We've Got to Get a Change of Luck

Sometimes there are seasons when life gets too difficult. The "dark night of the soul," becomes the dark week, the dark month, and then everything just stays dark. Such was the fall of 1958.

Imagine the anxiety. Ronald has three small children, a wife who is ill and possibly suffering from serious depression. Less than a year has passed since his father and grandfather have died. His overtime hours with the phone company are cut back because of a recession. He had to borrow money from his mother to pay the bills, which has produced enormous guilt. Without warning, someone runs into the back of the family car, while the family is in it.

A women failed to stop and plowed into the back of us. There was speculation that she had been drinking. Terry and I were in the back seat and went flying into the front seats. My baby brother was on my mother's lap and he was thrown to the floorboard. My father and mother hit the dashboard, resulting in head and neck injuries. However, the only one who went to the hospital was my mother. My father describes in a letter to my grandmother, that "Beverly was sitting on the curb crying" after the accident. She was released the next day. The car was totaled, but the insurance settlement was not enough, so my father did not immediately settle. Money he had borrowed from my grandmother to get "caught up" went to pay for the expenses because of the wreck and getting another car. As a result of the accident, my father started having headaches. I was limping for a short time, but it went away.

In a letter dated October 14, 1958, Ronald writes to his mother:

We've got to get a change of luck pretty quick or I don't know what I'll do. Beverly's teeth are really giving us a hard time...David got bit on the eye lid about two weeks ago..The doctor was afraid to open the eye up for fear of what he expected to see..The doctor doesn't want to examine Beverly to find out what is wrong with her foot and arm until she gets well from her teeth trouble...If you want to and or can I need $800-$1,000 dollars. It must be hard for you to believe that I could need that much money. I promise you one thing and that is when the insurance company settles, you will get the whole settlement. That should take care of the last loan anyway and I'll start paying you back as much as I possibly can every month.

Regardless of whether or not you can make me this loan, I am going to take out an insurance policy on myself with you as the beneficiary with a large enough amount to cover how much I owe you. I'll send you the policy when I get it all taken out.

It seems so hard for me to believe that I'm in so much trouble since on Jan 1, I was on an even keel, able to cope with almost anything that might come up, I thought.