From Chapter Two – Don’t Spare The Rod
Who blames an unborn child for the death of his brother? I can’t imagine, but that was the story told to me. My grandmother and namesake, Ada, Ma Potts to family, was five months pregnant with my father when she buried her firstborn son, Joseph Price, Jr. He was two years and forty-six days old. Always referred to as Little J.P., the only photos I have of him are on funeral postcards with his birth and death dates. Smallpox? Influenza? ‘One of those early childhood diseases that was deadly in West Texas back then,’ was the only explanation I ever heard my family make. Different family members have given varying accounts of his death. Nevertheless, all their stories indicated Ma Potts faulted my father for Little J.P.’s death. And that’s a helluva way to enter this world.
So, John Riley Potts’ birth on July 15, 1917, was not the joyous occasion it should have been, but hard to bear in the midst of Ma Potts’ mourning. Older sisters Roxie and Rubie helped care for Pop, while Ma Potts’ family cared for her. Two years later, her joy returned with the birth of her third son, Judge Claude, or Jack, to the family. Uncle Jack’s arrival made everything right in Ma Potts’ world, then and throughout her life.
The Potts’ home slowly got back to normal in the tiny Texas town of Roby. By 1920, my grandfather, Joe, known to the family as Pa Potts, was the Fisher County Treasurer. Ma Potts had Uncle Jack to care for, and Aunt Roxie and Aunt Rubie began taking my three-year-old father to school with them. Watching the neglect of Ma Potts and fearing abuse from Pa Potts, the ever-protective sisters did not want to leave tiny John at home. So, off he went – the tiny boy tagging along to the tiny school in the tiny town.
Pa Potts provided a comfortable home for his family, but he was a harsh disciplinarian. Whether it was how he had been raised or his handicap, I don’t know, but he was downright mean. He was a handsome, educated, God-fearing businessman who operated on one leg and a wooden crutch. Late 19th-century West Texas was not on the cutting edge of medical facilities or treatment when he lost his leg to tuberculosis of the bone, ironically named Pott’s disease.
With his wooden crutch under one arm, Pa Potts’s other arm wielded a brutal leather razor strap on his children in the name of his Church of Christ God or at the provocation of Ma Potts. The rod was not spared, and punishments were severe. When tiny Aunt Rubie admitted her fear of the dark, Pa Potts locked her out of the house at bedtime. Only after he fell asleep did older sister Roxie help Rubie back into the house through their bedroom window.
The War In My Bones 