Marilyn Ruth Juett family stories.
Marilyn Ruth Loux (nee Juett; 1922 - 1999) was my Mother. She was the daughter of Bill (William Thomas) and Edie (Edith Violet) Juett and the sister of Billy and Margie Juett. She had 5 children (Pat, Ron, Nick, Kim and Janet). She was a strong, bright, spirited woman who perhaps was born decades too early.
As a child she suffered from rheumatic fever and spent a period in a convalescent home; from this disease she acquired mitral stenosis and was advised by physicians to not have children (she had 5). She once told me that she and boy in the convalescent home once were hungry and entered a room where they took a bite out of what turned out to be onions; they were caught and forced to eat the rest of the onions.
She grew up during the 1929 Great Depression and her father traveled the country seeking work. One story she told was that while her father was in St. Louis he promised God that if he acquired work, he would buy a chicken and invite a homeless person to share in the family meal. She said that as a little girl, she glared at the homeless person with each bite of the chicken. She also said that at one time they had a Jewish neighbor woman who when she saw Marilyn, would ask if she was hungry. The neighbor would then invite her in and feed her. She always admired the warmth that she saw in Jewish families. After getting to know my Jewish wife Jodi, she once described Jodi as the kind of woman who was “sometimes murdered but seldom deserted”.
She had a very strong sense of right and wrong. I recall she once made me promise that I would not pick on anyone smaller than me. She also had a strong sense of loyalty. I recall another story from the 50's where my parents went out with one of my father’s cousins. This cousin tanned very deeply. Marilyn was outraged when the cousin had to lift her skirt to prove that she was white in order to enter the facilities.
Due to a technicality she did not graduate from high school but she pushed all of her children to attend college. I eventually acquired a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She always encouraged me in my quest to become a scientist (I was a Sputnik child). There were only 3 reservations that she ever expressed about my pursuit of science: 1) she once ordered me to dispose of a dead, bloated reeking black snake that I brought home, 2) she objected strongly when I burned sulfur in the basement of our home, and 3) on another occasion, my friend Norman came to visit one day and set a piece of wet filter paper on the counter containing some black particles (ammonium triiodide). Norman advised my mother to not let the paper dry out. Needless to say she asked why and he explained that it was a contact explosive when it dried out (I also recall stories of a school principal who was mystified over the black specks in the school hallways that crackled when he stepped on them).
Likely because of her Baptist upbringing she was uncomfortable playing cards. This is interesting because she once had a job inspecting decks of playing cards and she was skilled at running a deck of cards along her arm. During World War II she had a job as “Rosie the riveter” at Wright Aeronautical (she was a drill press operator). I also recall that she explained to her children that they were not to have fun on Good Friday.
Aside from being almost entirely responsible for raising 5 children, Marilyn also enjoyed the telephone, painting, geneology, and collecting tchotchkes. The time that she spent on the telephone was legendary. On occasion my father would be exasperated because he would have to wait hours in order to place a telephone call to his home. At one time the family had a party line and she was unhappy because an unknown woman would listen to her telephone conversations and even occasionally chime in with: “Is that so!”. Several of her paintings were hung on the walls of our home. She had a rather extensive collection of ceramics in the house. Marilyn also played a more silent role in the initial creation of the family business Weather Rite/Weather Products, Incorporated. This business provided an upper middle class lifestyle for quite a few family members over three decades.
During the pre-internet days my mother had a strong interest in the history of her family. I recall numerous discussions with her about this topic. Her father was born on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee and she said that there was a distant family connection with President James K. Polk. Given that he was an acolyte of President Andrew Jackson, this connection might not be something that one today might wish to bandy about. She also said that there was a family connection with Morgan of Morgan’s Raiders during the Civil War. Unfortunately he was caught by the Union Army in Kentucky and was hung as a “horse thief”. She was very interested in a silk tiger hanging in the museum at Wright-Patterson Airforce base that was given to Col. John J. Juett by Chiang Kai-Shek for his services with the Flying Tigers in China. She was particularly fascinated by her paternal grandmother. Family history suggests that when her father was small, her Grandmother would give her children laudanum to quiet them down (laudanum was available over the counter in those days as was the original Coca Cola). Her Grandmother supposedly had been married 8 times and left the US after an incident where a banker invested $20,000 in an invention designed to administer hot oil from a comb. Although her father was estranged from his mother, my mother as a little girl recalled several occasions where the family would receive post cards from all over the world. As a little girl she dreamed on one day visiting these sights. She also told tales of friends and acquaintances. She talked about one acquaintance who had his teeth knocked out in order to eat after he acquired lockjaw. This may also be the same individual who recovered from paralyzed legs by packing them in mud from the Mississippi River. She had one dear, warm friend who was unlikely to have been invited to join Mensa. The friend once complained that she disliked her prescription suppositories because they made the roof of her mouth all greasy (she thought the prescription read oral cavity). Her friend’s son once went on a camping trip but forgot to bring toilet paper; he unfortunately employed poison ivy instead. This son also once wanted to attend his high school prom. My mother forced my older sister Pat to be his date. Prior to picking up my sister, he had gone to his barber. The barber had had an epileptic seizure and when the boy arrived at our house he had shoe polish on the back of his head. She had another friend who was astonished at becoming pregnant at the age of forty because among other things, she was on birth control pills. The friend later learned that her teenage daughter was dating and had been shaving aspirin tablets.
One day my father was about to enter the front door of our house on Kenton Avenue in Silverton when he heard a scream, a bang, another scream and two more bangs. My father ran down the basement stairs and saw my mother standing there holding a revolver. On the floor was a dead rat. My Mother said that was the last time that this rat was going to terrorize her. To her infinite relief, no harm came to her new washing machine. Clearly my mother exhibited the 4th cardinal rule of firearm safety: “know what you are shooting at and what is behind it”.
During World War II my father was stationed in the South Pacific and my Mother was living in an apartment along with her infant daughter Pat. One evening, a very fortunate home invader entered the apartment and my Mother told him to leave. He continued towards her and my Mother pulled the trigger on a revolver several times but nothing happened. At that point, a car pulled in illuminating the apartment and the man fled. When my father returned from the war he found several cartridges with indented primers in the revolver (from the firing pin); apparently those cartridges were too old for the primers to fire. This home invader was fortunate indeed.
Some considered my mother’s parents to be among the most powerful psychics in Cincinnati; my mother also had an interest in this topic. She was spiritual and believed that “all spokes lead to the hub”. My mother sometimes tired of preparing meals for a husband, five children and a dog and cat. There were occasions when my father was to return home from work and my mother would gather the children together. We were all to send thoughts to my father to pick up double decker sandwiches (a family favorite) from the Marathon Inn in Silverton. There were a number of times when my father would enter the house carrying bags from the Marathon Inn stating that it occurred to him to pick up sandwiches. He was never informed as to why people started to laugh.
My mother always sought dignity but there were times when life appeared to conspire against her. After my mother’s father died, her mother Edie (a nurse) brought my mother’s Uncle Frank into her home because his health was seriously deteriorating. He needed prophylactics for his medical care (in the age before adult diapers were available). At my grandmother’s request, my mother stopped in a pharmacy and ordered a gross of prophylactics. My mother never forgot the stares that she received from the pharmacist. On another occasion my mother was summoned to my brother’s grade school because of a poem he had written on a Valentine’s Day card (the school would not allow my brother to bring it home). My mother once spoke of a telephone call from a radio station in Cincinnati informing her that she had won a date with a Chippendale. My mother explained that she was a sixty year old grandmother and that she declined the prize.
After her divorce, my mother bought a two story house with the intention of renting the second story for income. She had only one tenant that she had to evict because the tenant was entertaining gentleman callers at all hours of the evening. She always said that she did not think that she would grow old gracefully but instead would have to fight every G D inch of the way.
Along with other women, I think Marilyn chaffed greatly over the role she was forced into as a 1940's homemaker. For example, she wanted to work and bring in money but my father’s viewpoint was that a working wife was proof that the man was unable to adequately support his family. My father was a workaholic and eventually there was a rather ugly divorce. Had she been born decades later I believe she would have been a high level professional.
