The Belton Years (4)

William Elliott Bales Joins Our Family

We had not been in Belton very long before we realized that our first child was on the way.   Ann had a difficult pregnancy, and experienced a lot of ups and down both emotionally and physically.   I wasn’t really prepared for the mood swings. Fortunately, a good brother saw what was happening, and told me that his wife had experienced the same thing while they were awaiting the arrival of their first child.  He assured me that everything would be different once the child was born. That helped me tremendously.  He was right of course.

On February 7, 1961 we walked up to Clyde and Leona Watson's house to play 42.   I think Clyde and Ann had just laid a whipping on Leona and me, and we decided it was time to go to bed.  Within an hour or so Ann realized it was time to go to the hospital.  Clyde had insisted that he drive us to the hospital when we time came.   He wasn’t sure I would be up to the task.  

We called them and they drove us to King's Daughter's Hospital in Temple.  We also called "Nannie" and "Papa" (Ann’s parents) in Waco.  After they got there, Clyde and Leona went home.   We sat outside the delivery room for several hours.   It took Elliott about eight hours to make up his mind that he wanted to join this world.   I got my first glimpse of him when they carried him downstairs on the elevator to clean him up and put him in the nursery.  He was pretty red faced at the time, and he was letting everybody know that he wasn’t too happy about something.  He came equipped with a strong pair of lungs.

We had agreed on the name William Elliott.  It took me a while to warm up to that name.   In my childhood, there had been a cowboy movie actor named Wild Bill Elliott.   I could just see him acquiring that nickname. At first I thought we were going to call him” Billy" but Ann held out for Elliott, and of course it's been Elliott ever since.  Good thing too.  If we had called him, “Billy” the Wild Bill name might have stuck. 

What a great and glorious blessing it was and is.   On Wednesday night, I saw Dr. Pittman at church (an elderly physician who attended church in Belton).  He said, "Young man, I guess you know, you've started something that will take you the next twenty years to finish."   I think he was probably a little short on the time.  I don't guess we ever finish.

When Elliott was born, the whole church, and especially those in the youth group adopted him. When we left Belton, Alton Martin, one of the elders told the church.  “Norman and Ann have been wonderful, but Elliott came here perfect.”  

Clyde and Leona treated Elliott as if he were their grandchild.  He called them, “Gigi” and “Uncle Clyde.”  Clyde subscribed to several farm magazines.  For some reason Elliott was fascinated with the tractor.  He was not quite two when we left Belton but before we left he could identify every tractor in existence on sight.   We would drive down the road, and he would say, “There’s a John Deere.”  Or he might say, “That’s an Allis-Chalmers.”  

When you have just one child, you can do some things that you can’t do when you have several.  Elliott went with us most everywhere.  On Sundays nights we usually got together with three other couples – Joe and Mary Nell Pirtle, Marvin and Arlene Evans, and Joe and La Verne Whitley.  We usually played 42 for a couple of hours.  Ann would simply lay Elliott across her lap when he got sleepy, and he would sleep while she shuffled the dominoes.

Elliott had a rocking horse.  As soon as he learned how to walk, he would climb out of his baby bed and mount the horse.  Sometimes we could hear the horse rocking in the middle of the night when it was pitch dark.   The people at Belton always thought of Elliott in those days.  Many years later he and his family worshipped at the church in Belton, while he was stationed at Fort Hood.  At that time Raymond Chapman, who had been one of the teenagers in the youth group when we were at Belton, was making announcement at the congregation.  He took note of Elliott’s presence and promptly informed the church that “back in the day” Elliott used to throw up on his shoulder every time he tried to hold him.