IF ONLY I HAD LIVED

If Only I Had Lived - LETTERS to HEAVEN

I was just born!

I have no memory of it but I have heard about it. Many times. I occurred in a wild mining town away out in the worst part of Arizona; where people can barely live. They scrabble around in holes dug in the ground. Someone gave me a name that honors my father and mother but I don’t like it yet. I don’t even like my Surname - yes, I had one. But I was about to lose it.

TWO - OCTOBER 13, 1922

There are things I remember now. People shout. Some people are big and some are small. The big ones shout.

I know that I am bad.

One very big people is not always near me. Small people are always nearby. There are more than one small people who talk to me. One big people makes small people noises. Maybe this one is hungry. That one talks sounds that are weak and there is always crying. I cry a lot so I know its sound. The crying one is called Mother. The one very big people likes me and scares me with a low voice. He is called Daddy. The weak voice told me that I am bad, I am a girl. So are the two small people around me. We are called sisters. All of us are bad. We should be different but we don’t know how to do it. There are some other big people who make me feel better. They seem to belong to the mother and the father. They want to pick me up and talk to me and toss me up and down. I am frightened because I know I am bad. I am a girl child. So are my sisters. One of the others is not very nice. This one is also a girl but a big one. The father calls her a mother. She talks to the father, who may be a boy. She talks quietly but something is wrong. Now, the big girl is gone. So is the very big one, the big boy - the father. But he came back. We had a picnic somewhere and a lot of big and small people were there. We played until someone found an old wood box. One of the big people shouted at us to get away from it. Soon, the father ran up to it and picked it up. Someone ran up with some wire and they both walked slowly up and over a hill. Both of them came back and jumped on the ground. BOOM! Sand fell out of the sky.

THREE - OCTOBER 13, 1926

I am still in the horrible town. It is called Swansea. There are not as many people now. We live in a boarding house. My mother is an important lady who works downstairs. She is a landlady. My father is gone. I think about him and his nice words. My mother is not nice. My sisters are always with me but they have to go to school. We can go outdoors now but it is always hot in the sun. We find creatures in the garden but they are not good ones. One is white and long and has a lot of legs on each side. That is a centipede. My mother rushed out into the yard with a cleaver and cut it in half. Then she fell to the ground when the two parts crawled away. We caught big spiders and played with them but did not pick them up. My mother spoiled the fun again but not with a cleaver. Then my sister heard a buzzing sound – maybe it was a Cicada? NO! Rattlesnake! This time, we were dragged into the boarding house and then we heard a very loud noise.

I have been away from here for a while. My father’s mother sent for me and I went to her house in a place called Santa Monica in California. It is a great house with big porches around it. There is a man there who is not a father. He is very nice and both of them like each other. There are lots of places to sit but she did not like me to be in the big room with the big furniture. Street cars passed by and we rode on them. Sometimes we went to the beach where there is a lot of sand like back home. But this sand is washed all the time by something called The Ocean. I am afraid of the sand and the ocean. My Daddy came there to see us. He is nice and said he wanted to take me home with him. His mother wanted him to do that. But he did not do it. I must be bad, still, because I really wanted to go with him. In Swansea, there is a new Father with my Mother. He is gruff but nice to me and my sisters. He is a miner. He likes to tell us not to do things. My mother wants him to leave us alone and they shout at each other. Swansea is dead, no more boarders and no more ore. We are moving to Kingman, Arizona.

FOUR - OCTOBER 13, 1929

My older sister says she in love! Her man is a saxophone player from Oklahoma. My new father does not want this to happen because she is too young. Her man has a lot of friends in Kingman. They are loud and friendly and have beaten my Step-Father to make him leave my sister alone. My Step-father has been betrayed by my mother; who sided with my sister, and he has left us. My sister has married her man at the courthouse. They lived happily ever after. They have gone to California; where her man plays in a band and one of his wild friends has a job in Hollywood, he is an actor who plays a "Sidekick". He is big and fat and has a squeaky voice. So, he is funny.

My other sister and I get along and we are happy as can be. We play jokes on our mother; dressing up like each other and laughing a lot. She has a boyfriend. He is nice and spends a lot of time with her - in our room. There is something wrong with her. She has been sent to California, where she was born. She is staying with my mother’s mother, who was born in Iowa. I have found out that I am an aunt. It is very lonely here without my sisters. My sister’s boyfriend has gone away. My mother and I are about to leave the desert and go back to California. This is the end of mining for us.

FIVE - NOVEMBER 1, 1929

(My father sent this letter to me last year.)

My Dear Number 3 Daughter:

I have heard about your story and want to tell you my side of events. I was born in 1890, in New York City, not far from Central Park. My father was a very good pharmacist who invented the Home Medicine Tablet. People who needed medicine had to visit the doctor’s office for treatment or the doctor had to administer medicines at the patient’s home. With the tablet, they could take their medicine at home without a doctor’s visit. I had a brother two years older than me. When I was only four years old, my father died of appendicitis. My mother was born in Auburn, New York; where her father was a dentist who worked at the state prison. Her Uncle was a wealthy banker who did not have children. He arranged with the dentist to ‘adopt’ her and brought her up in the lap of luxury. Her Aunt doted on her and raised her like a natural daughter.

When she became a widow, my mother was expecting another brother but that child was born dead. She was left with two little boys and a house given to her by her Uncle. Because of an incident in Duchess County, New York, her Uncle had a bias against remarrying, which my mother promptly did. The Uncle found out, disowned her; the events made the front page of the New York Times in 1902. The settlement was generous but the family did not want her in New York. She had shamed them in public and the second husband was a wastrel and a drunk. He disappeared soon and she made preparations to leave New York for, as it turned out, Golden Colorado. There, in 1908, I enrolled in the Colorado School of Mines.

I had a roommate whose sister enchanted me and we married in 1911. My mother fought the idea but we eloped. My brother-in-law and I graduated in 1912; he becoming a Civil Engineer and I pursuing Mining Engineering. We lived for a while in Jean, Nevada, where I was an assayer, from there we went to a new district in Arizona called Swansea (after the mining town in Wales), There I opened a mine for a company owned by my family. By then, we had three little girls whom I loved very much. Your mother and I did not get along well, from the first year of marriage there was trouble. Contrary to what you were told, you girls were not the cause of the divorce - I just could not stand to be with your mother. She whined and complained and always thought she was superior to any New York sissy because her father was always a newspaper editor.

My mother, who had taken me to Golden, Colorado, did not like her at all and she did everything she could to discourage us before and afterward. Divorce was unheard of in those times but it was arranged and so I had to leave you. It broke my heart to do it. I knew that your mother could not support you but she insisted and worked very hard. I tried to come out to see you whenever I could. You should remember how happy you were, all three of you climbing up on me and screaming with joy. I found a copy of a photo of that reunion. You probably remember the visit I made to see you when I brought my new wife along. We have two fine boys now. My wife was an heiress to a fortune in Bonds; that meant nothing to Adolph Hitler, who canceled them when he came to power. So, we were left to our own resources and we are well.

I am now an engineer for Johns Manville Company in Ohio. I work with a fireproof material called Asbestos; which gives great promise in insulation as well, a fact I noted when designing high temperature furnaces. Some of my work was done near Yuma Arizona, where an asphalt soaked asbestos Plank Highway was laid right on the sands that are spread all over the country there. I am happy to hear that you are settled down in Santa Monica. Maybe we will come out to see you next vacation. I love Ocean Park, it reminds me of Coney Island and the beaches out there.

Love,

Your Father.

Theodore Henry Miller Crampton, Engr.