My Memorial to My Grandfather: part 10

Oscar was dumbstruck.  He knew not what to think – or how he should even react.  These revelations left him stymied into wondering, his mind meandering about as to what the two of them should now do.

It was Anna Jane who pointed out the one option available to them was farming the land.  Farm the land.  Do what your family expects you to do; and wait for other opportunities to develop.  Who knows what might happen in a year?  If one keeps their eyes open and their ears alert, anything could be possible.

She suggested he write his former partner in Greeley, and she would write her brother in Long Beach just to see if any new opportunities might have developed in the short time since they were there – not the same jobs to return to, but positions that would prove a step up from what both formerly held.  And if not, they would keep writing; they would keep asking; they would keep seeking until something came into view that would prove fruitful.

In the meantime, they would farm the land as his family and neighbors wanted; and Oscar would use whatever free time might come to work on the garage.  The horizon which offered such potential in the past was all clouded over with the vast emptiness of the Kansas prairie.  Oscar couldn’t see it himself for the first time.  He could see nothing but the manacles his family fastened about his feet.  He wanted to run, but where could he run?  He hoped these letters Anna Jane spoke of writing would amount to something; but seriously, he doubted it.  He was a farmer, after all.

They wrote the letters; and Oscar was right that nothing would come of them.  The jobs both of them held were, of course, filled; and the only jobs available elsewhere were similar jobs of same pay and status.  He knew Anna Jane was right, and they just needed to play the hand they were dealt to see where it might lead.

As time progressed, things began to settle down.  Anna Jane gave birth to their first child in March of 1925, a son by the name of Dean Olen.  She conceived a second time, two years later, in April of 1927, to a second son, this time named Gene Oscar.  Three additional children followed over the course of the next seven years with Rosalie in 1929, Naomi Lu in 1932, and James Burton in 1934, the namesake for Oscar’s father whom his mother expected one of her children to name.

Emma Ann Holt Sexton gave birth to seven children; and from those seven children, she was given twenty grandchildren, none of whom were named after her husband, who was named after his father, until this final child of Oscar and Anna Jane.