Our dad Wild Bill, as the nurses call him, is continuing his stay at the Arbor Springs Rehab Hotel. Of course it’s not supposed to feel anything like a hotel, meaning rehabilitation takes lots of work and NOT being comfortable, but somehow our father has made it like a room at the Hilton. He wanted this intro to say “like a room at the Trump Hotel”, but stirring the pot while others are taking care of your every need is bad judgement. Bill has asked that we print a few more short stories that his daughter Tina, number three of four, wrote many years ago. Here it is.
Dad never expected to raise four children, much less four girls. But God laughs when we make plans, and so our parents were blessed with four blonde-haired girls who had no idea that their parents had only picked out boy names. The family name Russell, shortened to an adorable nickname of Rusty, was never to be used.
Dad decided the best way to handle four new females in the house was to treat us like boys. We were all instructed to drive a stick shift long before we turned 16. From the shifting of a Honda to the grind of a Volkswagen bug, I take pride that I can stop at a red light on a hill and not roll backwards when the light turns green. He did however forget to teach us how to maintain a car. All I knew was that you filled a car with gas. Check the oil? In high school I had no idea the importance of this task until Tami nearly burned up her engine in the Monte Carlo. Whenever there was a mechanical problem, Dad would simply say..”Take it to Sam’s.” Apparently there was a gentleman who owned Sam’s Auto Shop that fix anything from a Volkswagen to a Monte Carlo to whatever Maxine rolled up in. “Take it to Sam’s” became a mantra in our family. Looking back on it, I suspect we didn’t pay Sam nearly enough to magically fix the Frazer female fleet.
Another thing that our dad was ill-prepared to deal with was the dress-up time before big events. Early on, Maxine recruited him to tie the bows on our Sunday dresses, but as we got older the dress-up time got more intense. We four girls shared one bathroom for our whole lives. I know that many people have shared a bathroom with siblings, but four girls getting ready for a piano recital is quite shocking to an unsuspecting male. My three sisters and I all took piano from the wonderful and scary Miss Estelle. There was always a recital scheduled at the end of May to display our lack of talent. The recital dresses at the time were your absolute Sunday best, if not long, prom-like dresses. The end of May in the South is hot and humid, a precursor to the long summer ahead, and you may have guessed it, but Wild Bill had a policy of not turning on the air conditioning until June 1. We would all be complaining of the heat as our hair wilted and makeup melted, begging Dad to turn on the air. For the first few recitals he would still maintain “Not until June.” But after a year or two, Maxine wore him down and the blessed cool air would always come on recital day and last through the summer.
All southern girls are recruited to do outside work and whatever else needs to be done regardless if it involves dirt or not. We loved it. One such thing was feeding the cows that Dad kept on the Frazer farm while Grandaddy was still alive. We would climb to the top of the barn while Dad backed up the tractor and trailer. We would then push hay bales on to the trailer below. Our mom was never involved with this and therefore explains why we were oblivious to the presence of rats and snakes as we confidently climbed through the haystacks. We helped distribute the hay and I can still remember the cows following us to get their share. The cows were big, much bigger than four young girls, but I only remember fearing the mule. In fact, even our dad said the mule was NOT to be approached, and our dad rarely acted scared of anything, so we knew that meant something.
You would think that my Dad was disappointed that he never had a boy, but I never felt that way. He would say that he only cared that we were healthy, and now that I’m a parent of four children, I know exactly what he means.