In the beginning there were twelve kids in that family, . . . Bess was the youngest, twenty when I was born, and she took care of me . . . Bess had been married once . . she was young and it was kept secret in the family. Divorce was rare then. The first husband? He wasn't from around here . . . I don't think she knew him very well. Just within a month or so, she wired home from St. Louis — he'd taken off and left her out there. It was my father, Warwick, went to get her . . . They booked passage back on the train, but it was near Christmas and a winter of bad blizzards; they were weeks getting home.

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