Yes: And after he got back from service, he went to work for the State
Highway Department. He was head mechanic. Oh, he was one of the best.
Everybody said he really was a good mechanic. But the poor old thing
come down with… He had some feet problem. His feet were sort of frozen
when he was in the War. Wearing those old boots so long, and when he'd
pull them off, the blood and hide and everything would come off
[unclear] . Oh, he had a lot of trouble with
his feet. And the older he got, the worse they'd get. So they retired
him, and then they found out he had cancer. And he was sick five year.
And I waited on that man. After they found out he had cancer, he was in
and out of the Veterans Hospital at Oteen. Well, he was an outpatient
for a long time before they found out he had cancer. And so he didn't
want to stay in the hospital; he wanted to stay
Page 9 at
home. Well, I kept him at home, and I waited on him. He had two major
operations, one on this side and one on that side. It was in the lymph
glands. And he had a tumor under his tongue. They took that out and the
lower jawbone, his teeth. They had to do all that in order to get to all
those glands that that thing travelled in. And I had to fix his food
just like you do a baby's. But I waited on that man just like if he was
a little helpless child. And on Monday, he and his sister and me… They
were awfully good to me, especially that one; she lost a boy in service.
And she was so depressed and everything. She was so good to my husband,
her brother. And she and me would take him to Oteen when he'd have to go
in for a checkup and everything. And so we had took him up there on
Monday, and they had put him through the lab and everything, and they
told him to go home and take it easy, that they had done all they could
do for him. Well, we knew that he was getting to the last stages,
because he had such a dark color, and he was just weakening away. If
he'd get up, a lot of times he'd fall, lose his balance. So I'd walk up
to him and help him walk. And one time he got down in the bathroom one
night. It was about two o'clock. He had lost his balance when he started
to get up. And so I helped him get back to bed, because I knew if he lay
on the floor it might take him till Monday
[unclear] , as weak as he was. But honest to goodness, that
man was as poor as he could be. Right in here, you could stick your fist
in there in those places, and he was a big-boned man. He was a
well-built man. He was tall, and he had the biggest body, and you could
count every bone in his back, all of his ribs. He was just plumb
pitiful. But I sure waited on him. And then on Friday morning, he died.
He said he felt so bad he couldn't sit up, but I guess that it had just
got him. But on Tuesday night after we'd taken him up to the hospital, I
know he had a light heart attack. I had a couch
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over there for him to lay on a lot. And he took a smothering spell
during the night. And they had give him some medicine for his heart, and
I didn't know he had heart trouble. And Susan—my daughter, that's head
nurse at Charlotte—looked at his medicine that they give him, and she
said, "Mother, did you know Daddy had heart trouble?" And I said, "No,
Susan. He didn't tell me." She said, "Well, he's got heart trouble,
because he's got a prescription here for heart medicine." And they was
giving him the cancer drugs in a capsule. But he sure did suffer, I'm
telling you.