"That Will Learn Ya Durn Ya!"

The two people you see on the front page of this blog holding their new great grandbaby for the first time is my parents, Don and Beverly Norwood.  The little boy who is the delight of Beverly’s eye is my first grandchild Cy Jackson Tolbert.  My parents had six kids.  They had five girls and one boy and I was that one boy.  Folks ask me how I made it with all those sisters and no brothers and I generally say, “ Well I’m a survivor.”  The Lord has blessed my sisters and me with children of our own and at last count Grandpa Don and Grandma Beverly are the proud grandparents of seventeen grandchildren, and two great grandchildren and one on the way due in July. As I see their joy in that photograph I can’t help but think of some of the stories about how it all began for them so many years ago.

My Dad told me that he had a job with southwestern bell out of Uvalde, Texas  and Mom was still attending High school in Sabinal just shortly after they got married.  They had just returned from their honeymoon , it was Sunday and Mom and Dad went to church with granny Pearl and Grandpa Rollie in Sabinal.  After church they went to Medina ,Texas to see Dad’s mother. During the visit she told Dad to go to his old grandparents place to pick some cooking utensils and small household items and use them for their new apartment.  They had arranged for this little two-story apartment that they had rented from an old lady in Uvalde.  They didn’t get back to Uvalde until late about midnight and Dad remembered that he failed to get a key to the door from the landlady .  Well being so late they didn’t want to wake the landlady so Dad decided that he would just see if he could crawl through the upstairs window and gain access into the apartment.  He had to crawl up and balance on the stair railing to reach the window and push it open. He lifted the screen off and then boosted Mom up through the window and then proceeded to lift all the furnishings that they got from his grandparents old place up to Mom. They finished hauling everything up and then went to bed exhausted from the effort.  Early next morning Dad expecting to have to crawl back through the window absent-mindedly just opened the door and went out to the car and then realized that the door had been opened the whole time.  They laughed at their folly for days after and even now when they retell the story they laugh all the more.