THE MENTAL HOSPITAL IN WICHITA FALLS

Sometime within the next few weeks, events were set in motion to get her admitted to the mental hospital in Wichita Falls.  First, there had to be a court hearing.  I sat in the courtroom and witnessed the proceedings.  Six jurors were impaneled.  They were all males.  This was 1951 and women were still not considered peers in a court of law.  The jurors were being asked to rule on her sanity.  It took only a few minutes for the jury to declare her insane.  I don’t know that I can describe how it felt to have my mother declared insane by a court of law. I don’t even actually remember how I felt.  I think that’s probably the worst part…an absence of feeling.

Within the next day or so, the sheriff drove Mama and Daddy to Wichita Falls.  At that time electric shock was the treatment of choice, and that’s what they did.  She wrote letters to us, and we could tell that her mental state was improving, although it was obvious that she had certain memory lapses.

Daddy, Murl, his son,  Charles, and I contracted to build a turkey shed for Roy Griffith.  It was huge – probably a third of a football field long.  Our job was to put a metal roof on the shed.  It was July, and well over a hundred.  The corrugated roof we were putting on made is much hotter than that, but we built a good shed.  It was still standing as recently as ten years ago.  However, the last time I made a trip to Abilene, I noticed that it had been torn down.

Roy always had a hired man who worked regularly for him.  Roy had employed a man had only one arm, but he was a jolly sort of fellow who worked hard.  He had an uncanny way of getting his nails started, and he stayed up with the rest of us on that roofing project.  During this time Daddy decided we needed to go see Mama.  We told the hired man that we would be gone for the next day because we would be making a trip to Wichita Falls.  He said, “Well, you’d better be careful.  They might keep you.  That’s where they’ve got the crazy house.”

Daddy said, “That’s where I’m going.”

The next day Murl brought him up to speed on our situation, and the man felt terrible about it.  I think he apologized to Daddy when we got back.  We learned that you couldn’t allow yourself to be offended by the “crazy” jokes.  People were going to do it, and they usually didn’t mean to offend you.  They just didn’t know your situation.  It has made me a lot more sensitive to that kind conversation.  We need to be a lot more sensitive to everybody.   Most people are dealing with some kind of burden, and if you make light of it, it just adds more pounds to the load.