Lesson Assignment: Look at your three children and list 3 character traits in each. I’m guessing you can find the quality of mischief in at least one. “I’d like to change it to quality of adventure instead; it would be easier.” “After you have turned it to prose, see if you do not find a truth inside it. State that truth as part of a revelation.”
Elaine
Elaine, our oldest was pretty, shy, very sensitive, and spent a lot of time at Nanny’s house. Nanny, a widow, had brought up Carl as an only child. She loved Elaine and spent much time with her. She lived behind us so Elaine could go over any time of day or night. Especially when she was naughty and was punished, she would run over there. Ide (Elaine) rose her bicycle to first grade in West U, and came straight home. The teacher called me often, “We cannot get through a story without Elaine crying. Every story ends too sadly for her.”
Ide was a home-body and did not venture very far from home. Nanny took her to Colorado to try to fatten her up a bit. When she was a teenager she went to camps like her friends. She went to Rice and lived at home as there were no dormitories then. Sometimes the Rice group would study for an exam over at Nanny’s house, but when the crowd left to jump in Hofheinz’ pool, Nanny wouldn’t let Ide go because it was late at night. When Ide graduated from Rice and started teaching school, she lived at home. We tried to get her to move in with her friends who had an apartment.
Ide didn’t have much self-confidence. Whenever she had a paper to write, she always begged her father to help her, which he did. As a teacher, however, she was a good teacher. Finally she decided to move in with her friends. We made a big to do about it, got Dale to play the violin while we all stood on the porch and watched her put her boxes in her old car. She had finally left the nest.
To end this part, Ide who had never done adventurous things, met the boy across the street from the apartment she lived in and eloped!
Carol
Carol wrote stories. Before she could write, she printed stories about the family. She played with tiny little dolls, letting them be actors in her stories which she told to Dale. He listened enthralled, watching her move the dolls around in the stories.
She wrote stores about a funny character who did a lot of crazy things, but this made entertaining great. “Hoogley and the Duke” had wonderful adventures.
I:\Mooney09\The Three Illig Children.wpdCarol won a prize in writing when 16. It was in a magazine called “Seventeen”. It was about her sister and titled “Barry T is Not for Me.” Then when she went to Sarah Lawrence to college, she won a spot in “Mademoiselle” magazine, as a college editor, and she had to interview James Thurber. After she graduated from Sarah Lawrence she went to Spain to work for Esso Espanoles.
In her job she had a young man sitting with her to see that she spoke idioms correctly. Carol wanted to go to this boy’s home to see what it was like. Her Spanish girlfriend said, “No, don’t go. You just don’t go to people’s houses like that.” But Carol went anyway. They were very poor. She felt like she was taking food out of their mouths when she ate supper. The Spanish father had to work in another country to make enough money for the large family.
Carol had enormous curiosity. She wanted to find out about people. Everything she did was an enormous adventure.
On her way home from Spain she sailed on a Greek ship with a girlfriend whose father or uncle was Captain of the ship and who took care of the two girls on this ship of no other passengers–just Greek sailors.
Carol became engaged to a young man 3 years her junior. He was very smart and Captain in the army and already in a law firm. Her father made her sign a contract that she would have a church wedding so he could march her down the aisle, which she did and he did.
Dale
Dale was shy also. He had 3 or 4 good friends but he spent most of his time after school building things. He built a boat large enough for him and a friend, Jimmy H., to get in. Carl and I had to borrow a large car to take it to the bay to launch with a coke bottle. Carl tied ropes around the boys and they set the boat in the water. Lo and behold, the boat started sinking! Dale got a letter from Jimmy when Carl died to say that he would never forget Mr. Illig tying the rope around him and Dale and when the boat began to sink, pulling them in safely. He was praising Carl. It was a loving letter about something that happened 40 years ago.
Then Dale built an airplane big enough for him to sit in. I was the one who took him to the lumber yard for wood or the hardware store for nails. He was always sending me back for more supplies. When I took him to the dry goods store for material to make the wings of the airplane, I said, “You have to go in by yourself and ask the lady for 5 yards of unbleached domestic. I’ll wait out in the car for you.” I had to teach him to tend to his own business, which he did.
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The next thing he did was to take the motor off the edger when he finished mowing the yard and put it on a frame of a little car. He rode around the block and then he insisted I get in and drive it, which I did.
The next thing was to pave the patio with bricks for me. He nailed boards on his tennis shoes and stomped down all the sand, then laid the bricks. When he got through, he said, “now I know how to do it.”
Dale finished college during the Vietnam War. He applied to the Peace Corps, was accepted and went off to India to direct the natives to drill water wells. There was no one to take him to the hardware store; he had to go on a bus in India, buy the water pipes and bring them back to the site of operation on top of the bus. It was not easy like it would have been here; none of the pipes fit together. The handful of boys or men working for Dale got only 35 cents a day and sometimes they couldn’t work well because they were hungry and Dale would have to feed them. His salary was $75 a month. Somehow he managed to accomplish the water wells. He made a movie showing the bubbling water flowing slowly over the parched dirt.
Being in northern India in Ghazipur, Dale looked longingly over the Himalayas. Deciding to plan a trek, he wrote me to buy a great many packages of dried food to take on this trek. About five years earlier Dale had met the Crown Prince of Nepal when the Crown Prince and his tutor came to Houston. Dale accompanied them to Astro World with an older friend who was a member of the English speaking union. So Dale took with him on his journey the name of the Crown Prince and his tutor. It really came in handy when Dale bought a ticket on the plane from Katmandu to Pokhara where the trek began. That was the only way you could go, and you never could be sure of the plane. Sure enough, Dale was about to be put off as often happened to many of the passengers. So Dale, in a terrible worry, knew that the only chance to get this one plane was for him to call the Crown Prince. He talked to the tutor and the tutor remembered Dale and put someone else off the plane and gave Dale back his seat on the plane. So he got to Pokhara and met his Sherpa, a 4’10” slight, sinewy man who was strong enough to lift Dale (6′ 4″) when they crossed over the rivers along the journey.
Dale met Sandra Croston, who was employed as a secretary in the American State Department in the Embassy in New Delhi. They fell in love in the shadow of the Taj Mahal. He made many visits to New Delhi to see her. They took trips now and then to see sights in India. Dale came home after two years to be in Carol’s wedding, but went back for his third year and then asked for six more months to make a movie.
Dale was taking pictures under a bridge. I think he was actually in the water. Policemen came and said he was arrested for taking pictures of the bridge. He tried to assure them that he was no spy and that he was making a movie. Finally he offered to
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drive them in his jeep to the police station which they accepted. It ended up all of them having tea. Dale got along well with his escapades.
For three years Dale had a servant, Narayan, to wait on him, boil his water, go to the store to buy the food and come back and cook it. There was no ice to keep food; so it had to be cooked each meal. Narayan was good to Dale and kept him well but he was an old man and after three years, he died. Dale was fond of him and depended upon him. This was a terrible blow. Dale had to take care of his death and even had to pay for his funeral and cremation. This must have been hard for Dale, not knowing all the customs for death in a foreign country.
To bring the Indian episode to an end, Sandra and Dale returned to the U.S. and a few months later, Dale and I, Carol and her husband, Elaine’s husband and two children and Nanny and our preacher all traveled to Kansas by plane to the marriage of Sandra and Dale in Mr. and Mrs. Croston’s home. Dale arranged to take a picture of the wedding and played music for the bride to come in. It was all very nice except Carl was too sick to go and Elaine stayed home with him.
I have only told briefly about my three children but I must tell you what kind of home and atmosphere there was for them to grow up in. Carl furnished us with a beautiful home in one of the prettiest parts of town. Carl was always at home when in the city. We all sat down to meals together. When the children were little, Carl told them Zuzu stories, about a boy like Carl illig. Carl did not help Dale with building–I did that, but he helped him with the law when later he became a lawyer. He taught Timothy the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” when the child was only 4 years old. He taught Carol poetry. He helped the children with writing for information and literature. The family was close knit. Carl played golf. We all went to church and on vacations together.
You have asked me to find a truth inside of this writing. I think that people go along in life a certain way and then something quite different happens to them, something that, due to the need and circumstances, causes them to act differently, where they have to muster strength and will and act in a way quite differently from their usual actions.