American Fox Tales, it turns out, is a long love letter to my family, friends and to my home, South Tillamook County.
— James Royal Fox, Jr.
One of my earliest memories was of the night before I went to Shriners Hospital in Portland for the first time, when I was six. My sister Dottie often slept on the floor next to me when I had broken a leg. Since I was crying, it was only natural she slept next to me that night, by my bed. The following day my mom was taking me from our dairy farm up Blanchard Road, to begin a series of operations on my legs, that would enable me to walk.
As a small child I understood that what I was about to begin to endure would not be easy, but what was worse for me that night, was it would mean I had to spend a lot of time in the hospital, away from my family. Months at a time, for years.
I wanted to walk. The bones in my legs were not straight. My femur’s were bowed and my tibia’s had peaks in them that even today I remember as being shaped like a boomerang. As a parent what do you tell a six year old when he asks what it will take to make him walk? Understanding in away I couldn’t, what procedures it would take was more than they could admit.
Dottie laid down an old quilt and a pillow, with embroidered pillowcases; both familiar to me since I could recall and silly as it sounds, would become little pieces of the memories of my family, and our farm that I clung to at times for over a decade of constant yet intermittent isolation from my family.
I was weepy and Dottie was sitting by my bed. I asked her why God had given me these legs? Why my four sisters were spared? She said, “You’re bones are this way because God knew you could handle it.” Still I pushed, “Why didn’t you or one of the girls get it?”, I asked. She answered, “Because He knows that you can handle this.” The why and how of that answer would elude me for years.
Unknown to me at the time, in their bedroom downstairs, Mom and Dad were crying too, for a thousand reasons I could not conceive.
Dottie’s words that night convinced me that I was chosen because I was tough. Tougher than my peers. Her words in those moments came to me hundreds of times a year, for the next dozen years before 24 operations later, I chose; I asked at 18 to please, please cut them off.
Double bilateral amputee’s are not generally accepted as able-bodied people, but it was by me after what I’d been through. I was free. My first indication that life was going to be different was when I came home with no legs and transferred from my wheelchair to my childhood bed. The second nature movement was literally flipped on its head. As I went to move forward from the chair and I lifted myself into the air, I was so light I turned; slowly and in complete control; until I basically did a strange, slow motion somersault from chair to bed, resting gently on my butt. WOW! The world had changed for me and nothing could stop me.
Decades of challenges lied ahead but as I moved forward I was so happy to have my legs gone. When people asked, I would tell them that my legs broke all the time so I had the doctors cut them off. Every time, and I mean every time; they looked at me aghast. Their response was so typical I could have mimicked the words – “I couldn’t do that.”
I was probably almost a half century old before I realized that when people hear me say that, and respond like they do, they are judging my decision based on the two good legs they are standing on. No wonder they never understood. How could they?
My life spent in South Tillamook County, has thankfully been marked more by victories than failures. But throughout, when my back was to the wall, Dottie’s words, “Because He knows you can handle it.” gave me much inspiration and strength.
I became interested in genealogy, and I think it natural I was most intrigued by the Fox men that had come before me. Over the course of years, I got to know them well. In these men I began to see indications of my own strengths and weaknesses. My better angels and some demons.
Ephraim Fox brought the family to Oregon in 1852; he had brothers; he had sons and they had some sons, then they had more daughters than sons; then they had no sons. By 2018 I realized that of the Fox’s that came to Oregon, I was the last surviving male. And I have no children.
I am the last son of Benjamin, Nicholas, Ephraim, Andrew, James, Royal and James Fox and there is no one left to tell our stories as qualified as I, at this point. It’s all I can leave behind to document we were ever here.
In the evolution of learning so much, despite an independent reputation and demeanor that belie my disability, sometimes the little boy in me still wonders innocently, “Why, God?”
American Fox Tales, provides some answers for the little boy and leaves a lasting memory of the Fox’s long after he’s gone.
American Fox Tales, it turns out, is a long love letter to my family, friends and to my home, South Tillamook County.