Ties That Bind Read Online Free Page B

the time. Mother made it too, and the both of them indulged in their craft many nights. It was par for the course. Make it, drink it, and get stupid.
    They’d sell their stuff too, but not to just anyone. It had to be a friend or a friend of a friend. I guess someone got their nose out of joint because Daddy wouldn’t sell them any, and it resulted in someone ratting on him.
    The cops were called out to the pool hall. I overheard them questioning Daddy about it. Not realizing it get him arrested, I led them right to the stuff! Daddy always hid it under a loose floorboard. Seeing what was about to take place, Mother hid hers inside the wringer washing machine, full of water and suds!
    They hauled Daddy off to jail. I was crying and thought he’d be mad at me, but he wasn’t. He knew I didn’t mean to get him in trouble – I was just an innocent child thinking I was helping out.
    After he’d been at the jail for a few hours, I pleaded with Mother to take me to visit him. She mumbled some not very pleasant things about both Daddy and me. When she knew I wouldn’t stop crying until she did what I’d asked, she took me.
    Daddy wasn’t mad at me at all. Moreover, in fact, he asked the guards if I could stay and have dinner with him. Mother huffed and puffed about what an idiotic idea it was, but the guards obliged him and we had a very nice spaghetti and meatball dinner; complete with salad and garlic bread.
    They released Daddy the next day and not a word was ever mentioned about the moonshine, the cops, or the spaghetti dinner.
    I also recalled another time when Daddy had drunk too much of his moonshine; Mother made him sleep out in the car. I begged and pleaded with her to let him come inside, but that only made it worse for the both of us. She tried hard to break up our little pact, but it didn’t work. I loved him dearly, and the day he died, I lost the one and only real parent I knew loved me the way I loved them.
    Daddy would sit on the front porch and sing to me. Sometimes, my cousin, Whitey would play his guitar. Mother would come out, look at us with a stern face, and walk back inside as if to tell us we were bothering her. We didn’t stop. In fact, we sang even louder, and Whitey strummed his guitar with more force. We loved getting under her skin. If she’d only known what we said about her behind her back, she’d really have been angry!
    It was these flashbacks that made it hard to forget about my past. After a while, it had me wanting to pursue looking for my parents – or at least the truth surrounding my birth. The days in Iowa pulled me back there, like it or not.
     
    ***
     
    Thank goodness for technology and the invention of computers. Charles purchased one for the office and he encouraged me to use it. I was able to look up some things, like current events in Sioux City, birth announcements that had familiar names, and a host of other interesting things.
    The few things I could do with this new modern machine satisfied me to a certain extent, but as time went on I began feeling frustrated. About that time, the new computers came out with more speed and capability. I was very excited and began more in-depth searches.
    I looked up names I remembered, and I registered with genealogy databases and searched them for anything I could possibly connect to my past. I found census reports that listed Lyle and Irma along with me. I even found an earlier one that may have been my mother, Irma and a young child. The date would have put her around sixteen to eighteen years old. It showed the address as a convent in Sioux City. This really piqued my interest.
    I vaguely remembered hearing that she wanted to be a nun and that she married Daddy instead. I also recalled pictures of crosses, churches, and bibles placed on shelves, which seemed hypocritical to the non-Christian way she treated my daddy and me.
    I didn’t believe for a second that she really was ever a nun, or that she even joined the convent to be