The Tepee

I love anything Native American and have always read about how the different tribes lived, even before I found out that I am Cherokee myself. Jeremy and I had been living in a run down trailer house that belonged to his step father who was in prison when we started to go down financially. First we lost the car we were using and then we couldn't get to doctor appointments for his Epilepsy or my myriad of illnesses and diseases and we didn't qualify for any kind of government aid because you have to have children or be working twenty hours a week to get aid in Texas so we slowly went downhill. By the time Jeremy was selling blood every week to feed us, we had lost our electricity and water so life became very dismal and there seemed no way out or any future for us. We had tons of garage sale type items plus we scavenged for more all the time and tried to set up a little second hand business on the property but got shut down after three weeks for running a business without a license. We were dong all of our cooking on the bar-b-que pit, I even baked a pineapple upside down cake in it one day! Then I mentioned to Jeremy one day that I wish I had a tepee to live in so we could have fire in our home for cooking and heat. The next day Jeremy was gone out side for a long time and when I went to look for him he was halfway done building a tepee! He found six 24 foot iron rods that he wired together at the top for a frame and then he covered it with canvas painter's drop cloths he found out in the shed. I joined him and started sewing it together leaving a flap that opened for a door. We found enough bricks laying around to make a fire pit in the center and there was a pile or red fencing boards out back that we used to put in a floor and our new home was done. It was incredible! We used a round grill from an old bar-b-que pit over the fire to set pans on or to grill right on it and began one of the most precious times of my life. There was a church across the street that let us use their hose for water and I would get up in the morning and stir up the fire embers and heat water for coffee, and while it boiled I would put on big pots of water to run out the fire ants that moved in and started building by the fire pit every night. During the day we gathered and cut wood and pulled tall, dead nettles to use as kindling. I washed our clothes in a tub outside the tepee. We would go for walks looking through dumpsters for things to fix and sell even after our little store closed and rode our bikes ten miles to the blood bank twice a week. We bathed by the fire in the evening which was always fun, you didn't have to worry about spilling water! It just ran off between the floorboards and soaked into the ground. What was the most amazing was how warm we stayed in the winter cold and rain. The first time we had a hard rain I thought for sure the fire would go out but it burned through every rain storm. The Native Americans sure had a great design for living in!
We would play cards and dominoes by fire and candle light in the evenings until we went to bed. We were on about a half acre right on the border of South Houston and Pasadena and amazingly no one bothered us about living in a tepee. It wasn't all fun and games. There was always that hopeless feeling in out hearts that we were barely surviving and had no clue how to get out of the tepee and back into society. The trip to the free clinic was as far as the ride to the blood bank and we just couldn't get there often enough to keep up our health. We did get bothered about things like not being able to mow the property according to the city ordinances. We had it mowed down once when we first got to the trailer and found a car hidden in the weeds as well as a young Mexican man living behind the shed! We knew our life couldn't go on this way forever and didn't particularly want it to either. We both kept up a brave facade but we were terrified of every new day living in this limbo.

It all ended after about six months when my children found out how we were living and my oldest daughter sent for us and my youngest daughter took us in and gave us a chance to get on our feet here in Nebraska. We were thrilled to have electricity and running water and a real bath tub and TV to amuse ourselves again! But as we left the tepee I said, "I bet you we miss this place someday," and since then we have seen many days when we miss the simplicity of the poor life we lead back then. Our lives are now full of my children and grandchildren and we live in a real house of our own like "normal" people. We try to convey to people the simple contentment we could feel in our tepee days and never quite paint the picture for them. I don't even think I have come close writing this to capturing the spirit in our lives during that time. It was poverty in it's severest form and became a rich part of our past. I wouldn't do anything any differently that we did to survive and feel we came through it wiser and better human beings. Next I want to build an igloo...