The following was written by Alma Faulkner on May 1, 1997. I transcribed it exactly as she had written it, capitalization, punctuation, and all (despite my frustrations that my Grandma does not use the Oxford comma). This just scratches the surface of the amazing life she and my Grandpa had together, and gives you an opportunity to hear the stories in her words.
If we are to believe traditional beliefs, all marriages are made in Heaven. Perhaps so, but the marriage of J.C. Faulkner and Alma Rutherford was made on a dare, a bet, and a promise. J.C. dared Alma to marry him, Alma bet J.C. that he could not put up with her long enough to call their life together a marriage, and they both promised not to interfere with each others choice and life style. Surprise, surprise. That dare and bet happened on January 1, 1948, and next year – January 1, 1998, (although at times the going was rough and with the exception of a short time in the early ‘70’s,) the marriage will have lasted 50 years. The promise! It worked well then, and still works today.
The key to the longevity of the marriage was give and take. I gave J.C. pure hell, and he took it. The marriage itself had a rocky beginning. After we graduated from high school in 1947, all of our classmates were married with the exception of Marion Singleton, J.C. and I. Marion later married my sister, Faye, and since everyone else was “doing it” J.C. and I decided we would try. The day of our wedding began in a ridiculous manner. No one gets married on New Years Day. Everyone, who was anyone, was recuperating from a hangover from a New Years Eve party. But not us. We had marriage on our minds and the deed was done on New Years Night, in Fostoria, Texas, before a warm and cozy fire at the home of the local Peace Justice Pat Teleford. His wife was witness and Ivy Partain stood with J.C. I didn’t ask anyone to stand with me. I could do this by myself. And this decision of self-help, self-preservation has taken me places throughout my life that I would never have thought possible.
As I recall that day, with the exception of intervention of a higher source, the wedding would not have happened at all. J.C. had borrowed his dad’s car (we were going to a movie after the wedding) and he stopped at Pud Daw’s service station to fill the gas tank. It had been storming all day and somehow a wire had shorted out around the gas pumps. J.C. leaned against a metal pole and got the shock of his life, literally. He could have been electrocuted; thank God, he wasn’t. On our way to the theater in Conroe, we encountered several downed trees on the road. We went around them and continued driving through flying limbs, sheets of rain and howling winds and finally made it to Conroe. Neither of us remember the name of the movie, or if we even attended the movie. That part remains a blank.
My first job, when I finished school, was front office clerk in the Cleveland laundry. J.C. helped his dad in the logging business. I liked my job, even though I knew that it was not my life ambition to handle other person’s dirty clothes, but it was a job. It may have been a life ambition, with the exception of action, or perhaps inaction, taken by J.C. In May, 1947, I went with my family to Trinity, Texas for my older brother, Foster’s, wedding and on the way home I got sick. The next morning, which was Sunday, I felt so bad that I stayed in bed. My mom (mom’s are so smart) brought in a dill pickle and told me to eat it. I thought the idea rather unusual but in those days, mom always knew best. I took one bite of that pickle and thought my jaws were locked. I had the darn mumps.
Also, in those days it was a luxury to own a telephone and that luxury had not yet come to the Rutherford household. When J.C. arrived at our door to attend Sunday School with me, mom met him and told him that I had the mumps. She also warned that he could also be affected since I still had a very high fever. He chose to come into my room to see me. I asked him to call my boss at the laundry and tell him I had the mumps and would be out for a few days. He promised he would. When the fever left and the side of my face began to look normal, I headed back to work only to be told that I had no job. My boss didn’t know that I had had mumps, J.C. never told him. So I was fired. That little incident put a damper on our relationship, but not for long. I didn’t worry about losing the job, I went down the street on that same day and got another with better pay. And J.C.? In two weeks I was visiting him at his home. He had contacted the mumps from me.
I was born the fourth child of ten children and knew the love and protection of God-fearing parents. Some times it was too much protection, or so I thought. I had never intended to get married when I finished high school. I had applied for a scholarship to the University of Houston and had obtained it, along with a job to pay my tuition. The day the official from the College came to talk with my parents was hot and dry. It was the last of July and I was supposed to be enrolled by August 31. I had talked with mom and dad about attending college and they reluctantly said yes. However, on that hot, sultry July day, all of my hopes and dreams were shattered because a college official stopped on his way to my home and quenched his thirst with a bottle of beer. My dad smelled the beer and immediately said that I would not be attending college after all. (little did he know at the time, nor did I, that the daughter they were trying to protect against beer drinking would one day break bread and indulge in social drinking with an American president, several State Governors, and countless state senators and representatives). 
My determination soared at that moment and with my mind in a whirl I went to the barn, threw a hackamore over the head of Sugar, my horse, and rode to Peach Creek. Sitting under a huge oak tree, venting my anger by throwing sticks, limbs, leaves, and whatever I could get my hands on into the swirling waters, I made my decision. I would get married, so I could leave home, and then I would go to college. However, that also backfired. Exactly eleven months and ten days after I said “I do” to my marriage vows, I said hello to a 7 pound 8 ounce beautiful baby boy. We named him Jack. College would have to wait.
Our first home was what we affectionately called “The Duke House.” It belonged to Uncle Jerry Duke’s son, Curtis. I loved that little house and was content at being a mommy and homemaker. Yet there was that nagging in the back of my mind that I knew one day I would have to answer. J.C. worked at Weingartens and commuted back and forth and all seemed to be doing fine until one day heavy rains came. And they came. And they came. And soon, our little dream home was filled with about five feet of water with the overflow from Peach Creek and my furniture was floating around the rooms like boats. I had taken Jack up to Aunt Lilly and Uncle Jerry Duke’s house. I was treading water in my house and trying to put everything up out of the water but it didn’t help, everything got wet anyway. J.C. had gone to work that morning so he was on the other side of the creek for about two days. After the flood, we moved to Houston but would return to the Cleveland area often set up housekeeping for a few years, and then move back to Houston again.
When Jack was two years old, I went back to work as a billing clerk for Wessendorff, Nelms &Company in Houston. I had worked there for two years before I became manager of the billing department and two years later I became secretary to the Executive Vice President. I was not cut out to be a secretary, I didn’t like the job, so two years later I quit and went to work for National Supply in their billing department. I was there less than a year when they assigned me as an assistant to the Production and Reclamation Department and in that job I traveled over Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma. I loved the job but it took me away from J.C. and Jack. I didn’t want to quit the job but fate stepped in and gave me the out I needed. After 13 years, we found that we were going to be parents again. In June, 1961, a beautiful blue-eyed blond headed girl was born. Jack named her Tonya Jo and J.C. and I went along with the name. She was later to become “Punkin” a name that her grandpa Faulkner labeled her with, and it stuck. Four years later, Judith Dian was born and that rounded out the Faulkner family until the grandkids began to arrive, so far, seven in all, one granddaughter and six grandsons. I never went back to work at National Supply, I decided to become a home maker again. Yet the urge to do something different never went away. I lived with it day and night and I knew that someday I would find out just what made me tick. The desire to find out was overwhelming.
J.C. took a job with Foley’s after he left Wingartens. He worked in the warehouse on Leeland Street and we bought a house in northeast Houston. It was a small white house surrounded by a white picket fence. I loved it but it was never home to J.C. Home for J.C was somewhere within a ten mile radius of Cleveland or Splendora. So we sold the house and moved back to Cross Roads. Several years later, we again moved to Houston. We bought a house in the Woodland Heights, but still was not home to J.C. We lived there approximately six years and when Fostoria closed down in 1958 we bought the house that J.C.’s grandma and grandpa Faulkner lived in. We moved it to the property on Fostoria Road, which was owned by J.C.’s parents and after grandma and grandpa died, we moved in. We remodeled the house, added to it, and live in it today. The house now sits on five acres of land that we bought from J.C.’s aunt Erma Bradford Hill, a part of J.C.’s grandma Perkins homestead. Finally, J.C. was home.
When our last child, Judy was around a year old, I went back to work. Grandma Faulkner welcomed the chance to care for the girls (Jack took care of himself) and I got the first job that I applied for. The job was flunkey for the Texas Manufacturers Association (TMA).
TMA was an association of approximately 6,000 business executives working in the largest companies in Texas. Its primary function was lobbying the Texas Legislature and the Congress in Washington, D.C. I knew nothing of what I would be doing but that didn’t stop me. The pay was much better than working in a billing department, and best of all, it was challenging. Among several filing and typing jobs, I learned to set type on a Varityper for a newsletter, paste up the newsletter and submit it for printing. Within a two year period, I was assigned Director of 
Communications, a job that put the entire newsletter, magazine, copy setting and printing under my jurisdiction. I had seven employees and we worked together beautifully. And the best part of the entire deal was that I enrolled in the University of Houston’s Downtown College at TMA’s expense. Finally, I was getting to do what I had planned for so long. After five years as a Director, the Vice Presidency position came open and I applied. There were four people in the running, three men, one woman, and me. I got the job. In my new position, I was to mix and mingle with heads of state, legislators and National government. I was to argue with legislative leaders in committee meetings and to hold a poker face when things did not go my way. I learned to curse, drink and play the game of politics. And I learned it well. The job was challenging, exhausting, yet exciting and I put all I had into it. The job also involved travel around the state and to Washington, D.C. And in August 1986, The job demanded that I transfer from Houston to Austin. I planned to make the transfer and get everything set in order and then retire. It didn’t work that way. I put in five more years and finally retired in 1991.
When J.C. left Foleys he took a job with a furniture broker called Herricks. He sold furniture to companies across East Texas and Louisiana and was on the road a lot. One evening he called me from Raine, Louisiana and told me that the mosquitos in his room were as thick a flies and were about to eat him alive. I told him to come home, and he did. The next week he went to work for M&M Furniture Company, from there to Blacks Carriage House and then to Shepherd Furniture Company in Conroe. He spent 26 years with Shepherd’s and for years held the highest sales record, every month, of anyone that had ever worked with the company. He retired in 1990 from Shepherd’s and his sales record has not yet been broken.
I guess retirement agrees with J.C. He likes it. I don’t. I knew within a two-week period of retirement that I had done the wrong thing. I enjoyed being home but I missed the regimentation of my life style. I also missed not being inside the loop of knowing what was happing in state and national government. I am now involved in writing poetry. I have won one award and have had several poems published. It is a buffer zone, but it does not quite fill the void left from a hectic, public life. So, I secretly plan, almost every day, to go back to College and pick up some more credits. Then I face reality. Perhaps, some day. Not now. I am needed on the home front.
Alma Faulkner
May 1, 1997
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