They met in a small café sometime during the thirties in Lindsay Oklahoma where she worked as a waitress. He was Choctaw Indian with dark skin and eyes that were so black they seemed to consume everything they fell upon. The date of his birth is somewhat questionable but it is somewhere between 1898 and 1900. It is a wonder that they fell in love, because he had a deep resentment toward the white population and with just cause. Their prejudice against his people had forced them into poverty and prevented them from working at all but the most menial jobs. Still this young Irishwoman with the fairest of skin captured his heart.
They married and began the business of raising a family. He worked the fields to earn enough to rent for the family as suitable a place as could be afforded, which was just two rooms without the benefit of running water and electricity. Grateful for what they were able to afford they worked hard and made, however meager, a living in those hard times.
The Second World War sent him into the army and he boarded the train bound for training in California, leaving behind his wife and small children. The money he would make in the service would provide steady income for them so he gladly went. While training, he once again faced the prejudice of the white man. It took a great deal to send him beyond reason but once sent there he was a force and a force that few could withstand. His superior officer constantly hurled racial remarks his way berating and belittling him. After almost two months of this he turned to the man and said," We are both going to get on that boat in a few weeks and go over seas, but only one of us will come back."
Instead of going overseas, a few days latter he was given an honorable discharge and sent back home. The reason gave was his age, the truth was the fear that lived in his superior officer after the confrontation.
I do not know when he got the nickname Chief, for he was not a chief, but it was what people had called him for as long as I had been in the world. The only one I recall ever calling him by his christian name was grandma, the Irishwoman.
By the time I was able to retain memories of them, they were both in their sixties. He however still stood tall and straight and had no real fear that I had ever seen. There was one occasion when the Irishwoman saw a rattlesnake go under the house she told the Chief about this and he took out his pocket knife and crawled beneath the house after the snake, when he emerged he had the headless snake in his hand.
Whenever extra money would allow he would go into town and drink, or sometimes he would go down on the river to powwow and drink with the other Indians. I had wanted to go to these powwows with him but he said it was too dangerous down there for me, that when the Indians got drunk, knife fights broke out and people got hurt. Although he liked to drink, his family obligations were always met first. Men who work hard need time away and the Irishwoman understood that. As a small boy, I would lie awake and hear him singing in Choctaw as he walked home after a night of drinking.
The Irishwoman for the most part had an even temperament but the Chief had a way of igniting it. Sometimes he did this deliberately and would laugh as she shouted and threw things at him. She had a beautiful high soprano voice and sang as she cleaned and cooked. She cleaned every day the house they lived in was little more than a shack but she kept it as if it was the Ritz-Carlton. She swept several times a day and mopped every morning. Dust was not allowed, and the beds were always made. She took pride in her home and no matter that they were of the poorest in the county she was always willing to help others.
She loved to dance and I recall she would turn on the radio and dance around the room. By then she had the plump body elderly women sometimes get and as she danced around her plump bottom would bounce and shake behind her. It caused laughter to rise in me and although I don’t know how, I managed to keep that laughter inside. When I was about ten, she taught me the waltz. I still recall her patience as my clumsy feet stomped on her delicate toes. She would say, “That’s ok now lets try again”, and we did, all afternoon until I could waltz. After that, we would occasionally dance together.
The Chief and the Irishwoman always seemed to bicker, and anyone who watched them together might think that they had grown contemptuous of one another, but that assumption would be wrong. They loved each other more than any I have ever seen, and what seemed like bickering was playful sparing. The way old people in the comfort of each other's company speak.
They would go into town once a week. While the Irishwoman took care of the business of buying groceries and such the Chief would go to have a beer. Occasionally these trips would end with the Chief spending the night in jail. The police knew him and tried to keep him from getting into trouble if they could. On one of these trips, he had just sat down and ordered his first beer when one of the officers came into the bar. He walked up and said," Chief you're going to have to leave."
The Chief looked up at him and said, "Ok as soon as I finish this beer."
"No Chief you're going to have to leave now or I am going to have to arrest you."
"Look officer, I just ordered this beer when I finish it I will go."
The officer told him to stand up and put his hands behind his back, he was under arrest. The Chief stood and hit the officer square in the chest knocking him through the front door of the bar. He drank his beer walked outside and told the officer, "Ok I'm ready to go now."
Eventually they moved to Texas to be near their children. The only time she had ever been frightened by him was then. They lived just outside of Seagoville and it was winter. She was standing before the fire with her back to him and he was cleaning his gun. The gun had not been unloaded and accidentally discharged. The bullet went beneath her skirts and between her legs hitting a cast iron pot the hung over the fire. The Irishwoman screamed and turned to face him. "Enoch, what are you trying to do kill me?" She shouted.
He laughed almost unable to speak. "Aw calm down Doll, if I wanted to kill you I wouldn’t have missed." The children heard about this incident and decided he didn’t need a gun so they went to take it from him. When they left the house that day, he still had his gun.
About two years later, he was diagnosed with emphysema, and was no longer able to work. It was hard on him, a man who had always worked hard and fought hard relying on a government that had always been his enemy. The Irishwoman took care of him for the ten years he lived with his illness, but it was not the emphysema that took him, it was a heart attack.
Shortly after the death of the Chief, the children decided that the Irishwoman was unable to stay alone and convinced her to move in with her oldest son. She lived with him and his family only six short months and then they put her into a nursing home, where she stayed for almost ten years, until she too died.
I was the only one who went to visit her at the home and I went almost every week to see this amazing woman. Her life had been hard yet she never complained. Her children had secreted her away in that place and never visited yet she never complained. Instead, she spent her time there cheering up the other residents, and looking forward to my weekly visits, when I would take her out for ice cream, or hamburgers, or to sit in the park by the lake.
The life and love they shared was not born of romance, for there is nothing romantic about struggling to live. No instead, the life, the love, was born out of the true pure emotion of the heart. She a fair skinned Irishwoman who tamed a wild Choctaw Indian who had no use for the fair of skin.
They met in a small café sometime during the thirties in Lindsay Oklahoma where she worked as a waitress. He was Choctaw Indian with dark skin and eyes that were so black they seemed to consume everything they fell upon. The date of his birth is somewhat questionable but it is somewhere between 1898 and 1900. It is a wonder that they fell in love, because he had a deep resentment toward the white population and with just cause. Their prejudice against his people had forced them into poverty and prevented them from working at all but the most menial jobs. Still this young Irishwoman with the fairest of skin captured his heart.
They married and began the business of raising a family. He worked the fields to earn enough to rent for the family as suitable a place as could be afforded, which was just two rooms without the benefit of running water and electricity. Grateful for what they were able to afford they worked hard and made, however meager, a living in those hard times.
The Second World War sent him into the army and he boarded the train bound for training in California, leaving behind his wife and small children. The money he would make in the service would provide steady income for them so he gladly went. While training, he once again faced the prejudice of the white man. It took a great deal to send him beyond reason but once sent there he was a force and a force that few could withstand. His superior officer constantly hurled racial remarks his way berating and belittling him. After almost two months of this he turned to the man and said," We are both going to get on that boat in a few weeks and go over seas, but only one of us will come back."
Instead of going overseas, a few days latter he was given an honorable discharge and sent back home. The reason gave was his age, the truth was the fear that lived in his superior officer after the confrontation.
I do not know when he got the nickname Chief, for he was not a chief, but it was what people had called him for as long as I had been in the world. The only one I recall ever calling him by his christian name was grandma, the Irishwoman.
By the time I was able to retain memories of them, they were both in their sixties. He however still stood tall and straight and had no real fear that I had ever seen. There was one occasion when the Irishwoman saw a rattlesnake go under the house she told the Chief about this and he took out his pocket knife and crawled beneath the house after the snake, when he emerged he had the headless snake in his hand.
Whenever extra money would allow he would go into town and drink, or sometimes he would go down on the river to powwow and drink with the other Indians. I had wanted to go to these powwows with him but he said it was too dangerous down there for me, that when the Indians got drunk, knife fights broke out and people got hurt. Although he liked to drink, his family obligations were always met first. Men who work hard need time away and the Irishwoman understood that. As a small boy, I would lie awake and hear him singing in Choctaw as he walked home after a night of drinking.
The Irishwoman for the most part had an even temperament but the Chief had a way of igniting it. Sometimes he did this deliberately and would laugh as she shouted and threw things at him. She had a beautiful high soprano voice and sang as she cleaned and cooked. She cleaned every day the house they lived in was little more than a shack but she kept it as if it was the Ritz-Carlton. She swept several times a day and mopped every morning. Dust was not allowed, and the beds were always made. She took pride in her home and no matter that they were of the poorest in the county she was always willing to help others.
She loved to dance and I recall she would turn on the radio and dance around the room. By then she had the plump body elderly women sometimes get and as she danced around her plump bottom would bounce and shake behind her. It caused laughter to rise in me and although I don’t know how, I managed to keep that laughter inside. When I was about ten, she taught me the waltz. I still recall her patience as my clumsy feet stomped on her delicate toes. She would say, “That’s ok now lets try again”, and we did, all afternoon until I could waltz. After that, we would occasionally dance together.
The Chief and the Irishwoman always seemed to bicker, and anyone who watched them together might think that they had grown contemptuous of one another, but that assumption would be wrong. They loved each other more than any I have ever seen, and what seemed like bickering was playful sparing. The way old people in the comfort of each other's company speak.
They would go into town once a week. While the Irishwoman took care of the business of buying groceries and such the Chief would go to have a beer. Occasionally these trips would end with the Chief spending the night in jail. The police knew him and tried to keep him from getting into trouble if they could. On one of these trips, he had just sat down and ordered his first beer when one of the officers came into the bar. He walked up and said," Chief you're going to have to leave."
The Chief looked up at him and said, "Ok as soon as I finish this beer."
"No Chief you're going to have to leave now or I am going to have to arrest you."
"Look officer, I just ordered this beer when I finish it I will go."
The officer told him to stand up and put his hands behind his back, he was under arrest. The Chief stood and hit the officer square in the chest knocking him through the front door of the bar. He drank his beer walked outside and told the officer, "Ok I'm ready to go now."
Eventually they moved to Texas to be near their children. The only time she had ever been frightened by him was then. They lived just outside of Seagoville and it was winter. She was standing before the fire with her back to him and he was cleaning his gun. The gun had not been unloaded and accidentally discharged. The bullet went beneath her skirts and between her legs hitting a cast iron pot the hung over the fire. The Irishwoman screamed and turned to face him. "Enoch, what are you trying to do kill me?" She shouted.
He laughed almost unable to speak. "Aw calm down Doll, if I wanted to kill you I wouldn’t have missed." The children heard about this incident and decided he didn’t need a gun so they went to take it from him. When they left the house that day, he still had his gun.
About two years later, he was diagnosed with emphysema, and was no longer able to work. It was hard on him, a man who had always worked hard and fought hard relying on a government that had always been his enemy. The Irishwoman took care of him for the ten years he lived with his illness, but it was not the emphysema that took him, it was a heart attack.
Shortly after the death of the Chief, the children decided that the Irishwoman was unable to stay alone and convinced her to move in with her oldest son. She lived with him and his family only six short months and then they put her into a nursing home, where she stayed for almost ten years, until she too died.
I was the only one who went to visit her at the home and I went almost every week to see this amazing woman. Her life had been hard yet she never complained. Her children had secreted her away in that place and never visited yet she never complained. Instead, she spent her time there cheering up the other residents, and looking forward to my weekly visits, when I would take her out for ice cream, or hamburgers, or to sit in the park by the lake.
The life and love they shared was not born of romance, for there is nothing romantic about struggling to live. No instead, the life, the love, was born out of the true pure emotion of the heart. She a fair skinned Irishwoman who tamed a wild Choctaw Indian who had no use for the fair of skin.
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