Sunday, May 8, 2011

This is a picture of my Mother, Myrtle Gordon, holding my little brother David. She is sitting in back of one of the burlesque tents and next to the tent truck that we lived in.  After pulling into the lot where the carnival would be, the roustabouts would empty the tents out of the trucks and then pull down the murphy table and benches from the inside walls.  We, of course, had no running water or toilets.  We did, via a drop line, have electricity.  We ate our meals with the other carnys in the cook tent.  My Mom washed our clothes by hand in a metal wash tub using a scrub board.  We also took our baths in this tub and for some reason David loved to sit on it in the sun.  My Mother was and is my Hero.  I miss her very much.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Part of the time when we were with Hennies Bros. Shows we traveled by train.  Our trailer would be on an open flat car and we would be in the railroad cars.  One of my first memories is  of uncontrollable terror when going from one railroad car to another.  I had such fear about falling between the two cars that someone had to carry me. Even as an adult traveling on trains that had covered couplings, that fear was always with me. Staying with the same carnival for a long time meant that you acquired carny "Aunts and Uncles" along the way.  Some of these aunts and uncles came in off the road and settled in Houston, Texas, and went to work for my father after he became a concessionaire.  I was closer to them than I was to my blood aunts and uncles on my mothers side of the family that I only saw several times in my life.  I have never met any of my fathers relatives even to this day.  I do not know if his family knows that he died in 1958. 

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Baby Picture of Betty (Becky) Gordon

This is the only picture I have of me as a baby.  At one point in time we were living in a tent that burned down and all of our baby pictures were lost.  My Mom was able to retrieve a few copies that she had sent to relatives.  I was told that I was a good baby and that my older sister, Judy, treated me like a doll.  She was 18 months older than me and for a short period later in our lives we looked like twins and were dressed alike.