Ben and Anne in Azle– by Louise

Mama and Daddy moved to Azle in the new two bedroom house that Stanley oversaw the building of. It was built with the money they got for selling their place in Arkansas.

Daddy’s mind got bad and we were afraid that he would jump out their big single pane windows, trying to save us from 'the herds of wild horses'. He set in his wheelchair and thought he had a rifle under the chair. He was 'guarding German prisoners'.

He had to go to a nursing home. Dr. Mobley said, "I been telling you that he had to go." Mama had not gave it a thought, but he was not going any place without her. She went too. She said, "They will just have to get used to me." When he would get violent, she would 'ring the bell' and five nurses would come and hold him down and give him a shot. Then she would come back into their room and set with him until he woke up, feeling better.

He would fall when he walked. He told the nurses that if they didn't tie him in his wheelchair so tight, it wouldn't take him so long to twist his body around so he could untie it. They tied him in the bed with a sheet, the knot was under the bottom middle of the bed. One night he even got that undone. He saw snakes in the corner, they agreed with him. Generally he was pleasant and visited with everybody and remembered good old stories.

Mama would push him in his wheelchair. He would badger her to push him on out the door and all the way home. "That’s the only way we will ever get out of here. You push me home, it's not much over a mile."

Everyone was at our house in Azle for supper, Mama too. Ida went to the nursing home to feed Daddy his supper. It was pureed and carefully squirted into his mouth from a plastic kitchen basting syringe. The first time he got the pureed food, Mama told him that it was what they fed babies. He said "Pore little babies."

He kept turning his head and refusing it. Ida said, "He knows what he is doing, I'm not going to force him." She come on home and ate with us. They called us in two hours and he had leaned forward in his wheel chair and died. They were there for ten months.

Mama went with Stanley and bought seven spaces at Azleland, to have him buried where she could visit his grave more often. He could have been buried at the Hittson in Mineral Wells. I told Stanley, "I'm not ready to have my grave bought." He grinned and said, "Don't rock the boat." I turned them over to Nancy. I will be put at the National Cemetery, over Thel. Ben and Anne and Ida Knight are the only ones buried in Azle now. Three down and four to go.

Eldridge come from Arkansas, for a few days. Mama moved out of the nursing home, back into her house. Then Benny and Sharon were having them a new house built in Fort Worth. They helped her by moved into the house with her for seven months. Then she was alone for a while.

She called me one morning and wanted me to buy her some Vicks, when I went to the store. I had some and walked the block to her house.

She was laying in the floor, in pain. "Why didn't you move your legs, so that I wouldn't have fell when I stepped over them?" She imagined that. I called Thel and then the ambulance. They tried to lay her flat. That hurt her, bad. They said they had to lay her flat. Thel convinced them that they could transport her-half setting up. It was two blocks to the Azle Hospital. She went to the Azle hospital and then Fort Worth for a hip replacement. Finally she could walk again, but she always needed much care than we could give her at home.

She was in the nursing Home for the next 25 years.