Our first child was born October, nineteen thirty three, a girl we named Nancy.

The next baby was born November, nineteen thirty four, another girl named Roberta but we called her Bobbie.

Two years later our first son, Jim was born. Then we had a bad spell of Malaria fever, and I did not have another baby until nearly four years later. Then we had another boy, John.

After John was born I told Loren that as long as we were living with his mother I did not want any more children.

Bigma, as we all called his mother, was so hard to get along with I could not see any chance of happiness.

She was a very dominating woman and the only way to get along at all with her was to do as she said to do. ~

A mother with four children does not want to be told what to do, even about her children.

I gave birth to them but that was about all I had to do with them.

I worked in the field with Loren and did the laundry and milked the cows, and by this time we had a large flock of laying hens which Loren and I cared for along with all the rest of the chores.
Bigma did the cooking and caring for the children.
Now I did not mind helping Loren with the farm work but I wanted to be a mother too!

To make matters worse, Gus, ^{Loren's Brother} was always getting into some kind of trouble and Loren and Bigma would go pay him out. I finally told Loren I would not work like a hired hand to pay Gus out of trouble all the time.
Gus did not do any work at all.
Irma was going to school and what time she was not in school or studying she was doing up Gus’s clothes so he could go out and get drunk again!
Well, the next time Gus got in trouble Loren told his mother he would not spend another cent to get Gus out. Gus spent several days in jail and when he got out he was very angry at first, but he finally got over it and went to work as hard as the rest of us.
He soon got married and moved out to himself, which made our home much happier. Irma finished school and married a wealthy man from Milledgeville Ga.

Poverty

When our youngest child was six years old, Loren was taken sick while he was working in Savannah Georgia.
My brother brought him home.
We had the doctor come to see him and he said Loren had Typhus fever.
Before he was well of this he had Pleurisy.
We carried him to the hospital and he was there for about five months before he died. I stayed with him most of the time while he was in the hospital to keep from having to hire a special nurse, but I finally had to have one for night duty because I could not stay up day and night.
While I was there I learned to give Hypos, and make beds, take pulse and respiration.

^{By the time I was born in 1955, Mama had built upon this experience, had taken correspondence courses and was about to go get her Nursing License, when she found out she was pregnant with me

It seems I put a halt to her medical aspirations}
Loren died December the sixteenth, nineteen forty-five, just four days before his thirty fifth birthday.
Not long after Loren died his mother had an attack with her heart.
When Bigma came home from the hospital she stayed with Gus at his farm house.

^{This is the old Tippins homeplace in more recent times}

This left my children and me alone in the big old farmhouse. The children were all in school and I was very lonely at first. I soon started to build up a brood of chickens again as we had to sell nearly all we had to pay the doctor and hospital bills, not only the chickens, but all the cattle and hogs too. I don’t know what I would have done if my brothers had not helped me financially.

^{[My own Daddy (next chapter) told me when I was about 12, (and swore me to never say he'd told me this) that when he married my Mama, they were literally wearing ragged clothes and were almost starving]}

Gus rented the farm next year, which helped some.
I started taking in sewing to help out with expenses.
This along with taking care of the chickens kept me from having time to be lonely.