Mom Turns 70 Today

I don’t know if she’ll like this post or not, but 70 years old is a darned mighty milestone, and worth celebrating. Especially when you’re going strong like she is.

So, here’s the story as I know it. She’ll help me correct this, undoubtedly! I’ll make sure to republish with corrections as she sees fit.

My Mom was born on the Ides of March, 1940. It was a turbulent time. The US was clawing its way out of the Great Depression. That same month, Mussolini joined Hitler in Germany’s war against France and Britain. Finland surrendered to Russia. Himmler ordered the construction of the infamous Auwschitz concentration camp in the same year my mother was born. 

In Oklahoma, Chuck Norris was a five day old baby boy on the day my mother was born. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Barney Frank were both born later that same month.

As if representative of the time, my mom was born in a tent, in Nyssa, Oregon, as my displaced elders waited out the end of winter to start working in the fields come spring. They’d lost the farms in the area around Lincoln, Nebraska, and were working their way west to northern Oregon. Some of my family members had already settled in Newberg; everyone else was working their way west.

By the time my mom was two or so, the family had settled in Newberg and gotten to work. It was The Wartime, afterall. America was in an all-hands battle to stave of near certain annihilation. Many of the men in the family went off to fight. My mom’s father, included.  And when he returned, he took a job with the US Postal Service. My mom was the eldest of four: three girls and one boy. On the event of my Mom’s 70th, only her brother, Austin Jr, has passed away. The three sisters are all still healthy and vibrant.

My mom grew up in Newberg. The family lived in a number of houses around town. She was a girl scout. In 1945, she witnessed the wide-reaching devastation of the third Tillamook Burn (and arguably the best known of the series of blazes that comprise the Tillamook Burn complex). She sometimes tells stories of the red skies, and black soot raining down over Newberg, miles away from the fire site.

In those days, Newberg was an agricultural community. There was a paper mill, and the logging in the Coastal range brought log trucks in for a daily parade, through town, to the mill.

For me, in 1966 or so, when mom was 26 years old, I can still remember the log trucks rolling through Newberg – carrying logs so large that only two or three fit on the truck.

Mom met a boy in high school. His name was Grant, and he joined the Marines. Mom married him and moved back to Virginia to be with him until his training as a nuclear weapons specialist got him assigned overseas to Japan. Grant was my biological father. He was generally a troubled soul, and didn’t live to see 60.  My mom and my father separated  just after my birth. My mom was a working single mother during the 1960’s, in a small agricultural town. This must not have been a good time.

But I remember it just fine. We’d go shopping at the local grocery store, called Nap’s. It’s still there, by the way, some 50 years later. I have clear memories of the youngish butcher regularly giving me a treat of  a raw pork weiner  at Nap’s every time we went into the store. I’d sit in the cart and gnaw on that uncooked hot dog sausage all throughout the shopping trip.  Imagine doing that today~ major health safety issues, that. I’ve never asked her, but I think that butcher thought my mom was cute…

It was about this time that my mom contracted Scarlet Fever, a severe form of strep throat. Severe enough to hospitalize her, and to leave her with scar tissue on her heart valves. For as long as I can remember, she’s taken a daily penicillin to prevent any re-infections. The scar tissue, however, has been an issue in later life. Mom takes a series of heart-related medications and attends exercise classes to maintain as much heart health as possible.

In about 1966 or so, Mom met another guy. She married him just as I was turning 5 years old. His name is Jerry, and 42 or so years later, they’re still married. They had one child together, my sis, Paula. And raised us as a nuclear family, in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Mom stopped working at Tektronix when my sister was born. Mom stayed home, and took care of other children in the house for additional income while we kids were in school.

About 1980 or so, Mom and Dad bought a small place in Pacific City, Oregon. They almost moved there full-time right away. By this time, Dad was working at the Tektronix/Merix plant in Forest Grove, and could just as easily commute from the beach as anywhere. But, for the sake of the school system, they stayed put. My sister and I graduated from Hillsboro High School in 1981 and 1988, respectively.

Once my sister was out of high school, Mom went back to work. This time, she took a job in the cafeteria at Sunset High School as a baker. She kept this job until about the same time Jerry retired from Merix. True to their retirement plan since 1980, they systematically moved from Hillsboro to the house in Pacific City, where they’ve lived full time for over fifteen years.

Mom quilts. She dotes on her two grand children (my two kids). She dotes on her husband. She was born in a tent to landless farmers surviving as crophands, and today she uses the internet and a computer to communicate to the whole world.