Ruby Lois Lane - You Didn't Want to Mess With Mama

Ruby Lois Lane (my mother) was born in Clairette, Texas (in Erath County, a few miles west of Hico) on April 30, 1908. She was the second child born to John and Ada Lane.  She died at the West Texas Medical Center in Abilene in November of 1980 at age 71 after a bout with stomach cancer. She died on Election Day within minutes after the polls closed in the election that sent Ronald Reagan to Washington. 

I’ll have more to say about her in a later blog. However at this point, I’d like to share a comment from her youngest sister, Loretta. “She was always kind, generous and encouraging. That time my friend and I visited with you in Clyde, I had stupidly married a soldier who was transferred to the Air Base (Tye Air Base) at Abilene. (Note: Loretta and a friend came to visit us in Clyde during the war. We lived in a two room house. It was summer time, so we put a bed in the yard and that’s where they slept). We didn’t stay long. I moved to Abilene and found my husband with another woman. The marriage was annulled. I remember at supper time you asked my husband why he didn’t eat at the base before he came because you didn’t have much to eat anyway. ‘Out of the mouths of babes!’ I still think it was funny because we were all thinking the same thing and only you were innocent enough to say it.” I don’t remember the incident, but I will confess to being a smart mouth kid at times. 

My smart mouth probably stemmed from the fact that I was a spoiled only child. I remember Uncle Tom Mackey coming to our house during the war. Uncle Tom was a cousin to Grandma Bales and had a son named Dale. Dale was an irresponsible womanizer and general all around rebel, who stayed in constant trouble with the brass. Uncle Tom had come to visit us so he could see Dale at Camp Barkeley, a World War II army camp near Abilene. At the breakfast table he pondered out loud, “I wonder where I can find Dale.” Before anybody else could say anything, I blurted out, “You’ll probably find him at the guard house” (stockade). My insight was probably true, but it was not the kind of thing a seven year old boy was supposed to say to a relative about his son. The first thing I know, I caught a hand across my mouth.

At one point Dale decided to make a pass at Mama. She kicked him in the shins so hard that it broke the skin and produced a fairly nasty wound. You didn’t want to mess with Mama.