My Father, The Drunk

This is the only photo I have of my father when we lived there. He's holding Jane. Christine and Jeanne are next to him. When he wasn't drinking he could be okay but when he drank he turned into a very mean person. He beat my mother a lot. It's a good thing I don't remember too much at this stage in my life. One night he scared the living daylights out of my mother and she almost shot him. He came home real late from drinking in town I guess, and was trying to sneak in the window. The door might have been locked. My mom thought it was a burglar. I wonder how things would have turned out if she had shot him?
Then one day he just never came home from one of his drinking binges. He wasn't working for Farmer Wagner any more so we were forced to move out. I learned later he was in jail for non-support. We were always told it was for non-support. Not sure if my mother had him put in jail or how he got there. I recall my Aunt's saying we had no food in the house after he left. They say we ate popcorn for a week. Ha! Ha! Not sure if that was all true. I'm sure old Emma Wagner would have given my mother meat and surely old Bessie and Ray down the road would have. Heck. I still love popcorn!
When we moved we had to leave the dog behind. I guess it wasn't really our dog but hung around our house all the time. I gathered that much from an old letter that Bessie wrote to my mother after we moved.