IT DON’T MATTER 25 Baby Martha Arrives

Baby courtesy photobucket

The time is getting closer to the birth of Martha.  We aren’t entertaining any thoughts of it being a boy so we haven’t thought of a boy’s name.

I’m nervous about leaving the house each day and am thankful Lucia is there with Nan. I stay up late waiting but so far it hasn’t been the time.

Then I was wakened by a poke in the ribs and a voice saying, “Go, go get the doctor, quick.”  That’s all I needed for me to spring into action and was out the door after telling Lucia to get up.

By the time I returned with the doctor the child was beginning to emerge from the only home it had known so far.  About ten minutes later the familiar sound of screaming out I’m here and I’m hungry.  I was given the job of burying that which was no longer needed and I just remembered I didn’t know what it was.

It had to be a she.  As I hastened back to the house I tried to prepare for a boy but there was only disappointment in that thought.  When I returned to the room the child was wrapped in a blanket and Nan was cleaned up.

Nan looked up at me and said, “Let me introduce you to Miss Martha our newest member of the family.”  

I almost collapsed from relief as the truth began to register in my mind.

Nan said, “Marty meet your papa.”

As much as I loved Bessie I still wanted a girl of my own and now I have her.  I hope she will be as much like her mother as Bessie is.  My boys are getting to be boys wearing out the knees of their overalls and trying the patience of Nan and Lucia to the edge where punishment kicks in.

Bessie the grape farmer visits her vines every day carrying the hoe grandpa made for her.  Lucia tells her to talk to the vines and tell them to grow up and be strong for it takes strong vines to produce good grapes.

Our family fortune continues to grow but I see the beginning of problems to appear. Problems are in the horizon that I don’t know how to solve.

While Pa is the head over everything we own in common I am in control of how our money is invested and shares are distributed.  Everyone’s needs are being met and are at liberty to propose new avenues of investments.

All that is required is the viability and probability of being successful.  So far this has been a good model to follow.  Our problem that is the likelihood of grandkids nearly being grown and they will want their piece of the pie.

Within a year there will be several wanting to go out on their own, and they will want to be independent of the family.  Because of the size of the family and the grandkids growing up we needed a plan to provide a share of the family wealth to the grand children.

Dividing up the holdings
courtesy photobucket.com

After much discussion and some disagreement about how we could do this and still be fair it was decided each of my sibs will need to have their share of our holdings and then the money funneled down to the grandchildren.

Or in other words the family holdings will have to be sold and the cash distributed to each.  This can only be done if Pa and Ma agree to the distribution.  As long as everything stays intact this couldn’t be accomplished to everyone’s satisfaction.

If they give in and say sell it a piece at a time it will be a long and difficult procedure. After several months I could see grandma had been won over and grandpa was weakening.

A lot of our holdings were brick and mortar which made the partnership with the sharecroppers a different issue.

Before it came to having to sell and kick the sharecroppers off the land due to it being sold I went to each and offered to sell them the farm they were farming.

They all had done well on their particular farm and had enough money to make a down payment and we would carry a note on it.

All of the other holdings could be sold and then the money distributed equally between the main family.  Ma and Pa would get an equal share same as their children and then they could give their kids what they wanted to without any supervision from me.

I agreed to everything being sold except Bessie’s grape farm, for that was her’s personally.

It was a big job but we finally inventoried all of the assets and were preparing to put them on the market.

The home properties were valued and each could keep them if they wanted and their share would reflect that amount being deducted at the final distribution of funds.

One thing was proposed by Dr. Lester was to sell everything to a corporate entity that was interested in the whole package and after some heated discussions we all agreed to the sale.  

Most of the disagreements was from the grandkids but they had no legal say so which only amounted to a lot of noise.

The sharecroppers were able to keep their farms as long as they made their payments to the new owners, which was a relief to me for I felt a responsibility toward them.

What I called my cattle was no more for they were gone.

The oil field holdings were gone and that was what the new owners were interested mostly.  

They would never bought the holdings without the oil fields.

So here I sat with a pot full of money and no responsibility toward no one except my brood.

After having to deal with the family including the grandkids and the people who were interested in our holdings I had enough of all of them.

Ma and Pa had been influenced by different ones of the family who only wanted to get their hands on some money.

They had no idea what it took to earn this money for they knew nothing of money management.  I had Judge Larson set up the distribution of the funds for Ma and Pa and us children.

Now it will be up to the children’s parent’s to share with them if they so choose to do so.

I told Nan I had to take a short trip and would be back in a week.  In eight days I returned and I told her where I went but for now, wanted to keep it between just the two of us.

I put our house up for sale and Sammie heard about it and wanted to buy it right off.

We waited three months until Marty was getting stronger and then visited Ma and Pa for the last time for awhile.  They were upset that we were moving away from them.  

Ma wanted to know how far it was to where we were going and I told her we weren’t sure where we were going to land so I didn’t know exactly.  She said she didn’t want us to go to far because she wanted to visit us.

I told them we would write and keep them up to date about how we were doing.  The truth be known I was put out about the way the both of them supported the other members of the family and forced me to go through the process of selling all of holdings.

Since the money had been distributed to all the kids and the grandkids got their share I noticed that the grandkids didn’t have time to visit grand parents as they did before they got their money.

We packed up everything we wanted to keep and shipped it to our new home.  Lucia was a widow and had been with us for five years now and we wanted her to go with us but she said she had other plans.  

She had been writing a man from her village who was a wine maker in Italy and he wanted to marry her but wanted her to return to Italy.  I told her if he would move to America I would see to it that he had a job.  

She wrote him and assured him that I was a man of my word and if he came I would take care of them.  I guess he was anxious to get her for he said he would be on the next boat.

I went to the area where we were moving to and was prepared for Nan and the kids coming.  They were to wait for Adamo’s (Lucia’s new man) arrival.

We had told him to bring some seeds with him for we wanted to plant a vineyard. Also I wanted him to try to get some cuttings from Bessie’s vineyard (which we finally sold) to see if they would grow so she could start some new vines at our new home.

I didn’t tell Nan or the kids but I had bought a valley for our new home and a new house was in the process of being built.  I also bought a nice home in the big city on the hill which was about forty miles from our country place.

All of this I was doing without talking to Nan about it in detail.

I thought “It don’t matter” or would it?