The Chicken House

By Myra Goleman

My book begins when I was a small child in Bayou La Batre, Al. I had to spend a lot of time with my grandmother because my parents worked long hours running their grocery store. My mother's brother was an alchoholic. He caused lots of chaos. When he drank he seemed to be a different person. My cousins, his children, and I were very afraid of him. My grandmother tried to keep us safe. My life at home with my parents was happy most of the time. We were poor but had food and a roof over our heads. Later when I was a teenager my mother realized that she was an alchoholic. This affected my life greatly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667814223

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The Chicken House

© 2021 Myra Goleman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 978-1-66781-421-6

eBook ISBN 978-1-66781-422-3

Table of Contents

Here I will try to put it into words.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Dear husband,

I have always tried to paint a mental picture

of what my childhood was like for you so that you would have a clearer understanding

of why I think like I do.

Here I will try to put it into words.

I can remember back as far as when I was a year old. I remember being in my walker and walking under the table in the kitchen. I remember trying to get close to where my dad was cutting some wood with an electric saw. He was so patient, he just pushed my walker back and said Munk, come get this girl Munk was his nickname for my mom.

I am the oldest child of my father’s second marriage. I was born in the local doctor’s office. My mom waited until she was twenty-nine to marry and had me at thirty-one. Because my father had started over he had very little money, but it didn’t seem to matter. We had food on the table and lots of love in our home. One of my fondest memories is nap time. Mom would bathe me, put fresh clothes on me, put me in the middle of her bed, and cover me with my light pink flowered blanket. At 4 o’clock every afternoon my mom would take me to my grandmother’s house so that she could go to work. My mom was head cashier at my dad’s store. I absolutely loved staying with my grandmother. My grandmother was a small framed woman with long dark hair that she kept up in a bun. She was dark complected and wore tiny wire framed glasses. My grandmother and grandfather and my maiden aunt lived right on the bayou. A small dirt road led to their house. It was lined with palmettos. There were a few neighbors on her street. The Steiners, my grandfather’s cousins lived just up the road a bit. They had an oyster shop in the curve of the road by the water. My aunt would open oysters there sometimes, mostly in the winter when the other seafood was scarce and the shops would close down. I remember going down to the oyster shop with her. There were long benches behind troughs of oysters. The openers sat on the benches to open and threw the shells into another trough.

When I was four years old I started noticing that my uncle would be different at times. I wasn’t sure why. He lived next door to my grandmother. He and my aunt had a whole bunch of kids. My cousins, my first friends. My cousin Pud, his nickname, had at an early age moved into my grandmother’s house. Ronnie was my age. We did everything together. We fished in the bayou, swam in the bayou, and built boats from the wood scraps my grandfather left behind. My grandfather could do so many things. He knew how to catch oysters, fish, build boats, and tell the best yarns you’ve ever heard.

My grandmother was called Mamier and my grandfather was called Papa Joe. They never had much money, but a lot of love.

Most of the time there were ten or eleven kids at their house. Mamier would stand at her stove in her tiny kitchen and cook enough to feed all of us until we were full. Mind you ,the meals weren’t fancy, but filling and delicious. I love telling you about the different foods we ate as children. Some of my favorites were peaches and dumplings, blackberries and dumplings, homemade biscuits, grits and red gravy. She would cook anything we brought into the house!

In spring we would pick blackberries, so she would make blackberries and dumplings.In the summer we’d bring her the fish we caught in the bayou and she’d fry them. In the fall we’d bring her a dead squirrel and she’d skin it and fry it for us. We didn’t know we were poor. We had love, plenty to eat and a loving aunt and grandmother to take care of us everyday.

Mamier also had a rather large vegetable garden next to the house. I loved going into the garden with her. It had a picket fence around it to keep out the rabbits. We ate the fresh vegetables from her garden. In the summer there was always that one special day when Mamier and my aunt, Memie, would make a huge spread for when everyone got off work and would come to eat. Her small light green table would be full. There was fried fish, potato salad, fresh tomatoes sliced, snap beans,biscuits, and banana pudding. Most days at Mamier’s house were fun and I felt safe. I had my cousins to play with, my aunt to talk to , and my Mamier to teach me how to play cards and checkers.

Then there were the days when my uncle Dick would come through the front gate yelling and angry. He was drunk! I was scared! I didn’t know what he would do to me. My grandmother always tried to keep us safe. By the time I was four