Trouble Times Two

By James T Honea

As children, James and John were inseparable. They did everything together, including things Texas Panhandle townsfolk probably didnt appreciate. The good thing, though, if ever one of them was suspected of doing something wrong, the other could stand up and play alibi. In fact, the other could even stand in and take the punishment if need be, because James and John were identical twins.

On a winter day in 1956, the birth of these boys was something of a miracle. Their tiny town would never be the same, especially as the boys grew into their nicknamesThe Terrible Twosome, The Sons of Thunder, or The Daring Duo. For James and John, these werent just nicknames; they were ways of life, as they set off on world-wide adventuresone in the navy and one as a firefighter and paramedic.

No matter the distance between them, the twins had an unshakable connection, built on a lifetime of strong family support. It wasnt always easy raising two boys, but with unconditional love, the Honea family made it happen. Being a twin is like no other experience on earth, and being a Honea twin is even more exciting. Through danger, adventure, and brotherly love, the ties of family kept them together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Apr 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781426962431

James T Honea

James T. Honea was raised an identical twin on the Panhandle of Texas, where he gained his sense of humor and light-hearted approach to life. He spent 22 years as a firefighter, paramedic, and flight medic and has travelled all over the world.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Forward

The Honea Family

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Epilogue

Forward

I would like to thank everyone who made this book a possibility, my family, for being the subject material and believe me I’ve changed the names to protect the guilty. I truly appreciate my mother and father for giving me a family that was close enough to experience the things we did and still be able to love us. There were many good friends and relations who made growing up much easier for all of us and were always there when the need arose. I also have to thank GOD for watching over us and allowing us to grow up relatively unscathed. We tried for years to get into the running for a Darwin Award which would have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that only the superior mind and body would survive while those of us using none of our mental capacity would do ourselves in and not procreate another generation of poorly selected genes. My mother thought it would be a good idea to write this book about 25 years ago. I got started writing and had a chapter or two written but working for the Fire Department and raising two wonderful kids, who fortunately, reminded me daily of the things my brother and I did to and with one another, side tracked me for awhile. I had so much fun with the kids that I forgot pretty much about the book. I called my identical sounding board frequently to tell him of the things that were happening with my two little girls. He agreed with me that someone should tell our story, so here it is.

Getting started I would like to point out that although most of the things written here are based (rather loosely) on facts, it is for the most part intended to be a look at some of the truly amazing things that can happen to identical twins growing up in a small community in the Panhandle of Texas (God Bless Her). With that said I suppose I should also say some nice things about my twin brother John, without whom I would never have been an identical twin and this book never written. I guess about the nicest thing I could say about my twin brother is that he sure looked a lot like his handsome twin. We are not the only characters in the book so I certainly hope my family decides this is funny and not worth a lynching. I would not want to take credit for all of the fun things that happened in our lives and would without a doubt want to give credit where credit is due. So, to my Mother, Zoa, who passed away January 13, 2000, it is with love and fond memory that your sons remember you in this book. Thank you for giving us our start and making us the men we turned out to be.

I hope that with the reading of these short little stories someone will remember something of their own past and smile for a moment and remember to call their brother or sister or their mother or father and thank them for their childhood memories. We pass through this life but once.

The Honea Family

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Have you ever seen such handsome devils in your entire life? To think that my sisters actually took advantage of all that cuteness and profited from it.

Chapter One

In The Beginning … … … .

I guess we should start at the beginning. For my brother and I that would be on January 6, 1956. It could not have been a coincidence that the worst blizzard in 50 years was in progress when it came time to go to the hospital to deliver us. Don’t get me wrong here, there were plenty of omens that should have pointed to this kind of thing in the beginning of the pregnancy for my mother. It seems that once she found out she was with child her eating habits changed considerably. My mother was unable to eat anything of substance once she found out she was pregnant. Mostly living on crackers and milk because it was all she could keep on her stomach. That might have been attributable to the fact that my womb mate and I still have difficulty agreeing on some things in our lives. Food is no longer one of them though. There wasn’t a lot about our coming into this world that was going to be easy for my mother. My understanding is that the only vehicle that could get my mother to the hospital with all the snow and ice on the ground was a wrecker that my father had in the garage.

My brother and I were almost born before Christmas but thankfully we were able to postpone the inevitable until a more difficult time and alternate transportation could be hastily arranged.  I would like to add here that my Five foot one and three quarter inch mother, ( If she just heard me say that she will be finding a way to thump me for it, she always said she was five foot two) weighed only 85 pounds when she delivered the terrible twosome.

Here is a newsflash for some of you folks that are not of Generation X. There was no such thing as Ultrasound in 1956 in the small community hospital where we were to be introduced to the unsuspecting world. Because of my mothers size and weight it was not even a remote possibility that she could have been about to deliver more than one child

When the good doctor delivered the world’s first Honea twin he was appropriately surprised to find such a perfect specimen of Homo sapiens and that another one just like me would soon appear. There was soon rejoicing to replace the surprise and the buzz around the hospital was all about us. Here is where everyone got a feel for what it was going to be like for my mother and her new set of identical twins.

For those of you who are not familiar with the medical practices of the 1950’s you should know that the preferred method of sedation for childbirth at the time was the use of ether. My brother and I were about 4 weeks premature and there was no way to judge how much of the ether was getting to us during the delivery. When my brother was delivered 28 minutes following my entry into this world it was kind of touch and go as to whether or not he would actually make it. He finally started breathing on his own and at the 4 pounds and 8 ounces he weighed in he became a handful. Nothing like his 5 pound 2 ounce perfectly behaved older brother. After the perfunctory rest period the nurses decided it was time to take the new bundles of Joy to see their mother for the first time. One of the nurses walked into the room and said, Mrs. Honea, you had twins. My mother replied in the drowsy slurred speech of a mother who has just given birth, The Hell You Say, and promptly went back to sleep. I am almost certain that those profound words found their way into the medical record as well as the local newspaper the following week. I had plenty of fun reminding my mother of it many times over the next decades.

Since I don’t remember much about my early days and into the early years I must depend on the stories told to me by my older sisters and my parents and family. Although the details may be skewed a bit the ideas were genuine.

My sisters were pretty ingenious in their own right according to the stories I heard from my mother. It seems that a new set of twins in the neighborhood can cause quite a commotion with the kids. Kind of like a new litter of puppies or kittens to the anxious kids. Mom wasn’t really happy about the fact that all the neighborhood kids were coming over to see her premature twins. I suppose she was flattered a bit that every one of the kids really did want to see us. That is of course until she found out that my older and forward thinking sisters were charging a penny per person for the kids to come in and see us. I don’t know whether mom was upset more about all the kids and the possible health problems her premature twins might develop from someone’s cold or flu or the fact that someone else was cashing in on her Labor. (Pun intended).

Sonja and Juretta were duly chastised and the lucrative business of marketing the identical oddities came to a screeching halt. There went our college fund. What was it the Circus Great P.T. Barnum said about suckers? There’s one born every minute - and two to take him. I guess Sonja and Juretta knew about P.T. Barnum.

I have seen pictures of my brother and I together as babies and I think that without the tiny little Baby A and Baby B bracelets even my mother would not have been able to tell us apart. I know this to be true because in later years I can remember her saying things like Jo-immy or Ji-ohnny when trying to get our attention or get us to follow direction from her. Speaking of names, I suppose I should tell you now that my brother and I were named both for my Uncle and from the Bible. First there was James and John, The sons of thunder from the Bible. My moms’ brother John Thomas Hill, from whence came James Thomas and John Timothy. The Sons of Thunder would probably stand out more in the early years for us. Think about it now if you will. Two guys the same size, weight, reach and disposition living under the same roof is bound to develop into a no holds barred free for all knock down drag out match for supremacy whenever there is a disagreement between the two. It was that way in our case anyway.

I have seen the pictures to prove that at six weeks of age the wrestling match had already begun. There are pictures of one of us (I won’t say who) pinning the other (poor Johnny) to the bed and trying to bite his nose off. It’s really a good thing that at six weeks old there weren’t a lot of teeth to be used for the assault. I’m sure that the assaults were never just one sided but neither of us was ever seriously injured.

My brother and I had it good growing up. We had two older sisters who thought of us as their own little dolls to play with. They would dress us and take us with them everywhere they went. My mom was appreciative of that I’m sure. We were always dressed alike because it was fun to get the attention. Twins aren’t that common in a town of 5000 people. We were treated like kings by my sisters and I hope that they will be treated equally as well for their entire lives.

Things got much more exciting when my brother and I were a bit older and able to ambulate under our own power. My brother and I had a trick we liked to pull on unsuspecting people at the grocery store. When we were three or four years old we would go to the grocery store with our mother and run the aisles. We did it in such a special way. One of us would start at one end of an aisle and the other would start at the opposite end. We would start running in the same direction. As one of us would round the end of the aisle on one end the other identically dressed little dude would reappear at the opposite end of the aisle. We sure had some people scratching their heads about that until they caught on that it wasn’t one really fast toddler but two of them traveling at normal toddler speed.

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Here we are working on our tag team skills. One sleeps and recharges while the other is awake to keep the adults busy. Now that is dedication at a very young age. Making the family feel truly useful. Angelic aren’t we???

Chapter Two

And You Thought Things Couldn’t

Get Worse… … .

I should tell you now that at nineteen months old we were blessed with a baby sister, Susan. She was the baby of the family and the youngest of the six children. Susan passed away on the 11th of August 2005 after battling cancer for five years. I hope she too will view this book as something that is worthy of a laugh or two and reflection on growing up in a small town with a large family.

My brother and I were the appointed protectors of our little sister and if we didn’t believe it we could certainly hear our parents say that very thing every day. Things like, don’t let your little sister get into anything, she’s just a little girl, and watch your little sister, she doesn’t know any better. Not that we resented our little sister but there were times when I guess we did let things get away from us a bit. Like the time we were told that we had to watch Susan in the back yard when we wanted to be playing cowboys and Indians. We had to hold her little hands and lead her around the back yard wherever she wanted to go or she would cry and then we got in trouble for not taking proper care of her.

Twins do learn things quickly, mostly because we have the experience of someone exactly like us to draw on as well as our own ideas. While walking Susan around the back yard she kept trying to walk through the fresh mound of