"If" by Bill Floore - Floore Family History

There is a great interest that people have in their ancestry. What famous people are their Ancestors? A monarch? A sea captain? A passenger on the Mayflower? Records of birth, death, marriage, and last will and testaments allow people to find a lot about their past. Businesses have been created around this pursuit.

But an equally important record is not kept and it shapes our lives every bit as much as our ancestors. Much of the course our lives takes is based on decisions made by us and others in our past.

A good place for me to start is in Mississippi with my father, Thomas Clinton Floore. He graduated high school. His dad offered my dad and each of his siblings a choice. They could either go to college, or get a brand new car. My dad chose a new Model T Ford. He took it down the highway and totaled it. Alcohol was probably involved. He didn't have insurance. It wasn't required. In fact, a driver's license wasn't required back then.

His life has a strong similarity to the unfortunate life of Robinson Crusoe when he decided to go to sea instead of following his father's wishes. If Robinson didn't go to sea, he wouldn't have marooned on an island. And we wouldn't have had a graet book.

Back to my father. He got married to Tula Anne Spikes. He started a radio store business. He built a house in Tennessee. He and Tula had six children: Thomas Floore, Martha Crocherone, Anne Bledsoe, John David Floore, and Burns Lee Floore. In a very short time his wife died, his first born son, Thomas, died, his house burned down, he lost his business, and he contracted tuberculosis. If my dad had gone to college, he might never have left Mississippi. No family with Toula, or my mother. All those people not born.

My dad moved to Chicago to find work. He met my mother Margaret Elizabeth Bachelman. She recently got out of a cruel Catholic orphanage. That orphanage kept my mother away from religion. My brother, sister and I weren't raised Catholic or anything else. When my father met my mother, she was working in a pickle factory. They dated and married before he told her about his former life and his five living children. Then I am born. If my father had stayed in Mississippi, no marriage to my mother, no me.

My dad never went to college. He never had a real career. He had low paying jobs. He never worked in a place with a union. He never had a pension, profit sharing, or a retirement plan. He never had a new car again. He was never able to buy a house until he had his fingers cut off on a milling machine and he bought the house in Round Lake with the settlement the factory gave him. Because my dad moved to Round Lake, I bought a house there. Mary bought a house there. Which is why her daughter, Gidget and Robin, now both live in Illinois minutes, away from Tommy's house. If my dad went to college he might have become an agricultural engineer like has brother John. Or, he might have become a college professor like his sister Theola who taught at Penn State. If my dad didn't get injured and move to Round Lake, neither I nor Mary would have ever moved there.

Back to my dad moving to Chicago to find work. He and my mother moved from Racine to Artesian. I don't know why. The Artesian days were the happiest of my life. We lived poor but happy in our little bungalow on Artesian until our landlord passed away and his son wouldn't let us keep our low rent. So we moved to a flat on North Avenue. We were still in the same neighborhood. But our new apartment was robbed and my parents decided to move to Lakewood. If the landlord had not died, if our flat not been burglarized, we would not have moved to Wrigglyville.

While living on Lakewood, my mother saw that Jewel was building a store on Belmont and Sheffield. She got me an application. I met Charlene Imhoff. Jimmy met Doris Olson and married her. Around that time my sister Mary talked me into going to classes with her to become Catholic. I became one. She didn't. I did end up getting a part time job at Jewel which resulted in my meeting Chuck and Randi Dominick. Through Chuck and Randi, I met Pat Stenberg and ended up marrying her.

Pat and I had two children, Jill and Tommy. Tommy worked for Jewel for a while where he met his wife MeLinda. His life continued from there, his life experiencing its own ifs.

Through Tommy I met his friend Adam Kowa and his wife Toula. It was at Jewel I learned about Wilderness Bay. Now Tommy, Adam and I fish every year near Wilderness Bay. Tommy bought my house. If he didn't buy that house his daughter would not have gone to high school in Wisconsin and she probably would not be going to the University of Wisconsin now.

I kept working for Jewel until I decided to become a teacher. I got a job and taught in Illinois for two years, but was not given tenure. Bummer. My fault and a bitch principal. I was out of a job with no health care, no income. I went on several interviews, but no school in Illinois would hire me. So I had to find a job in another state. And I wouldn't be living in Illinois and be near my mother, my brother, my sister, my son, and his children. While I lived and worked in another state, my mother and younger brother died. If only I didn't have that bitch principal.

Meanwhile, Jill graduated high school and decided to go to Grinnell. She met Dan there and they decided to go to the University of Arizona. Jill earned her masters degree, but she and Dan stayed on in Tucson to allow Dan to earn his PhD.  While he was earning his advanced degree, Jill got a job working for the Amphi school district. That led to Jill giving me an application which I filled out and I was hired to teach at Coronado. I transferred to Copper Creek to get away from a jerk at Coronado only to run into even more evil people at Copper Creek. EVIL is not an exaggeration. There were moments at Copper Creek that were the best of my life. But I met more nasty people at Copper Creek in eight years than I did at Jewel working there for twenty-nine.

But living in Tucson allowed me to meet Brie Ronnie who is from Bullhead City, and is one of the best teachers I know; I met Dale Williams, my stamp guy for eighteen years; I met Dot, my 95 year old neighbor; I met Joyce, a florist who worked at Safeway; and I met Monica Salazar, my best friend. If we didn't move from Artesian, we wouldn't have been robbed. If we weren't robbed we wouldn't have moved to where I got a job at Jewel and met Pat. If I didn't marry Pat, I wouldn't have had Jill. If Jill didn't wind up at the U of A and Amphi, I would have never moved to Tucson and would not have met a lot of wonderful students, teachers, and parents and my best friend Moni and eventually our dog Alfie. Keep your own record of your ifs, or at least think about what shaped your life..

There is a trail of ifs that led my sister Mary Vidone to live in Round Lake. There is a trail of ifs that led to my dad moving to Chicago and meeting my mother and me, Mary Jane Floore and James Robert Floore being born. We all have our own story of ifs and "It's A Wonderful Life" after all.

There is another if story that I'd like to share. When I bought my house in Round Lake, I was working at a Jewel store in Mundeline, Illinois. My job was assistant-manager and I had a crew od part timers who put up the grocery load when it arrived. One day the Bldg A night union Steward, Dizzio, and his crew walked out of the grocery warehouse and refused to work. As a result, our load was eight hours late. I ended up working 16 hours straight. I had to put most of the 1200 piece shipment myself. I was physically and mentally exhausted when I drove home. I fell asleep at the wheel and I ran into a parked car.

I didn't have insurance. I had to pay for the repair of my car and the car I hit. I did. The car I hit was insured by American Family Insurance. I liked the agent Russ Shaak so I ended up getting insurance with American Family. That was in 1968.