Both my parents grew up along the Kentucky River. My mother's father died when she was almost 7 and her mother remarried when Mom was a sophomore in high school and Granny and her youngest children moved to another county where the new husband lived. The older children had left for marriage,work, or war. My mother came back to her home community, worked and lived with her sister during the summer.
It was a tight community and though my parents never attended the same schools, there were connections between their families. Her oldest sister was married to dad's uncle. Dad's aunt had a relationship with Mom's uncle (her mother's half brother) who lived across the river with his real family. My mother was good friends with this aunt of my dad's and her daughter. My mother said my dad's aunt was jolly and fun and her uncle's wife was sickly and dull. Sometimes, they would all be at the river swimming, his wife and family on one side and his mistress and her family on the other side. They never spoke. Mom says that though he was stingy and selfish with his widowed half sister and her 10 kids, her uncle built the house his mistress lived in with her husband and children. Her husband mostly hunted and fished. It seems he must have known about the affair but didn't seem to care.
Even though, my parents had these and other family connections, they did not know each other very well, they did not run with the same people, they did not have an eye on each other. There was a 4 year age difference and my mother lived in another county when they were teenagers.
Read More
