Chapter VIII – Not Having a Home to Call His Own
Not long after Anthony moved in with my parents he became very active in sports. Playing sports seemed to keep him occupied so he didn’t tear things up as much. He played basketball, football, baseball, and was on the swim team. Not only did Anthony become active in those sports but he spent hours and hours fishing. You could give Anthony a fishing pole and a place to fish and you wouldn’t see him for the entire day.
However, if Anthony wasn’t in a sport of some type he would continue to tear things up. Mother was very concerned about him and started doing research on this type of behavior. She came to the conclusion Anthony may have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and suggested we take him to a doctor. We made an appointment and sure enough he did. The doctor prescribed him Ritalin and explained to us as long as he was taking these pills they would stunt his growth and once he got off of them he would gain a lot of weight. Mother and I decided if it would stop him from tearing things up he needed to be on it. Once Anthony started taking Ritalin, he calmed down tremendously and it was a huge relief to us all.
On May 3rd, 1993 Anthony turned six years old and less than a month later on June 1st I gave birth to my second son Kevin Michael. Anthony now had an older brother and a younger brother. You could tell Anthony was very proud of his baby brother and loved him dearly.
When Anthony was seven, Timmy’s job transferred us to Tupelo, MS and gave us two weeks in which to move. Tupelo was four hours away from my parents so I wasn’t very happy about this. Since we only had two weeks in which to move, Timmy and I went that weekend to see if we could find a place to live and we did. On the drive home I started having back pain and I knew this feeling all too well. We were in his truck so needless to say the four hour ride home was uncomfortable. When we were almost home I asked Timmy to stop by the neighborhood grocery store. He thought I was going in to get something to relieve my back pain but instead I bought a pregnancy test and sure enough it was positive. I was going to have another baby. I cried and cried because I wasn’t ready for another baby. Not now, we were in the process of moving and Kevin was barely a year old. What was I going to do?
As I mentioned before we only had two weeks left in Pearl and I didn’t want to tell Anthony because I knew how hard this was going to be on him. His mother was no longer going to be right up the road, she was going to be four hours away. Not only that but she was going to have another baby. Our family was growing rapidly. The days of me singing to him in the bathroom floor while I got ready for work were long gone.
To my surprise Anthony wanted to move to Tupelo with us and I was very excited about this decision. He’d been living with my parents a little over a year now and his behavior had changed a lot. I spoke to Timmy about this and he was fine with it. Once again I’d have my entire family together and I couldn’t wait.
Timmy was a construction worker and the reason he was transferred to Tupelo was because there were new bridges that needed to be built and old ones that needed to be blown up. One day Timmy told me around 7:00 p.m. they were going to blow up a bridge about four miles up the road from our house. We may be able to feel the explosion so not to panic if the trailer shook. I didn’t think anything else about it and sure enough around 7:00 p.m. there was an explosion so big it shook the trailer.
The next thing I knew Anthony was running down the hall with his pants around his ankles yelling, “Did you feel that???!!! Did you feel that???!!!” He was on the toilet at the time of the explosion. I started laughing so hard I was crying. He said, “Mom that wasn’t funny!!!” I said, “Yes it was I forgot to tell you your father was blowing up a bridge tonight and you might feel the explosion.” After he realized we were fine, he started laughing too.
Once I found out the child I was carrying was going to be yet another boy I let Kevin name his baby brother. Kevin came up with the name Brett and my mother came up with the name Harmon (a family name) so Brett Harmon it was.
On June 6, 1993, six days after Kevin’s second birthday, Brett was born. We now had four sons ages eleven, eight, two, and a newborn. God help us all!
At first things were going well then out of the blue Tyler started bullying Anthony, I wasn’t really sure why this was happening. Anthony was twice Tyler’s size and he wouldn’t fight back, instead he would do whatever Tyler told him to. When they’d be outside playing I’d look out the window and see Tyler pushing Anthony around. This made me very mad because Anthony was so much bigger than Tyler but he wouldn’t do anything about it. I told Anthony repeatedly to take up for himself but he wouldn’t.
Finally after months of telling Anthony it was okay to fight back he did. Sometimes they would start fighting outside and other times they would start fighting in the house. If they started fighting in the house I would open the front door and tell them to take the fighting outside because they weren’t going to fight in the house. How redneck was that having my two older boys fighting in the front yard?
At this point not only Tyler and Anthony were fighting but Timmy and I were fighting a lot as well. The bad thing was Timmy and I fought in front of the boys and we never should’ve done that. I’d get mad at him for coming home with liquor on his breath or for coming home and going to sleep and not helping me with the boys.
One day I was in the kitchen cooking super when Tyler and Anthony came busting in the front door. Anthony was holding his head and blood was running through his fingers and down his arm. I asked him what happened and he moved his hand from his head. His head had a very big gash in it and was bleeding pretty good. I asked the boys what happened and here is what Anthony told me, “Mom, Tyler and I were running through the woods. Tyler picked up a huge stick and started running towards me. I was running towards him also. When we got close to each other, the stick went in my head and now it is bleeding.” I looked at the gash again and realized Anthony needed stitches but we had no insurance and with six people in our family and only one income, we couldn’t afford a hospital bill. Realizing we couldn’t pay for stitches, I leaned Anthony over the kitchen sink and pinched the wound together and told him to stand there and hold the wound together until I told him he could let go. Once I saw the bleeding had stopped and thought it would be okay for him to let go, I told him he could go play. Believe it or not, that worked and until the day he died, he had this huge long scar on the top of his head. If you look close on the right side of his graduation picture, you will see the scar.
When Timmy, the boys and I lived in Tupelo we had a neighbor that offered Anthony and Tyler cigarettes. Not only that but he got Anthony, at the age of seven, to start dipping. The way we found this out was because Timmy’s cigarettes kept disappearing. Timmy kept telling me it had to be either Anthony or Tyler of both because Kevin and Brett were way too young to smoke. One day Timmy decided we were going to find out which boy was taking his cigarettes. He took Tyler to the truck and gave him a cigarette to smoke while I took Anthony on the front steps and gave him a cigarette to smoke. To my surprise, Anthony just smoked away. He was a pro at it inhaling and all. Timmy told me Tyler took one puff off of the cigarette and turned green. We then knew it was Anthony taking Timmy’s cigarettes and punished him for it. Well Anthony wasn’t the only one stealing the cigarettes so he told on Tyler. He said, “I don’t know how Tyler faked turning green but he has been stealing them too.” Busted!!!
Anthony was a little pyromaniac he loved to play with fire. One day Timmy and I came home from work and in our bedroom we could smell something burning. We searched and searched but couldn’t find it. A couple of hours later I happened to notice a piece of toilet tissue behind my cedar chest at the foot of our bed. I pulled it out and to my surprise it was burned on one end. I asked Anthony why he did that and his answer was, “Because I wanted to watch it burn. When I heard you and Timmy come in I had to get rid of it so I threw it behind the cedar chest.” He could’ve burned our house down. Scary!!!
My favorite story was when Anthony told Timmy about the big rat in the house. Timmy was asleep in our bedroom one day and Anthony came in the room yelling, “Dad wake up because there is a big rat in the house!!!” Timmy said, “Boy leave me alone there is no big rat in the house. Go play.” Then Timmy rolled over. Anthony again said, “Dad wake up there is a big rat in the house and it is behind your dresser!!!” Timmy opened his eyes to look at the dresser and sure enough he could see a very long tail sticking out from behind the dresser. Timmy got up and walked over to the dresser. Whatever the animal was this tail belonged to was in our dresser drawer. Timmy opened the dresser drawer to find a baby opossum looking at him. He told Anthony to go get the broom and he shooed the opossum outside. Once the opossum was outside, Anthony looked up at Timmy and said, “See I told you there was a big rat in the house.”
Because we had so many children, I was a stay at home mom and I’d look forward to Timmy coming home evenings and weekends to help me with the boys. I remember the first weekend Timmy didn’t come home. He usually came home around 5:00 p.m. and no later than 7:00 p.m. This particular night it was 10:00 p.m., Timmy wasn’t at home and I hadn’t heard from him so I became very worried. I called his boss and woke him up to ask him if he knew where Timmy was. His boss was very upset with me for waking him up and told me he didn’t know where Timmy was. I became even more concerned at that moment. Then it dawned on me, Timmy and I were fighting that morning when he left for work so I began to wonder if by some chance he had driven to Wynne and not told me. Wynne was a three hour drive from our house so he had plenty of time to get there by then. I called his mother, Louise, and sure enough Timmy had gone to Wynne and hadn’t had the decency to call me and let me know. How dare him drive to Wynne for the weekend and leave me there alone with all four boys! Talk about angry. That anger towards Timmy would flow over to the boys so they got the short end of the deal and it wasn’t their fault at all. This was just the first of several times he would do this to me.
Because I was overloaded with Tyler and Anthony fighting along with Timmy and me fighting plus trying to take care of two babies, Anthony ended up moving back to Jackson to live with my parents. Anthony would stay with us during the summer months because mother needed a break from him and I wanted to spend time with him.
When Anthony would stay with us I’d take him off of Ritalin because he didn’t need to concentrate on anything and this would allow him to start growing again. However, he’d gain a lot of weight over the summer and my mother would get upset with me for allowing him to get so big.
During the school year Anthony would go back to my parent’s house and mother would put him back on Ritalin so he could concentrate in class. The Ritalin would wear off around 4:00 p.m. because it would only last for eight hours. Mother would get home from work around 5:30 p.m. so if Anthony didn’t do his homework as soon as he came in from school it would be very hard to get him to settle down and concentrate.
There were times when Mother would be at her wits end because Anthony wouldn’t do his homework so she’d call me and ask me to talk to him. I’m not really sure what I could do from four hours away but she would put him on the phone. I’d explain to him he was going to have to settle down and do his homework because my mother had a long hard day at work and she didn’t need to have to babysit him and make him do his homework. Somehow it always worked and he’d settle down.
In 1992 Timmy was transferred back to Pearl so we moved yet again. This time Anthony came to live with us because we were close to my parent’s house and he could visit them on a regular basis. It was as if he was torn between two houses all his life. He loved his grandparents and being an only child but he also loved his mother and his two younger brothers. What to do? What to do?
At the time of our move, Anthony was in the 4th grade in Brandon schools. Since he came to live with us in Pearl he’d no longer be in the same school district so we had to enroll him in a different school. When I went to enroll him the principal said his grades weren’t good and gave him the option to stay in the fourth grade or go back to the third grade. I explained to him the advantages and disadvantages of both grades and let him make his own decision as to what grade he wanted to be in. The entire time he was making his decision I was silently praying he’d go back to the third grade so he wouldn’t have to struggle so hard in order to pass. Thank goodness he chose to go back to the third grade because this decision would make his life as well as ours a whole lot easier.
We lived just outside of Pearl on this beautiful piece of shaded property with a ditch that ran behind it. The ditch was very deep but most of the time it was dry and the boys could play in it. However, if it rained the ditch would fill up with water and was very deep so the boys were not allowed to play in it at that time.
One day after a heavy rain all four boys went outside to play and I told them they weren’t to go near the ditch or they’d get in trouble. A little while later there was a knock on the back door and I opened the door. There were no stairs going to the back door so I was a little curious as to why the kids were knocking on it. When I opened the door Tyler handed Brett up to me, Brett was muddy and wet and when I looked down at Anthony so was he. I immediately started yelling at Anthony and told him I told them to stay away from the ditch. The whole time I was yelling at Anthony Tyler was yelling at me. I finally heard what Tyler was saying. He told me that Brett, a little over a year old, was riding the big wheel when he hit a rock and flew over the handlebars into the ditch. He went under the water and Anthony immediately jumped in after him. Needless to say, my mouth was wide open and I felt like a heel. Anthony told me the water was so muddy he couldn’t see Brett. He was feeling around in the water until he felt him and then he pulled him up out of the water. I thanked Anthony for saving his brother’s life and apologized to Anthony for yelling at him. I cleaned Brett up and he went back outside with the other boys and continued playing.
Somewhere between the fourth grade and sixth grade Anthony moved back in with my parents. During his sixth grade year, Anthony went to the YMCA after school. Wyatt, this boy that lived down the street from my mother went there as well. When you put the two of them together it usually meant trouble.
One day while at the YMCA Wyatt and Anthony were in the boy’s bathroom and got this wild hair to crawl up in the ceiling and spy on the ladies in the kitchen. Anthony went first, as usual, and jumped up on the wall between the stalls and climb up through the tiles in to the ceiling. Once Wyatt saw Anthony up there he backed down because he knew what was coming and he wanted to witness it firsthand. You see Anthony was not skinny by no means and with all that weight on the ceiling tiles it was just a matter of time before he came tumbling down. Wyatt ran to the kitchen and made it there just in time to see Anthony fall through the ceiling. Wyatt was on the floor he was laughing so hard. Thank goodness Anthony didn’t get hurt. They asked Mother to pay for the damages and she refused to. She told them they should be watching their children better.
There was another time Anthony was at the YMCA minding his own business digging a hole in the sand and this little black girl kept calling him fat. Each time she’d call him fat he’d get madder and madder and the hole would get bigger and bigger. Finally he’d had enough and warned her if she called him fat again she was going to be sorry. Sure enough she called him fat again. This was more than he was willing to take so he took her by the back of the neck and threw her head in the hole he’d been digging and covered her head up with sand. The counselor saw what was happening, ran to the little girl’s rescue and scolded Anthony. Anthony didn’t care if he got in trouble or not he was mad at her for calling him fat and he was going to make sure she never did it again. Guess what? Lesson learned she never called him fat again.
As you can see, Anthony was a handful for all of us. For the biggest part as soon as he got home from school Anthony would go outside and play without doing his homework first. There were many times after work my mother would circle and circle the neighborhood looking for Anthony but couldn’t find him. Anthony knew she’d come looking for him when she’d get home and he didn’t want to go home because that meant he had to do his homework. He’d go to Wyatt’s house and he and Wyatt would sit on Wyatt’s roof and watch my mother drive around the block time after time looking for him. They both thought this was the funniest thing because they could see her and she couldn’t see them.
One of Anthony’s favorite places in the entire world was the deer camp. My parents had a trailer there and that is where they spent a lot of time. Anthony was ten years old when he killed his first deer, it was a young buck. The buck was a spike and Anthony was so proud of himself as was my father. They were both very excited until my father realized Anthony had killed a spike and it was doe season. This meant Anthony would have to pay a $50.00 fine for killing a buck out of season. Anthony didn’t care about the fine because he’d killed his first deer and it was a spike weighing 95 lbs. Woot! Woot!
As you can imagine there were a lot of snakes at the deer camp, especially rattle snakes. One day while riding a four-wheeler and playing around, Anthony came upon a rattle snake which he shot and killed. He was so proud of killing that snake he took it home, put it on my father’s tail gate, stretched it out from end to end and took pictures of it. He then held it up because it was almost as long as he was and took more pictures of it. When he got finished taking pictures of the snake he cut off the rattle and put it in a Ziploc bag for keeping. He’d also cut off the tails of the squirrels he would kill and put them in a Ziploc bag. Gross!!!
Anthony’s life had become turmoil. Within two years we’d gone from the two of us to six of us, he had a father and three new brothers now. Not only that but he spent most of his younger years moving from one house to the other, time and time again. I couldn’t imagine how hard that must have been on him. At least with my parents he had a stable environment. With me we never knew where we were going to be living plus there were too many of us for him to get the one on one attention he needed. These people had taken his mother away from him and I didn’t even see it because I was too busy raising a family, without my first born son.