1. The Early Years
2. The Depression Years
3. The Teen Years
4. Getting Married
20. After they returned from their honeymoon, my parents first lived above my Grandpa Schenck's store. My mother had all the adjustments you would expect not only for someone newly married but for a new wife living on her husband's family's turf!
My dad not only had the work of his bread route with his brother (then Tasty Bread later that year), but he was expected to be on call to help in the store on a moment's notice. Sometimes, he was so tired that my mom could hardly wake him up. When my dad's brother Eugene once asked her how it was going, she unthinkingly and innocently remarked, "All he wants to do is go to bed." I'm sure this elicited a smirk from the mischievous Gene. Obviously, it embarrassed my mother enough to remember it.
My mom always said that Dad survived on short power naps. I've heard that these are actually very healthy. I take them quite often myself.
21. They lived there for four years. In April of the next year, they had their first daughter Patricia. Then Juanita in 1950. Then Sharon in 1951. My sisters would become the famous "Schenck trio" with my mother playing the piano.
My mother could play virtually any song by ear. She could of course read music as well, but the style of Pilgrim worship favored a more extemporaneous ability. A song could arise at any time in a worship service, whether from the front or from the congregation. It could come in any key.
The right hand would quickly find the melody, and the alto could fairly easily be filled in because the interval was fairly predictable. Then the left hand would play the chords. First the key chord-note one octave below. Then the left hand jumped up an octave to the appropriate three-finger chord just below C. Once you figured out the key, the two or three key chords that went with the melody were predictable.
In any case, my mom made it look easy.
22. A couple awkward funnies from this period. One unexpected feature of my mother these last few years is a slight sense of humor. Recently, if you asked her how she was feeling, she might say, "with my fingers and toes." But most of my life, she hasn't really been much of a joker. They used to tell her to raise her right hand when she was being funny because no one could tell.
This Spock-like matter-of-factness got her into a little hot water apparently with her new father-in-law. As I remember the story, at some point, the Schenck family were all singing the melody, and she suggested that some of them might want to sing harmony. I guess Grandpa Schenck didn't like any suggestion that they weren't already perfect singers.
Of course, the Schenck family are all incredible singers. My dad's brother Maurice and family were in great demand. And, yes, they have all indeed sung in perfect harmony for as long as I've been conscious.
A second awkward moment was when my mother's father was the reader for some ministerial correspondence course that my dad's father was taking. My Grandpa Schenck didn't think that my Grandpa Shepherd had graded him fairly. I of course can't say except that Grandpa Shepherd was neurotically conscientious and prayed over every grade he gave. In any case, Grandpa Schenck asked my mom to have a talk with her father about it. :-)
23. As Sharon's birth approached, the space above the store was not going to be adequate. So they bought their first house on Evanston Avenue in Indianapolis. My mom's brother Paul was married by then and moved there as well, not far from the old Northside Pilgrim Church. This is the congregation that would eventually move to what is now Trinity Wesleyan on Allisonville Road. My family would attend Northside until we moved to Florida in 1971 (except for two very brief company moves to Anderson and Evansville).
It was below zero around the time Sharon was born in December. Mom went to the hospital early because they were afraid that the car wouldn't start when the critical moment came.
In the 50s, my mother struggled with the peer pressure of "standards" that existed in the church at that time. My mother and father were easygoing. I like to say that while they lived a strict lifestyle, they were not legalistic. My mother had a bun her whole life (in a distinctive style). She didn't cut her hair except in keeping with the common sense of split ends and such. She never wore slacks or pants, only skirts and dresses. In the last decade of her life, she had some pajama bottoms. She wore no jewelry. Maybe she had an un-showy pin/brooch or two on a rare occasion. She wore no visible makeup. Maybe a little base you didn't notice sometimes.
We did not buy or sell on Sunday, meaning that we didn't eat out on Sunday except when the "ox was in the ditch" because of traveling. We didn't have a TV for many years. My dad always suspected that his dad wouldn't visit them because he thought my dad was hiding a TV. (They did visit, however, when I was born in 1966.)
Even when he got a small black and white TV, my dad didn't watch TV on Sunday because he felt like he would get sucked into sports and lose perspective on the Lord's Day. As another sidenote, my mother had to adjust to my dad listening to the radio/watching sports. He would tell her there were just five minutes left in a game, which she assumed meant five minutes. She didn't know it meant a half hour.
At some point, my go-along-to-get-along mother had to make some choices. One decision she made had to do with knee socks for my sisters. Apparently, they were viewed as prideful and showy by some in the church of that time. However, when you consider the coldness of winter and the fact that my sisters wore only dresses and skirts, there was the question of practicality. My mom didn't want to make waves or appear prideful, but there was the practical concern of keeping her daughters warm.
She felt like the Lord brought Philippians 2:12 to her mind: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." She believed the Lord was telling her not to worry about what others thought but to do what made sense to her own conscience before him. She let them wear knee socks.
She trimmed my sisters' bangs -- a big no-no in some circles. The famous Schenck trio of Patricia-Juanita-Sharon was actually not allowed to sing at one church they were supposed to because they had bangs. 1 Corinthians 11 -- a woman's hair is her glory.
A story I haven't mentioned is how my mother felt like the Lord told her as a young girl that she was spending too much time listening to programs like Little Orphan Annie on the radio (I think that was the show). She felt convicted and that she needed to spend more time in the real world rather than getting caught up in fiction. Thankfully, I've never felt convicted about living in a dream world, much to my wife's dismay.
24. On the whole, I feel like a sort of common sense conservatism typified my parents. They didn't eat out on Sunday, but they made exceptions. When the merger of the Wesleyan Church happened in 1968, my dad was a delegate and supported it. Some in his family thought it was of the Devil and told him they would pray for his soul. Despite how uncomfortable this sort of conflict was for my dad, he stuck to what he believed. And my parents never got bitter over things like this.
When I struggled with some of these questions in college, my mother told me not to worry too much about it. God would work these things out. It seems to me that she was unusually practical when it came to such things, no doubt because of some of the extremes they had navigated in their early marriage.
25. From Evanston Avenue they moved to Crestview, where Debbie was born (1958). In the mid-fifties, my dad started working for General Motors. More specifically, MIC, Motors Insurance Corporation, which is now GMAC. This would lead to some moving around. He was actually in Michigan at the GM Institute when Debbie was born, and Uncle Paul had to take my mother to the hospital. Debbie never let my dad forget.
In the 50s, I think raising my sisters was my mother's main job. She also babysat some for my cousins Carl and Jerry, Paul's sons. I think in the 60s, she did start giving piano lessons. She was officially certified as a piano teacher. I've mentioned that she played the piano and accordion, but I haven't mentioned that she played the violin. She had a valuable violin that someone who had played in John Philip Sousa's band had sold or given her.
That reminds me that I didn't mention the orchestras that used to be part of Frankfort Camp meeting. As a young girl, my mother would play the violin in the orchestra. Anyone who played an instrument could join, and it seems like most people did in those days. My dad played the trombone. My son Tom used my dad's trombone throughout high school for band.
The final move in Indy was to Preston Drive, on the edge of what is now Carmel. What was countryside and a random artesian well is now a quite hip neighborhood. My wife and I ate at a nice Greek restaurant for our anniversary this year probably less than a mile from where my family lived when I was born.
Each time my parents moved, Uncle Paul and Aunt Betty would move nearby too. Paul would pass from this life in 1980 living in a house about a mile from Preston Dr. Again, extremely difficult for my mother given how close they had all been as a family.
26. I don't think my mother ever had any serious difficulties with my sisters except perhaps a little conflict with Sharon in her early teens. Sharon would tell you that she was initially rebellious but then had a spiritual breakthrough when she gave everything to the Lord. Sharon went on to become a Wesleyan pastor. She would follow Juanita to Brainerd Indian School and then, after marrying her husband, to work at God's Bible School and Hobe Sound.
My two oldest sisters both graduated from Frankfort Bible College. Sharon started there but had to finish up at Hobe Sound Bible College because of Frankfort closing. They all also went to live with Grandma Shepherd to finish high school at Frankfort. That made it easier for my mother to have two young children at home in the late 60s rather than five.
When I was still four in 1971, General Motors moved my Dad to Florida, where I would grow up. My parents lived in Wilton Manors, within Fort Lauderdale, in a house that cost my dad $25,000. It's probably worth a half a million today.
To be continued...
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