Straight Life by Art Pepper; Laurie Pepper Read Free Book Online Page B

... That probably explains how he was with Moham. My wife could never understand it. We'd go over to their house and here was his wife and his ex-wife sitting knitting on the same couch. The whole family stayed together all these years. That was very important to Moses.
    (Millie) Remember that time Moses wanted to buy some property? He was going to have him and Mommy [Thelma] live on the middle of that property. On one corner was going to be Junior and Patti; another corner, Bud [John's brother] and his wife, Aud; us in this corner. He was going to be ...
    (John) He was going to be the patriarch. He wanted to keep us together so we could always be in contact with one another, but there's one thing Moses didn't visualize, I don't believe, and that was such a fast-moving civilization coming up, going faster than he could think.
    Grandma Noble was a very, very-hahahaha!-stubborn and hardheaded woman, but you had to love her. Art lived with her, you see, and was under her domination more or less. Grandma had set ideas, same as Moses did, and when she told Art Junior, "I don't want you smoking! I don't want you doing this!" well, she expected to be obeyed, and Art, of course, didn't obey very easily. She was the same way with me, but I loved her very much because she did so much in trying to help me, although I didn't agree with the way she went about it. She tried to make me be industrious, clean living. She was a very good woman. Her ideas about young people probably coincided with mine in this modern day and age.
    Grandma and Moses fought hammer and tongs verbally, being both as stubborn and hardheaded as they were. They couldn't come to a meeting of the minds. Grandma didn't like the way Moses was living with some of the women he went around with. Moses was her son and she thought she had some control over him. Moses wouldn't conform at all. He paid her bills, made sure everything was there, furniture, food, but he didn't want her telling him what to do, the same way he wanted to tell other people what to do. It was a conflict constantly, always a friction.
    Moses always admired my mom when she was a young woman. He was in love with her for many years before they finally got married. My dad treated my mom very shabbily. And Moses didn't believe that a man should treat a woman shabbily. He could knock her down and kick her-that's fine-but he had to feed her and give her the necessities of life. With Shorty, he'd go down and work, longshoring, and leave Momma with no money. He'd spend it all in the bars. He wasn't like Moses. He wouldn't take care of the family first and then go drink it up. He'd spend all the money down there and come home broke. We didn't have food in the house.
    Dad left in 1939, '40, and Mom and Moses got together. He was always quite attracted to her, and he, in her eyes, was a good provider even though he drank and horsed around. He'd been divorced from Moham, oh years and years. In 1942, when I entered the navy, Mom told me he was staying at some hotel in San Francisco, so I went to see him before I shipped out. I woke him up in his hotel room; his gang was workin' up there. We spent one evening and all night together, and he told me, just before I left, he says, "Well, John, I'm gonna go back and marry your mom." And I says, "Well, that's okay with me, Moses. I hope you have a lot of fun."
    They started living together, and by the time I came back from the service, Momma could legally get married again. By that time, Moses was in his fifties, and he always treated my mom like a queen because he saw what my dad had done to her and to me, beat me up, threw me out. Moses loved kids, and the old man would beat the poop out of my brother Bud and I. Moses couldn't stand to see children mistreated, beat, and without food. And he brought us food, gosh yes! Moses'd come to the house and bring us food and sometimes clothing because my old man would feed us. all canned tomatoes and then he'd tell my mom, "Cook me up