In These Shoes

Chapter One

Early Childhood

Once upon a time is how the story usually goes. My parents named me Deborah Fern McDonald. I was the daughter of Alberta Fern Lawson and Billy Charles Mc Donald. I was born very early at Grayson’s County Hospital in Sherman Texas. I also have two brothers, named Billy and Gary that lived with us. My parents had us when they were very young. My father traveled in his work and my mother stayed with my grandparents.

My grandmother (on my mother’s side) had passed before I was born and my grandmother was about the closest to a mother that my mother knew. Even though my grandmother and grandfather tried to help my parents throughout their young parenting it wasn’t enough. They still ended up in a divorce. I was only about nine months old when my parents divorced. Yes to young too know what was going on, so I guess they thought the sooner the better.

My grandparents were very good to my mother and her family. My mother’s sisters would live with us from time to time when going through a bad marriage or a job loss. My grandparents always would take those girls in. I know that my grandmother always did that knowing the loss of their mother from cancer. People couldn’t believe the groceries and help with clothes that my grandmother would give during the rough times. But she always had a knack in being able to do just that.

My grandmother worked running a restaurant in Sherman by the name of Travis Restaurant. She was very well known for her capabilities of knowing how to manage a restaurant. My grandfather had a dump trucking service and ran a very reputable business for years until he had several heart-attacks and had to sell. We grew up not knowing the lack of anything. As a child I would run around with my grandfather in his trucks and we went everywhere. My grandmother always took care of all our needs incase our parents hadn’t thought of it. As time grew on so did I.

We lived in a house on Travis Street in Sherman. All the children would stay with us throughout the summers and play in the back yards and over at the school grounds across the road. My parents would take the old cotton barrels and put us in them and roll them up and down the hill into the ditches at the school yard. We loved that old school yard because it had the biggest swing set around. This swing set was tall with the longest chains and you could take those chains and wrap them around the top of that swing set until you could touch the top. Our parents would let us play for hours there.

Every Saturday night we would go to Dairy Queen for a hamburger and shake. My grandparents always took the grandchildren for that special treat. It was a family outing that went on throughout my entire life. My grandfather always took me to get his hats steamed and shaped. He wore a white cowboy hat and cache pants that were heavy starched and a western shirt. So; every Saturday off we would go to the western store together and then go to the restaurant for a bite to eat. The man at the western store was one of my grandfather’s friends and he expected us to show up with no excuses of not being there. I use to wear my western boots and my dresses that my grandmother had made for me from either that week or the week before. Many of the people in that town bought dresses that my grandmother made. So I always started with the new one and got to help with the rest that were made.

When I was about the age of five I had gotten out of the house by myself and decided to take off on my tricycle. The first time I did that I went across the highway and was almost struck by a car. I had a real bad habit of waiting until everyone was in the kitchen cooking and sneaking out of the house on my own. The next time I decided to take off on my tricycle I hit a Safeway building at the bottom of the hill before I had gotten across the highway. It put me into a coma for about three weeks.

During this time the doctors reset my -legs, arms, and ankles that I had broken from the fall of the tricycle. My family really came together at that time. Every relative that I had on both sides of our families came to see me. They really didn’t know for sure if I was going to be okay. My grandparents and parents at that time would not leave my side. It was weeks before I started showing signs of coming back around. My parents worked day and night with the doctors trying everything to bring me back to a concise speech. They were hoping for some type of response and my family was totally exhausted by this time. Those few weeks had seemed like eternity for any parent.

Of course my grandmother had a neighbor and also a very well known preacher of the community that came to the hospital and prayed over me at this time. Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Watson were well loved and respected as reputable builders of churches and as a preacher. My parents figured with him by my side the healing would really begin. I recovered slowly with broken limbs and contusions. My dad us to tease me, saying; he was going to take my tricycle away because the Safeway couldn’t afford to replace that many bricks that I had taken out when I hit it. It really became a joke around our house once I had shown signs of recovery. Being back at home my parents decided to buy me a gift. It was an organ that I had really wanted and just what I had in mind. I use to play on that organ for hours. My main thing was dancing and singing new beats consisting of many different songs that no one else had ever heard before. It was my way of rehabilitation and mind resource for thinking of something other than trying to get well.

We decided to move from the house on the side of the hill off Travis to 121 East College St., but still in Sherman Texas. It was the next street over from Travis and across from the school yard. It was a nice big three bedroom house and we had room for everyone that came to visit. My Great-Grandfather Dishner became very ill at this time and my grandmother became his caretaker. She was always the one in the family from the Dishners’ side that took care of anyone that was very ill. If one of the uncles or aunts or cousins came down with an illness my grandmother always took care of them until they were well enough to go home. She always had an art for healing the sick.

It was her inter motherhood and she had a way of being calm and directive in her techniques. She soon took over the care of my great-grandfather full time. I remember my grandfather giving me a quarter everyday so that I could go and get peppermint from the store. I would stay for about five minutes and visit with the clerk and then hurry back so that I could read bible stories and entertain him with things that we were doing at the church. I loved teaching him our new songs and letting him sing to us the ones he remembered.

It was quite a sight and he was quite the character. He gave my grandmother the money for my first puppy. I had to pick out my first Chihuahua; it was just the one I had wanted. My great-grandfather and I named him Tiny. He was as little as a tea cup. I use to put Tiny in one cup and my great grandfather something to drink in the other and take both of them into his room. We would have a ball with that little puppy. I had many tea parties and a lot of Barbie doll stories to be told for him and Tiny.

As a youngster I would smoke Texas cigars. My great-grandfather use to leave his lighter by the bed before he would take his nap just so my grandmother could say, that child better not be in her grandfathers car smoking again. I usually was in the car or in the bathroom from time to time just a puffin on one of those cigars. I use to take one to church and put it out by the gutters and wait till break and go out back and smoke.

Our preacher would catch me coming in from the back of the church and would tell my parents. Oh; how they already knew, was usually their reply. Debra, were you at the church smoking a cigar? My grandmother would always ask. They never caught me red- handed but always knew that I was smoking. I always smelled of cigar smoke and usually the aroma of smoke was left from where I had just been. Needless to say I never did quit.

Life moved on for me and I soon became one of the choir girls and singing solo for the church. My girlfriend Annette and Joyce Watson both did the same. We sang trio two to three times a week for our church events throughout our lives. We all traveled with the pastor all over Texas to other churches for concerts. When we weren’t practicing singing and playing piano we would go to my house and my grandmother would let us play at the schoolyard on the swings. We would have picnics and play Simon says for hours. Every afternoon we would work up songs for the upcoming events that we were to do for church.

I spent a lot of time with the Watsons eating lunch and reading prayer requests. Mr. Watson came home every day for lunch and we would look up different things in the bible for sermons for the following service from our prayer requests that we received for the sick and for people that needed an extra helping hand. A lot of times it was for extra food or for a bill or even for help with one of the fellow members needing a job. He always tried to help and would do a sermon on the needy for the next Sunday service.

One day my grandmother came to me and said my mother was coming to visit. My father had been keeping us, but my mother hadn’t given up her custody even though she was the missing parent. It started as a friendly visit and soon became a three ring circus. My mother came to visit and soon took off with us. Seeing as we were her children even though she was told by the judge during their divorce that she had to be given permission on visitation by my father. At this time he had told her she could visit but leaving with us was not what my father agreed. She and my stepfather had taken us to Lafayette Louisiana.

It was several months before my father found out where we were. Once my father did find out he showed up there and returned us to our grandmother’s house on College. We were so glad to see our father, I can remember missing my family and not knowing my mother at all. I was very glad to be back where I felt at home and loved. It was a dramatic situation for me at the time. I went into shock and had to take hearing and speech therapy. It didn’t take me long to start speaking properly again and hearing people without blocking them out. Being attentive and coherent was a plus for me at that time. My father spent a lot of time working with me.

My Grandfather McDonald had a heart attack and soon after so did my Great- Grandfather McDonald. They brought my Great-Grandfather McDonald to Sherman so it would be easier for us to take care of them both at the same time. We spent a lot of time back and forth to the hospitals. It took a toll on all of us and we did a lot of praying back in those days for healing. After the release from the hospital my grandmother and father took care of Grandfather McDonald and Great-Grandfather McDonald and she still had Great-Grandfather Dishner as well as me coming through recovery. They really had their hands full all the time.

If it wasn’t one thing it was another. There for awhile we didn’t think that life was ever going to look the same. Luckily healing began and soon my grandfather returned to work and my Great Grandfather McDonald returned to his home. My Great-Grandfather Dishner soon died after and the house just didn’t seem the same. It was an extra large funeral because everyone in forty counties and three states knew him and they all showed up. There were people lined up for two blocks for his funeral and people parked for a mile around the funeral home in every direction. It look as if the President had died, that’s how well respected and loved he was.

Soon after the funeral the family started traveling to Richmond and Austin Texas. My great-aunts and great-granduncles lived there. We spent a lot of time with my Great-Uncle Buddy who trained Greyhounds and worked for the city of Richmond. His wife had cancer and he spent a lot of time at lunch coming home and taking care of her. He went back and forth throughout the night taking her to the hospital for she was very ill. Many of times he would find her in the bathroom almost dead. It took a toll on him in a very short time because you could see that he looked ten years older quickly.

He took early retirement from his work and had to quit training greyhounds because he couldn’t spend time back and forth with the dogs and still take proper care of her. At first he tried, he thought he could check on her about every couple of hours to help her to the restroom and with some water and medicine. Soon he found out she wasn’t ready to lay down even though she had strict orders from her doctor. Everyone in the family would tell her she had to do exactly what the doctors told her but I think she was just tired and wanted to just die. She had taken all the therapy that she could handle and just wanted it all to end.

We use to spend time back and forth talking with her and visiting in hopes of helping her to keep going on. She had lots of friends that took turns coming to her side and everyone would bring a book and read to her in-between the time that she would awake. We would make sure she had flowers and perfume that she liked right by her side. Before her funeral we had all discussed the arrangements. We had a dress made for her just like the one her mother wore and we all wore dresses that she had picked out for us to be made. We had spent time taking her to do things that involved her here after. She really did enjoy being a part of it all. It was just a little over a year later that she passed. We had a really beautiful funeral. Everyone missed her greatly after she died.

My grandmother and I spent a lot of time with my Great-Grandmother Dishner. My Uncle Buddy would always bring my Great-Grandmother Dishner to visit at my grandmother’s house and he still continued even after the loss of my aunt. My Great-Grandmother was not only a pistol but also a handful. She always carried a stick cane, had her favorite kitchen chair and took no back talk off of any of the children. She would take you outside and make you pick your own switch and wear your butt out with it. If you were older and you would back talk her she would whack you with her stick. We always considered her to be the cantankerous one in the family.

We spent a lot of time with family bringing food and having big get together even though there wasn’t a special occasion. My friends would always look in amazement when they would come to my house because our family was so large. Everyone would exchange gifts or bring one that they had gotten from one of their friends or at their church bazaar or a little something that they had pick-up through their travel. Gifts of all kinds traveled from miles around to my grandmothers. I guess you could say it always looked liked Christmas at our house (even though it wasn’t) and that became the story around town.

I can remember telling my grandmother that I didn’t have all of my Grandparents in one place at the same time so that I could take a picture of them. She arranged a special day just for that to happen. I took a picture of five generations of John D. McDonald’s in the living room at my grandmothers. These pictures were my Great-Great Grandfather, Great-Grandfather, Grandfather, Uncle and Cousin. I took this picture when I was about seven.

I had a Great-Uncle Raymond Dishner that was retarded. We spent a lot of time in art and painting at the nursing home with him. All the paintings of art were used in raising money for fund raisers and for field trips to help with different events that they wanted to go on. My Great-Aunt Anna Bess and Great-Uncle R.L. that lived in Plano Texas spent a lot of time coming to see us there and spent a lot of time with us. During one of the visits that my grandmother and I had made to the nursing home my Uncle Raymond and I decided to make a special leather photo book for the generational picture of The McDonald’s.

The oil painted Indian design cover of the photo book was one of a kind. It had taken quite awhile for us to paint this book cover. Once it was finished everyone in the nursing home had gotten to come and see it before I would take it home. It was a great big project for the nursing home because all the elderly thought it was a neat idea and a good thing that someone had thought to make a family picture and make this special book. We also made a picture day for the nursing home the day that the book was finished. We enjoyed taking a group picture of the elderly from that nursing home as well.

My grandmother made extra money in Sherman by making flower arrangements for the restaurants and funeral homes for the local people. She did this to help in our extra activities that I did. I practically lived at the restaurant with my grandmother as a child. When we had gotten big enough to mind and know how to help roll silverware and fill salt and pepper shakers. We knew how to do anything in a kitchen from wash dishes to busing a table.

As a child I would wash dishes while my grandmother cooked dinner then set the table for us to eat. After dinner I would take all the dishes off the table and wipe the tables and chairs down and we would do the dishes. It was always a team effort in our house because we had to work together on everything due to the fact there was always something going on that needed extra attention. Most of the time we would take flower orders and work on them for awhile until we would get about ten of them finished. It was a daily thing and extra chore.

You had to know how to watch out for yourself as a kid. No one locked their doors back in those days except for the latch on the screen door. You were always in a wide open space and anyone could walk up and hear the conversation or situation that was going on in the home. People were always visiting us at my grandmothers. We always had lots of crafts in our home that anyone could have taken at anytime for extra money that they may have needed. Luckily we never had anyone in our neighborhood that robbed our house. We were always catching someone trying to break into one of the cars. The local police always caught them. Most of the Grayson County Police Department ate at the restaurant. Most everyone ordered pies that my grandmother made out of the restaurant. They paid her extra for the pies that she made.

We always had big Birthday parties and big Christmas parties and big New Year parties both at home and at the restaurant. Taking care of all the catering is what my grandmother did for all the events in her restaurant business. Everyone knew Margie Mc Donald in that town and several others towns around. She knew from the poorest to the richest people and always treated everyone the same. Everyone that knew her would always say it’s a pleasure knowing a women like her and an honor being her friend and coworker. I was the luckiest of all because I spent my life with her. We always stayed with our father while our grandmother did her banquets.

My father always took us fishing and water skiing on Lake Texahoma. He worked on a fishing barge and would let us children help with the fishing poles that were being rented out. All the children in our neighborhood loved my father because he was so patient in teaching each and every one of us how to put the hooks on the poles and how to add our worms. They always called him number 1 dad. If we were on the barge and one of the other men that worked there didn’t know where the parent was that went with that child they would always say; We are with number 1 dad and they would always know that was Billy Mc.

He also took us to fish off the damn and we would camp out on the week-ends in the park. We always caught a lot of fish that we would take home and clean. My father was quite the fisherman and loved to fish. He spent a lot of his time as a member of The American Legion and they always did a lot of dinners for fund raising drives to help the people in the community that needed help. The children spent a lot of time at these dinners and doing different tasks to help with The American Legion. All the children would get to eat dinner and play in the ballroom while they received there awards and it was like having an extra family. My father was on the board and was an excellent director. He helped in keeping their sanction open for many a years.

Soon I went to live with my mother and stepfather due to the fact that she did have the last say after returning to court for legal guardianship. We soon moved to Lafayette Louisiana. We had a beautiful house there and my stepfather was a successful business man who owned his own beauty shop. He did a lot of the richer people in the area and made a very good living for my mother and us. The work days were long and we always had a lot of chores to do. We were rewarded by spending time on the weekends at the lake waterskiing. I loved to water ski in the summer.

My father taught me to ski when I lived with him. After moving in with my stepfather I was always scared of being in the water on a ski. My stepfather started putting me on his shoulders in the water with him so that I would feel safe again. As time went on I did feel comfortable with him and soon began skiing on my own again. The bayous and the Gulf of Mexico is where we skied at this time. I use to see snakes and alligators when we went skiing. If you didn’t pay attention you could get hurt real quick.

We had a babysitter during the after school care. My brothers use to go through babysitters quit often. They didn’t want to live with our mother so they would give our sitters a hard time. As any other child going through change of great severity they were affected. Once we would lose a sitter we would have to stay with the German family down the street. We couldn’t understand anything that was said. Olga was her name and she spoke very little English and fluent German. My mother was one of her best friends even though my mother never spoke German.

Go figure, just picture yourself in a living room with six grown-ups that you don’t want to mind but don’t understand anything they said. How would you know if you were in trouble or not? It always worked for me even though it really wasn’t an excuse. I really never understood anything she said. So I spent a lot of time on the living-room floor by myself. I use to take off and go across the bayou and hide in the caves there. Olga would look for me for hours.

They finally figured out where I was hiding and went to take our ropes off of the big tree that we used to get across the bayou. One of Olga’s friends broke his arm while taking down the rope. He fell out of the tree and landed in the bayou and his other friend that was helping him had to finish taking down the rope. Olga was standing there in pure shock and was screaming at the top of her lungs in German. I was mad so I told him that I’d had my arm broke before and he would be just fine and walked off. His buddy had to get out of the tree and get into the bayou to help him out of the water. My brother walked up about that time and told her I could have got that rope down for you if I’d a known.

My parents were very mad and we had to sit at the dining room table while they marched around us and complained. I told my mother that it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t make him get in that tree and not to complain at me because he fell. I told her she should have been there to give him directions because I didn’t need them I knew how to get up and down in that tree without falling. All of us kids climb that tree every day and that none of us had ever been hurt. We didn’t think that taking down that rope was going to make any difference in whether we crossed that bayou or not.

It didn’t keep us from taking off because the boys next door and my brothers found the biggest rocks we could find and put them in the bayou until we made a walk way that we could get across. Our feet would still be in the bayou but they weren’t so deep into the water that we would touch the bottom. Soon we found another rope and put it back in that old tree. We would swing back and forth across the bayou for hours and explore that ravine. We would see gators in our back yard from time to time. We had one that lived in that ravine that would come out every once in awhile and watch us go back and forth across the bayou but he never bothered us. I named him tator. I use to call his name before I would cross that bayou and tell him that he’d better not bother any of us because we were going to be there for awhile. Tator would always just watch.

We were from the deep-south and had a very heavy slang. My mother went nuts with three kids that no one could keep up with and she didn’t know how to discipline. She was always loud, forceful and abusive. Everyone that watched us was playful and trying to cover the abuse knowing they needed the money for the job and she needed the help not knowing what exactly to do. Then a slap in the face or grabbing a belt and swinging it was considered discipline. In these days and times it’s considered exactly what it is, abuse.

My father was a sit down disciplinary, you got time out and your favorite toy taken from you. By the time he got through talking to you, you felt like someone shot your best friend and killed the dog. So needless to say you didn’t do it again for quite awhile. I was one of the more fortunate to have someone in my life that would always take the time to listen to me. My father always took the time to correct any problem that may arise.

I spoke with my father often since I wouldn’t speak to anyone else. I went totally into a shell and my brothers and father where the only people I would talk to or be around for about the first year of moving into my mothers. If my mother came to try to talk with me I would walk off or go on the couch and hold my knees to my mouth. It took my father and a lot of doctors to bring me around in realizing that everything would be all right and that I would get to see my father and grandparents again just only in the summer. I had to live with my mother and stepfather because it was court ordered and there wasn’t any changing that.

Soon after I went to live with my stepfather and mother a hurricane hit and tore up our home and destroyed most of everything around. During the hurricane disaster everyone was in shock and trauma. It’s almost like, drama is your best friend. Putting your life back in order is the hardest thing to do after a disaster. I protected part of my things by putting everything up in a very high area and securing the closet door closed with a chair so the wind didn’t blow all of my property into the rain waters from the