him around, though, because Papa Amos, with whom we lived, served as our father figure and the man of the house. Our dad was merely a close relative.
Promptly after my parents divorced in 1951, my dad married Emma Lou Earl, with whom he was running around. And not in secret either.
Everybody knew about it, as his adulterous affair was quite public. Since Emma was born in 1929, therefore nine years younger than my dad, which means that she must have been 19 when they started carrying on. I know that Daddy liked them young, but really now! But they must have had something special, because they remained together for the next 43 years, until his death by heart failure brought on by a car collision with a drunken driver. More about that later.
During the ensuing years, Mother had several lovers (one at a time), including a decades-long love affair with a married man, a dentist. This union eventually produced a daughter, my half-sister, Debra Jean. I was ten when she came along. Despite the circumstances of her birth, I am so grateful that Mother allowed her to be born. Debbie is one of my best friends. Her dad was my mother’s one true love. He was very good to her, and although he never divorced his wife (he already had four other children with her), he and my mom remained close up until he died.
Mother did marry a second time herself to Lee D. McNeill (or “Mack“), a common laborer. He worked in a slaughterhouse! His real first name was Ledoris, which he didn’t like and is why he changed it. He had two other sons from a previous marriage, named Herman and Ledoris Jr. I find it strange that Mack would give his second son–not the older one, mind you–his own name that he hated. My stepfather and I never really got along. We tolerated each other for a while, but it got worse as time went on. I think he resented my smarts and my close relationship with my mother. I have learned since that he was abusive to her, too (physically and emotionally), while they were married. Learning that made me resent him even more.
Jenny had her fourth and last child, Aaron McNeill, on October 2, 1970, when she was 46-years-old and I was 23. He certainly was unplanned and unexpected. When Mama didn’t get her period for three months, she assumed that she was menopausal. No such luck. Preggers again! She would had been lying if she said that she wanted another baby at age 46. I wasn’t around to watch Aaron grow up, since he was only two when I moved to NYC, but we’ve always been close as brothers. When they divorced after ten years, Mack married a third time to the woman he was carrying on with while still with my mother, but that did not last long either.
I believe that my mother was somewhat psychic. The very day that McNeill died, or right soon after, Mama had a dream about him. He was telling her to check on him. “Jenny, please check on me,” he kept imploring. The next day, she called Mack but got no answer. So then she called her stepson, Junior McNeill, and asked when he last had spoken to his father and told him about her dream. He told her that it had been a while. They weren’t all that close either. But at her request he decided to go to Mack’s house to check on him. He got there to find his father sitting on the toilet…dead! He apparently had been there for several days. The cause of death? Probably abject hatefulness, I wouldn’t be surprised. Mack was cremated. Mother being the only surviving ex-wife, the undertaker asked her if she wanted to retain his ashes. She replied, “Hell, no, burn them up, too! I don’t want nothin’!”
By the late ‘90s the neighborhood, where we kids grew up as well, became rather rundown and unsafe, so Mother moved into a seniors-occupied apartment complex in another part of town. There she thrived for several years until she got too sick to care for herself and had to be confined to Healthwin Hospital, where she lived out her remaining years.
Ten years earlier, when Mother turned 80, in December 2004, to celebrate this milestone, the family decided to throw her a surprise birthday party at my sister’s house the day after Christmas. She had been hinting around for the whole year that she wanted a party. She appeared to be genuinely surprised. But the bigger surprise was my being there. I didn’t tell her that I was coming. Mama knew that I am always busy at Christmastime every year with singing gigs. In fact, I had not been back in South Bend at Christmas in 20 years! That was when she turned 60. So she did not expect to see me at all. She was quite taken aback when I came out of hiding and walked into the room where everybody was.
I had the foresight to throw Mother another surprise 90th birthday party the summer before she died, when I was in South Bend for a family reunion (my father’s family). As it turned out, it was good that we did it then, because she never made it to 91. It was the last time that she got to see me, as well as some family members and mutual friends. Besides the four of us, there are six grandchildren and seven (or is it 8?) great-grandchildren.
Jenny was a dear, sweet, wise woman who was kind, always cheerful, honest, out-spoken, friendly and cordial and well-liked by everyone. She didn’t know any strangers. When she visited me in NYC, she’d be talking to people on the street and in restaurants like she’s known them forever. I would tell her, “Mama, you don’t know those people. Why are you telling them all your business…and mine!?” But that’s how she was. She just liked people.
In her younger years, Mama worked at various jobs, including elevator operator, busgirl at a restaurant and housemaid. When she dropped out of high school at the end of her junior year, her only option, in lieu of marriage, was to go to work. She worked at Bike-Webb, a factory that made elastic garments and as a seamstress at Wilson Brothers clothing factory for several years. She next was a school crossing-guard for 20 years, until she retired for good in 1981. She also moonlighted as an undertaker’s assistant, but only as a sort of hostess and guide; she didn’t have to deal with the dead bodies directly. She attended the wakes and funerals, comforted the loved ones of the “dearly departed,” rendered a vocal solo when it was requested, and even drove the hearse occasionally.
Although Mother was an accomplished and talented singer in her own right, she never pursued a professional career with her singing. So she lived vicariously through my musical endeavors. When she was still a teenager, however, a man who was passing through town with a traveling dance band heard Mama singing one day and offered her a job with his band. Of course, her parents would not let her go with them. She was too young, and they weren’t going to relinquish their child to a bunch of errant strangers. I suppose I shouldn’t regret that she did not run off with that band so many years ago, for if she had, her life would have taken another path, she most likely would have not met my father, and I would never have been born. So you see, everything happens for a reason.
Mama did sing in her church choir for most of her life (and I along with her and my grandfather as well, until I left home), did solo work and even occasional recitals. For a while she directed our church’s youth choir, and of which I was also a member. As a young woman, Mother was a regular member of the H.T. Burleigh Company, a local theatrical troupe that produced musicals and even operas. When I was only twelve, I appeared in my first Carmen with the Company, as part of the children soldiers’ chorus in Act One.
I had a special relationship with my mother. She was my pal, my buddy, my best female friend. In fact, she called me “Buddy.” That’s been my family nickname all my life. One of my earliest memories was that I was a “Mama’s boy,” and I remember following her around the house like a shadow. It’s a wonder that I became so independent as I am now. But knowing that I would be on my own someday, I learned how to fend for myself. I can cook, iron, sew, do my own laundry and make minor repairs that involve hand tools.
Even when I left home temporarily and then for good, my mother and I regularly corresponded with cards, letters and phone calls. We wrote each other when I was stationed in Okinawa for 18 months. Even while on my cruises with the Vagabonds, I would call her when I got the chance. No matter where I happened to be in the world, we always kept in touch. I think that is what I am going to miss the most–our phone conversations. Hearing my voice always made her day. And I always had to end the calls; she would keep me on the phone all day if I let her. Of course, she said the same about me.
Some of our common interests were our love of records, movies, music and singing. Mama must have instilled those aspects and talent in me as well. She told me that she sang the whole time that she was pregnant with me. I always acknowledged Mother’s Day and her Christmas birthday (Dec. 23) with a gift and a card. Typical gifts were cash (she could always use that!), recordings (my own, especially) or inexpensive jewelry items. She loved cheap jewelry, like earrings and brooches and such. She was not a flower person. I’m not either. What purpose do they serve? She preferred things which have a practical or useful function, as do I.
Mother was so proud of me and all my achievements, musical and otherwise, and she was my biggest fan. Over the years and whenever possible, my mom would come to where I was to see me perform. She came down to Bloomington while I was at I.U. to see me act in a play (Jean Genet’s The Blacks). She saw some DeCormier shows, the Flirtations several times and even traveled to Toronto to see me when I was on the Canadian tour with Harry Belafonte. She was there for my stage debut in 1952, and ultimately, I performed for her after her death as well, when I delivered the eulogy at her funeral and rendered a dedicatory solo, standing directly over her coffin while I sang.
Now let me tell you what kind of mother she was. Jenny managed to raise four children, practically all by herself. Well, she did have help, because we lived in our grandparents’ house. I am the second-born of three sons (I’m “Malcolm in the Middle”) and a daughter, who is the result of the aforementioned interim relationship. Considering how well we all turned out, I think she did a pretty fantastic job in raising us. None of us were ever in a gang growing up, in trouble all the time or hooked on drugs or in prison. Mother herself did not ever have a criminal record.
We were all really good-mannered, well-behaved kids, and I think Mama had a lot to do with that. I instinctively say “please,” “thank you” and “excuse me” without even having to think about it, because that is what we were taught. Our mother was never abusive to any of us, physically or emotionally. She never raised her voice to us in anger, not that we ever gave her any reason to, and we never disrespected her either. I am appalled at how some children talk to their parents, calling them ugly names and saying that they hate them. That sort of behavior was absolutely unheard of in our household. We all had mutual respect for one another.
Mother neither smoked nor drank. There was never any alcohol in the house anyway. We never had much money growing up, so none of us were spoiled or demanded things that we knew our mother could not afford. As a result, I still am frugal, non-extravagant and tend not to spend money unnecessarily. We didn’t know just how poor we were because we were always well-fed, clothed and had a roof over our heads. Mama woke us up every morning for school and made us breakfast. We never started our day hungry. Our mom showed us all unconditional love and was always accepting and supportive of anything that we wanted to do with our lives. We could talk to each other about anything. She would give advice if we asked for it, but she never was judgmental. Her life was not perfect by any means, so she chose not to criticize and reprimand us when we made mistakes.
You know how some parents are disapproving of their kids’ friends and acquaintances. Our mother was accepting and respectful to all of our friends. A couple of my own homies, for example, were, shall I say, a bit obvious, gayly-speaking, but Mother never talked about them disparagingly or criticized their unmasculine demeanor. I guess she realized that if I liked these boys, it was not her place to suggest that I should not be friends with them. In fact, she liked them, too, and remained friends with them even after I left home. Several of them attended that last party she had and even attended her funeral. All my friends were good kids like myself. She had no reason to object to any of them. Besides, some of her boyfriends over the years were not all that great, so she knew better not to belittle any of mine. I must have gotten my dislike of hypocrisy attitude from her, too.
I can’t ever accuse my mother of being neglectful or remiss in her duties as a parent. She was always there when we needed her. We never once had an outside babysitter. When she was at work, our grandmother watched us, and the rest of the time, Mama would be at home taking care of us herself. She was quite the homebody, not one to be out in the street every night doing who-knows-what, and I must have gotten that from her, too. Even now, I go out only when I need to.
Mama knew all of her kids, because she spent a lot of quality time with us. She read to us when we were little–in fact, she taught me how to read before I started kindergarten–she took us to the movies often, the indoor theaters as well as the outdoor drive-ins, we watched TV together, she played cards and board games with me and my brother and our friends, she attended my brother’s Little League baseball games, and we even played miniature golf and went bowling a few times. We kept up with and taught Mother all of the dances that came along in the ’50s and ’60s; there was a new one practically every week. Since we didn’t drive yet, she was our personal chauffeur until we left home to attend college. Mother knew her way around a sewing machine and used to make some of her own clothes. She taught me how to embroider, and I introduced her to Paint-By-Number.
I have learned over the years that some children of divorced parents don’t always have it so good, and it often affects their lives in very negative ways. The parents part as bitter enemies and tend to use their children as go-betweens. In addition, each one talks despicably about the other to the kids, expecting them to take sides. That was not our case at all. Our parents parted mutually on friendly terms and remained so for the rest of their lives. My mother never badmouthed our dad in our presence (neither did our grandparents) and never kept him from spending time with us. She confided to me later why they split up, but it was the truth and she wasn’t resentful about it. It worked out in all of our favors besides. If they had stayed together “for the sake of the children,” we all would have been miserable.
Mother passed on September 10, 2015, five days after my birthday, at the age of 90 years and 9 months. Due to her age and physical condition, her death was not unexpected. For some time now, Mother had been suffering from various ailments–diabetes, kidney trouble and anemia, among them, but she always remained in good spirits. I don’t feel at all sad, because my mom was ready to go. She didn’t have anything to live for anymore. For the last few years she was confined to a hospital/hospice/nursing home facility, where she received around-the-clock care. As she had been an active person all her life, she could no longer walk or go anywhere on her own or do anything, so she was basically only existing.
That last year she succumbed to dementia, and became increasingly disoriented and confused. She still knew me and my siblings and her grandchildren, but her memory was short-term at most. She would repeat herself often, not realizing that she just told me that a moment ago. So, since she had already resigned herself to her passing, we all accepted it as well. She led a good, long life, and I have no regrets or unfinished business with her. The last time we spoke on the phone, only a few days before she died, and every other time that we spoke, we both said “I love you” to each other.
Mama and I were alike in many ways, with similar personalities, intelligence, wit and a great sense of humor. We made each other laugh often. My mother absolutely adored me. But how could she not? I am so adorable! She is greatly missed. Now let me give you more T about my father.
What do you think of a man who gave his children’s mother only $15 a week for child support, for the both of us!? That’s how much she got, and he was oftentimes late with that! Even in the fifties, that wasn’t a lot of money, especially for two growing boys. In all fairness, though, Dad did spend adequate quality time with us often enough. Since he lived only across town, Junior and I were able to see him anytime we wanted to. At his invitation we regularly spent the night at his house (which he had built for his new wife), and he took us fishing a couple of times, on many of his lodge picnics, to Playland, our local amusement park, and other fun outings while we were growing up.
My dad even visited me in New York a few times. Being an avid baseball fan, he came here one year to attend a game with Notre Dame (South Bend’s home team) and whomever they were playing, I don’t remember who, at the Meadowlands in New Jersey and invited me to go with him. Although I loathe spectator sports with a passion, I went along just to spend some time with my dad. Another time he came for no other reason than just to see me. I was quite touched by that.
My dad did not seem to be as impressed with my artistic and creative endeavors as my mother was. He never told me that he was proud of me or even that he loved me. But Emma confided in me that he did brag to his friends about me behind my back. Like, when I was working with Harry Belafonte, now that got a rise out of him! I wished he had told me directly how he felt. I told you that my dad liked to gamble. He did tell me that once while in Las Vegas, he got to play cards with Redd Foxx!
I don’t know my dad’s early employment history. He did serve in World War II in the Army, but that was before I was born, of course. He told Junior and me once how he went AWOL and hid out somewhere in Germany during a combat mission to avoid having to fight. He must have somehow gotten away with it, though—maybe he wasn’t missed—because he apparently was never found out and received an honorable discharge besides, unless he was lying about it all.
I do remember when my dad worked at the Studebaker automobile factory, which was South Bend’s major industrial employment venue from 1901 until it finally closed down in 1963. Papa Mark worked at Studebaker, too, before the Y, as did my Uncle Lester. Then Dad went into the youth employment training field, working as a career counselor at Indiana Vocational Technical College (Ivy Tech) for the next 18 years. He also served as a member of the Board of Directors for Head Start and commissioner for the South Bend Human Rights Commission. Other affiliations were The St. Joseph County Chronic Disease, the Real Services Advisory Counsel and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). He was chairman of the Model Cities Program, the St. Joseph Mental Health Board, Hansel Center and the Urban League.
I suppose that it was one of these positions that earned my father an invitation to the White House in 1980, during Carter’s Administration, to attend a meeting with the President and his senior advisors to discuss foreign and domestic affairs, but he got sick on the day he was to go and did not make the trip. I imagine that was a great disappointment to him. I have no idea why the President wanted my dad’s opinion on anything they had to discuss. How did he even know my dad? Earl Sr. did seem to be up on politics and civic affairs. He knew all of our mayors and politicians.
In fact, I was actually named after M. (for Maurice) Clifford Townsend, who served as Governor of Indiana from 1937-1941. His claim-to-fame, I suppose, is that he is credited with painting all the school buses yellow for easy recognition. (Whoop-de-doo!) Did Dad actually know this man and admired him or just liked that they shared the same surname? For whatever reason, I do like my name. My middle initial is also “M” but stands for Mark, after my grandfather. I use Cliff as my professional name, and it’s how I always introduce myself to people.
I have a couple of inadvertent humorous comments made by my dad. There was a period over several months while we were young, when Junior and I were getting injured a little too often–for me, serious cuts and getting hit by an automobile while on my bike and fractured limbs and other body parts for both of us–and we were frequently in and out of the hospital and doctor’s office. So I guess the medical bills were piling up, which I suppose was my dad’s responsibility to pay. Dad came over one day and told Junior and me, “Don’t you guys break nothing else, you hear? Not even a toenail!”
Do you remember when that Korean passenger plane was shot down in 1983 because it wandered into Russia’s private air space? We were discussing it one day out on the front lawn, and my dad said, “Didn’t that pilot know better than to fly in that restricted area? Nobody flies there. Even the birds know better than to fly there!” My mother, too, was a funny woman, but not always intentionally. She just would say and do funny shit.
My father met his unfortunate demise on August 14, 1994. I was just about to go into the studio to record my first solo album, Out Here On My Own but had to postpone in order to attend his funeral in South Bend. So, he never got to hear the finished project, unfortunately. Dad’s death notice published in our local newspaper, The South Bend Tribune, was fraught with inaccuracies. First of all, Dad’s birth date is one year off, making him a year younger than he really was, 73. (Gee, I have already outlived him!) It said that he was born in Forrest City, Arkansas, which may be true, although I always thought that he was born in Cairo, Illinois. Maybe the family was only passing through Forrest City enroute to Cairo when Granny birthed him. It said that he married Emma in 1951 but never mentions Helen or my mother at all.
Then it goes on to say that she survives with two sons, Earl Jr. and Clifford. So Junior and I are Emma’s children? Actually, Emma never got to experience motherhood, as she had several miscarriages, and the one daughter she did bring to term was stillborn. Then, too, besides us, my dad himself fathered two other boys, Marvin and Jeremy, with two different women. We learned later that Jeremy was in the car with our dad when they crashed. The article failed to mention that, too.
In the case of women who go after married men or men who are involved with someone else and then later marry these same guys themselves, usually act surprised or feel betrayed when their man runs around on them as well. They seem to want to forget that that’s how they got him.
Emma, for instance, tried to be outraged and all upset with my dad when it came out at his funeral that he had two sons by two other women. I am pretty sure that she already knew about them, but she was in her usual denial phase and tried to act like she didn’t know. So she feigned anger when publicly she had to acknowledge that my dad was unfaithful to her. Why should she be mad or even surprised? I reminded her of the fact that she herself was having a blatant affair with him while he was still married to my mother! So once she got him, did she think that he would never stray ever again? Come on! Once a philanderer, always a philanderer, I say. And what goes around, comes around. Some other women only did to Emma what she once did herself. I wasn’t trying to be mean, I just don’t like hypocrisy.
In fact, Junior and I always had a friendly relationship with our stepmother. Since, as I told you, Emma never had any children (that survived) with my dad, she was glad to accept Junior and me as her surrogate sons. At least I stayed in touch with Emma even after our father died. My brother, however, had a falling out with her over some petty disagreement, and he never spoke to her again. It was all on Earl, though, because Emma did not do anything wrong, in my opinion. My brother is the master for holding grudges.
And what everybody found to be so strange and unusual is that Mama and Emma were also amiable friends! In Mother’s words, “I don’t have anything against Emma. In hindsight she did me a favor by taking Earl off my hands. Now let her deal with him!” Dad and Emma apparently were more suited to each other, so there is no resentment on Mother’s part. She got the better deal anyway. Mother got the boys and her freedom, and Emma ended up with only my philandering, penchant-for-gambling dad. Emma certainly had it much worse with him than my mother ever did, and for a much longer time besides! Emma is also now deceased.
All things considered, I appreciate both my parents, especially my mother, who helped me to grow up to be the happy, well-adjusted, successful, good person that I turned out to be. They must have done something right.
[Related article: Lester Townsend, Man of the Century…Literally! A detailed account of more of my family history and genealogy.]