MY FIRST DAY
September 4, 1947
My dad was attending Texas A&M University when I was born. I don't remember it, actually. However, I have been told that my mother was so damned hot that she took 2 or 3 showers a day. When she went into labor, they called an ambulance to take her from College Station to St Joseph's Hospital in Houston. When they loaded her on the stretcher, her Cocker Spaniel, Muffin, jumped up on her stomach. I always say I was born with pawprints on my forehead.
MY PARENTS
7/20/1918 - 7/18/1971
My father, or Daddy, was born on July 20, 1918, in a farmhouse on FM 1763 in Oklaunion, near Vernon, TX. He and his younger brother Bill worked on the farm from the time they could walk. Most of what I heard about his childhood was from my grandmother, Mary. My dad did tell me that when he was a teenager, he had a half coyote/half dog, and she bit him and he had to have a series of rabies shots in his stomach. He said they were extremely painful. He also had a horse named Pony. My dad never wanted to work on the farm; he wanted to be an engineer. After he graduated from Vernon High School, he went to Texas A&M University in College Station (class of 1941). He was on the football team until he injured his leg, and he walked with a very slight limp for the rest of his life.
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| WWII Certificate |
Before he graduated from TAMU, World War II broke out, and he and most of his TAMU class enlisted. My dad chose the Marine Corps. Even though we watched war movies together, he never would talk about the war at all.
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| Refinery in Abadan |
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| My dad washing Muffin, my mother's Cocker, in College Station |
My dad was tough. He didn’t go to the doctor, ever. I was a tomboy through and through, and when I was hurt and bleeding, his solution was his pocketknife and/or a bottle of iodine. His theory was that either you got better or you died.
When I started to grow up and become a girl, he almost visibly turned his back on me. He acted as though he didn't know me anymore, which was probably the truth. Our arguments had become fights by that time.
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| My dad with my sister and me on the beach in Normandy in 1956 or so |
A few years later, he went to Nova Scotia and my mother and sister stayed in London. I was living in New York and he called me fairly often. He spoke to me much more than he spoke to my mother or my sister. Somehow, from far away, we became close again. I was the first one who knew he was sick. He rarely called my mom in London but I finally called her and told her something was wrong.
When he went back to London, they had an ambulance at the airport, and he went straight to the hospital. My mother called me, and I flew to London right away. He died a week after I returned to New York.
My dad and I were very close when I was little. From as far back as I can remember, I was his buddy. We talked about cars. He took me everywhere. He taught me how to shoot his .22 rifle. I knew more about cat crackers and oil refineries than my mother did. We would drive around the refinery at Port Jerome in Normandy and he explained everything to me. He took me with him to work a lot on the weekends, because his secretary wasn't there and he needed me to translate in case someone needed him. He was terrible at foreign languages. He called me Scooter or Feathermerchant. We were really close in a way he and my sister never were.
We argued all the time, maybe because we were so alike in many ways. He was extremely undemonstrative and inhibited. Every sentence was considered and measured; he was not at all spontaneous.
We argued all the time, maybe because we were so alike in many ways. He was extremely undemonstrative and inhibited. Every sentence was considered and measured; he was not at all spontaneous.
He actually almost killed me one night. I snuck in really late, and when I went to my room, he intercepted me. It was a stormy night, and my sister was sleeping on the floor in my parents' room. The fight started in the hallway. I was so good with words and he was not, so i could provoke him so easily. He grabbed my arm and dragged me in their bedroom so that he could wake my mother up. I said something nasty and he grabbed me by the throat and started to squeeze. That is when my sister woke up and so did my mother and turned on the light. I remember my dad's face had gone from red to white, not a good sign. I could feel him choking me, and I was starting to have trouble breathing so I just kept on yelling "Go ahead and kill me - you're such a big brave Marine", etc. At that point everything went red and I vaguely heard my mother scream "For god's sake, Travis, you’re going to kill her!" Then he dropped me. I had a red mark on my neck for days. He couldn’t look me in the eye for weeks, and I am ashamed to say I took advantage of that.
My dad was buried where he was born, in Vernon, Texas. My employer, Air France, arranged for me to fly first class from New York to Dallas via Braniff. The funeral was wonderful. Our family was together for the last time. It was summer and hot, and we spent all our time talking about Daddy, and when we were kids and visited the farm. It was a wonderful tribute to him.
CLARE CIEL EZEKIEL KING
June 26, 1922 to June 2004
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| Mother and me |
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| Mother as a Toddler |
Her plan for the future was to be an actress and go to New York. Then she met my father and everything changed. I think she had a lot of bitterness, especially as my father died at age 52. She was only 48 and alone. That affected her greatly. She never got over it.
My relationship with my mother was strained, to say the least, in the later years of her life. When I was a child, we were close. I was the artistic one, and my sister was the practical one. My mother spent a lot of time teaching her to cook, etc. She never spent that time with me. Of course, I would have hated it. I was a total tomboy. We were extremely competitive, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Once when I lived in NJ in the early 1970s, we had a fight on the phone and didn’t speak for over 2 months. We fought a lot. I thought she was overly dramatic and caused my father a lot of pain. I always sided with him.
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| Cousin Claire and Mother |
She was very emotional and volatile. I remember terrible fights at night in Orono when I was about 12. I remember hearing my mother scream at my dad, “Do you want a divorce Travis?” and I always knew I would stay with him no matter what. They fought off and on all the time. One incident that really stands out happened in Paris, in the living room of our apartment. She and my dad were having a fight. My dad would always get quieter as she got louder. She finally was so frustrated that she threw the heavy glass full of Scotch that she was holding and it hit him on the eyebrow and cut him. Blood was dripping down his face. I think we were all stunned.
When we lived in Short Hills, my dad was in Italy for almost two years. He came home for a weekend every few months and my mother hated it. She liked life the way she had arranged it and he really disrupted everything.
After my dad died in London in 1971, my mother and sister went back to Boston. Then after a few years there, they moved to Rockport, Maine. My sister eventually got married and moved out, and my mother lived alone in her great house on Main Street. It was a wonderful, old, New England house. She lived with her dogs, and my sister lived nearby.
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| Mother and me at my wedding to Jim in 1978, Vernon, TX |
In January 1986, about a week before Benjamin was due, Mother other came to stay with Trey and me in Vernon for the big event. My doctor told me I couldn’t drive 210 miles alone to pick her up in Dallas, so I had a friend, Nancy, go with me. It was great, because she and Mother hit it off immediately, and for the whole 4-hour drive back, Nancy and Mother talked and I was able to disappear in the back seat.
Mother honestly never thought I would have children, but then again, neither did I. As soon as she arrived in Vernon, there was tension. She and Trey had never met, which of course made it very awkward. Each one of them thought the other was unreasonably selfish. Fortunately, at first she stayed with my grandmother King on the farm. The last few days before I was due, she stayed with Trey and me, and the 3 of us went to the hospital when I went into labor.
When Benjamin and I got home from the hospital, she didn’t help me at all, except to vacuum a few times. What I remember most about the week after his birth was that every day Mother would have me drive her to McDonald’s, and then we would sit in the car in the parking lot and eat. She wouldn’t drive, and I was miserable because I had hemorrhoids. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in a car in a parking lot with a crying newborn in the back seat. But that was Mother.
One of the best moments I can remember was when I drove her to Dallas to go to the airport when she left. Standing at the gate, I was crying my yes out. She looked at me and said “Why Fay, I do believe you are crying, I can’t believe you are that upset”. Little did she know they were tears of joy to see her finally go.
In the fall of 1986, when Benjamin was 8 months old, we went to Maine to visit Mother and Lydia. We only stayed a week. It was very difficult for me to be with her. She insisted on treating me like a child, even though I had a child of my own. To make matters worse, Lydia apparently resented me greatly for still being married (though my marriage was already shot).
The next time I saw Mother was in the summer of 1989, when Benjamin and I again went to visit her. My aunt Audrey, cousin Douglas, and uncle Abbey, had driven up from Boston to Portland to meet us at the airport, and to see Julian, Lydia, and Mother. We all went out to eat, together for the first time ever.
In 1994, Mother came to visit us in Denver. I was showing dogs at the time, and we went to a show in Rapid City, SD. It was a great time, but Mother was exhausting. She was critical about everything. I drove her all over the Denver suburbs and took her up into the mountains. There was always something wrong, or she would make a comment with the condescending tone I knew so well. I vowed I would never be like that. I think that is the last time I saw her. Funny that I can’t really remember.
In 1994, Mother came to visit us in Denver. I was showing dogs at the time, and we went to a show in Rapid City, SD. It was a great time, but Mother was exhausting. She was critical about everything. I drove her all over the Denver suburbs and took her up into the mountains. There was always something wrong, or she would make a comment with the condescending tone I knew so well. I vowed I would never be like that. I think that is the last time I saw her. Funny that I can’t really remember.
When I moved to Montana, we spoke occasionally on the phone. I tried to call her every weekend, but by then she and Lydia had moved from Maine to Florida, where she was living in a very nice assisted living facility. She was extremely bitter against my sister for that, but she really hated me. Somehow my sister convinced her that it was my fault. Our conversations were stilted and difficult, and they became more and more rare.
On my birthday in 2003 she didn't call me. When I called her a few days later to make sure she was okay, she said, “I used to love you”. After that, I wrote her a long and heartfelt letter, trying to clear the air but it was never mentioned.
On my birthday in 2003 she didn't call me. When I called her a few days later to make sure she was okay, she said, “I used to love you”. After that, I wrote her a long and heartfelt letter, trying to clear the air but it was never mentioned.
In 2005, I moved to Aberdeen, Washington. I tried to call to tell Mother I was moving and to give her my number, but I didn’t have Lydia’s phone number. The only one I had was disconnected. I didn’t know if Mother was still living with Lydia and her boyfriend, or even if they were still together.
I don’t mean to imply it was all bad. We had some great times together. One time when we lived in Normandy, the two of us went to Paris for a special trip. She took me to a play. It was wonderful. We always talked and argued about books. We wrote letters (this was before the internet of course) and we corrected each other’s grammar and spelling. We were very close in some ways, and very antagonistic in others.
As they say, “It’s complicated”. I wish it had not ended on such a sad note.
MY SISTER
Lydia Ann King
October 29, 1952
My cousin Paul (a couple of years younger than me), couldn't say "Lydia", so he called her "Liditer", which later became "Diddy".
My sister and I were never close. When she was born, I hated her on sight. My life had been wonderful until then.
As we grew older, the feelings didn't really change much. I always felt she got all the attention because she was happy and smiling, and was very cute. She had pretty coppery hair, which she wore in long curly pigtails. I had plain old dark brown hair. She was chubby and friendly. I was sullen and awkward. She loved people. I hated people.
We traveled so much as children that we were often each others' only companions, at least when we first arrived, but she always found lots of friends right away. I usually eventually found one friend. She gravitated towards social events and parties. I gravitated towards animals. She was much more like my mother, whereas I was like my father.
Once I got married and moved out of my parents' house (1969) and they moved to London, we really didn't communicate. It wasn't until she moved to New Jersey and lived with David (husband #1) and me in1975 that we were around each other, and that didn't last. When I moved to Maine in 1976 to live with Mother and Diddy, the conflicts just intensified. Eventually, she got married and moved out. Since then we were never close, only talking when it was about Mother. Diddy lived with her after her divorce, which would have tried the patience of a saint, and Diddy was no saint. She had her son Julian in 1984. Finally, in 2003 or so, Diddy moved Mother to Florida, to an assisted living facility and Diddy moved in with a friend.
After that, we really didn't communicate. However, I have to accept some responsibility for the breakdown of communication between us. Of course, there are many things I should have done. I should have gone to Florida to visit Mother. I should have forced the communication. I should have been more aggressive, but I am so non confrontational that I let it lie and I deeply regret it.
Addendum May 7, 2017
My sister Lydia and I have been in touch for a few months and things are much better between us. She left Washington DC and went to Florida, with the plan of moving back to Dallas at some point. We have reconnected in a big way and I am very grateful for it. Aside from my son Ben, she is all I have, and no one else shares our memories.
MY GRANDPARENTS
Earl and Mary (Griffin) King
Paternal grandparents
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| Red circle upper right is farm Red circle lower left is cemetery |
Earl, my Grampa King, was very tight with a penny. I remember Grandma King would have to give him every cent of change when she returned from town. We would get cards from them for birthdays and Christmas with a $5 bill inside, always with the notation , “Enclosed from Grandma King”. I’m sure he never knew. He always wore overalls. He was gruff and tough, but I loved him dearly. I remember arguing with him when John Kennedy was elected president. Earl thought he was a namby pamby spoiled Easterner and he was not upset when he was shot and Johnson became President. I learned early though that it didn't pay to argue with Earl. I think he hoped to make a farmer out of me because he took me everywhere with him. He smoked like a chimney and always smelled of a mixture of tobacco, hay, and motor oil. 
Mary was tiny and she drove huge cars. First they were Cadillacs, but then she switched to Lincoln Continentals. She had one I particularly remember; it was burgundy with a black vinyl roof and suicide doors. She could barely close the door and she had to use both hands to shift. When she was behind the wheel, you couldn’t even see her. She was a fast driver, and it was terrifying to ride with her. Everyone in town knew her, though, and stayed out of her way.
Arthur and Frieda (Alpert) Ezekiel
Maternal grandparents
Maternal grandparents
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| Arthur Ezekial "Grampa Arthur" |
His family history is quite interesting. He was a Portuguese Jew whose family left Portugal during the Spanish inquisition and traveled all over Europe before coming to America and landing in Alabama. His great (great) uncle was Sir Moses Ezekiel, a very well known sculptor who was knighted by the King of Italy.
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| Thelma, Frieda, and Sara |
Frieda, or Lorelei as she preferred to be called, was one of a kind. I always knew that she was secretly the missing Russian princess Anastasia. We were really close. She said she came from nothing, from a Jewish family on the Polish-Russian border. She despised her 2 sisters, Sara and Thelma. No one could have imagined they were related. Frieda created herself, made herself into a beautiful, sophisticated, desirable woman. The other 2 never even dreamed of what she would become.
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| Frieda in later years |
She built that into an amazing antique shop called "Coronet" where she sold very expensive antiques. Her clientele included Joe and Dom DiMaggio, the mayor of Boston, etc. She made a lot of money.
Even when she was 70, she looked like royalty. She wore a veil all the time in public, not to cover her face, rather like the queen she was, a mesh attached to a hat, dressed to the nines. She was dripping in diamonds and other precious gems. Everywhere she went, men turned around and looked at her.
She was beautiful, even at that age. But she was hard inside, like the diamonds she loved. I remember going to see her in New York at the Plaza Hotel when the Beatles were there. It almost took an act of Congress for me to be able to go to her room. David and I were getting serious and she sat me down and gave me some pointers. The general gist was “Never love a man more than he loves you. You always need to be the one in control".
Then she married Irving, a nice Jewish jerk, and turned into a Jewish grandmother. It broke our hearts. She told me she did it because she wanted someone to take care of her. But it changed her. When she died, Irving and his kids took everything. The only thing I have of hers is a chunk of amethyst and the few things from her shop.
Frieda died while I was living in Texas in the early 80s. When she was 29 or 30, she had a double mastectomy, which was almost unheard of in those days. I believe she did die of some kind of cancer. It was a shock. Somehow, as much as she had changed in the years with Irving, I always thought of her as Anastasia, or one of the Gabor sisters, and I talked to her on the phone often. She was a special part of my childhood.
I think she was the origin of the dysfunction in my maternal side. Clare and Audrey could never hope to live up to the standard she set.
Click HERE for more pictures of my family