Jesse James

I married a man who wanted to be like Jesse James the famous outlaw of the Old West. He did not realize it. He wanted what he thought of as an exciting life.

The father of my children was not a large man. When we got married we were the same height. He grew a couple more inches as the years went by.

So he had that feisty temperament often attributed to small people. No remark was ever too slight to elicit an angry response from him. If he was lucky a fight would erupt.

Because he was an alcoholic he was often at the bar. You have no idea how many times he would call me and say, "They are picking on me!"

Of course me being the great enabler that I am I would rush to the bar to break up the fight.

There would be my husband and another man (often a friend of his) rolling on the ground and hitting each other. I would break up the fight. My husband would stand up and clap the other guy on the back and say, "That was a good fight. You want a beer?"

How can you be angry enough to fight with someone and then want to have a drink with him? I really would like to know.

So I would go back home. The combatants would go back into the bar to drink some more.

My husband liked to draw a gun on people. He is lucky he never hurt anyone.

My sister-in-law was still in shock as she told us of the time soon after my mother-in-law died that she got a call from the farm. My ez-husband moved there when Mom died. To a friend he rented the trailer house of another sister (who had died a few years before). It was across the driveway from the farmhouse.

He called my sister-in-law to tell her that he was fighting with his friend. He told his friend to move out immediately.

A gunfight ensued. No one was hurt. Both men felt big and bad and probably had a beer together. By this time we had been divorced for years so I was not a part of any of this.

When my sister-in-law was telling two of my sons about the incident they both chuckled and said, "That;s my dad." They were used to his erratic behavior.