Pat, slowly becoming the interviewer, asked Mona how far back she could remember and she said, “As far back as I can remember was Halbert Street. I can remember going out in the rain and standing out in the rain while Mom and Pop was fighting or Pop was fighting Mom — which that was probably the way it was. But it takes two to make a fight or an argument. I don’t remember whatever started it. I just remember Pop being mean to Mom, and that was on 45th Street. And the next memory I have is at Ward Hollow. 337 37th Street, that was Ward Hollow. And the next one was at 17th Street. And the next one was back up on 45th Street.”

Pat said, “When they lived on 45th Street that time had to be about ’48, ’49.”

Mona agreed: “It was, because Ralph was a baby. My Ralph.”

Pat said, “Good or bad memories are you talking about?”

Mona kind of laughed and said, “They’re all bad but there had to been some good ones.”

I said, “Bad stuff is easiest to remember. Most history and everything is told in terms of bad things instead of good things. Usually, if you go along a highway, most highway markers that you see commemorate battles and tragedies.”

Mona said, “I remember some good times with Mom. I remember seeing a lot of movies.”

Pat said, “That’s what Larry said. Said you’d see movies while they played.”

Mona said, “Yeah. I can imagine how Mom worried, too. I couldn’t sit there with her. They didn’t let us go too far away.”

Mona said she mostly traveled with Ella as a girl but remembered going with Ed to Doc Holbrook’s office where she watched him reach into her father’s mouth with something that looked like a giant spoon and take out his tonsils. Ed said, “How long do I have to do this?” and Doc answered, “It’s over…” and then they started playing music.

I said, “Did your mom and dad usually play around a movie theatre?” and Mona said, “Seems to me like it might have been a block or two away from the movies but that wasn’t very far.”

I asked what kind of places Ed usually looked for when he first came into a town and she said, “Pop always looked for a courthouse square or a YMCA — something where they’d be a lot of people around. He played at the Catlettsburg Stock Yard a lot, him and Mom.”

We made small talk for a few minutes — the kind that often signals the end of a conversation — when Pat said to Mona, “What do you remember about your childhood other than those bad memories?”

“I remember Mom playing with me and me getting a wash pan and washing her face and her hands and her arms,” Mona said. “Just with Mom, you know. Lawrence and I would take turns doing dishes and cooking for Mom and Pop. I remember playing cowboys and Indians with the boys and they didn’t like me playing with them.”

Mona was apparently quite the tomboy when she was a young girl.

Pat said, “I told John about how harsh they were with you about keeping your dress down and sitting property.”

Mona said, “Yeah, they were. They was rough on me. There wasn’t any ‘Come here, let me have you,’ or no love. Always ‘You do this’ or ‘You do that.'”

Pat said she figured Lawrence had been right in on all that and Mona said, “Why, I’d a whipped Lawrence. You remember Mom sent Lawrence to get me one time — I don’t know where I was – and he said, ‘I can’t.’ She said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘She can whip me.'”

Pat said, “I’ve heard Mom tell that story. And he used to tattle on you.”

Mona said, “Yeah, he did. But I don’t know if I tattled on him or not. I don’t remember.”

A little later, when they were teenagers, Lawrence was so overprotective of Mona that he cut one of her boyfriends with a knife trying to run him away from the house. Ed was also hard on her boyfriends; he called one of them a “raggedy-ass-son-of-a-bitch.”

Mona told me about her memories of Ed in his later years.

“He retired from playing…period. I remember one time on 45th Street. I came over from South Point, where I lived, and I tried to get Pop to play some for me and Mom said, ‘He’ll never play no more. He’s quit.’ It was a long time after the divorce.”

I asked her if Ed had his beard at that time and she said, “Yes. I used to shave him with a straight razor under his beard. Trim it. He shaved hisself most of the time, but once in a while I’d shave him.”

She said Pop seldom took baths.

“He said it was a waste of water. He was like that guy that said too much bathing will weaken you.”