Ruby Lois Lane Bales 1908 – 1980

Graduation Picture - Hico High School - 1927

Disappointments

I’ll have to admit that I was a little reluctant to include the story I’m about to tell.  It’s a sad thing, but it explains some of the trials she faced in life.  For a long time I never knew how her employment with the Jewish family in Fort Worth ended.  This is the story that Melba, her sister, told me several years after Mama’s death.  

Her chores included washing and ironing.  Of course this was long before the time of colorfast fabrics.    One day she hung up a brown sock with a blue sock.   The colors merged and she was fired for that indiscretion.  I’m sure there were plenty of young women looking for jobs in Fort Worth in those days, so the family apparently didn’t give a second thought to replacing their housekeeper.    She had no choice but to return to Hico.   According to Melba, Papa was a little bit more than upset.  He still had plenty of younger mouths to feed, and times were hard.

When she returned home, her younger sister, Loretta was a small girl and Mama took her under her wing.  Loretta looked up to her big sister and was very close to her.   Of course big sister could also be a stern disciplinarian when she had to.  Once she heard Loretta using certain words that Papa had spoken to his mules.  Loretta got her mouth washed out with soap.  She said that she never forgave my Daddy for taking Ruby away from her.  She loved my mother dearly.  I enjoyed a good relationship with Loretta during her last years, and was privileged to speak at the graveside service when she died.

I don’t really know, but I wonder if combination of the depression, the loss of the job in Fort Worth, the anger of her father, and perhaps her mother, and her inability to find work in Hico contributed to her mental illness later on.  It’s hard to say.    Looking back on it, I’m very certain she suffered bouts of depression over a long period of years, but I was really too young to recognize it.  I do recall coming a time when we had just come back to the farm after a trip into town and her eyes began the swell, so much that she couldn’t see for awhile.   Mental illness, or at least our awareness of it, did not surface until a few years later.    Mental illness is a terrible thing.  I may have more to say on that subject at a later time.  

I’ve never known exactly what triggered it in my mother.   I gave some thought to studying psychology in college because of her condition, but I was turned off by an inept professor in a basic course.  From what I know in the studies I’ve done, she appears to have suffered from schizophrenic paranoia from the time that she was about 35 years old until the end of her life.  Supposedly it runs in families, but I’ve never known anyone else to have these same symptoms.  The episodes came and went.   Sometimes she would revert to her normal self, although she became more withdrawn and reclusive as time went on.    People, who only came to know her in later life, would never have dream that she was once a socially active person.  Loretta remembered her spending a lot of time day dreaming during her early adult years.  She thought Mama had expectations from life and when it didn’t materialize, things went downhill for her.

During the last three weeks of her life her mind reverted to normal thinking.  I got to spend those three weeks with her.  It was a wonderful time in terms of our own relationship with each other.  She knew what she was up against.  I never saw anyone face death with more confidence, with a greater sense of peace, and with what appeared to be a total absence of fear.  How I admire her for that.