"I am a good mind to knock you in the head with this mop handle"

(Mama Atwood had her grown children living with her from time to time when they were struggling to make a living after the Depression.  One day she tangled with her oldest son Edward who was already married to Laura Fischer.)

****You know for over a week he had been eating on me.  And I didn’t like that and was mad because he grumbeled at what I had to eat Sunday.  So he was fixing to take Bud to Sipe Springs and I got through in the kitchen and went into the room where he was & he was sitting on the side of the (bed) with his feet in Laura’s lap & she pollishing his shoes.  I said Well I’ll be durned & Sat down like I was exasperated to death.  And told him I had never pollished my shoes where Frank Thurston Harrold or Jack Rambo was and here he was having his wife pollish his now I am compairing you to Jack Rambo.  He didn’t say a thing.

Laura is doing Ruth's work including Washing & Ironing with mine thrown in for their board.  And the folering day after I told hiim the above I was down on my knees mopping the dust up under the radio and it was playing.  He was just getting up and told me twice to tell Laura to come there.  She was out in Ruth’s kitchen busy.  

I reached up and turned down the radio so I could hear him.  And said what he said never mind rough like and called her and told her to give him his pants.  and when he did I let out on him.  I said I am a good mind to knock you in the head with this mop handle.  The idea of a lazy man calling his wife away from her work to get anything within four steps of him.  and that he wasn’t reared to have anyone get his things for him.  He just looked up at me and said he didn’t know where they was.  

But I told him  he had an Idea where they was.  See he had just told me his old weak mother to get up off her knees and go tell her.  I said nothing about that though.  But if Frank or Thurston had heard him they would have told him to wait on himself.  Well anyway, he helped Laura that day dried dishes etc. and got out and worked in the yard and watered flowers etc . and has worked some every day since even to trying to saw down one of those big mesquite trees with a hand saw.