About My Mother (1996)
By Elinor Jeanne
Judge (nee Smith)
Transcribed from audiotape
Audio
version (mp3)
Several years ago my mother wrote a paper
about my dad, Paul [break] which
was very nice because none of us knew anything
about [break] … and I told my Dad
I would write something about my mother. Cause
nobody else knows her but me now.
So I’m not sure why I’m doing
it, I think it’s for myself, and
maybe for you too. And it
may not be completely accurate, because
there are big blanks in my memory too.
So I’m going to start out by saying …
My mom was born Vera Lenore Loveland,
December 23, 1911, in Harleton [?], Montana.
She was the fourth child of Mina Alice
and Robert A. Loveland. Her other
siblings were Russ, Wayne, Mary and
her youngest brother Bill. I don’t
know anything about Harleton, but I know
that they moved to Lewistown when my mother
was quite young. And they built their
house, which is at 1010 W. Main. And
it was a very large house. As far
as I know all of the children went to Lincoln
Elementary School as I did later in life,
and Lewistown Junior High.
My mom as far as I know was pretty athletic,
she liked to play basketball, and she was
a lifeguard at the swimming pool.
At age 13 my mother was fully, physically
developed. And in those days, sex
was not spoken of -- only in negative terms. She
had no idea of what anything was about.
At age 16, her and my aunt Mary double
dated with two boys named Donald and Bud.
Donald was ten years my mother’s
senior, and somehow both my mother and
her sister got pregnant. Life changed
for her radically then. My grandfather
told her she had to leave. So my
aunt and my mother went to Detroit and
both had their babies in Detroit.
I don’t know who they knew or how
they got there, but this is what happened.
[break] … model, and then when
she had my sister, she went back to Lewistown
and left her with my grandmother, and then
she, my mother, went back to Detroit, and
in Detroit continued modeling and then
married my father, Joseph Smith, previously
Russkowski, who worked for the post office. Now
my father I don’t remember hardly
at all, except that my mother tells me
he was very alcoholic. And he was a singer,
and when he wasn’t drinking he was
singing on the radio, plus his job at the
post office.
I don’t know what all happened,
my mother was modeling. Then I guess
when I was born, again I went back to Montana. Meanwhile
my mother was still in Detroit and doing
modeling. She modeled for a church,
for a Mary [Madonna sculpture] to be at
a church, and she modeled clothes and modeled … she
stood for students that were learning art.
And during that time I guess she became
pregnant again, but because of my father’s
alcohol, he kicked her down a flight of
stairs and she lost the baby, and she became
quite obsessed with that. Many of
the poems that she has in her poetry book
relate to babies that died.
So it wasn’t very easy for her. This
was all during Depression times. And eventually
she came back to Montana, and worked for
the chamber of commerce for awhile. And
eventually she got a job with the NYA,
which was the National Youth Administration,
during Roosevelt’s time. And
she had to work a hundred miles from Lewistown
because that’s how far apart the
towns are. So she either worked
in Billings, which was a hundred miles
one way, or Great Falls, which was a hundred
miles the other way. So on weekends
she would come home.
During that time in my life when I was
with my grandmother, it was not an easy
time, because, for one thing I always felt
left out of what was going on. My
sister still – had had a different
father – and she was considered more
important because of the prominence of
that family, even though she was illegitimate.
My grandmother was very close to her because
she had had … she was the first
baby to come. And she -- my
grandmother -- became very, very close
to her. Nancy even used to sleep
with her as time went on and read with
her. And somehow or another
I was kinda like somehow outside of the
circle. I guess I didn’t know
it then, but I was very, very shy -- very,
very passive and I did not take criticism
well.
So, let me see … this is hard. That’s
all I want to say right now.
I used to wait for every weekend when
my mother would come home from her job. She would stay during the week and then
come home on the weekends. I remember
I always had so much to tell her, because
I didn’t think my grandmother treated
me right. And I would build it all
up and wait and wait for her to come home. And
then actually when she got home, I kinda
forgot to even say anything. I think that’s
because I wasn’t sure she would believe
it anyhow.
During my mother’s time when she
working and driving long distances, she
picked up a hitchhiker, an elderly man,
who was to affect her life for many, many
years. He somehow thought that she
was like his dead wife, that had died.
And after she had picked him up and dropped
him off, he would try to come see her every
day in Lewistown. Eventually my mother
moved back to Detroit, we were still with
my grandmother in Lewistown.
And she got married to my stepfather who
was Paul Averit. When they
came back … Well, first I
guess she wrote my grandmother a letter,
and my grandmother told my sister that
my mother had remarried. I didn’t
know anything about it until the day she
walked up to my school with her new husband, and
I had the biggest fit anybody could have. I
had always said to my mother that I’d
take care of her, and I would take her
on a long cruise when I grew up.
So without any knowledge of this man in
our lives, I just freaked out. And I cried
and I screamed and I did everything because
she had brought this man home. And
that lasted for quite a while.
Anyway he was in the Marines, and eventually
was transferred to California. But
my sister and I still stayed in Montana. But
my mother was in San Diego with him. And
then suddenly decided to bring me and Nancy
where she was.
So I remember we took a train called the
El Capitan, We were like the only
two people on a whole train full of Seabees,
going oversees. To this day I have
a book called Bulldog Drummond with everybody’s
autograph on it. No, we had
a great time.
When we got ... I think the train stopped
in San Franciso and we went to a hotel
with my mother, where she picked us up. And
everything is kind of hazy there except
we ended up in San Diego, and my stepfather
was sent overseas to the Marshall Islands.
While we were in San Diego I went to school
for about 3 months, and then we moved back
to Detroit.
My mother had a friend who helped us buy
a house. And that was in St. Clair
Shores, Michigan. Well, meanwhile
before we got the house, we lived in a
couple of apartments, so I went to like
four schools … no, wait a minute,
now I’m mixed up.
Before we went to Michigan, we lived in
Mohave, California. So I went
to junior high for a few months in Montana,
a few months in San Diego, and a few months
in Mohave, and a few more months in Michigan. So
I went to four [junior] high schools.
I didn’t get to know anybody very
well, but in Michigan, in St. Claire Shores,
I finally went to school up until my junior
year.
Meanwhile my sister got married.
And incidentally, during this time, that
man, whose name happened to be Sullivan,
that my mother picked up on the road, had
followed us to San Diego. He left
notes, cut up our clothes. Then when
we were in Michigan, somehow or other he
got to Michigan, and there he did the same
thing. And he put my mother’s
name down in bathrooms in Detroit, people
were calling, and it was really, really
awful.
Meanwhile my stepfather was overseas and
my mother was working, like most people
did, in a factory for guns and planes or
whatever.
And Nancy and I got a little wild. One
time we stole the car; my sister had it
hotwired and, guess what, she ran into
a police car. So those were the days. However,
when my dad came out of the service, came
back to Detroit, and he suddenly tried
to be The Boss. Well it was a little late. Nancy
was … we were both in high school. He
was trying to be the boss and we didn’t … we
used to call him “little Hitler” all
the time. Because what we thought
was ok, he thought was really outrageous.
Anyhow my dad was not feeling very good,
he was coughing a lot, and the weather
was very, very cold in Michigan. So
the doctor recommended that we move to … someplace
like AZ. Meanwhile my sister was
married so she was out of the house.
Incidentally from her days in Montana
when she had done a little stealing, she
had ended up getting caught stealing in
Michigan from a very prominent department
store. And it really … it
really showed me that when you get away
with something, it’s easier to do
it over.
Anyway, we did then .. my dad did decide
to go to Arizona. We went to a town
called Prescott, Arizona, because it was
supposed to be very warm, but the first
year we were there it snowed! And
he did … ok.
And that was … I had gone three
years to high school in Michigan, now I
was at my last year of high school in Prescott. It
was a real, real hard decision to decide
what to do. I was able either go
back and go on a trip with my class in
Michigan, or stay in Prescott and go through
the graduation ceremonies.
I finally decided to stay in Prescott,
even though I did go back and visit my
sister later.
Meanwhile that little man, that Sullivan
man, was following us again. He came
again, we never knew where he was, we called
the police and everything, but we never
could find him. And he continued
to wreck some kind of havoc … my
mother was constantly worried about where
and when he was going to show up again.
So from Prescott, my dad got a job at
what they call Davis Dam. They
were building a dam which was down from
Boulder Dam and he went to work there.
My mother became a librarian. This
is a very small town, which is now known
as .. well part of Laughlan. There
were about two stores, and the river, and
the government project.
My mother meanwhile got a job as a librarian,
which she really, really loved. But
for some reason my dad was not happy there
and wanted to leave.
But meanwhile I went to college at Arizona
State in Tempe and started as a music major.
And it was a completely different thing
in my life, because I had never been alone,
never had any responsibility … for
myself or anybody else. So I ended
up eventually messin’ that up.
But I did meet my first husband in college. Went
out with him two times and became pregnant.
I went to the doctor, and the first time
I went they said that I wasn’t pregnant,
that maybe it could be a tumor. So
I told my mother about this, and I was
more relieved to say it was a tumor than
a baby at that time. And of course
she got very concerned.
And then the next time I came back, it
wasn’t a tumor, it was a baby. And
then my mother was really upset, cause
she claimed I was lying to her, that I
had been lying about it all along, you
know. So that didn’t turn out
to be a very good situation.
I wrote to my … In between school,
when I was not on campus I was living
with my mom and dad in Davis Dam, and
I wrote him a letter and I told my … the
father of the child that I was pregnant … And
he at that time was in the Air Force, he
was about a year or two after me and had
been drafted to go into the service. So
he was in Puerto Rico at the time and I
wrote to him. And I guess that he
decided he was going to marry me. So
he came back, he was a good guy, he was
a nice guy, but it wasn’t a
good situation, because neither one of
us were very smart. He was an only
child, and his mother doted on him, and
everything was … he was ok, but
I wasn’t ok.
Well we really didn’t live together,
hardly at all. When he got
transferred to another place in Florida,
we did take a plane, my son and I, when
he was about a year old and went to Florida
to see him, for the first time. And
it went ok, it was all right.
But in his area he knew a lot of people,
that he’d even known from childhood. He’d
originally been brought up in Huntington,
West Virginia .. and the “only mother” [child?]
routine … He had .. he was
overly interested in people with education
and wealth, the other people were not that
interesting to him. And it
was like, you know, a class thing. Well
that bothered me.
And then he started going to a church,
where -- what we would call today maybe
born-again Christians -- where everybody
had to be one of those, or they were in
trouble. And I remember they
were trying to get me to get up and take
some kind of communion, like you would
in the Catholic Church, and I refused to
do it because I wasn’t .. didn’t
believe that I should do that. I
wasn’t that religion, and I didn’t
want to do that. So that caused
a little problem.
And so I went back to Davis Dam, he was
still in the service, went back to Davis
Dam with my son. And one day I got
a “Dear Jeanne” letter -- not
a “Dear John” letter -- from
him. He had gone to Huntington, West
Virginia, where he had been raised … and
he had an old girlfriend, named Sweetsee,
that he felt he was in love with, and he
had all this background, his favorite teacher
was a friend of hers, and he went on and
on and on about how, you know, he loved
her, and so he decided to get a divorce. We
hardly ever had lived together.
The best thing I can remember was a kind
of like a honeymoon we had. We went
to Oak Creek Canyon. And it was like
a beautiful cabin where they raised their
own chickens and grew all their own food. And
it was very quiet and very beautiful. That
I remember … it’s the only
really good thing I remember. Although
he wasn’t mean, he wasn’t abusive,
none of those things.
So I was back with my mom and dad. Things
went bad there, and we moved to Texas where
my uncle was, for some reason I’m
not sure what, had to do with work. Then
we went to Laredo, which was across the
border.
And Stephen … right from the beginning
I could see that my mother was kind of
controlling … wanting to control
my baby. And she got a Spanish lady
to come in and take care of him, you know,
when I should have been able to do it myself. And,
and I guess I let her. So it’s
my own fault in a way.
(Here we go again, moving around, did
a lot of moving around.)
Oh, I don’t know, we had a falling
out, my mother and I, and my dad lost his
job and they decided they were going to
Washington. Finally my mom
and dad came back from Washington and went
to Las Vegas, Nevada. And I’d
had enough of San Antonio, trying to make
it on my own and decided to go with them,
went to Las Vegas, where we had a trailer,
with an upper bunk for Stephen and a lower
bunk for me. And we all got jobs in the
casino … Well, my mom got
a job at the Sahara as a head housekeeper,
and I got a job at the Desert Inn as a
billing clerk at the front desk. It
was an interesting nine months.
All right, I got as far as Las Vegas. Now
the rest of my life is an open book, and
you probably know it. But the purpose
of this was not to give you my life, and
if you want to know about that you’ll
have to ask me -- this was about my mother,
and I really got off the beaten track.
What I guess I want you to remember is
that the time she was brought up, the things
that happened to her, was very, very difficult
for her in that time frame. Women
were not respected very much, especially
if they weren’t at home. She
went from a sixteen year old girl and working,
which she’d never done, she
finished high school in correspondence. And
she went on and improved herself constantly.
I was going to say something about ….
Ok, so my mother was a strong woman who
took care of her children to the end, as
far as she could. I think it was
harder then than it is now, but everything
is relative. She worked for a senator,
she worked for a lawyer, she was part of
the NYA during the Roosevelt administration. She
had a wealth of experiences and no formal
education. Which I’m sure had she
had one she would have graduated with honors
because she was so curious and she wanted
to know so many things. She was a
good person. I know there’s
a lot more I would like to say, but I think
the most important part is that, she never
gave up on her children, she took care
of her mother, and she constantly tried
to improve herself.
I know there’s probably more I would
like to say, but I’ve been at this
for months and months and months, and I
haven’t gotten very far. So
I’m going to leave it at this, and
I want you to know that your grandmother
had her faults, but in the end she really
had tried hard to do what was right. Guess
that’s it. Bye.
[Later…]
Oh, when I started to add to this tape
I had been thinking all the way up here,
I’m at Dr. Mulray’s, about
what I wanted to say, and since this is
such a political season, there is a great
deal of my mother in my thinking, and probably
your thinking from my thinking, because
she was always involved in politics in
some form or another, really believing
we could make a difference, which as you
know is the way I feel, although less and
less lately.
When ... the one thing I regret the most
is that my mother died just before Clinton
won the election and we got two women senators
from California. She would have been
in heaven. She died just before this
all happened.
Anyway in this political season, I think,
I’m trying really hard to believe,
and I know that she would be trying hard
to believe, that we still can change things.
But all the way from the time I was a little
girl, she always influenced me in my thinking,
and I still think it was right. I
needed to say that.
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