Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
Diane discusses her background and family history. She talks about her parents, her mother's difficult life in Mexico, her father's disappearance, and the challenges her family faced after losing their home. Diane recalls specific memories of her father and the struggles they went through after he left. She also mentions her father's military service and the near-death experience he had during World War II. Thank you for her life in Jesus' name, Amen. So Diane, let's just kind of get a little background. The background is when did we meet each other? Do you remember when that was? What year did you go to Agnes' place? Well, if Jamie was here, he would give you the date and the time. I was 19. I'm 61 now. I think it was about 1981. Okay. That's what I think. I think you came... When did you guys get married? We got married... well, we're going on our 40th anniversary this year. Same as Gordon. Gordon, ours is our 30th. So you got married in 1984. Okay. So, okay, so cool. You don't have to know exact dates or anything. We can always fill that in later. And again, what we're doing is we're taking what you're saying and we're going to try to describe it. So I think the biggest... should we start when you were a kid? What do you remember? Yeah, I remember as a kid, abandonment. So was your mom and dad both together? My mom is from Mexico, and my dad married her, met her in Mexico. They married, and then my mom came to the United States. Okay. And then my sister was born in Mexicali, and then my mom, apparently at that time, they did not allow you to speak your language. Okay. So my mother, she was forced to speak English, which was good because she was in the United States. Right. And so she spoke English with my siblings and myself. Except when she was upset. When she was upset, you, the whole, everybody knew that. Everybody knew that. And she said it all in Spanish. And you somehow understood all of her Spanish when she was upset. Yeah, you know they weren't good words. What's your sister's name again? Judy. Oh, that's right, Judy. And then it's just the two of you? No, Judy, then Harvey, then myself, and then my brother Steven. Okay. Yeah. And before I was born, my mom had a miscarriage and lost twins. Oh. Because my mother is actually a twin. Okay. But her twin died at birth. Oh, wow. And she lived. Yes. Wow. She lived, and her mother, she died when my mother was eight months. And it was a deliberate death. Somebody, they think maybe poisoned her or something. Wow. Because her first husband, she had eight kids with my grandmother that I've never met. Yeah. Had eight children. And my mother, her first husband was kicked by a horse and bled to death. And she was left with the eight children. They had a ranch, and my grandma got involved with a married man, which was the father of my mother. And his wife was out to kill my mother and to kill her mother. Right. Which my mom was approached even with guns. So wait a minute. So this woman that, okay, so your grandmother had an adulterous relationship, and the wife of that man wanted to kill your grandmother and the mother? And my mother. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Uh-huh. And many times my mom had to escape death. Uh-huh. And even a hitman came to her and said, if you pay me more, I won't kill you. And my mother was just, had such a hard life, she just said do it. And he just shook, she said his hands shook, and he ran off. Shortly after that, my mom left that part of Mexico. I don't blame her. I think I'd leave it too. Yeah, and that's when she met my father. Uh-huh. My dad was in his late 40s, and my mother was 19. Oh. Wow. Well. Yeah. So I think they looked for like, you know, like an image of a father maybe. Right, right, right. But she met my dad. My dad had a lumber company going into San Luis. Okay. Which was the aunt that I rented her house behind her house. Right, I remember that. When we did, when I lived there later on. Right, after you and Jamie got married. Yes. I remember that. Or before we got married. I remember that. Yeah. Uh-huh. So was he, he was from Arizona or? He was from Texas. So he, your dad was from Texas, but when you had that place in San Luis, was he living? He was living in Colectico, and he was transporting lumber. Uh-huh. And then, yeah. So then, so when your mom and he, your mom got married. Got married. She moved to the United States to start a life. With someone? Yes. In Victorville. Uh-huh. I was there when there was one grocery store in Victorville. So you're a Victorville girl. And then, my father had a roofing company. Okay. And he also had a wholesale, he called it Maria, which was my mother's name is Maria Del Carmen. Uh-huh. And he called it Maria. Uh-huh. Wholesale. And he would sell roofing material. Okay. And they had four children, which I'm the third. Uh-huh. And then he, I heard that my dad was a gambler. Okay. Yeah. And he had done roofs, roofs for the military base. Uh-huh. And they made a mistake in the wrong material, and my dad lost everything, went bankrupt. Wow. And I guess the only way he thought was the best decision, because he owed the IRS so much money. Right. Was just to give my mom $200, and he packed his bag, and he left in a car, that was our family car, and I never saw him again. So you didn't know if he was alive, you didn't know what happened. Later on, when I was, I think I was 14 years old, we received a telegram, and it had a picture of glasses in the road with a circle around it. I guess he had been hit by a car. And he was living in Calexico, and had a fruit company, fruit stand, and he remarried illegally. Wow. Yeah. But when a relative sent us that newspaper, I remember my dad's glasses, you know. Uh-huh. And those were the glasses he would wear. And so my mom went to, my dad was in military, he was in World War II. Oh, really? Okay. And actually, there's a story my mom told me. Okay, tell me about it. And I didn't find it out until years later, but my dad was on a Navy ship, and all of his brothers went to the Navy. Right. And my dad was a very, very good shooter. He was so good that he ran one of the machineries that are on the side of the ship. I thought it was a machine gun or something. Yeah, something that's connected, I think, to the ship. Right. But she said that it was when Japan, you know, they were fighting Japan, huh? Uh-huh. And Japan actually sent a ship, no, I'm sorry, an airplane that actually hit the ship. Yeah. And actually, my brother, my dad got shot. They just nicked him. And he went, and they treated him, she said, and they put him right back out because he was so good. He was a good shooter. Uh-huh. And at that time, they lost control of the ship, and they floated without communication. They lost communication. Wow. They were out of food. And, oh, I think she said they had some rice, and they had the water, the water that they would get from the ocean, I guess. And they knew they were gone because the ammunition was just about out. Right. And, oh, there's the fight. And then Japan kept attacking them. Wow. Wow. So, all of a sudden, my mom said they saw a cargo ship the United States had located them. Cargo plane. Cargo plane. Wow. And they started dropping supplies. Oh, my God. And they all got on their knees. Wow. My mom said, my father said they all got on their knees, and they started thanking God and their lives were saved because they were this close to death. That is absolutely incredible. What a story. And that I found out years later before my mother passed away. I wished I had more, had taken more time with my mother to know more. Right. But, so what was your father's name? Monty Curtis Watson. Monty? Monty Curtis Watson. Uh-huh. And his brothers all came back from the war. Right. And the next day, his, one of his brothers, I think the youngest one, was drinking and got in a fight with his wife and took off and somehow the car turned over. He was going too fast. I don't know. He died. Can you imagine? He survived the war and when he got back the next, I think it was the next day or something. So he survived the war, he survived what happened to the plane, got on his knees and prayed, got home the next day. Yeah, his brother. Wow. Yeah. Well, I don't know if he was actually on the same ship as my dad. Yeah. But my dad was on that ship. Yeah. So what do you remember about your dad? I remember that, I only remember two things about my dad, but maybe three. One, he had dandruff and he would sit in the chair and pay me a quarter to comb it through. And then I remember one time my mom had, my dad had picked up tamales at a Mexican restaurant and brought them home and they didn't give us the amount we should have had. And I remember I was crying because I wanted my extra tamales. And my dad got so upset, he said, you better cram that down your mouth or you're going to die. And he told me, you better do it very quickly. You better cram that in your mouth or you're going to get spanked. And I remember that, I remember. And then I remember the day he left in the car and took off. So how old were you when he left? Probably six. I had a little brother, he was only like, I don't know, maybe six months, I'm not sure. He was a baby when my dad left. And never communicated with us, never called, never sent a letter, nothing. My mom thought, he thought it was better off that he didn't come around because he owed the IRS money. And he didn't, I guess he didn't think he could give us a future. So I remember the bank coming to possess everything that we owned because we owned a house at that time. And the gentleman, the bank felt sorry for my mother, so he said, you can keep the truck. It was an old truck. And then we moved from the riches to the board. Wow. Yeah. So they took the house, they took everything. They gave us a few little things. Yeah. Yeah. A furniture, a few things. So you lived in a nicer part of like Victorville, and then you moved to a not so nice part of Victorville. Yes. To a very poor, I remember seeing poop on the wall, cocks in those shoes. So were you like in an apartment or something? No, my mom had a friend, a Mexican friend. My mom, all her friends were Mexicans, of course. And she rented my mom that house. Okay, so she rented the house to her. Yeah, it was in a pretty bad area. Wow. So how old were you at that time? What do you think? Eight years old or something. Probably. Seven? Seven. Probably close to right after when your dad left. That's probably when they came into the house. That's been hard. I remember coming home and seeing my mother's eyes just so swollen from crying. And then she applied for welfare because that was how we could survive. So I remember that, and I remember being so happy when we would go to bars to pick up our commodities. So what was your favorite commodity? The canned meat. Because we used to make chicken tacos, beef tacos. Then we would get the cheese. Oh, I didn't like that cheese. The cheese. And my mom would clean houses and she would iron clothes. And then she did get a job in Motel 6, but she had hernia. And she would get very bad migraine headaches. And those migraine headaches would put her in bed for a week where we couldn't make any noise. And she couldn't have any light. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And who cooked when that happened? You know what? I remember my mom cooking. I don't know. I remember we would just make our little foods too, you know. But I remember she used to make homemade tortillas and she would make a whole bunch. And the beans and the rice. I didn't know what vegetables were. Because I guess my mom never raised us or maybe she didn't know. But I would go to the grocery store and I thought cauliflower was unprocessed cauliflower. Really? Really? Uh-huh. Oh, that's a good idea. And broccoli, I didn't know what broccoli was, you know. So when I was 16, I went to a party and they had a vegetable platter out. And that's when I experienced eating such vegetables. And then I would save my money that I would get because I was not a sweet person. I didn't really care for sweets. Right. And I would buy vegetables with my money. So I learned how to steam it and then I learned how to put the butter in it. And it tasted so good. I just enjoyed it. And then when I went to Summer Haven, that's when I learned about spinach. I learned about all different types of vegetables because I never knew about them or knew how to cook them or how to eat them. Wow. Yeah. That's really neat. Yeah. So how were you in school when you were little? In school, I think I had a mental block because maybe trauma as a child, you know, with my fear of death. Right. And then I would have like a lot of dreams. And I was thinking my dad was a hobo out there or I would always look as a homeless thinking maybe I could find my dad. Wow. But when we found out that he had been killed, then it brought that relief like, okay, I know where he's at. Right. So when my mom went to file claims because he was a veteran. Right. And we could receive benefits. Right. They said, oh, you're the real wife because my mom had all the information. She never divorced my dad and she never remarried. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. So then I remember we were so happy because we got to get clothes. Because we would have two sets of clothing. Wow. So we had clothes and we didn't keep switching them. That was really nice. So you asked me another question before that. What was that? School. How was school? School. I was always in special classes in speech as well because my mom, her first language was Spanish. Spanish, right. So there was many words I could not say in English because I was taught the way she taught me. She couldn't say it the right way. So that's the way I would say it. Right, right. So I had a difficulty. I had a mental block there. I was always in special classes and speech classes. Oh, wait. Hold on. Hold that thought. You just wait until I'm finished in the bathroom. Okay. Because some of those words are hard to get rid of. Like toilet flushing and stuff like that are hard to get rid of. Hey. Toilet flushing and stuff are hard to get rid of. So just make sure I keep my back. Are you going to go back in the house or are you going to stay in your room or what? I'm going to leave. So now you told me that at 12 o'clock I was supposed to leave. And so I'm just sitting. Is all the food ready in there? We're ready to eat. All right, so we're going to go ahead. So you went to special classes, speech classes particularly. Yeah. Just like, you know, I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. Just like, you know, there's programs that they have for kids that have like reading disabilities, spelling, speech, probably everything you could think of. Right. Right. Right. So did that make you feel bad or did you even pay attention to it or what? Well, my sister is very bright. She became a teacher. Right. And growing up with a mother that had a lot of problems, I remember my mom like swallowing her tongue, having to call ambulances, she had like seizures or something? Nervous breakdown. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. And then she would be in bed, you know, weeks at a time sometimes. And I don't think she knew how to be a mother. Right. Right. Yeah. I don't know when I look, I think I, it was different for me than my brothers and my sisters for some reason. I don't know why. But I remember my mom saying, I wish you were never born. I never wanted you. I never wanted a girl. And I think back, what did she go through? As a woman. Right. As a young girl. She didn't want that to happen. But at the time you don't think that way. Yeah. At the time you think it's rejection. Right. Yeah. And my brother was very abusive. He was a paint leader of a gang. And he would come home and he would be high on paint. And I remember as a child him banging the walls. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you. And there was just something, I don't know. Probably it was just the devil wanted to destroy me. My sister was very bright and she achieved a lot, you know. In the world's eyes, she achieved, you know. But I didn't feel, even if I tried to be that, I could not be intelligent. Yeah. Even if I studied and studied for a test, I would fail it. Wow. So you were challenged with studying. You were challenged with speech. I was challenged with... With math. Math. And then the abuse of my brother. Did your brother hit you or just... He would do like cut my hair. He would put gum in my hair. He would, like if I was on the TV, he would come and change it. It was just torment. Torment. Yeah. Anything to torment me, he would do it. How much older than you was he? A year and three months. Okay, okay. So he was on, he was doing paint. He was doing paint. He would come high, two, three in the morning. One evening, my mom never would let me spend the night at anyone's house. She was very protective in that way. Right, right. And one night, I think I was 14, she said I could spend the night at my elderly woman's friend's house, which was a friend. And that night, the gangs shot at our house to get my brother. And I would have been on the couch. But I just see how God has protected me and his hand is on me. And at the time, I didn't see that. Like, God, you protected me. Wow. Because when I came home, we had a lot of windows right there. And then there was a TV and then the couch and that's where I would sleep. And that's, because my brother kicked me out of my room so he could bring in women into that room. So, you know, yeah. But now, my brother and I are very close. He received the Lord. Oh, wow. And even as I was at Summer Haven, I remember we would intercede. He would have guns to his head and we would intercede and God always intervened. I remember in Mexico, we were living in San Quentin and the Lord burdened my husband and I to come back to the Mission Center. And I wasn't even there an hour and we received a call. And they said, your brother's not going to make it. He's in a coma right now. He had an overdose. And I remember Jamie and I going there and praying for my brother and the Lord brought him back to life. And I told her, you know, you know, Harvey, so many times, one time he locked himself in the trunk of a car. Why did he do that? He wanted, he didn't want to live. He thought the Spirit of Suicide made him. Wow. Yeah. And I remember that. I was at the King's Ranch and I remember being in the kitchen and said, I have to go. And I went to my home and I began to travail finding the Spirit of Death. I didn't even know that my brother was missing though. And they had not, they had a helicopter looking for him. And at the time of the intercession, his wife goes to the car. He goes, goes to the car and sees it moving. Wow. And he had been in that trunk. And, and his life was saved. But that particular time, the other time when we were in Mexico and we went to pray for him, I said, you know, God saved your life so many times through the prayer and the intercession. Why don't you give your life? I'm not ready to give my life. But I think it was a few months after the trunk part, he calls me and he says, Diane, I received Christ in my life. And I don't know why it took me so long. Beautiful. That is so beautiful. So I would go, I went to visit him. He was in an apartment. And he filled the refrigerator with food. He gave up, he treated me like a queen. And he started bringing all of his friends. Wow. He says, you know, Diane, when you're walking up these steps, it's as Jesus is walking. This is the presence of God. He says, I've never met a holier woman than you. My brother. What? That is a miracle. Yeah. And so he would bring his friends. We'd pray for him and minister to him. You know, we're very close. My brother. That's really, that's so beautiful. Yeah. So my younger brother became a pastor. He's still a pastor. Really? Really? What church? The Family of God. He went through the school. I think he just paid off his debt a couple years ago, but he went through the school and he became a youth pastor. And now he's a pastor of a church. And he's also the coach of the University of, Assembly of God Christian University. He coaches baseball. Really? Where is that? In Dallas, Texas. Wow. That's amazing. That's like, she's back in Texas. Like that's where your dad was from. Yes. And he went back to Texas. Yes. That's amazing. My mother did say that my father, because she would take us to the Catholic Church, and I found a Bible when I came to the Lord. I was 16. And I said, Mom, what's happening? She said, that was your dad. Wow. Methodist. Wow. And she said that he would say, two of my children, you've taken to the Catholic Church, but two of my children were served by God. Wow. That's amazing. And, I don't know, you know, I pray that my father just go to be with the Lord. You never know at the last minute. You know, you know I might have spoken to him right before. Actually, I went to a wedding, my cousin, in Madeira. My uncle Short lived in Madeira. And he had his children there. And when she married, my kids were small at the time, but we were at the King's Ranch. And she's a cowgirl, so I dressed all my kids in cow outfits. And we went to this wedding. I don't know any background about, really, my family. On my dad's side, or actually, too much on my mother's side, too. Anyway, I went to that wedding, and I was taking my kids to the bathroom. And my cousin, that I didn't know was my cousin, began to prophesy to me. What? Why? And she said, you're the chosen one. You're the one that will build the house of God. And then she looked at everyone, and she said it out loud. And she said, if anybody has money, give it to her. And for a while, she would send us $100 of money. Yeah. And then I thought, I'm a product of my grandmother. I don't know if it's my great-grandmother, or my grandmother. But somebody helped me, somebody.
