Recipes for Living CELESTE CUMPSTON JACKSON

I didn't think of having my story in the book, but now I'm excited about it. Part of the reason is that my Grandmother Cumpston, Dad's stepmother, did this. She kept notes from the time she could write. I have what she wrote; in fact, all of us have a copy, and it is so neat! She lived in Denmark and, when she was 17, she came to America all alone. She was married shortly afterwards to a fellow she knew previously, who had come to America earlier. One day that husband left for work and she never saw him again.

At the time she had two children, a boy and a girl. To support them she became a housekeeper for my dad's father and later married him. Together they had six children - her two, his three and one they had together. He was a blacksmith, and they lived in Winterset and Des Moines.

My dad went to C.C.C. (Civilian Conservation Corps), which was part of the New Deal plan instituted by President Roosevelt. It was a camp for poor young men who didn’t qualify for the army. One Halloween he went with a friend, uninvited, to a party that my mother, Rita McGahuey was giving. They corresponded after he went back to camp, and he didn't see her again until they were married.

They set up farming in Clarke County, where I was born in December, 1939. Later they bought the farm where Melvin Goeldner had lived as a boy. They tore down the house and sold it as barren land. Melvin asked if he could have the pump handle because, when he was a boy, he had pumped it a lot.

I developed polio when I was nine-months-old. When I was four, my father took me to the hospital for surgery. My mother refused to go. She wasn't going to have any part of that. She never could cope with my handicap. She was very bitter. I'm sure it was the cause of much of their bickering. She blamed Dad's friends, feeling sure they had given me polio. When I finally got old enough that she could ignore it, she became a mother to me. I was hurt about it for awhile; but when I became an adult, I understood.

When it was time for me to be released from the hospital, my mother wouldn't let me come home. Grandma McGahuey had ridden to the hospital with my father; so he took me to stay at her house, which was about 2 ½ miles from where my parents lived. There were mud roads at that time, and I remember Dad would ride his horse every day to come see me. My uncle, Mom's brother, helped Grandma take care of me. He was probably 15 when I was born. He called me "gooseberry'', maybe because I had a sour disposition, maybe I was a pain. At any rate, I must have been quite a burden to him.

Grandma and Grandpa McGahuey were very religious, and they had a strong influence on me. In fact, they influenced everybody they knew. One day, while Rev. Ivan Bys was our pastor, he asked if anybody knew a saint. Gene Marquis stood up immediately and said, "A saint is what most of us ain't." Traci was about four-years-old and she stood right up and said, "Grandpa and Grandma McGahuey."

I went to Barnard #7 country school. Maxine Woods was one of my teachers. I don't remember a lot about my school years but I remember that Maxine was a good teacher - strict, but we learned. I went there through 8th grade and then came to Osceola for school. We still lived in the country, and I rode to school with my brother part of the time; but by this time my grandparents had retired, sold their farm, and moved to Osceola, so sometimes I stayed with them. They moved to Leon about 1970.

I didn’t participate in any extra-curricular activities in high school. I tried several things but never was successful with any.

My handicap, I think, also made my dad bitter; and he was quite abusive to my brothers, Eldon Junior, who was three years older than I, and Herbert, who was two years younger. Junior left home when he was 12 because of that. He was very intelligent. When he was in 6th grade the "powers that be" decided he could skip the 7th and that meant he was through school when he was 12.

They decided that I also must be intelligent, which I wasn't. They skipped me from 5th grade to 7th and it was very hard for me. As it turned out, I didn't graduate early because I spent a whole year in and out of the hospital. My brother and I got into a fight and I broke my bad leg. This was also hard on my mother. She just couldn't cope with my handicap at all.

I graduated in 1958, moved to Des Moines and went to AIB (American Institute of Business). I lived at Esther Hall for as long as they would allow, which was probably two years. It was a great place. The house-mothers tried so hard to have a good influence. They were good ladies. After I finished at AIB I continued to live there and worked for the Farm Bureau, which was just down the street from Esther Hall.

I’d like to be in contact with some of the girls who lived there at that time. For us it was just fun and games. One time we went to a fortune teller. She told one of the girls she would never be married and that weekend she was electrocuted. The house-mothers really babied us after that and we sucked it dry. One time I went downtown with a girl who shoplifted. I didn't know it at the time, and her only regret was that she had taken that item when later she saw a better one. I was scared for a long time that they'd come and get us. I didn't go with her again.

The fortune teller didn't tell me much about myself, more about my younger brother. Some of what she said came true, or maybe I made it seem like it came true. A "recipe" in that connection is, "Never spend your money on a fortune teller."

After I moved out of Esther Hall, I came back to Osceola and car-pooled to work. Herb was also working in Des Moines. One day I had car trouble. I took it to Phillips 66 where LeRoy Jackson was working and that was how I met him. We went together from November until June, 1961, and were married in the United Methodist church by Rev. George Pennington. I remember his saying to me, “You’ve got to get serious"; then he turned to LeRoy and said, "If you want to get out of this; this is your last chance."

LeRoy had two children, Donnie and Debbie, who were four and six respectively. I continued to work until LuAnn was born in 1963. That was when I found out that being a mom is hard work! I hadn't really been a mom to Donnie and Debbie because they had lived with Leroy’s mother and she did the babysitting for them. It became a bit of a problem because she really didn't want to give up the role of surrogate mother and continued to do so much for them. Before LuAnn came along I’d had an instant family that, with all the help I had, could handle. But now, going to work, then coming home, fixing meals, washing - well, I had never before had to think about dirty clothes and school or any of those things. This was different!

Donnie adored LuAnn. Debbie was jealous of her, and that caused some problems. Todd was born in 1964. One time after he came along we were having a fire drill and we asked Donnie what he would do if we really had a fire. He said he would have to save LuAnn. He couldn’t save Todd. He thought we meant that, besides himself, he’d have to save somebody else.

I well remember our move. The kids had sheep that we kept at Leonard and Glennis Graceys. We didn't know any other way to transport them so loaded them in a U-Hall. When sheep get excited they go to the bathroom. LeRoy had quite a job to clean up after them. He didn't like the sheep in the first place and was pretty angry about the whole arrangement. He told the kids they would have no more. It served him right. He should have hired a truck.

I worked at the station. We lived close by and I never had a babysitter. The kids played around the station. Todd loved to write letters. He wrote to Montgomery Ward about a gun he saw in the catalog. His dad wouldn't let him have one; so he wrote and told them that, and asked them to save such and such a gun on whatever page in their catalogue. They wrote a nice letter back saying that they agreed with his dad and, by the time he was old enough, they'd have a better one for him.

Todd also wrote to Cox Company. They had a toy dune buggy with a motor. He couldn't get it started; so he wrote to them, told them it didn't work and his dad didn't have time to fix it. They sent him a new one. We didn't know he was doing this until he got a response. But I often think of him traipsing off to the Post Office to mail his letters. It wouldn't be safe for children to do that now.

We moved back to Osceola in the winter of '73, but kept the truck stop until mid-summer of '75, when LeRoy went to work for Ruan. He also had the Texaco station on west highway 34. It became too much for him to do both, so he quit Ruan. LeRoy was a workaholic. He never had enough to do, never enough business. He always wanted more.

I did the bookkeeping for LeRoy. I also worked for Gene and Eddy Saylor, who were builders at that time. I did bookwork and was assistant to their secretary, Fran McKinney. I also worked part-time as dispatcher at the sheriff’s office for about 10 years, until LeRoy became ill.

LeRoy had a heart attack and surgery in 1983, and never was well from then on. He was diagnosed with cancer in April, '87. They tried to do surgery and decided against it in mid operation. He went through radiation and started chemo but withdrew. We fought his illness like you can't believe, with black-market medicine and everything we heard or thought of, but he died in 1989. Tim was the one living at home, so he was also a care giver. I now wonder if that was healthy.

Our family thought we were prepared, but we weren't. I knew he was going to die, and yet I somehow didn't realize that he would. We are told that we all go through stages of grieving. What I remember was being angry, thinking, "How could you do this?'' My brother Herb was the one who saw us through it. We called him in Phoenix about 6:00 in the evening, and at 1:00 in the morning he was on the patio knocking at the door. Between him and Cliff Haider they took care of the arrangements. That is the kind of guy Herb is, very take-charge, but it surely helped me through that time. I wasn't capable of thinking rationally enough to handle it. Cliff Haider and Jane have remained family friends to this day.

What needed to be done included choosing a cemetery plot. We hadn't thought of that, or LeRoy would probably have taken care of it.

I continued at the station for two more years. Then came the EPA cleanup, and the cost of what they required was prohibitive. That closed us down. Todd had taken over the business, but he needed to get on with his life. We made the decision together that it was time for both of us to move on.

Todd and Jill live in Mt. Ayr. Jill has her Master's degree in Psychology. Tim and Kim live in Osceola, and he works at O'Reilly's Auto Parts. Don and Stacey live in Brookfield, Missouri. Their children are Michael, Brooke and Mindi. Debbie and Jim live in Van Wert. They have two children, Austin and Dustin. LuAnn and Stacia live in Osceola.

Traci and Greg live in Humeston. They have Lyndsey, Christin and Seth. The latter two are particularly close to me, which is understandable because they lived with me for awhile. Christin is ten. Her birthday is on February 29 so on a Leap Year we have to make arrangements for when we will celebrate. Christin is a special child, so caring and generous. A few nights ago she and a friend stayed at the house with me. I had watched her give up everything for her friend all day; and when it was bedtime, both of them wanted to wear one of my nightgowns. I said to the friend, "It is Christin's turn now. She is to wear it." This just broke Christin's heart, and she came to me in awhile and asked if she could please let her friend wear it.

My mother passed away in 1993, my father in 1997, both from cancer. Mother studied the Bible. Dad didn't approve of her attending church, so most people wouldn't know what a good Christian woman she was.

My children and I are a very close-knit family, which is expanding because of internet and e-mail, through which I have also found many cousins. Junior has begun corresponding with them, too. Just this morning I received an e-mail from a cousin in Australia. I saw her name, Teresa Cumpston Bird, when she was checking on hurricane victims in Florida; and I wrote to ask if we shared the same aunt. Lo and behold, we do. She is very interested in knowing me and my siblings. She can remember her parents mentioning my name and said she has sometimes felt strange not knowing any of her family.

That part of e-mail is so much fun, but Timothy has found out the hard way that it has its down side, also. When he first got it he began putting his name on the internet, essentially sending his name everywhere. Girls wrote back, and he got into lots of correspondence which he thought was fun, until--One girl wanted to know if he would like to have her picture, and of course he would. She sent him a nude photo, and Kim told him that was enough.

Our family again is dealing with cancer which brother Herb is now fighting and beating.