Here I am almost at the end of my great year of blogging. It should be called BOGGING, because four months ago I suddenly got so bogged down with things I had not figured on when I turned 80 and began this project. They were all good things sidetracking me, and I feel so great about how the year is ending. It began in the spring when Sara Jayne became engaged to Tyler. Sunday dinner at our house has become a tradition these last four years when we have had so many grandchildren here at BYU. Last year they were Paige and her husband Chris, Maren, who brought two room mates, and Sara Jayne who brought room mates. We had anywhere from 8 to 16 for dinner. I got used to cooking for ten and occasionally had enough leftover for our dinner on Monday. They always let me know who would be here. John McKenna from Ogden came occasionally, sometimes bringing a friend.
This year is different; Chris got in dental school at USC. We celebrated his graduation from BYU in the summer. His younger brother Nick teasingly said he would take Chris's place at Sunday dinner, and I told him I would be expecting him. He called as soon as he came to start his freshman year, so we have him and his room mate Daniel, such cute boys who get here a little early and help. Nick sounds just like Chris.
Eric returned from his mission in Mexico this summer, and says he looks forward to his one good meal each week. Sara now has a husband and no longer brings room mates. Maren has a handsome boyfriend, but she also bring her room mate. My reward for feeding all these neat kids was not having to cook Thanksgiving dinner. We went up to Salt Lake for the big day, ten around the table and two little ones. John's 6 mo. old Tanner slept through dinner. The beautiful, well behaved two year old Allison took her nap as soon as he woke, so we enjoyed watching him smilin' and crawlin'. Most of them went to the traditional movie down town. This year, the block buster Sandra Bullock "The Blind Side". Tedder and I had already seen it the day before, so we came home early.
I just have to tell about my busy summer, which kept me from blogging. We had been feeling pretty selfish about having such a nice apartment in our basement sitting there empty. We spent so much money a couple of years ago with new carpet, new doors, some new upholstery, and with Eric returning we felt we should let him live down there, although it would be social suicide. Then when Sara became engaged we decided to offer it to them until they graduate in two years.
Sara was so cute. She said, "We will be able to help you a lot, and you are going to need some help at your age." They have fixed it up really cute, and have much more room than most student couples. They have raked leaves and will do the snow shoveling.
Sara is captain of the swim team and is on full scholarship. Tyler works part time , so they will hopefully be able to save a lot of money. We are enjoying having them here, and they will be a help to me next week when Ted goes into the hospital for a hip replacement.
Anticipating all the guests we would have for the wedding, graduation, etc, inspired me to do a major repair job on the deck which is tiled and covers the west side. Two leaks had rotted the wood under the tile and proved hazardous. I removed about a hundred 8" tiles, and not being able to find anything to match, I had to remove the cement from the underside with a diamond blade and reset them after the workman installed the new flooring. I don't mind tile work, but the new products for waterproofing are so tricky, they advised me to get an expert to do it. I found one, but before we got it dry enough to install ( rain every other day in June) he found a bigger job to do and deserted me. I am glad now that I had to do it. I learned how to handle the new epoxy grout, finished it up before our July 4th party, and saved us a couple thousand dollars!!
One other major job was altering Paige's wedding dress for Sara to wear. Her dad gave her a generous budget for her wedding, and told her she could keep anything she could save, hence the borrowed dress. Actually, it is the most beautiful dress I have ever seen. She copied one we saw in Madrid costing three thousand dollars, had it made of embroidered lace from France. I spent well over 50 hours mending the lace and making the alterations. I also made three of the junior bridesmaids dresses and one of the three flower girl's. In case you want to know the duties of a junior bridesmaid, it is keeping the flower girls out of the swimming pool. Disposing of all the stuff I had stored in the basement was a job. As Sara moved stuff in, they brought my stuff upstairs where I sorted, stored or took to DI. Paige and Sara decided to have a yard sale which took care of a lot of it.
We have a very comfortable seven foot sofa in the basement which I had covered twice myself, but every chance I had this summer I worked on covering it in red linen. It turned out beautiful. Tyler and Sara painted the railings on the deck and the cement under the carport so they have a nice entry. We had a 50th birthday party for Tom in August on the deck. As we say in the South."Y'all come to see us now, hear!"
Do I sound like a complete nut? I actually enjoyed all I did this summer, except the yard work which was major. Paige and Chris helped me a lot. People think I love yard work, which is not true. I love to see the results.
If I may describe myself in a few words: I have 110% energy 99% of the time, average organizational skills, zero will power when the calories are accessable, but determination to do anything I set my mind to. I have decided I can set a goal of eating better when he goes in the hospital. I will be fasting with family and praying he will not get a blood clot. The doctor gave us some comfort saying the hospital has a trauma team 24/7, and we will be by his bedside 24/7.
I will blog enough to catch up on our recent events, our plans for next year, my match making efforts and systematically writing biographies of my family. I have the best family around and I am so thankful for all they do for me.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Leopard's Spots
We have always heard that a leopard cannot change his spots, and that the only person you can change is yourself. These are bits of advice people will give you, if they think you are getting into a bad marriage. I suspect there is a lot of truth in these words, and I am sure Momma had no hope that Daddy would ever change his ways. He farmed tobacco until I graduated from college and was working as a dietitian at Duke University Hospital. It might have been because the farm work was done that he was managing a seafood restaurant just across the Neuse River Bridge in Swansboro. It was called The Harbor Lights, just a small place with very little business. There were a couple of seafood restaurants in town with long standing reputations, but I suspect that the fact that my brother walked in one day and caught him in a clinch with the only other employee had something to do with the restaurant's demise. Momma wrote a letter to the woman and asked her to consider that she could destroy two families. Her children opened the letter and read it before she did. The restaurant closed soon after that.
As far as I know my dad did not react against my mother, although it was the first time she had ever done such a thing. I was so afraid for her when she told me, but perhaps he was not aware of all the subtrifuge. Mama was having a terrible time with menupause at that time and was not
herself. She had written that she wanted Daddy to buy her a nightgown she had seen in a store window for Christmas. Of course he didn't buy her anything, as usual. Probably didn't even remember her mentioning it. She had written in one letter that they were having a big dance in the new chapel at Harker's Island and if I could borrow a formal to fit her, she would like for us to go. I had just become engaged, and Tedder was in New York, but I saw no reason why the two
of us shouldn't go. She looked beautiful. Daddy was embarrased for us, but I felt like it was important. We had a good time. I didn't get asked to dance, but she did, by some old friends, husbands of old friends, rather, and she had a wonderful time.
When we came home from the dance all the lights in the house had been turned off. Daddy was in the hall waiting for us and explained that he wanted to tell us what had happened before we saw him. He explained that they had a grease fire at the restaurant, and without thinking he grabbed the fryer and ran out the back door, the strong wind blowing the flames right in his face. He looked like a mummy, but there were no scars. That experience dampened his enthusiasm for that job and it was not many months before he sold it.
Momma was working at the shirt factory in Beaufort. They were renting the front bedroom to a very nice marine and his wife. Times were tough until Daddy finally decided to look up his old friend in the dredging business. He wanted Daddy to supervise a rig working in Cheasapeak Bay, so they moved up to Washington,D.C. suburbs where they rented a small apartment and Momma enjoyed just staying home for a change. Miss Helen was still in the Swansboro house, and Bill was there to look after things. I think the marine and his wife were there for another year, too.
They were still in Washington when we had been married four years and went home for the first time with our Katy who was a year old. When the job in Washington was over they went back to Swansboro and she went back to the factory. The rig had moved back near Swansboro and he was paid well to sit and watch the dials and boss the deck hands.
They visited us twice in Albuquerque and came to see us in Provo as soon as we moved here. Daddy loved to drive, and he had bought a Mustang. They went sight seeing in Salt Lake where he was exposed to genealogy, even went to see the vault in the mountain. Still he never became interested in driving the 20 miles to Jacksonville where she went to church every Sunday.
When Katy was ten they drove out again. Bending over the sewing machine all day at the factory had caused her shoulders to develop terrible arthritis and she was on steroids for the pain. I suspect that shortened her life. Her face was very round, and she did not look like herself. However, she was ecstatic! Since he preferred taking the back roads where you see more interesting places, she had suggested that they drive through Nauvoo and Carthage where they were given a tour at the jail by the first missionary couple to serve there. The sweet litttle sister from Bountiful, UT, took my dad's hands and asked if he were a member of the church. He answered, "No, Maam, but my wife is."
Her next question was, "But you know it's true, don't you?" to which he answered in the affirmative. She then challenged him to call the missionaries as soon as he reached home and tell them he was ready to be baptized. He said he would!
When Momma related it to me she was trembling, doubting that he really meant it. We didn't talk about it again, but sure enough he did just that and was shortly baptized. He became a different man. He was never a swearing person, but after his baptism he wouldn't allow the sailors to swear in his presence. We never were allowed to have a blessing on our meals, but that changed. He would not eat even a cracker without blessing it. All he talked about was the Gospel, and he accumulated a sizeable library of church books which he read, and left to the ward library when he died. I hope I have not repeated this, because my Mother's story did have some of what I have just written. Sadly he did not convert anyone but himself. He was able to go to the dedication of the Washington Temple, because he had been endowed, and he took the bus trips from Kinston with the members for temple excursions. I cannot imagine him praying in church, or giving a talk, but I was with a tour group we were directing in Paris once when we spotted two missionaries, and when we stopped to chat with them we discovered one was from my dad's ward, and Brother Stroud had given the closing prayer at his farewell.
I have to say that having the privilege to do my mother's temple ordinances and take part in their sealing has been the most important, significant, unexpected thrill of my life, not that my own marriage was less terrific, but Ted, being with me on both occasions, knows why I can say this. If anyone reading this is ever in a temple with me, just ask me to go to a sealing room with you and I will tell you what happened that night. It is too sacred to write any more.
Daddy had never been in a hospital as a patient until he began sufffering from acute constipation and the pain became so severe he was in a coma for a week before he died of what they finally determined was a stroke in muscles of the colon causing all functioning to cease. The doctors were apologetic about not rushing him to Duke, less than a hundred miles away, where they could have saved his life. It was such a rare condition, but his father died the same way, at about the same age. I have passed that age long ago, but any stomach ache does give me some worries.
As far as I know my dad did not react against my mother, although it was the first time she had ever done such a thing. I was so afraid for her when she told me, but perhaps he was not aware of all the subtrifuge. Mama was having a terrible time with menupause at that time and was not
herself. She had written that she wanted Daddy to buy her a nightgown she had seen in a store window for Christmas. Of course he didn't buy her anything, as usual. Probably didn't even remember her mentioning it. She had written in one letter that they were having a big dance in the new chapel at Harker's Island and if I could borrow a formal to fit her, she would like for us to go. I had just become engaged, and Tedder was in New York, but I saw no reason why the two
of us shouldn't go. She looked beautiful. Daddy was embarrased for us, but I felt like it was important. We had a good time. I didn't get asked to dance, but she did, by some old friends, husbands of old friends, rather, and she had a wonderful time.
When we came home from the dance all the lights in the house had been turned off. Daddy was in the hall waiting for us and explained that he wanted to tell us what had happened before we saw him. He explained that they had a grease fire at the restaurant, and without thinking he grabbed the fryer and ran out the back door, the strong wind blowing the flames right in his face. He looked like a mummy, but there were no scars. That experience dampened his enthusiasm for that job and it was not many months before he sold it.
Momma was working at the shirt factory in Beaufort. They were renting the front bedroom to a very nice marine and his wife. Times were tough until Daddy finally decided to look up his old friend in the dredging business. He wanted Daddy to supervise a rig working in Cheasapeak Bay, so they moved up to Washington,D.C. suburbs where they rented a small apartment and Momma enjoyed just staying home for a change. Miss Helen was still in the Swansboro house, and Bill was there to look after things. I think the marine and his wife were there for another year, too.
They were still in Washington when we had been married four years and went home for the first time with our Katy who was a year old. When the job in Washington was over they went back to Swansboro and she went back to the factory. The rig had moved back near Swansboro and he was paid well to sit and watch the dials and boss the deck hands.
They visited us twice in Albuquerque and came to see us in Provo as soon as we moved here. Daddy loved to drive, and he had bought a Mustang. They went sight seeing in Salt Lake where he was exposed to genealogy, even went to see the vault in the mountain. Still he never became interested in driving the 20 miles to Jacksonville where she went to church every Sunday.
When Katy was ten they drove out again. Bending over the sewing machine all day at the factory had caused her shoulders to develop terrible arthritis and she was on steroids for the pain. I suspect that shortened her life. Her face was very round, and she did not look like herself. However, she was ecstatic! Since he preferred taking the back roads where you see more interesting places, she had suggested that they drive through Nauvoo and Carthage where they were given a tour at the jail by the first missionary couple to serve there. The sweet litttle sister from Bountiful, UT, took my dad's hands and asked if he were a member of the church. He answered, "No, Maam, but my wife is."
Her next question was, "But you know it's true, don't you?" to which he answered in the affirmative. She then challenged him to call the missionaries as soon as he reached home and tell them he was ready to be baptized. He said he would!
When Momma related it to me she was trembling, doubting that he really meant it. We didn't talk about it again, but sure enough he did just that and was shortly baptized. He became a different man. He was never a swearing person, but after his baptism he wouldn't allow the sailors to swear in his presence. We never were allowed to have a blessing on our meals, but that changed. He would not eat even a cracker without blessing it. All he talked about was the Gospel, and he accumulated a sizeable library of church books which he read, and left to the ward library when he died. I hope I have not repeated this, because my Mother's story did have some of what I have just written. Sadly he did not convert anyone but himself. He was able to go to the dedication of the Washington Temple, because he had been endowed, and he took the bus trips from Kinston with the members for temple excursions. I cannot imagine him praying in church, or giving a talk, but I was with a tour group we were directing in Paris once when we spotted two missionaries, and when we stopped to chat with them we discovered one was from my dad's ward, and Brother Stroud had given the closing prayer at his farewell.
I have to say that having the privilege to do my mother's temple ordinances and take part in their sealing has been the most important, significant, unexpected thrill of my life, not that my own marriage was less terrific, but Ted, being with me on both occasions, knows why I can say this. If anyone reading this is ever in a temple with me, just ask me to go to a sealing room with you and I will tell you what happened that night. It is too sacred to write any more.
Daddy had never been in a hospital as a patient until he began sufffering from acute constipation and the pain became so severe he was in a coma for a week before he died of what they finally determined was a stroke in muscles of the colon causing all functioning to cease. The doctors were apologetic about not rushing him to Duke, less than a hundred miles away, where they could have saved his life. It was such a rare condition, but his father died the same way, at about the same age. I have passed that age long ago, but any stomach ache does give me some worries.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The Man
I call this segment of my dad's story The Man With the Power because it always seemed to me that he knew everybody, and that he always controlled every situation. I came to this conclusion when I was about six. The house we lived in had a lane just wide enough for one car. To pass another vehicle one driver needed to back his car back into the front yard or into the main road, whichever was closer. I noticed that Daddy was never the one to back up. He just sat still and waited for the person headed to or from our house to back up and let him pass. I may not remember it correctly, but I saw him tell a friend who was headed in and backed to the main road, "Come on up to the house. I won't be gone long." People seemed to let him carry the situation his own way. I remember taking a class in sociology where we learned to analyze the power structure of communities and neighborhoods. I wrote my paper on Ocracoke Island, just off the coast of NC where many people had never taken a boat to the main land. You only needed to spend a few days there to realize that the people with all the power on the island were those who were in the Coast Guard. I cannot account for my dad's popularity, because he had no money nor property, only an infectious laugh (a low huh, huh, huh) and a fantastic memory for detail.
To illustrate his memory, I recall that he had a favorite poem about "Hoover Times" which he read in the paper when Roosevelt was running against Thomas Dewey. Hoover had been president during the Great Depression when most people had seen very hard times. I cannot remember all of it but it was something like this:
When Hoover was president I lived on a farm,
And a dollar bill was as long as my arm.
If Dewey wins I'll move back to the farm,
And plant some vegetables behind the barn.
I'll feed my family with roasting ears,
And try to get by for four more years.
He had very strong opinions, but I do not ever remember hearing him argue with anyone except my husband. Then it was fun for him.
He had a solution for every problem. When I was about six I was doing a lot of work on the farm. I hated getting up early, while it was still dark. When I was tired I was not allowed to rest, so I faked a stomach ache in order to get some rest. The regularity of my stomach aches raised some suspiscion with Daddy. He announced to everybody, including the hired hands, that he knew something that would cure a stomach ache in a hurry. He asked Momma to bring him the empty blue quinine on the kitchen shelf, which he took to the pasture and in plain sight began to fill it with sheep droppings, which look for all the world like symetrical pharmacy pills. In all seriousness he asked me if I could swallow them dry, or if he should get a glass of water for me to wash them down. By that time I was sobbing and my face was washed with tears. I replied in a shaking voice, "I'll take them with a little water."
He could control his laughter no longer, and I was relieved to see he was only joking, and that he was onto my deception. I could never find any way out of the forced childhood labor after that. I don't remember when I actually began to enjoy the work. Maybe it was when I knew there was no way out, but if I could do it better than any of the others, it gave me some measure of success, or gave me some attention.
He was not a person to ask, "What would you like to do?" He made all the decisions. He and Momma drove to see us several times when we lived in Southern Pines, the first year we were married. My getting engaged only drew one remark from him. He said it looked like I would want to work a while first, I had worked three years, paid off my college loans, bought and paid for my car, and bought Momma a gas stove and refrigerator.
When we were out of the army and living in New Mexico they drove to see us there, and brought Bobby and Ella and their two little boys. We skipped church on Sunday to take Daddy and Momma sightseeing up to Taos and Santa Fe. Ella found a Baptist church for them to attend. Before they left we took them by our brand new chapel. My parents and Bobby commented that it was very nice, but Ella kept her eyes in her lap, refusing to look at it. When they had gone home we noticed two leaflets left on our living room table which they had brought from the Baptist Church. We thought how fortunate Bobby was to have married this beautiful girl who was five years younger, such a good little mother and so dedicated to their church. She was very smart and would later return to high school, get her diploma, enroll in nursing school and graduate first in her class of one hundred. We have watched with pride as they raised their three sons, and we consider it one of the greatest blessing of our old age that we have had a hand in their conversion to the Mormon faith. Another story for another segment. My next story will be of my own father's conversion. I really cannot take any credit. It was living with an angel forty years.
To illustrate his memory, I recall that he had a favorite poem about "Hoover Times" which he read in the paper when Roosevelt was running against Thomas Dewey. Hoover had been president during the Great Depression when most people had seen very hard times. I cannot remember all of it but it was something like this:
When Hoover was president I lived on a farm,
And a dollar bill was as long as my arm.
If Dewey wins I'll move back to the farm,
And plant some vegetables behind the barn.
I'll feed my family with roasting ears,
And try to get by for four more years.
He had very strong opinions, but I do not ever remember hearing him argue with anyone except my husband. Then it was fun for him.
He had a solution for every problem. When I was about six I was doing a lot of work on the farm. I hated getting up early, while it was still dark. When I was tired I was not allowed to rest, so I faked a stomach ache in order to get some rest. The regularity of my stomach aches raised some suspiscion with Daddy. He announced to everybody, including the hired hands, that he knew something that would cure a stomach ache in a hurry. He asked Momma to bring him the empty blue quinine on the kitchen shelf, which he took to the pasture and in plain sight began to fill it with sheep droppings, which look for all the world like symetrical pharmacy pills. In all seriousness he asked me if I could swallow them dry, or if he should get a glass of water for me to wash them down. By that time I was sobbing and my face was washed with tears. I replied in a shaking voice, "I'll take them with a little water."
He could control his laughter no longer, and I was relieved to see he was only joking, and that he was onto my deception. I could never find any way out of the forced childhood labor after that. I don't remember when I actually began to enjoy the work. Maybe it was when I knew there was no way out, but if I could do it better than any of the others, it gave me some measure of success, or gave me some attention.
He was not a person to ask, "What would you like to do?" He made all the decisions. He and Momma drove to see us several times when we lived in Southern Pines, the first year we were married. My getting engaged only drew one remark from him. He said it looked like I would want to work a while first, I had worked three years, paid off my college loans, bought and paid for my car, and bought Momma a gas stove and refrigerator.
When we were out of the army and living in New Mexico they drove to see us there, and brought Bobby and Ella and their two little boys. We skipped church on Sunday to take Daddy and Momma sightseeing up to Taos and Santa Fe. Ella found a Baptist church for them to attend. Before they left we took them by our brand new chapel. My parents and Bobby commented that it was very nice, but Ella kept her eyes in her lap, refusing to look at it. When they had gone home we noticed two leaflets left on our living room table which they had brought from the Baptist Church. We thought how fortunate Bobby was to have married this beautiful girl who was five years younger, such a good little mother and so dedicated to their church. She was very smart and would later return to high school, get her diploma, enroll in nursing school and graduate first in her class of one hundred. We have watched with pride as they raised their three sons, and we consider it one of the greatest blessing of our old age that we have had a hand in their conversion to the Mormon faith. Another story for another segment. My next story will be of my own father's conversion. I really cannot take any credit. It was living with an angel forty years.
Monday, June 1, 2009
The Joker
I am not sure the draft I was writing about my dad as his family's humorist got published.
(Here is what was in the Draft: Mama was not a big talker, but Daddy usually had the floor when we were in the company of other family members, and it seemed to me that she registered approval on her face at his skill in story telling. His language was clean, and he allowed no swearing of any kind. I believe that was true of all his family. Not even a "darn" could be used. We might have been poor, but we were never "common". Bathroom language was unheard of in our house.
Daddy loved a good practical joke. He tried his hand at raising sheep for wool. Since I was put to work on the farm at a very early age, I sometimes faked a stomach ache to get out of work. One day I started to complain as soon as he gave me a job to do. He said he knew just the thing that would cure a stomach ache, and going into the kitchen first to get a little blue medicine bottle he proceeded to fill it with "pills" dropped by the sheep in the pasture. I watched with disbelief until he asked if I could take them dry, or if I needed to have water to get them down. I could tell by his face that he was dead serious. I began to cry. He reminded me that we didn't have all day and I should make up my mind quickly. Trying to stifle my tears I said, "I'll take 'em with a little water." That broke him up, and I knew then that he was teasing me. He told the story at every family occasion for a long time-the sure cure for stomach aches!
Raising sheep didn't pay during those depression years. Neither did raising the crop of sugar cane for molasses. It was fun to see the baby sheep, and it was interesting to see the mill grinding the cane powered by a mule walking around it in a circle. I really loved the molasses we had all winter. Usually we didn't have a cow, but we used canned milk which I would sweeten with a good shot of molasses.
The old antebellam)
In case you did not read about my dad's cure for stomach ache, please send me an email and I will put it in my next post. I think it is a very funny story, but I don't know what happened. Suddenly the whole page disappeared. I got it back as a draft, but could not add to it. Then when I decided to publish the draft, it didn't seem to work either. HELP!!!
As I was about to explain, the big house in the woods had some features we were very reluctant to leave after our six years there. The best one was the banister which I enjoyed sliding down. Bill had just become old enough to master it. The best thing about the house, though, was the huge pecan tree in the front yard. I remember when Mama learned to drive the first car we ever had. When Daddy was working in a field far enough away that he couldn't see what she was doing, she would get the car keys and drive round and round the pecan tree with us in the car. She had watched how he drove it, and without any lessons from anyone she drove it to town one day and got her license. It was so unlike her, I still can't believe she did it.
Daddy got a kick out of our getting out of bed early, as soon as it was light, to see how many pecans had fallen during the night. Bill and I had our little buckets and I always beat him, of course. One morning we found the ground literally covered with not just pecans, but every kind of nut on the market. Daddy had planned his trick very well, and I can just see him smiling when we came in with our buckets full of walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds as well as pecans. He was clever enough not to get peanuts, because we would never have been fooled - we grew peanuts and knew they grew underground. We spent a lot of time gazing up into the limbs and branches to see which shell each nut had fallen from. We knew it was a magic tree. We never wondered why it only happened one night, but we knew that it could happen any time! Moving away from the magic tree was the saddest thing that happened to us. I was in second grade and remember the morning Bill and I went out to say goodbye to the tree and hugged it.
Daddy loved to play practical jokes. When I was a freshman in college he played a joke which made him famous in the new home town we had just moved into. Mrs. Helen Wessel had persuaded him to move back to Swansboro where I was born. I don't know if he had lived there long enough when I was a baby to make any men friends. Except for brief leaves from his job, I believe Mama was alone with me. It didn't take him long to get acquainted, because there was a country store in the small village. At night he loved to sit with a few men around the potbellied stove and socialize. One of the leading citizens in the town was a farmer of some means who monopolized every conversation with his plans to buy the first German imported car in our state, a Volkswagen. He had pictures which he dragged out at the slightest provocation, detailing the features, primary its small extremely unusual design and fantastic gas mileage. Gas should not have been a concern, because it only cost fifteen cents per gallon, and was plentiful because the war was over. Night after night they had to listen to the story of the fabulous little car, and his plans to meet the train delivering it.
The day finally came, and everybody at the store got to see it, even sit in it and take a little spin. He could not believe that he had driven it from town and the gas gauge had not moved. After he drove away, Daddy hatched a plan to play his trick. Each night he would sneak up to the Odum farm and pour gas into the tank to refill it. His friends at the store never missed being there night after night, when all the attention was directed to the number of miles he had driven without the gas gauge moving at all. He had begun to assume the gauge was broken, but when he tried to fill the tank it woud not hold any more. A hundred miles to the gallon! INCREDIBLE
Then one night he caught Daddy pouring gas into his tank with a can. Mr. Odum never hung out at the store again, but everybody loved to tell the story around town.
Too bad Daddy wasn't a magician. He would have loved to entertain people. As far as I know he never had an enemy. He had no use for religion. He always said he wouldn't ever critisize anybody's church because it might be the right one, but he wouldn't join one, because it might be the wrong one. I was never in church with my dad until Ted and I took him to the Provo Temple to be endowed and sealed to my mother, as he had promised he would do when she died the year before. A story for another time.
(Here is what was in the Draft: Mama was not a big talker, but Daddy usually had the floor when we were in the company of other family members, and it seemed to me that she registered approval on her face at his skill in story telling. His language was clean, and he allowed no swearing of any kind. I believe that was true of all his family. Not even a "darn" could be used. We might have been poor, but we were never "common". Bathroom language was unheard of in our house.
Daddy loved a good practical joke. He tried his hand at raising sheep for wool. Since I was put to work on the farm at a very early age, I sometimes faked a stomach ache to get out of work. One day I started to complain as soon as he gave me a job to do. He said he knew just the thing that would cure a stomach ache, and going into the kitchen first to get a little blue medicine bottle he proceeded to fill it with "pills" dropped by the sheep in the pasture. I watched with disbelief until he asked if I could take them dry, or if I needed to have water to get them down. I could tell by his face that he was dead serious. I began to cry. He reminded me that we didn't have all day and I should make up my mind quickly. Trying to stifle my tears I said, "I'll take 'em with a little water." That broke him up, and I knew then that he was teasing me. He told the story at every family occasion for a long time-the sure cure for stomach aches!
Raising sheep didn't pay during those depression years. Neither did raising the crop of sugar cane for molasses. It was fun to see the baby sheep, and it was interesting to see the mill grinding the cane powered by a mule walking around it in a circle. I really loved the molasses we had all winter. Usually we didn't have a cow, but we used canned milk which I would sweeten with a good shot of molasses.
The old antebellam)
In case you did not read about my dad's cure for stomach ache, please send me an email and I will put it in my next post. I think it is a very funny story, but I don't know what happened. Suddenly the whole page disappeared. I got it back as a draft, but could not add to it. Then when I decided to publish the draft, it didn't seem to work either. HELP!!!
As I was about to explain, the big house in the woods had some features we were very reluctant to leave after our six years there. The best one was the banister which I enjoyed sliding down. Bill had just become old enough to master it. The best thing about the house, though, was the huge pecan tree in the front yard. I remember when Mama learned to drive the first car we ever had. When Daddy was working in a field far enough away that he couldn't see what she was doing, she would get the car keys and drive round and round the pecan tree with us in the car. She had watched how he drove it, and without any lessons from anyone she drove it to town one day and got her license. It was so unlike her, I still can't believe she did it.
Daddy got a kick out of our getting out of bed early, as soon as it was light, to see how many pecans had fallen during the night. Bill and I had our little buckets and I always beat him, of course. One morning we found the ground literally covered with not just pecans, but every kind of nut on the market. Daddy had planned his trick very well, and I can just see him smiling when we came in with our buckets full of walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds as well as pecans. He was clever enough not to get peanuts, because we would never have been fooled - we grew peanuts and knew they grew underground. We spent a lot of time gazing up into the limbs and branches to see which shell each nut had fallen from. We knew it was a magic tree. We never wondered why it only happened one night, but we knew that it could happen any time! Moving away from the magic tree was the saddest thing that happened to us. I was in second grade and remember the morning Bill and I went out to say goodbye to the tree and hugged it.
Daddy loved to play practical jokes. When I was a freshman in college he played a joke which made him famous in the new home town we had just moved into. Mrs. Helen Wessel had persuaded him to move back to Swansboro where I was born. I don't know if he had lived there long enough when I was a baby to make any men friends. Except for brief leaves from his job, I believe Mama was alone with me. It didn't take him long to get acquainted, because there was a country store in the small village. At night he loved to sit with a few men around the potbellied stove and socialize. One of the leading citizens in the town was a farmer of some means who monopolized every conversation with his plans to buy the first German imported car in our state, a Volkswagen. He had pictures which he dragged out at the slightest provocation, detailing the features, primary its small extremely unusual design and fantastic gas mileage. Gas should not have been a concern, because it only cost fifteen cents per gallon, and was plentiful because the war was over. Night after night they had to listen to the story of the fabulous little car, and his plans to meet the train delivering it.
The day finally came, and everybody at the store got to see it, even sit in it and take a little spin. He could not believe that he had driven it from town and the gas gauge had not moved. After he drove away, Daddy hatched a plan to play his trick. Each night he would sneak up to the Odum farm and pour gas into the tank to refill it. His friends at the store never missed being there night after night, when all the attention was directed to the number of miles he had driven without the gas gauge moving at all. He had begun to assume the gauge was broken, but when he tried to fill the tank it woud not hold any more. A hundred miles to the gallon! INCREDIBLE
Then one night he caught Daddy pouring gas into his tank with a can. Mr. Odum never hung out at the store again, but everybody loved to tell the story around town.
Too bad Daddy wasn't a magician. He would have loved to entertain people. As far as I know he never had an enemy. He had no use for religion. He always said he wouldn't ever critisize anybody's church because it might be the right one, but he wouldn't join one, because it might be the wrong one. I was never in church with my dad until Ted and I took him to the Provo Temple to be endowed and sealed to my mother, as he had promised he would do when she died the year before. A story for another time.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Daddy
Well, I have dreaded begining my dad's story. It is a sad one, but he was never a sad person. It was the family who could have been so much better off had he been more ambitious. Every week of my life, after I left home at 18 to enter East Carolina University, I wrote a letter to my mother. I don't know if he chose to read them, but I knew she looked for it every week, and I never disappointed her unless I was out of the country with no way to post a letter.
After she died I did not feel obligated to write to him every week. Occasionally I would write, but he never wrote to me. One day I got a letter from my cousin Helen saying that he had asked her to write and tell me that he had cut his finger and couldn't write. I wondered, after all the years, what the other excuses might have been. Emmett Roland Stroud was a very intelligent man. His last year of school was grade 5, when his report card shows scores of 100% in every subject. It looks legitimate, but knowing the reputation held by himself and his three younger brothers, it does make me wonder. I wonder if she (the teacher in the one room school house) was attractive, easily charmed by the future ladies man, or if she was encouraging him to stay in school. I believe that was the last year, and in order to advance he needed to go to a boarding school. His older sister's husband recognized that he had a good brain and offered to finance him, but he wasn't interested. They were building a consolidated school, and my mother was able to go there through seventh grade, but Daddy did very few thing that he did not enjoy. Life was about good times, and sometimes it took a little work
I do know that he was an avid reader all of his life. Aunt Ruth found a subscription receipt from a newspaper he subscribed to when he was only twelve. He was hungry to know the political news. I remember when Roosevelt ran for his second term. Two men came to our house in a Model T Ford. I sat on the running board and listened to them persuade Daddy to vote for the Democrat. He never missed an election, and loved to argue politics. I did not know he had switched politics until Richard Nixon was about to be impeached and he and my husband got in a big argument. Ted was furious, but Daddy just laughed and never got mad. He just stood his ground, and he was well informed, not intimidated at all by the high and mighty university professor, no matter how many times Ted called Nixon a crook.
When Daddy was the youngest going to school, my grandparent's house burned down, and as neighbors always do, they collected clothing to give all the children. There were not perfect matches in every case, so the oldest brother had to wear a girl's coat to school the remainder of the winter. On the long walk to school one morning they heard the rumbling of thunder. Uncle Hubert sarcastically remarked that it was probably another load of girl coats. When they got together at family picnics, I loved to hear the stories of the "old days" when every student took lunch to school in a coffee can. Inside could be anything from fried chicken to salt pork and cold corn bread. Punishment was having to stand behind a screen hung with coats called the cloak room. On the floor was the line of coffee cans. Everyone knew who usually brought the best food, even a slice of cake or pie sometimes. It was worth getting punished to have a chance to exchange your lunch with a better one.
They always told the one about the outdoor toilet and the boy who was fishing in the hole under the toilet seat. I don't think the word "gross" was used back then, but they had some equally repulsive criticism, "Why would you want a coat covered in that filth?" they asked when he said he had dropped it in.
His answer was, "But my lunch is in the pocket!"
My dad's favorite trick was to unsnap every boy's cap which had been hung on a nail over the coat, so that when they ran for their things at the end of the day, and hurridly put them on to go home, every boy's cap came down over his eyes.
The brothers would hide behind bushes when they heard a buggy approaching and jump out to scare the horse. They told about stealing an egg from Grandmammy's hens on the way to school, and as they passed by the store they would have one brother go into the store and trade the egg for penny candy. The storekeeper would take the egg, place it in a big bucket of eggs, turn his back to get the candy, not seeing the boy take the egg back. Then when the same egg was produced from a different pocket, the boy would ask, "Could I get a piece of peppermint with this egg?" And on and on, digging deeper each time, and producing the same egg until he had traded it enough that each of the boys could enjoy a treat.
I can remember taking two eggs wrapped in cotton and going to the country store near my school and trading them for a small spool of thread for my mother. Ah, the country store, with boards that squeeked under your feet, a front window covered with fly specks, Coca Cola and small packs of Planters peanuts which we poured into the bottle to get a mix of nuts with each swig. What a treat! Only when the hens were laying especially well could we afford such a luxury.
I knew men who had much worse habits than my father. They used dirty language or drank openly, smoked, beat their children, slapped their wives, and he did none of those things. We just felt neglected, unimportant. I think perhaps it was good for me to want to do well to gain his attention and respect, but mostly I did my best because I wanted to make my mother feel good about something.
I hated the way she had to ask him for money to buy school clothes for us. One day she asked if he would take us to town before school started. He parked the car and stood on the street corner. We all stood there with him, the sun shining in my mother's face, making her squint. Maybe he had forgotten why she wanted to come to town, because he asked, "Well. what do you want?" She reminded him that she needed money to buy us some shoes. He took out a roll of bills from his pocket and slapped it in her hand as he told her to stop grinning like a monkey. She did not cry on the street, but I did, to see her so humiliated.
We never wore shoes in summer. Daddy joked that when we started back to school at the end of summer, he had to put a little sand in our shoes to get us to wear them. Actually, I took mine off and left them in the school bus. When I got home my feet were always black on the bottom. One day I knew they were taking group pictures, so I wore them all day, and I was the only one in the picture wearing shoes. Some of the little boys only wore bib overalls - no shirts!
One day a neighbor asked if I wanted to make some money. He paid me to thin his corn seedlings by pulling all but the healthiest plant in each hill - easy job, and he paid me a dollar. I was so proud of my earnings. Daddy asked me if I would lend it to him. I ask what he wanted to buy. He asked why it mattered, didn't I think he would pay me back? I told him that if he wanted to spend it for beer, I wouldn't lend it to him. He got so mad, and stalked away. I felt so powerful! I was six or seven at the time.
After she died I did not feel obligated to write to him every week. Occasionally I would write, but he never wrote to me. One day I got a letter from my cousin Helen saying that he had asked her to write and tell me that he had cut his finger and couldn't write. I wondered, after all the years, what the other excuses might have been. Emmett Roland Stroud was a very intelligent man. His last year of school was grade 5, when his report card shows scores of 100% in every subject. It looks legitimate, but knowing the reputation held by himself and his three younger brothers, it does make me wonder. I wonder if she (the teacher in the one room school house) was attractive, easily charmed by the future ladies man, or if she was encouraging him to stay in school. I believe that was the last year, and in order to advance he needed to go to a boarding school. His older sister's husband recognized that he had a good brain and offered to finance him, but he wasn't interested. They were building a consolidated school, and my mother was able to go there through seventh grade, but Daddy did very few thing that he did not enjoy. Life was about good times, and sometimes it took a little work
I do know that he was an avid reader all of his life. Aunt Ruth found a subscription receipt from a newspaper he subscribed to when he was only twelve. He was hungry to know the political news. I remember when Roosevelt ran for his second term. Two men came to our house in a Model T Ford. I sat on the running board and listened to them persuade Daddy to vote for the Democrat. He never missed an election, and loved to argue politics. I did not know he had switched politics until Richard Nixon was about to be impeached and he and my husband got in a big argument. Ted was furious, but Daddy just laughed and never got mad. He just stood his ground, and he was well informed, not intimidated at all by the high and mighty university professor, no matter how many times Ted called Nixon a crook.
When Daddy was the youngest going to school, my grandparent's house burned down, and as neighbors always do, they collected clothing to give all the children. There were not perfect matches in every case, so the oldest brother had to wear a girl's coat to school the remainder of the winter. On the long walk to school one morning they heard the rumbling of thunder. Uncle Hubert sarcastically remarked that it was probably another load of girl coats. When they got together at family picnics, I loved to hear the stories of the "old days" when every student took lunch to school in a coffee can. Inside could be anything from fried chicken to salt pork and cold corn bread. Punishment was having to stand behind a screen hung with coats called the cloak room. On the floor was the line of coffee cans. Everyone knew who usually brought the best food, even a slice of cake or pie sometimes. It was worth getting punished to have a chance to exchange your lunch with a better one.
They always told the one about the outdoor toilet and the boy who was fishing in the hole under the toilet seat. I don't think the word "gross" was used back then, but they had some equally repulsive criticism, "Why would you want a coat covered in that filth?" they asked when he said he had dropped it in.
His answer was, "But my lunch is in the pocket!"
My dad's favorite trick was to unsnap every boy's cap which had been hung on a nail over the coat, so that when they ran for their things at the end of the day, and hurridly put them on to go home, every boy's cap came down over his eyes.
The brothers would hide behind bushes when they heard a buggy approaching and jump out to scare the horse. They told about stealing an egg from Grandmammy's hens on the way to school, and as they passed by the store they would have one brother go into the store and trade the egg for penny candy. The storekeeper would take the egg, place it in a big bucket of eggs, turn his back to get the candy, not seeing the boy take the egg back. Then when the same egg was produced from a different pocket, the boy would ask, "Could I get a piece of peppermint with this egg?" And on and on, digging deeper each time, and producing the same egg until he had traded it enough that each of the boys could enjoy a treat.
I can remember taking two eggs wrapped in cotton and going to the country store near my school and trading them for a small spool of thread for my mother. Ah, the country store, with boards that squeeked under your feet, a front window covered with fly specks, Coca Cola and small packs of Planters peanuts which we poured into the bottle to get a mix of nuts with each swig. What a treat! Only when the hens were laying especially well could we afford such a luxury.
I knew men who had much worse habits than my father. They used dirty language or drank openly, smoked, beat their children, slapped their wives, and he did none of those things. We just felt neglected, unimportant. I think perhaps it was good for me to want to do well to gain his attention and respect, but mostly I did my best because I wanted to make my mother feel good about something.
I hated the way she had to ask him for money to buy school clothes for us. One day she asked if he would take us to town before school started. He parked the car and stood on the street corner. We all stood there with him, the sun shining in my mother's face, making her squint. Maybe he had forgotten why she wanted to come to town, because he asked, "Well. what do you want?" She reminded him that she needed money to buy us some shoes. He took out a roll of bills from his pocket and slapped it in her hand as he told her to stop grinning like a monkey. She did not cry on the street, but I did, to see her so humiliated.
We never wore shoes in summer. Daddy joked that when we started back to school at the end of summer, he had to put a little sand in our shoes to get us to wear them. Actually, I took mine off and left them in the school bus. When I got home my feet were always black on the bottom. One day I knew they were taking group pictures, so I wore them all day, and I was the only one in the picture wearing shoes. Some of the little boys only wore bib overalls - no shirts!
One day a neighbor asked if I wanted to make some money. He paid me to thin his corn seedlings by pulling all but the healthiest plant in each hill - easy job, and he paid me a dollar. I was so proud of my earnings. Daddy asked me if I would lend it to him. I ask what he wanted to buy. He asked why it mattered, didn't I think he would pay me back? I told him that if he wanted to spend it for beer, I wouldn't lend it to him. He got so mad, and stalked away. I felt so powerful! I was six or seven at the time.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Mothers day +4
I will try hard to finish the remarkable life of Mama, Mable Robinson Stroud. She will probably creep into most of what I write about myself, because she was the single best influence. She was modest, wanted me to always be proper. I am sure she had few reasons to enjoy my presence when I was a child. She had learned ways to preserve food for the winter. She wanted to be able to can beans and corn, but did not understand that low acid foods needed higher temperatures than she could provide; even if she wrapped the jars in worn old work clothes aand boiled them in the big wash pot all day, they still spoiled. Tomatoes and peaches, with high acid would be preserved. It was a great day when she was able to buy a pressure cooker. With it she could can meats, stews and even seafood. The stove she had cooked with for many years used kerosene, which was a grade above the old wood stove she used in my childhood which required her to get up an hour before anyone else just to heat it up enough to bake biscuits.
We were living in Swansboro, I had just started in my first job after graduating from college, and with my first paycheck I bought her a gas stove. It used a butane tank in the yard. It did not have a disagreeable smell like the kerosene. She became an expert with the pressure cooker, even made fruit cakes in it.
I cannot say Mama loved to cook. It was always a chore, but she was very resourceful. She made the best fried chicken in the world. Often in summer we had it for breakfast with corn and ripe tomatoes in vinegar. We looked forward to Christmas when she would cook all the good things she could, chicken salad for sandwiches, a ham, several kinds of pie, from pecan on down to sweet potato. On Christmas day we did not cook, only ate, all day long, any time we chose. Before she got a refrigerator, after I left home, she could only make jello in winter when she set it on the back porch to jell. Her jello had fruit cocktail, coconut and nuts in it, with just enough jello to stick it together.
She loved flowers, saved seeds for the next year, fertilized with barnyard manure, hen house droppings and even went into the woods to dig up "woods mold " or rotted leaves to enrich the soil. She could have written a book about home remedies. I wore a mustard plaster to school for a cough, The kids could smell it and laughed at me. The strangest thing I ever wore was a little cloth bag containing wood lice to cure a sore throat hanging from a string around my neck.
She was very superstitous. Bad luck would surely follow sweeping a room after sundown, so if it became necessary to sweep, she swept it behind the door, and waited until the next day to get it up. Washing bed linens between Christmas day and "Old Christmas", which was 12 days later,was bad luck. We were told to be especially clean during that time, as we were used to fresh sheets every Monday night. She was very clean, insisting on washing each of us when we were small before we could go to bed. I have the little three legged skillet she heated the water in the fireplace for our baths. The wash cloth was wet, soaped and returned for rinsing, with the face first and on down as far as possible, After we were old enough to do it ourselves she supervised our washing "possible" in private. She always said, "You might not always have clean clothes to put on, but you can have a clean body.
We all knew how much the church meant to Mama, although she didn't talk about it, She would not ever criticize my dad, even if the missionaries came by when he was sitting in the front room with his friends playing poker and drinking beer. I was in college before we ever had a room just for sitting, My parents always slept in the the front room. I shared a room with my brothers until I was 16.
My dad loved to travel and several times they drove to Utah to see us. When we had been married 13 years was the last time she was able to travel that far in a car. Her arthritis, coupled with a knee injury a year later, when a train hit their car, made it difficult for her to travel.
When they arrived, Mama was so excited. She could hardly wait to tell me that since he did not like to drive on freeways that he had taken her suggestion to drive through Carthage and Nauvoo, IL. At the Carthage jail was a missionary couple The little wife took my dad's hands in hers and asked."Are you a member of the Church, Sir?"
Daddy replied,"No, but my wife is."
She asked. "But you know it's true don't you?"
To which he answered, "Yes, Mam." Then she asked him to promise her that as soon as he got home he would call the missionaries and tell them he was ready to be baptized, and he told her he would. Mama said she would not remind him, just wait to see if he really meant it.
Mama flew out to see us several times, once to spend several weeks and have cataracts removed.
She was excited to go to the first assembly at BYU in the fall. Ted pushed her wheel chair right to the front and she was able to shake President Harold B. Lee's hand, and hear him speak. The next time she was to see him was on the other side. They died within a week of each other.
She was only 62. We did not know the cause of her death, even with an autopsy, but it showed a diseased gall bladder, which we now know can cause failure of any organ. Her kidneys ceased to function after many weeks of terrible pain. I flew to Florida at Thanksgiving to be with her in the hospital. They were worried about ecoli in the blood stream which they did not understand, but never suspected the gall bladder.
A beautiful woman, a life that was a benefit to all who knew her. I still cry sometimes when I think of how I miss her, and hope that she was proud of me.
We were living in Swansboro, I had just started in my first job after graduating from college, and with my first paycheck I bought her a gas stove. It used a butane tank in the yard. It did not have a disagreeable smell like the kerosene. She became an expert with the pressure cooker, even made fruit cakes in it.
I cannot say Mama loved to cook. It was always a chore, but she was very resourceful. She made the best fried chicken in the world. Often in summer we had it for breakfast with corn and ripe tomatoes in vinegar. We looked forward to Christmas when she would cook all the good things she could, chicken salad for sandwiches, a ham, several kinds of pie, from pecan on down to sweet potato. On Christmas day we did not cook, only ate, all day long, any time we chose. Before she got a refrigerator, after I left home, she could only make jello in winter when she set it on the back porch to jell. Her jello had fruit cocktail, coconut and nuts in it, with just enough jello to stick it together.
She loved flowers, saved seeds for the next year, fertilized with barnyard manure, hen house droppings and even went into the woods to dig up "woods mold " or rotted leaves to enrich the soil. She could have written a book about home remedies. I wore a mustard plaster to school for a cough, The kids could smell it and laughed at me. The strangest thing I ever wore was a little cloth bag containing wood lice to cure a sore throat hanging from a string around my neck.
She was very superstitous. Bad luck would surely follow sweeping a room after sundown, so if it became necessary to sweep, she swept it behind the door, and waited until the next day to get it up. Washing bed linens between Christmas day and "Old Christmas", which was 12 days later,was bad luck. We were told to be especially clean during that time, as we were used to fresh sheets every Monday night. She was very clean, insisting on washing each of us when we were small before we could go to bed. I have the little three legged skillet she heated the water in the fireplace for our baths. The wash cloth was wet, soaped and returned for rinsing, with the face first and on down as far as possible, After we were old enough to do it ourselves she supervised our washing "possible" in private. She always said, "You might not always have clean clothes to put on, but you can have a clean body.
We all knew how much the church meant to Mama, although she didn't talk about it, She would not ever criticize my dad, even if the missionaries came by when he was sitting in the front room with his friends playing poker and drinking beer. I was in college before we ever had a room just for sitting, My parents always slept in the the front room. I shared a room with my brothers until I was 16.
My dad loved to travel and several times they drove to Utah to see us. When we had been married 13 years was the last time she was able to travel that far in a car. Her arthritis, coupled with a knee injury a year later, when a train hit their car, made it difficult for her to travel.
When they arrived, Mama was so excited. She could hardly wait to tell me that since he did not like to drive on freeways that he had taken her suggestion to drive through Carthage and Nauvoo, IL. At the Carthage jail was a missionary couple The little wife took my dad's hands in hers and asked."Are you a member of the Church, Sir?"
Daddy replied,"No, but my wife is."
She asked. "But you know it's true don't you?"
To which he answered, "Yes, Mam." Then she asked him to promise her that as soon as he got home he would call the missionaries and tell them he was ready to be baptized, and he told her he would. Mama said she would not remind him, just wait to see if he really meant it.
Mama flew out to see us several times, once to spend several weeks and have cataracts removed.
She was excited to go to the first assembly at BYU in the fall. Ted pushed her wheel chair right to the front and she was able to shake President Harold B. Lee's hand, and hear him speak. The next time she was to see him was on the other side. They died within a week of each other.
She was only 62. We did not know the cause of her death, even with an autopsy, but it showed a diseased gall bladder, which we now know can cause failure of any organ. Her kidneys ceased to function after many weeks of terrible pain. I flew to Florida at Thanksgiving to be with her in the hospital. They were worried about ecoli in the blood stream which they did not understand, but never suspected the gall bladder.
A beautiful woman, a life that was a benefit to all who knew her. I still cry sometimes when I think of how I miss her, and hope that she was proud of me.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Mothers day +3
Some women are not"cut out" to be mothers. It was my mother's talent. She had enough patience for a dozen children, and she was lucky to have three. Given our financial circumstances, I don't know how they could have supported more. Given her unique blood type, which was unknown at the time, she could not have had more. Later in her life she was told about the Rh negative factor. Her third child, Bobby, was sickly, but he survived, and he was always her favorite, the cutest little boy you ever saw. He was small and had blond curls. She couldn't bear to cut them, so he became the original Hippie. He was about three when it was cut the first time. Of course she didn't tell anyone he was her favorite, but we could tell. He was sickly and missed a lot of school, but he was very smart, and everybody loved him. He was always closer to her. It hurt her that I was not able to go home often in those lean years of graduate school and getting our feet on the ground. Bobby always knew he was her favorite.
My baby sister was born when Bobby was two, but the jaundice took her life in a few days. It was a terrible time for all of us. She was so beautiful, lots of black hair, and my mother sobbed for weeks at losing her. The next year she had a still born boy, and every year after for several years she had a miscarriage. To preserve her health she had a hysterectomy. It was the only time I remember her being in bed for very long.
Our houses were always so small after we moved from the Civil War house. I guess it must have fallen apart after we moved, I was in second grade when we moved back to Deep Run, the small community about ten miles from Kinston, called Kingstown in the 17th century. It was a very old house, too, without interior walls, or sealing, as we called it, which made it very hard to heat. It had a loft and someone had left a huge old volume of Dickens up there. I read Pickwick papers. The most fascinating thing about the book was a hole eaten all the way through it by a worm. It really was a book worm! The cartoons in the book were fabulous. I will never forget Mr. Pickwick on his donkey holding the reins with one hand and a long stick with the other. On the end of the stick was a bunch of carrots which he held just in front of the donkey's nose to entice him to keep walking. I spent many hours up in the loft with that book. Mama became very aggrivated with my being so absorbed by it when I should have been working.
Bill and I were always fighting. Mama would threaten to go in the woods and never come back if we didn't stop. When Bobby was old enough to take sides with Bill, they were finally able to subdue me, and she had more peace in the home.
Mama had a very soft heart. Traveling salesmen came through our area occasionally. She had little sales resistance, and once she bought a piece of fabric from a Jew. How did she know he was a Jew? We had a bull dog so mean that people would borrow him to catch an escaped pig. Anyone approaching the house had to deal with the dog. When he did not even bark at the little man with the suitcase, Mama knew he was a Jew. After all, they are God's chosen people! If possible, she would not answer the door when a salesman came by our house. She made us sit quietly, because even if he had something we wanted, she usually had no money. Regulars like the Watkins man were planned for, and she always bought vanilla.
Once we were playing at a neighbor's and a man came by selling books. He asked if she knew when the lady next door (Mama) would be home. I said, "She is home. Come on. I'll go with you." She was so mad at me when I took him right in the house where she was sewing. She bought a medical book, rationalizing that as far as we lived from the doctor, we should be able to take care of ourselves with that book.
One night Daddy woke me to say he had to take Mama to the hospital. She was screaming in agony. He said, "Now, don't go back to sleep! Stay awake and listen for your brothers!" The reason he did not want me to go to sleep was because I had become a sleep-walker, and just before that he had heard me walking around, had asked what I was doing, and I said I was looking for matches. They were afraid I would burn the house down. Mama was holding her hand to her ear, saying something had crawled in her ear and they couldn't get it out. When they got to the front door of the hospital where there was a bright light, the bug crawled out and they came home without even going inside.
My baby sister was born when Bobby was two, but the jaundice took her life in a few days. It was a terrible time for all of us. She was so beautiful, lots of black hair, and my mother sobbed for weeks at losing her. The next year she had a still born boy, and every year after for several years she had a miscarriage. To preserve her health she had a hysterectomy. It was the only time I remember her being in bed for very long.
Our houses were always so small after we moved from the Civil War house. I guess it must have fallen apart after we moved, I was in second grade when we moved back to Deep Run, the small community about ten miles from Kinston, called Kingstown in the 17th century. It was a very old house, too, without interior walls, or sealing, as we called it, which made it very hard to heat. It had a loft and someone had left a huge old volume of Dickens up there. I read Pickwick papers. The most fascinating thing about the book was a hole eaten all the way through it by a worm. It really was a book worm! The cartoons in the book were fabulous. I will never forget Mr. Pickwick on his donkey holding the reins with one hand and a long stick with the other. On the end of the stick was a bunch of carrots which he held just in front of the donkey's nose to entice him to keep walking. I spent many hours up in the loft with that book. Mama became very aggrivated with my being so absorbed by it when I should have been working.
Bill and I were always fighting. Mama would threaten to go in the woods and never come back if we didn't stop. When Bobby was old enough to take sides with Bill, they were finally able to subdue me, and she had more peace in the home.
Mama had a very soft heart. Traveling salesmen came through our area occasionally. She had little sales resistance, and once she bought a piece of fabric from a Jew. How did she know he was a Jew? We had a bull dog so mean that people would borrow him to catch an escaped pig. Anyone approaching the house had to deal with the dog. When he did not even bark at the little man with the suitcase, Mama knew he was a Jew. After all, they are God's chosen people! If possible, she would not answer the door when a salesman came by our house. She made us sit quietly, because even if he had something we wanted, she usually had no money. Regulars like the Watkins man were planned for, and she always bought vanilla.
Once we were playing at a neighbor's and a man came by selling books. He asked if she knew when the lady next door (Mama) would be home. I said, "She is home. Come on. I'll go with you." She was so mad at me when I took him right in the house where she was sewing. She bought a medical book, rationalizing that as far as we lived from the doctor, we should be able to take care of ourselves with that book.
One night Daddy woke me to say he had to take Mama to the hospital. She was screaming in agony. He said, "Now, don't go back to sleep! Stay awake and listen for your brothers!" The reason he did not want me to go to sleep was because I had become a sleep-walker, and just before that he had heard me walking around, had asked what I was doing, and I said I was looking for matches. They were afraid I would burn the house down. Mama was holding her hand to her ear, saying something had crawled in her ear and they couldn't get it out. When they got to the front door of the hospital where there was a bright light, the bug crawled out and they came home without even going inside.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Mother's Day +2
Mama had very little contact with anyone in her family. Her sister, Myrtle, married later than Mama, to a very nice man, Leonard Lee. He was sort of quiet, and I thought he was very handsome. Aunt Myrtle was a character. We saw more of her than we did their brother Durwood, who inherited the farm and house. She lived in town, and it was a big treat to go to her house. I remember the first time she invited me to spend the weekend. I took my first bath in a tub, and made my first phone call - to my favorite teacher. Her daughter was ten years younger then I, and she was pretty, like the Robinsons. I envied that, hated my red hair and freckles.
Uncle Durwood came to visit about once a year. Daddy usually took off somewhere when he came. My mother accepted the fact that she would never get anything for her years of hard work on her father's farm, but Daddy grumbled about it. After Miss Helen died, and Mama could do as she wished with the house, Uncle Durwood asked her if he could do anything for her. I was in college, and I came home one weekend to find Uncle Durwood, a skilled carpenter, tearing out a wall to make Mama a proper living room. She had never had a nice living room with pretty furniture. Miss Helen had insisted on having the entire floor covered with scatter rugs, and they were the first to go. Uncle Durwood didn't charge her a penny.
Before Aunt Myrtle was married she came to visit us in the big old house in Craven County. She brought us a box of ready to eat cereal. I thought I had never eaten anything so good. Corn flakes soon became popular, but they were too expensive for us.
Mama always made a big breakfast, ham, if we had it, grits and gravy, scrambled eggs, and the best biscuits in the world. During the depression we sometimes had no meat or eggs, if the hens were not laying, but we always had biscuits, and she would make Hoover gravy, by browning flour in a dry pan, and adding water to make a thick brown liquid that looked like gravy, but had very little taste. If there were any left over black-eyed peas, we could put some on a split biscuit, and cover the whole thing with the gravy. Not bad!
We always had to take our lunch to school. If we had ham, a piece in a biscuit was good, but the kids whose family had money brought baloney sandwiches made with loaf bread store bought and pre-sliced. Oh, how I wished I could have tasted it. I ate mine in a corner so nobody could see what I had. In cold weather Mama always put a small baked sweet potato in each of my pockets to keep my hands warm. That made a nice treat. When I was in college,I was invited to a wedding reception where they served little biscuits stuffed with sliced ham. I shall never forget how it made me feel to realize I had been eating party food for lunch in grade school!
I always felt that everybody in the class was on a higher social level. They wore store bought clothes. In third grade my winter coat was made of flour sacks dyed orange, (after it was made, as we had no orange thread). Orange was not a popular color. Each weekend she washed it by hand, starched it and ironed it for me to wear on Monday. The sacks were heavy and had a label painted on, but Clorox had been invented, and she was so excited to be able to bleach out the writing. Now a coat like that, in that color, would be high fashion.
One day at school a pretty girl in high school came to me and told me she was Mama's sister. Our school was first through twelfth. She said she had just learned that she was adopted. Mama had never told me about the baby she took to Aunt Mary Harper, who raised her as her own. They were afraid she would be traumatized, if she learned her father had given her away. I suppose they did it very tactfully, because she said she was happy to know she was my aunt, and asked me to tell Mama she wanted to take the school bus to visit her. Mama was so happy to finally be able to recognize her as a sister. She was very beautiful with long black curly hair. We saw her often until she married a Marine stationed at Camp LeJeune, a Polish boy, Ed Tagai, from Wisconsin. She stayed with his family there while he faught in the Pacific, had a girl and boy when he returned, and died young of cancer. I wish I had some contact.
Uncle Durwood came to visit about once a year. Daddy usually took off somewhere when he came. My mother accepted the fact that she would never get anything for her years of hard work on her father's farm, but Daddy grumbled about it. After Miss Helen died, and Mama could do as she wished with the house, Uncle Durwood asked her if he could do anything for her. I was in college, and I came home one weekend to find Uncle Durwood, a skilled carpenter, tearing out a wall to make Mama a proper living room. She had never had a nice living room with pretty furniture. Miss Helen had insisted on having the entire floor covered with scatter rugs, and they were the first to go. Uncle Durwood didn't charge her a penny.
Before Aunt Myrtle was married she came to visit us in the big old house in Craven County. She brought us a box of ready to eat cereal. I thought I had never eaten anything so good. Corn flakes soon became popular, but they were too expensive for us.
Mama always made a big breakfast, ham, if we had it, grits and gravy, scrambled eggs, and the best biscuits in the world. During the depression we sometimes had no meat or eggs, if the hens were not laying, but we always had biscuits, and she would make Hoover gravy, by browning flour in a dry pan, and adding water to make a thick brown liquid that looked like gravy, but had very little taste. If there were any left over black-eyed peas, we could put some on a split biscuit, and cover the whole thing with the gravy. Not bad!
We always had to take our lunch to school. If we had ham, a piece in a biscuit was good, but the kids whose family had money brought baloney sandwiches made with loaf bread store bought and pre-sliced. Oh, how I wished I could have tasted it. I ate mine in a corner so nobody could see what I had. In cold weather Mama always put a small baked sweet potato in each of my pockets to keep my hands warm. That made a nice treat. When I was in college,I was invited to a wedding reception where they served little biscuits stuffed with sliced ham. I shall never forget how it made me feel to realize I had been eating party food for lunch in grade school!
I always felt that everybody in the class was on a higher social level. They wore store bought clothes. In third grade my winter coat was made of flour sacks dyed orange, (after it was made, as we had no orange thread). Orange was not a popular color. Each weekend she washed it by hand, starched it and ironed it for me to wear on Monday. The sacks were heavy and had a label painted on, but Clorox had been invented, and she was so excited to be able to bleach out the writing. Now a coat like that, in that color, would be high fashion.
One day at school a pretty girl in high school came to me and told me she was Mama's sister. Our school was first through twelfth. She said she had just learned that she was adopted. Mama had never told me about the baby she took to Aunt Mary Harper, who raised her as her own. They were afraid she would be traumatized, if she learned her father had given her away. I suppose they did it very tactfully, because she said she was happy to know she was my aunt, and asked me to tell Mama she wanted to take the school bus to visit her. Mama was so happy to finally be able to recognize her as a sister. She was very beautiful with long black curly hair. We saw her often until she married a Marine stationed at Camp LeJeune, a Polish boy, Ed Tagai, from Wisconsin. She stayed with his family there while he faught in the Pacific, had a girl and boy when he returned, and died young of cancer. I wish I had some contact.
Monday, May 11, 2009
MOTHERS DAY + 1
I find it impossible to do a tribute to my mother in one sitting, so this is Mable Robinson Week. Each night I will add to her story, a life of selflessness, sacrifice and hope. However bad her circumstances, she hid it with a ready smile. If my dad saved any money from his year "on the water", it was gone by the time my brother Bill was born. I was 2 1/2, and I remember it so well, because my uncles were digging a well, their clothes covered with yellow mud. They pretended to try picking me up, but I ran, screaming. I always tried to stay clean. My dad came in saying he had something to show me, a pink little boy in my mother's arms. They farmed that year, and I began to care for my brother. He was asleep on a quilt on the floor when he was a few weeks old. I was told to watch him, and go to the barn as soon as he woke. It was awfully boring, and after a few minutes I decided to go to a neighbor's house. My dad must have seen me leave the house, because he caught up with me before I got there, and with a switch he had cut on his way he hit my legs as I ran all the way home.
We were to spend the next 16 years share cropping, borrowing money for everything we bought, paying it back when the tobacco sold, and starting the new crop with borrowed money. Before I was three we had moved to the dilapidated Civil War mansion in Craven County. When winter came my little brother had no warm coat, so Mama took a very worn wool blanket which was threadbare except around the sides, and sewed him a little coat by hand. It was large pink and brown checks, and I must have had a fashion sense, even then, because I thought it was the silliest thing for a little boy with bright red hair!
During those depression years we were never on welfare, because we could grow things, and Mama sewed our clothes by hand. She could make the tiny stitches look just like a sewing machine had sewn it, by back stitching each one. Daddy was able to supplement their income
through some homemade brew operation he had going in the woods. Prohibition had given many people in the south a clear conscience, and he always had connections, law officers he paid off, but his partner was caught, and sent to prison for a year. The family were our best friends, and they had no income while their father was away. They were invited to live with us that year, in the upper floor which had two nice rooms and a fireplace in each. Miss Emmy cooked for her two daughters in the fireplace. I thought it was fascinating. My mother loved having them there, because normally she had nobody to talk with except me. I wore her out, she said, because I asked so many questions. It was during those years that stock car racing started in North Carolina, in the sand hills of Rockingham, near Charlotte, or so the story goes, with bootleggers in their old jalopies, trying to outrun the "revenuers".
Daddy enjoyed living on the edge. Gambling was another vice which worried my mother. One of the few times I saw her cry was the year he got in a poker game with all the money he had brought home from selling the tobacco crop. He lost every cent and could not pay the debts for the previous year. I am sure he spent a lot of time in the woods the next year in order to catch up. Most evenings he spent at the country store gambling, not for high stakes, but with small wrapped candies. It was wonderful when he won. I especially loved the peanut butter ones.
The store was warm. Our house was cold. He hated cutting wood. During the winter days my mother stayed in bed most of the time. She would take a "tow sack" made of burlap and scour the woods for fat pine so she could have a fire in the heater when we got home from school. As soon as we ate we went to bed with a hot brick at our feet. Some of the later houses were very difficult to heat. You could see through the walls in places. Mama decided, when I was about ten, to get a job in town at the new shirt factory. She loved the companionship of the other women who worked there. We loved the variety of food she began to bring home. Of course when the weather warmed up she had to quit and help work the farm.
Still she sewed all of our clothes by hand. She could only afford to buy black and white thread. I remember a skirt she made for me from a remnant she found on sale. It was peach color, and she determined it would look tacky sewn with white thread, so she pulled raveled threads out and wound them together to top stitch all the pleats in peach thread. She was always busy. I cannot ever remember seeing her resting. Daddy seemed to always be resting, usually reading Wild West magazines. After working all day in the factory she would come home, cook a meal and before going to bed she made a small tub of hot water and washed his feet!
We were to spend the next 16 years share cropping, borrowing money for everything we bought, paying it back when the tobacco sold, and starting the new crop with borrowed money. Before I was three we had moved to the dilapidated Civil War mansion in Craven County. When winter came my little brother had no warm coat, so Mama took a very worn wool blanket which was threadbare except around the sides, and sewed him a little coat by hand. It was large pink and brown checks, and I must have had a fashion sense, even then, because I thought it was the silliest thing for a little boy with bright red hair!
During those depression years we were never on welfare, because we could grow things, and Mama sewed our clothes by hand. She could make the tiny stitches look just like a sewing machine had sewn it, by back stitching each one. Daddy was able to supplement their income
through some homemade brew operation he had going in the woods. Prohibition had given many people in the south a clear conscience, and he always had connections, law officers he paid off, but his partner was caught, and sent to prison for a year. The family were our best friends, and they had no income while their father was away. They were invited to live with us that year, in the upper floor which had two nice rooms and a fireplace in each. Miss Emmy cooked for her two daughters in the fireplace. I thought it was fascinating. My mother loved having them there, because normally she had nobody to talk with except me. I wore her out, she said, because I asked so many questions. It was during those years that stock car racing started in North Carolina, in the sand hills of Rockingham, near Charlotte, or so the story goes, with bootleggers in their old jalopies, trying to outrun the "revenuers".
Daddy enjoyed living on the edge. Gambling was another vice which worried my mother. One of the few times I saw her cry was the year he got in a poker game with all the money he had brought home from selling the tobacco crop. He lost every cent and could not pay the debts for the previous year. I am sure he spent a lot of time in the woods the next year in order to catch up. Most evenings he spent at the country store gambling, not for high stakes, but with small wrapped candies. It was wonderful when he won. I especially loved the peanut butter ones.
The store was warm. Our house was cold. He hated cutting wood. During the winter days my mother stayed in bed most of the time. She would take a "tow sack" made of burlap and scour the woods for fat pine so she could have a fire in the heater when we got home from school. As soon as we ate we went to bed with a hot brick at our feet. Some of the later houses were very difficult to heat. You could see through the walls in places. Mama decided, when I was about ten, to get a job in town at the new shirt factory. She loved the companionship of the other women who worked there. We loved the variety of food she began to bring home. Of course when the weather warmed up she had to quit and help work the farm.
Still she sewed all of our clothes by hand. She could only afford to buy black and white thread. I remember a skirt she made for me from a remnant she found on sale. It was peach color, and she determined it would look tacky sewn with white thread, so she pulled raveled threads out and wound them together to top stitch all the pleats in peach thread. She was always busy. I cannot ever remember seeing her resting. Daddy seemed to always be resting, usually reading Wild West magazines. After working all day in the factory she would come home, cook a meal and before going to bed she made a small tub of hot water and washed his feet!
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Mothers Day
My grand daughters, Sara Jayne and Maren, cooked a dinner for me today. There were nine of us here. I talked to all my daughters, took a nap, and had a great Mother's Day. In honor of the best mother in the world I want to write a tribute to her.
When my mother was 16 years old the first Mormon missionaries came to the area and her whole family was baptized. There was not much time to learn about the Gospel before she was
married at 17. My dad was not interested in church, and there was not a branch near enough for her to attend. My first awareness of her being different from the Baptists and Pentacostal members came when I was too young to go to school. We were living in the big antebellum house back in the woods. One day we saw two young men in dark suits and fedora hats walking into the clearing. They introduced themselves as Mormon missionaries. Mama was so excited. ''I'm a Mormon! '' she announced. They looked startled, in disbelief. There were so few members in the state, and none in our area. The mission included Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Tenn., Virginia, and West Virginia, and I don't know how many more. The mission headquarters was in Kentucky, and Charles Callas was president. Mama jumped up and went for her trunk, which held everything important, and said she would show them her baptism certificate. She went through everything, but couldn't find it. They left, and she sat down and and cried, saying, "They didn't believe me!" When she died, Daddy gave me her little trunk. I can't remember what motivated me to turn the upper tray upside down, but stuck to the bottom was her baptism certificate.
I remember having company at our house and hearing them comment on her religion, "Mable won't eat. She's a Mormon, and she's fasting." We went to whatever church we lived near. In second grade we moved near Holiness, a Penticost faith, and Mama and I were the only ones in attendance who were not saved. We sat in the back. I wanted to join everyone at the altar to be saved, but she said it was not the right church. A neighbor told us, after we had missed a meeting, that the preacher had commented, " We can have a good time tonight. The old devil isn't here!" She was sure he meant my mother. She just laughed. We never put any money in the plate, and some thought we were heathens. Mama thought it was better to go to any church than stay home, so on Sunday she would hitch up the mule to the Hoover cart, and leave him tied to a pine tree while we went to the meetings. I loved the Bible stories and children's songs I learned.
I was in high school before we moved near enough to a chapel to drive there, but there was a war, gas shortage, and other than taking a school bus to my cousin's house, I still had no chance to attend my mother's church, and discover why it was so important to her. I loved the weekends I could spend with my cousin Helen, five years older than I. Finally, when I was a junior, we were able to attend regularly. Meetings were held twice each Sunday. I remember the day we heard a sermon on the word of wisdom, a principle which had not been emphasized in the twenties. Mama was very surprised to know that she should not have been drinking tea nor coffee. We were not big coffee drinkers, but iced tea was our salvation summer and winter. I was not sure I could give it up, and determined that I would be baptized if I could go a year without it. Mama never drank a drop of either from the time she heard the talk.
In September of 1946 I was baptized in the dark brown water of Tull's mill pond, wearing a pair of overalls and a work shirt. I was the only member in my senior class.
My younger brothers also wanted to be baptized, and I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life by convincing my mother that she should make them wait until they were older. I thought I knew everything. My philosophy was that it would be worse to commit the sins I was so sure they would. I could see they were poking fun of church. Sitting on the wooden benches my 14 year old brother was amused at how often one Brother Potter said, "My dear brothers and sisters". During a sermon one Sunday he said it some twenty times, and to keep count, Bill cut a notch in the bench each time he said it. I was so embarrased. I had a crush on one of the Harper boys who was on his way to BYU the next fall, and I wanted to make a good impression.
Had the boys been members I am sure they would have done the rowdy things, but their wives would have agreed to go with them to our church. That is just how wives were in our part of the country.
Mama was the hardest worker, the least critical person and most pleasant to be around. She was truly a missionary to my father, and eventually to my brother who is now a member. Other stories for another time.
When my mother was 16 years old the first Mormon missionaries came to the area and her whole family was baptized. There was not much time to learn about the Gospel before she was
married at 17. My dad was not interested in church, and there was not a branch near enough for her to attend. My first awareness of her being different from the Baptists and Pentacostal members came when I was too young to go to school. We were living in the big antebellum house back in the woods. One day we saw two young men in dark suits and fedora hats walking into the clearing. They introduced themselves as Mormon missionaries. Mama was so excited. ''I'm a Mormon! '' she announced. They looked startled, in disbelief. There were so few members in the state, and none in our area. The mission included Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Tenn., Virginia, and West Virginia, and I don't know how many more. The mission headquarters was in Kentucky, and Charles Callas was president. Mama jumped up and went for her trunk, which held everything important, and said she would show them her baptism certificate. She went through everything, but couldn't find it. They left, and she sat down and and cried, saying, "They didn't believe me!" When she died, Daddy gave me her little trunk. I can't remember what motivated me to turn the upper tray upside down, but stuck to the bottom was her baptism certificate.
I remember having company at our house and hearing them comment on her religion, "Mable won't eat. She's a Mormon, and she's fasting." We went to whatever church we lived near. In second grade we moved near Holiness, a Penticost faith, and Mama and I were the only ones in attendance who were not saved. We sat in the back. I wanted to join everyone at the altar to be saved, but she said it was not the right church. A neighbor told us, after we had missed a meeting, that the preacher had commented, " We can have a good time tonight. The old devil isn't here!" She was sure he meant my mother. She just laughed. We never put any money in the plate, and some thought we were heathens. Mama thought it was better to go to any church than stay home, so on Sunday she would hitch up the mule to the Hoover cart, and leave him tied to a pine tree while we went to the meetings. I loved the Bible stories and children's songs I learned.
I was in high school before we moved near enough to a chapel to drive there, but there was a war, gas shortage, and other than taking a school bus to my cousin's house, I still had no chance to attend my mother's church, and discover why it was so important to her. I loved the weekends I could spend with my cousin Helen, five years older than I. Finally, when I was a junior, we were able to attend regularly. Meetings were held twice each Sunday. I remember the day we heard a sermon on the word of wisdom, a principle which had not been emphasized in the twenties. Mama was very surprised to know that she should not have been drinking tea nor coffee. We were not big coffee drinkers, but iced tea was our salvation summer and winter. I was not sure I could give it up, and determined that I would be baptized if I could go a year without it. Mama never drank a drop of either from the time she heard the talk.
In September of 1946 I was baptized in the dark brown water of Tull's mill pond, wearing a pair of overalls and a work shirt. I was the only member in my senior class.
My younger brothers also wanted to be baptized, and I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life by convincing my mother that she should make them wait until they were older. I thought I knew everything. My philosophy was that it would be worse to commit the sins I was so sure they would. I could see they were poking fun of church. Sitting on the wooden benches my 14 year old brother was amused at how often one Brother Potter said, "My dear brothers and sisters". During a sermon one Sunday he said it some twenty times, and to keep count, Bill cut a notch in the bench each time he said it. I was so embarrased. I had a crush on one of the Harper boys who was on his way to BYU the next fall, and I wanted to make a good impression.
Had the boys been members I am sure they would have done the rowdy things, but their wives would have agreed to go with them to our church. That is just how wives were in our part of the country.
Mama was the hardest worker, the least critical person and most pleasant to be around. She was truly a missionary to my father, and eventually to my brother who is now a member. Other stories for another time.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
1929
Most people remember it as the year the stock market crashed, but the first month was not bad for my family. In fact it was probably the happiest time my mother had ever known. Not long after she was married my dad found a job working for a dredging company on the coast. The result of the project was called The Inland Waterway, and today it is a well traveled route for small sea craft from all over the world. With minimum sailing experience you can take a boat from the Florida Keys to Maine by just following the buoys marking the current, and never seeing the ocean. My mother spent most of the year boarding with a family in Swansboro, a quaint fishing village below New Bern. She remained friends with the people on the street the rest of her life. In her father's home she had been very unhappy.
In 1918 my mother was barely 8 years old when she found herself caring for both her four younger siblings and her parents. She took Mamie, the new baby, to her aunt's house and cared for the two year old, Naomi, until she died. It was the beginning of the flu epidemic. Her father survived, but Mama remembered standing at the foot of the bed watching her mother die, her father being too sick to be aware.
They lived in a beautiful log cabin with two bedrooms in the loft. The only son in the family, Uncle Durwood, inherited everything- the rule of primogeniture-and I remember visiting him there when I was very small, thinking what a wonderful, cosy house with gardenia bushes all around and pink roses climbing on the walls. Her mother, Lydia McArthur Robinson, was petite with jet black hair and eyes, and her work ethic affected my mother, and eventually me and my brother. I wish I could have known her.
Left with three children to raise, her father did his best. All of the children worked on the farm, and my mother did the cooking. After five or six years, her dad married a girl only a year older than Mama. Sally Taylor took over my mother's life. She was sent out to work on other farms, and turned over all her earnings to her stepmother. My grandfather bought one of the first cars in the county, taught his new wife to drive, but Mama did not ride in it very much. There were not many rules in the house, and 'Sook' as they called her, put an end to many things like eating between meals. She even put a lock on the pie safe where the left overs were kept. The only person my mother truly disliked was Sook. I only saw her once. Mama pointed her out in a doctor's office full of people. She looked like a skeleton to me, with parchment thin skin, and she did not recognize us.
I was delivered by a real doctor, unlike my other siblings who were delivered at home by a midwife. I don't think my dad was there, but I don't know. A few days before he was at a New Years Eve company party in Delaware. He brought his party hat for my first gift. I had until I was married.
When Daddy came home, he moved Mama and me two houses down the street where we rented an upstairs bedroom from a sea captain and his wife, Earnest and Helen Wessel. Cpt. Earnest was at sea most of the time. Miss Helen, from Pascagoula, Miss, the beautiful girl who fell in love with the German captain who had left his homeland rather than fight in WW l, went to sea with him until one day, in a storm, she fell overboard. She never left shore again.
Miss Helen spoiled me, always thought of me as her baby. Mama watched Miss Helen enter an affair with Mr. Bill Toler next door. Mrs. Toler developed pneumonia, was recovering, but suddenly died. Helen and Bill took off together as soon as he could sell his home, bought a house boat and lived moored by the city dump for sixteen years.
We visited them several times as I was growing up. Miss Helen worked in a laundry to support them, because Bill was disabled most of those years. A woman who had been pampered by her capitan and given every luxury became a drudge, looked terrible. When Bill died she returned to Swansboro, and he took her back. Cpt. Earnest only lived a year.
One day when I was a senior in high school we got a letter from Miss Helen, telling us the whole story. Eventually, during my first semester in college, she talked my dad into moving to Swansboro, and moving in with her. She gave us the house, but over the next nine years she nearly drove my mother crazy. My dad had remained friends with the dredging company and
had gone back to work for them, so they had left her alone, and were living in Washington, D.C. when my brother checked on her and found her dead in bed. There were only five people at her funeral,
The capitan's house is on the state register. Miss Helen's ghost has been heard by many people, climbing up and down the enclosed staircase, with her customary glass of iced tea, the ice cubes tinkling against the glass.
In 1918 my mother was barely 8 years old when she found herself caring for both her four younger siblings and her parents. She took Mamie, the new baby, to her aunt's house and cared for the two year old, Naomi, until she died. It was the beginning of the flu epidemic. Her father survived, but Mama remembered standing at the foot of the bed watching her mother die, her father being too sick to be aware.
They lived in a beautiful log cabin with two bedrooms in the loft. The only son in the family, Uncle Durwood, inherited everything- the rule of primogeniture-and I remember visiting him there when I was very small, thinking what a wonderful, cosy house with gardenia bushes all around and pink roses climbing on the walls. Her mother, Lydia McArthur Robinson, was petite with jet black hair and eyes, and her work ethic affected my mother, and eventually me and my brother. I wish I could have known her.
Left with three children to raise, her father did his best. All of the children worked on the farm, and my mother did the cooking. After five or six years, her dad married a girl only a year older than Mama. Sally Taylor took over my mother's life. She was sent out to work on other farms, and turned over all her earnings to her stepmother. My grandfather bought one of the first cars in the county, taught his new wife to drive, but Mama did not ride in it very much. There were not many rules in the house, and 'Sook' as they called her, put an end to many things like eating between meals. She even put a lock on the pie safe where the left overs were kept. The only person my mother truly disliked was Sook. I only saw her once. Mama pointed her out in a doctor's office full of people. She looked like a skeleton to me, with parchment thin skin, and she did not recognize us.
I was delivered by a real doctor, unlike my other siblings who were delivered at home by a midwife. I don't think my dad was there, but I don't know. A few days before he was at a New Years Eve company party in Delaware. He brought his party hat for my first gift. I had until I was married.
When Daddy came home, he moved Mama and me two houses down the street where we rented an upstairs bedroom from a sea captain and his wife, Earnest and Helen Wessel. Cpt. Earnest was at sea most of the time. Miss Helen, from Pascagoula, Miss, the beautiful girl who fell in love with the German captain who had left his homeland rather than fight in WW l, went to sea with him until one day, in a storm, she fell overboard. She never left shore again.
Miss Helen spoiled me, always thought of me as her baby. Mama watched Miss Helen enter an affair with Mr. Bill Toler next door. Mrs. Toler developed pneumonia, was recovering, but suddenly died. Helen and Bill took off together as soon as he could sell his home, bought a house boat and lived moored by the city dump for sixteen years.
We visited them several times as I was growing up. Miss Helen worked in a laundry to support them, because Bill was disabled most of those years. A woman who had been pampered by her capitan and given every luxury became a drudge, looked terrible. When Bill died she returned to Swansboro, and he took her back. Cpt. Earnest only lived a year.
One day when I was a senior in high school we got a letter from Miss Helen, telling us the whole story. Eventually, during my first semester in college, she talked my dad into moving to Swansboro, and moving in with her. She gave us the house, but over the next nine years she nearly drove my mother crazy. My dad had remained friends with the dredging company and
had gone back to work for them, so they had left her alone, and were living in Washington, D.C. when my brother checked on her and found her dead in bed. There were only five people at her funeral,
The capitan's house is on the state register. Miss Helen's ghost has been heard by many people, climbing up and down the enclosed staircase, with her customary glass of iced tea, the ice cubes tinkling against the glass.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Grandaddy
Isn't it interesting what we call our ancestors and parents! My mother called her father Papa, and her mother Mama. My brothers and I said Mama and Daddy. My kids say Mom and Dad, or in teasing, like their southern cousins, Da-ah-dee. By his children my grandad was called Pa. Their mother was Ma. My mother always thought it would be nice to be called Mother and Grandmother. I am sorry I never did that, since it was important to her. My brother's children, however, having been raised near her, have done as she wished. My girls were much closer to their western cousins and called them the same, Grandma and Grandpa. I don't think my parents appreciated it.
I think my dad must have said something to his father when he came to live with us, like"Don't ever lay a hand on my kids!" There were times when I am sure he wanted to, but my dad had seen enough of cruelty when he was a child.
I don't think I was a problem child, just extremely active. Once I climbed up into a young peach tree, and got my foot stuck in a notch. My crying brought both my mother and my grandfather. His advice was, "While she is stuck up there is the time to teach her a lesson." He cut a whip and handed it to her. She whispered for me to scream like I was really hurting, but she managed to hit the tree much harder than she hit me. I shall never forget how he danced around, like someone cheering at a ball game, really excited to see me suffer. "Hit her hard! Hit harder!"
Grandaddy lived with Uncle Walter as I was growing up. He formed a very close attachment to their first boy, Elmer, became the baby's caretaker, and when he was old enough to take on the buggy with his pony, Toby, at the reins they were a pair of travelers. Uncle Walter said Elmer had no chance to be disobedient, because he was never away from his protector. All of us were glad it was Elmer he liked best instead of us.
My grandfather died in 1945 from a condition called locked bowels, probably diverticulitis. My own father shared the same fate, and after suffering in a coma for a week after he was hospitalized (first time in his life) the doctor told me that he had probably had a stroke in a colon muscle which had paralyzed activity in that section of the colon, a situation which could have been fixed easily at Duke U. hospital, which was less than two hours away. Since I never have pain, or at least a very high threshold, if I get that condition, I will know what it is. I just hope I am not in the middle of the ocean
My grandmother did not go to Grandaddy's funeral with all of us. He is buried beside his first wife, Ida.
I think my dad must have said something to his father when he came to live with us, like"Don't ever lay a hand on my kids!" There were times when I am sure he wanted to, but my dad had seen enough of cruelty when he was a child.
I don't think I was a problem child, just extremely active. Once I climbed up into a young peach tree, and got my foot stuck in a notch. My crying brought both my mother and my grandfather. His advice was, "While she is stuck up there is the time to teach her a lesson." He cut a whip and handed it to her. She whispered for me to scream like I was really hurting, but she managed to hit the tree much harder than she hit me. I shall never forget how he danced around, like someone cheering at a ball game, really excited to see me suffer. "Hit her hard! Hit harder!"
Grandaddy lived with Uncle Walter as I was growing up. He formed a very close attachment to their first boy, Elmer, became the baby's caretaker, and when he was old enough to take on the buggy with his pony, Toby, at the reins they were a pair of travelers. Uncle Walter said Elmer had no chance to be disobedient, because he was never away from his protector. All of us were glad it was Elmer he liked best instead of us.
My grandfather died in 1945 from a condition called locked bowels, probably diverticulitis. My own father shared the same fate, and after suffering in a coma for a week after he was hospitalized (first time in his life) the doctor told me that he had probably had a stroke in a colon muscle which had paralyzed activity in that section of the colon, a situation which could have been fixed easily at Duke U. hospital, which was less than two hours away. Since I never have pain, or at least a very high threshold, if I get that condition, I will know what it is. I just hope I am not in the middle of the ocean
My grandmother did not go to Grandaddy's funeral with all of us. He is buried beside his first wife, Ida.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Grandmammy Eva
She had every reason to be miserable, but somewhere along the way she must have decided to be pleasant, and I loved to be with her, a short, very fat woman with no lap, who always told me I should eat more fat so I would be pretty. I could not bring myself to tell her I did not want to be fat like her. I knew I would never be pretty. I was too skinny and was covered with freckles. It was a real treat to have her come for a visit. She was such a good cook, and always made some thing sweet for dinner, even if it was only pudding made with Irish potatoes, egg and sugar. When all the children except the youngest boy, Robert, had married and left, the two of them rented a small house and farmed together as share croppers until he was drafted into the army in 1941. After that she gave away her few household things and lived with different children until her death when I was a college freshman. She was barely sixty years old when her heart gave out.
Most of those last years she lived with Aunt Ruth, who like her sisters had married at 15. The year that I graduated from high school she lived with us and we shared a bedroom. Our house had no electricity, and the only good light to read by was in the living room. After she went to sleep, I would read by flashlight under my covers. The racy book of that year was Forever Amber, an English novel most teens secretly read.
She was very critical of some of my clothes, shorts in particular, but my mother did not pay any attention to her comments. The reason she was not living with her daughter was because they had moved to a house too small for her. I enjoyed our conversations when she would tell me about her life. After Granddaddy left her she became acquainted with the Mormon missionaries and would take all of her children to the new church built on land given by a new convert named Howard, and was called Howard's Chapel. One day in summer she took a big picnic lunch and planned to enjoy the whole day at a conference. Chicken wire was stretched between the pine trees, and the children were instructed to put a cloth on the wire and set out the food she had brought while she went inside to nurse her baby. The chapel was only one room divided for Sunday school classes by heavy white cotton curtains drawn between the rows. She simply went to the back of the room and drew a curtain around herself. A priesthood meeting was going on in the front of the room. She was informed that she could not be in the room; it was closed to women. She had no other place except the outhouse to nurse the baby, so she gathered up her famous fried chicken and her kids and went home, never to return. I have often wondered how her life might have changed, as well as the lives of most of her children, with the support and influence of the church.
Uncle Jim, the second brother, converted to Mormonism shortly after his mariage, and was her only child to do so. He was faithful in his attendance, but I wonder if he ever really understood it. They had only one child who was five years older than me, and the greatest influence in my early years. She was beautiful, had piano lessons, and played for all the meetings. Her father, Uncle Jim never participated, would not accept the priesthood, nor pay tithing. He and his family observed the word of wisdom, and he dearly loved all the missionaries, but he was very miserly. He is survived by one grandchild who has been a credit to him. The seed finally bore fruit. She was baptized and finds great joy in her church callings. She will have her temple blessings this year.
She was a religious woman, always taught her children to pray and read the Bible. She became aligned with Uncle Wayne and the Jehovas Witnesses, but she never became as strident as he. Uncle Wayne told my dad that sending me to college was a waste of money, because the world would come to an end before I ever got to use any of my fancy knowledge.
Most of those last years she lived with Aunt Ruth, who like her sisters had married at 15. The year that I graduated from high school she lived with us and we shared a bedroom. Our house had no electricity, and the only good light to read by was in the living room. After she went to sleep, I would read by flashlight under my covers. The racy book of that year was Forever Amber, an English novel most teens secretly read.
She was very critical of some of my clothes, shorts in particular, but my mother did not pay any attention to her comments. The reason she was not living with her daughter was because they had moved to a house too small for her. I enjoyed our conversations when she would tell me about her life. After Granddaddy left her she became acquainted with the Mormon missionaries and would take all of her children to the new church built on land given by a new convert named Howard, and was called Howard's Chapel. One day in summer she took a big picnic lunch and planned to enjoy the whole day at a conference. Chicken wire was stretched between the pine trees, and the children were instructed to put a cloth on the wire and set out the food she had brought while she went inside to nurse her baby. The chapel was only one room divided for Sunday school classes by heavy white cotton curtains drawn between the rows. She simply went to the back of the room and drew a curtain around herself. A priesthood meeting was going on in the front of the room. She was informed that she could not be in the room; it was closed to women. She had no other place except the outhouse to nurse the baby, so she gathered up her famous fried chicken and her kids and went home, never to return. I have often wondered how her life might have changed, as well as the lives of most of her children, with the support and influence of the church.
Uncle Jim, the second brother, converted to Mormonism shortly after his mariage, and was her only child to do so. He was faithful in his attendance, but I wonder if he ever really understood it. They had only one child who was five years older than me, and the greatest influence in my early years. She was beautiful, had piano lessons, and played for all the meetings. Her father, Uncle Jim never participated, would not accept the priesthood, nor pay tithing. He and his family observed the word of wisdom, and he dearly loved all the missionaries, but he was very miserly. He is survived by one grandchild who has been a credit to him. The seed finally bore fruit. She was baptized and finds great joy in her church callings. She will have her temple blessings this year.
She was a religious woman, always taught her children to pray and read the Bible. She became aligned with Uncle Wayne and the Jehovas Witnesses, but she never became as strident as he. Uncle Wayne told my dad that sending me to college was a waste of money, because the world would come to an end before I ever got to use any of my fancy knowledge.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Grandmammy and Granddaddy
These were the names we used for the only grandparents we knew. As I mentioned, we did not know my mother's family. It seems my daddy had a falling out with her father shortly after they were married, over an access road to his property. He was a land owner, and probably did not approve of my mother's marriage. The fact that she eloped with one of the rowdy Stroud boys seems likely, since their marriage was unattended by any relatives on either side. It took place in the home of the justice of the peace in Kennansville, the county seat of the adjoining Jones County.
My grandmother was awakened after everyone was in bed. She simply moved two sleeping children from their bed to the feet of two other beds and gave the newly weds their bed, in the same room with another bed of children. At that time my dad, Emmett, was the oldest at home. There were six older who had married and moved out.
My Uncle Hubert was the oldest, the son who helped his mother deliver her last baby. Right at the end of the first world war in 1918 he was drafted in the army, but the war was over before he was trained. In 1941 the youngest boy, Uncle Robert, was drafted and spent the whole war, most of it in Europe in the army. In between there were seven boys who missed military duty.
My mother's life was very hard. My grandmother must have felt very sorry for her. She was able to give my parents a small room by themselves the day after their marriage, and they did not live there long. My dad found a job with a dredging crew on the coast and when I was born 13 months later he was up in Delaware, and my mother was boarding with a nice family in the tiny fishing village of Swansboro. She often spoke of the kindness of all the people on the street who took care of her when her husband could not be there. Today there is a waterway all the way from Maine to Florida that my dad helped dig. It was probably some of the happiest days of her life, no heavy farm work to do, only a cute little red headed baby to take care of, with no shortage of baby sitters volunteering.
My mother was beautiful, with black wavy hair and black eyes. I looked just like my dad. My mother kept her good looks in spite of her hard life. In high school a boy once said to me that he thought my mother was the most beautiful woman around, and if I were as pretty, he would take me out.
When the waterway was built my dad was ready to move back to the farm near his mother. During that year my brother Bill was born. I was two and a half. Shortly after he was born we moved to Craven County, near New Bern, and lived there until I was in first grade. It was a hugh antibellum house that had been very nice, but had not been painted since the Civil War. The once fancy wall paper was peeled away and bed bugs were living in the cracks. I remember my mother looking for bugs by lantern light and squashing them on the mattress. The corners and seams were red with bug juice. She wiped everything with kerosene to kill the bugs she called "chinches". Her life was almost unbearable. My dad had a car, and was gone with his friends at night. My mother would cry when he had lipstick on his shirt collar. This is the sort of behavior she grew to expect from him for most of her life.
I had intended to write more about my grandparents, but by the time my parents were married they had separated. Uncle Hubert had married and had four boys. The next was Uncle Wayne, who became one of the first Jehovas Witnesses in the area. He married a woman from a nice family. She inherited a large farm, but he went through it
My grandmother was awakened after everyone was in bed. She simply moved two sleeping children from their bed to the feet of two other beds and gave the newly weds their bed, in the same room with another bed of children. At that time my dad, Emmett, was the oldest at home. There were six older who had married and moved out.
My Uncle Hubert was the oldest, the son who helped his mother deliver her last baby. Right at the end of the first world war in 1918 he was drafted in the army, but the war was over before he was trained. In 1941 the youngest boy, Uncle Robert, was drafted and spent the whole war, most of it in Europe in the army. In between there were seven boys who missed military duty.
My mother's life was very hard. My grandmother must have felt very sorry for her. She was able to give my parents a small room by themselves the day after their marriage, and they did not live there long. My dad found a job with a dredging crew on the coast and when I was born 13 months later he was up in Delaware, and my mother was boarding with a nice family in the tiny fishing village of Swansboro. She often spoke of the kindness of all the people on the street who took care of her when her husband could not be there. Today there is a waterway all the way from Maine to Florida that my dad helped dig. It was probably some of the happiest days of her life, no heavy farm work to do, only a cute little red headed baby to take care of, with no shortage of baby sitters volunteering.
My mother was beautiful, with black wavy hair and black eyes. I looked just like my dad. My mother kept her good looks in spite of her hard life. In high school a boy once said to me that he thought my mother was the most beautiful woman around, and if I were as pretty, he would take me out.
When the waterway was built my dad was ready to move back to the farm near his mother. During that year my brother Bill was born. I was two and a half. Shortly after he was born we moved to Craven County, near New Bern, and lived there until I was in first grade. It was a hugh antibellum house that had been very nice, but had not been painted since the Civil War. The once fancy wall paper was peeled away and bed bugs were living in the cracks. I remember my mother looking for bugs by lantern light and squashing them on the mattress. The corners and seams were red with bug juice. She wiped everything with kerosene to kill the bugs she called "chinches". Her life was almost unbearable. My dad had a car, and was gone with his friends at night. My mother would cry when he had lipstick on his shirt collar. This is the sort of behavior she grew to expect from him for most of her life.
I had intended to write more about my grandparents, but by the time my parents were married they had separated. Uncle Hubert had married and had four boys. The next was Uncle Wayne, who became one of the first Jehovas Witnesses in the area. He married a woman from a nice family. She inherited a large farm, but he went through it
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Strouds
The Strouds were once nobles in England, but during the civil war their house was brought down, their ancestors' carcasses removed from the honored burial places like Westminster Abbey, and many were forced to leave the city which still bears their name, in Glouchestershire. You can still find the old manor house, and the grounds are still beautiful, but there is nary a Stroud to be found there. When we told my dad we had hunted in vain for kin, he said we should have visited the jail. We did hear of an old guy who was in his eighties, spent most of his time on the sea, scubba diving. but we did not have time to look for him.
The book about the Strouds in the family history libraries thinks most of us came from a pair of brothers who came over before the Revolution, just kids cared for by an immigrant family. Their descendants settled in Stroudsburg, PA, and later members migrated to Virginia, the Carolinas and eventually Oklahoma, where you can find a small town by that name today.
Evidently none of the ones who populated the slave states ever became prosperous enough to own land or slaves, since we have never seen a black person with our name. Although they were as poor as church mice, as the saying went, they had great pride in their work, and in their habits and tried to get as much education as they thought they needed; to be able to read the Bible and do a little "figuring". The little one room school houses were everywhere. Usually the only teacher lived in the homes of her pupils, taking turns, a week here, and the next at another home where she would usually be given a pallet (quilts on the floor) next to the fireplace. My grandmother said all the little kids wanted to bring their bedding and sleep next to her.
The cabins were very small, and most of the children slept in a loft accessable with a ladder. Food was cooked over an open fire until the Franklin stove became popular. It conserved wood and heated a larger area. Most of the heat from a fireplace went up the chimney, and when I was small it was a relief to go to bed with a hot brick wrapped in a an old blanket rather than sit in front of the fireplace with my back freezing and the fronts of my legs barbecued. The vein pattern stood out on the fronts of my legs all winter.
Gatsy Susan Gray married a Waters (some spelled it Warters), and it was her oldest daughter who married a Stroud. Her name was Eva Waters and she married Drewry Stroud. Her youngest sister Hattie also married a Stroud, so there were many in our county. Drew had been married before, to Ida Davis, who had died with her infant daughter in childbirth. My grandpa
never seemed to get over losing Ida. I remember hearing him tell how beautiful she was and that she was a perfect wife. My grandmother heard it all the time, she said.
Grandaddy did not have a home of his own, but lodged with different sons. When I was just a couple of years old he came to live with us and for a while during the winter I had to sleep with him. My mother was so afraid I would catch the "itch" he had on his legs. I don't know if it was scabies, but she insisted that he go to a doctor and get treated. There was a half bottle of the lotion he used left on our shelf when he moved on to my uncle's. My mother did not throw anything away, so years later I developed a rash under my arms and on my chest, probably by too many blankets when we had a warm spell at Christmas time. She was so sure I had something contageous. She grabbed the bottle, now separated into clots of pinkish milk. Shaking it thoroughly, she dabbed it all over my rash. Within an hour I was one big watery blister and it burned for three days. A benefit was that no hair ever grew under my arms!
My grandaddy was a strict disciplinarian. None of his children ever had feelings of afffection for him, only fear. He and "Grandmammy Eva" had 12 children. When their little boy Felix was still in diapers, just beginning to talk, he was seen by his father climbing into the new body of a wagon placed on the ground for the paint to dry. He yelled to the baby, "Are you in my new wagon?"
The child, trembling with fear, denied his obvious guilt by saying, "No, sir!", whereupon he was jerked up and beaten unmercifully with a board, not for a misdead, but for LYING!
My grandmother said she held the child on her lap and put ointment on the open skin while he cried all night.
That was not the last straw, however. It came some years later shortly after she delivered number 12. She went into labor on a warm Sunday afternoon in April. My grandpa was a Mason and his regular Sunday afternoon activity was to hitch up his pony to the buggy and go to visit one of his Masonic Lodge friends. He was thus engaged in deep conversation on his friend's front porch when my uncle came running up to say, "Ma says it's time to get the midwife." He wasn't finished with his conversation, and after an hour or so he brought the midwife - after she had delivered the baby herself with the help of her oldest son. She was one mad woman. His stuff was moved to the barn where he slept on the hay until cold weather when one day he came to the kitchen with a bundle of his clothes to announce that he was leaving.
I think he was gone for three years, just bumming around from one job to another. Nobody ever expected to see him again until he showed up suddenly telling everyone he had got religion, and he wanted to beg the forgiveness of his wife and all his children. She forgave him, but asked him to never speak to her again. "And," she asked him."how is little Felix, who was almost beaten to death, to forgive you. He died last year of a brain tumor, and I had no money to pay the doctor."
We were a close family. At family reunions I always thought it was funny that my grandparents were both there, but never spoke to each other. My mother's family was not close, and I only saw my maternal grandfather once. He didn't speak to me, only looked at me when someone told him I was his granddaughter. I was eighteen. Maybe that is why I have always wanted to be a good grandparent. Everybody deserves to have one.
The book about the Strouds in the family history libraries thinks most of us came from a pair of brothers who came over before the Revolution, just kids cared for by an immigrant family. Their descendants settled in Stroudsburg, PA, and later members migrated to Virginia, the Carolinas and eventually Oklahoma, where you can find a small town by that name today.
Evidently none of the ones who populated the slave states ever became prosperous enough to own land or slaves, since we have never seen a black person with our name. Although they were as poor as church mice, as the saying went, they had great pride in their work, and in their habits and tried to get as much education as they thought they needed; to be able to read the Bible and do a little "figuring". The little one room school houses were everywhere. Usually the only teacher lived in the homes of her pupils, taking turns, a week here, and the next at another home where she would usually be given a pallet (quilts on the floor) next to the fireplace. My grandmother said all the little kids wanted to bring their bedding and sleep next to her.
The cabins were very small, and most of the children slept in a loft accessable with a ladder. Food was cooked over an open fire until the Franklin stove became popular. It conserved wood and heated a larger area. Most of the heat from a fireplace went up the chimney, and when I was small it was a relief to go to bed with a hot brick wrapped in a an old blanket rather than sit in front of the fireplace with my back freezing and the fronts of my legs barbecued. The vein pattern stood out on the fronts of my legs all winter.
Gatsy Susan Gray married a Waters (some spelled it Warters), and it was her oldest daughter who married a Stroud. Her name was Eva Waters and she married Drewry Stroud. Her youngest sister Hattie also married a Stroud, so there were many in our county. Drew had been married before, to Ida Davis, who had died with her infant daughter in childbirth. My grandpa
never seemed to get over losing Ida. I remember hearing him tell how beautiful she was and that she was a perfect wife. My grandmother heard it all the time, she said.
Grandaddy did not have a home of his own, but lodged with different sons. When I was just a couple of years old he came to live with us and for a while during the winter I had to sleep with him. My mother was so afraid I would catch the "itch" he had on his legs. I don't know if it was scabies, but she insisted that he go to a doctor and get treated. There was a half bottle of the lotion he used left on our shelf when he moved on to my uncle's. My mother did not throw anything away, so years later I developed a rash under my arms and on my chest, probably by too many blankets when we had a warm spell at Christmas time. She was so sure I had something contageous. She grabbed the bottle, now separated into clots of pinkish milk. Shaking it thoroughly, she dabbed it all over my rash. Within an hour I was one big watery blister and it burned for three days. A benefit was that no hair ever grew under my arms!
My grandaddy was a strict disciplinarian. None of his children ever had feelings of afffection for him, only fear. He and "Grandmammy Eva" had 12 children. When their little boy Felix was still in diapers, just beginning to talk, he was seen by his father climbing into the new body of a wagon placed on the ground for the paint to dry. He yelled to the baby, "Are you in my new wagon?"
The child, trembling with fear, denied his obvious guilt by saying, "No, sir!", whereupon he was jerked up and beaten unmercifully with a board, not for a misdead, but for LYING!
My grandmother said she held the child on her lap and put ointment on the open skin while he cried all night.
That was not the last straw, however. It came some years later shortly after she delivered number 12. She went into labor on a warm Sunday afternoon in April. My grandpa was a Mason and his regular Sunday afternoon activity was to hitch up his pony to the buggy and go to visit one of his Masonic Lodge friends. He was thus engaged in deep conversation on his friend's front porch when my uncle came running up to say, "Ma says it's time to get the midwife." He wasn't finished with his conversation, and after an hour or so he brought the midwife - after she had delivered the baby herself with the help of her oldest son. She was one mad woman. His stuff was moved to the barn where he slept on the hay until cold weather when one day he came to the kitchen with a bundle of his clothes to announce that he was leaving.
I think he was gone for three years, just bumming around from one job to another. Nobody ever expected to see him again until he showed up suddenly telling everyone he had got religion, and he wanted to beg the forgiveness of his wife and all his children. She forgave him, but asked him to never speak to her again. "And," she asked him."how is little Felix, who was almost beaten to death, to forgive you. He died last year of a brain tumor, and I had no money to pay the doctor."
We were a close family. At family reunions I always thought it was funny that my grandparents were both there, but never spoke to each other. My mother's family was not close, and I only saw my maternal grandfather once. He didn't speak to me, only looked at me when someone told him I was his granddaughter. I was eighteen. Maybe that is why I have always wanted to be a good grandparent. Everybody deserves to have one.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Yankees (Damnyankees, that is)
My greatgrandmother, Gatsy Susan Gray, daughter of Alexander, was a twelve year old girl in March of 1861. Her grandmother Gatsy must not have been all bad for her to have been named for her. I learned the story of the Yankee soldier from her in 1939 when I was ten years old. My cousins and I were visiting her at Aunt Hattie's house where she lived. We had all just seen the hit movie Gone With the Wind, and it was all we could talk about. We related the staircase scene where Melanie, still in bed from having delivered her baby, came down with a shotgun to take care of the Yankee soldier who seemed about to molest them and take their food. We were describing it all to our greatgrandmother, who, to my knowledge, had never seen a movie. She was sitting in her rocker and we sat on the floor at her feet. She began her story by telling us that they were very poor. Their straw mattresses were made soft with huge feather beds stuffed with the small feathers of chickens and geese. She had already saved enough to make one for her own dowery.
Behind the house was a woodpile and a big iron pot where clothes were boiled each Monday. This was a rare day when her mother was making lye soap, taking all the fat saved from frying bacon, etc., boiling it in water to skim off the clean fat and leaving the meat residue in the bottom. To the fat she had added a mixture of lye and cold water. The lye is so volitile it immediately heats the water so that you cannot hold to the glass jar, and when it is added to the lukewarm grease it begins to thicken like gravy. After stirring an hour or so it can be poured into a cardboard box to cool. In three days it is soap.
She had just added the lye, and the thin mixture was strong enough to take your skin off. She stood stirring when she saw a ragged soldier approaching. General Sherman had discharged his army, telling them to find their own way back home. He asked for food, and she told him they were very poor and had none. He argued with her and when she wouldn't answer him, he entered the log cabin, brought out all the featherbeds and pillows, and slowly ripped them open with his bayonet, shaking all the feathers over the freshly plowed ground for the wind to scatter. He was sure he would find money sewn inside. Finding nothing he advanced toward her. She waited until he was close and with the huge long-necked gourd with which she was stirring she threw the thing full right into his eyes.
Her husband was ploughing in a distant field. I can only imagine the flurry of sending a child to retrieve him and the whole family having to dispose of him and keep it secret. If she told us that part, I blocked it out. I'm pretty sure he did not fight in the war. My family had very little to gain by going to war. None of them ever owned slaves, and could not visualize themselves ever benefiting, even if the South had won. I heard a lot about the Yankees. My belly button was referred to as "where the Yankees shot you". We joked about not knowing that damn yankee was two words until we went to university. Next time - the story of my grandparents who had 12 children and why he deserted her after the birth of the last one.
Behind the house was a woodpile and a big iron pot where clothes were boiled each Monday. This was a rare day when her mother was making lye soap, taking all the fat saved from frying bacon, etc., boiling it in water to skim off the clean fat and leaving the meat residue in the bottom. To the fat she had added a mixture of lye and cold water. The lye is so volitile it immediately heats the water so that you cannot hold to the glass jar, and when it is added to the lukewarm grease it begins to thicken like gravy. After stirring an hour or so it can be poured into a cardboard box to cool. In three days it is soap.
She had just added the lye, and the thin mixture was strong enough to take your skin off. She stood stirring when she saw a ragged soldier approaching. General Sherman had discharged his army, telling them to find their own way back home. He asked for food, and she told him they were very poor and had none. He argued with her and when she wouldn't answer him, he entered the log cabin, brought out all the featherbeds and pillows, and slowly ripped them open with his bayonet, shaking all the feathers over the freshly plowed ground for the wind to scatter. He was sure he would find money sewn inside. Finding nothing he advanced toward her. She waited until he was close and with the huge long-necked gourd with which she was stirring she threw the thing full right into his eyes.
Her husband was ploughing in a distant field. I can only imagine the flurry of sending a child to retrieve him and the whole family having to dispose of him and keep it secret. If she told us that part, I blocked it out. I'm pretty sure he did not fight in the war. My family had very little to gain by going to war. None of them ever owned slaves, and could not visualize themselves ever benefiting, even if the South had won. I heard a lot about the Yankees. My belly button was referred to as "where the Yankees shot you". We joked about not knowing that damn yankee was two words until we went to university. Next time - the story of my grandparents who had 12 children and why he deserted her after the birth of the last one.
Monday, March 16, 2009
In The Beginning
When I got so excited about having a blog, I thought I would become addicted like Paige and want to write every day. I even composed in my mind the stories I want to tell, but eventually fell back to sleep. I imagined that I would be able to embellish my stories with pictures like Paige does, but it seems I am technically challenged. I need a new computer and some serious lessons from someone who will let me pay.
Just imagine a cotton field in the south. The cotton is ready to pick, and we approach it from a narrow dirt road back from the modern highway. The building is square with only a door in the front. It needs a coat of white paint. Perhaps it has only had one coat in the past two hundred years. I have seen smaller churches, but not many, and the others had some semblance of a steeple. It is only one room, and out back there must have been an outhouse. Sandy Bottom Baptist Church has been preserved as a storage shed. I have a picture taken recently of my Aunt Ruth, my brother Bobby and myself standing on the front stoop, which I will send to you if you wish.
We went out there to pay homage to our fourth great grandmother (only third in Aunt Ruth's case) whose name was Gatsy Harper Gray, a name which was struck from the records of same church, for adultery before she was twenty. The evidence was very clear. Her husband whom she had married at age 15 had been away for two years and upon returning found her with a newborn son. The divorce proceedings recorded his testimony that he had not seen her for two years. The son, Alexander, like his older and younger brothers had the Gray name, and although I assume I am not directly related to the Grays, they remain in my genealogy.
There was some speculation as to the identity of Alexander's father. Two names of possible liasons appear in the stories gathered by family historians. I can only imagine the eagerness with which the research was compiled, but unless you really want to know, I will not go farther.
Life must have been very hard for Gatsy. There are no pictures, but I imagine her to look like Mammy Yokum, a small wiry woman with a fuzz of white hair protruding from the back of a gray handstitched bonnet. She would be sunburned in spite of the cardboard slats inserted into the lining spaces in the front of the bonnet meant to shade her face. In the corner of her mouth was always a corn cob pipe, not so much for smoking the home grown tobacco as to bite upon when faced with all the problems of running a farm by herself. Women did not wear men's clothes in those days, but long skirts down to her brogan boots, Mammy Yokum style. Maybe Grandmother Gatsy wore her skirts a little shorter than most, showing a little bit of leg, because she had no shortage of suiters and had two more children without the support of a husband. She drove her own mule and wagon, lived to be eightysomething (like me) and was nice enough that her son Alexander, my third great grandfather named his daughter for her, Gatsy Susan Gray.
I feel a special connection to both of these Gatsys. The first one's father had been a soldier in the army during the Revolution as witnessed by a petition made by his widow many years after the war seeking a widow's pension due to wives of veterans of the war. It would have been typical for her to wait until she was destitute to ask for help. Like all the ancestors I have met through these stories they were very poor tenent farmers. They grew tobacco as a cash crop, taking it to the market in September, and turning over half the money to the landlord. Tobacco continued to be the cash crop of North Carolina until just a few years ago when smoking was found to cause throat cancer. Now most of the fields are converted to growing cotton, the fiber which almost lost it's popularity when synthetics came out just after WWll. Hence the field of cotton surrounding Sandy Bottom Church.
In 1865 at the end of the Civil War, the second Gatsy was a twelve year old girl, on another tenent farm when she had an encounter with a Yankee soldier. Story to come.
Just imagine a cotton field in the south. The cotton is ready to pick, and we approach it from a narrow dirt road back from the modern highway. The building is square with only a door in the front. It needs a coat of white paint. Perhaps it has only had one coat in the past two hundred years. I have seen smaller churches, but not many, and the others had some semblance of a steeple. It is only one room, and out back there must have been an outhouse. Sandy Bottom Baptist Church has been preserved as a storage shed. I have a picture taken recently of my Aunt Ruth, my brother Bobby and myself standing on the front stoop, which I will send to you if you wish.
We went out there to pay homage to our fourth great grandmother (only third in Aunt Ruth's case) whose name was Gatsy Harper Gray, a name which was struck from the records of same church, for adultery before she was twenty. The evidence was very clear. Her husband whom she had married at age 15 had been away for two years and upon returning found her with a newborn son. The divorce proceedings recorded his testimony that he had not seen her for two years. The son, Alexander, like his older and younger brothers had the Gray name, and although I assume I am not directly related to the Grays, they remain in my genealogy.
There was some speculation as to the identity of Alexander's father. Two names of possible liasons appear in the stories gathered by family historians. I can only imagine the eagerness with which the research was compiled, but unless you really want to know, I will not go farther.
Life must have been very hard for Gatsy. There are no pictures, but I imagine her to look like Mammy Yokum, a small wiry woman with a fuzz of white hair protruding from the back of a gray handstitched bonnet. She would be sunburned in spite of the cardboard slats inserted into the lining spaces in the front of the bonnet meant to shade her face. In the corner of her mouth was always a corn cob pipe, not so much for smoking the home grown tobacco as to bite upon when faced with all the problems of running a farm by herself. Women did not wear men's clothes in those days, but long skirts down to her brogan boots, Mammy Yokum style. Maybe Grandmother Gatsy wore her skirts a little shorter than most, showing a little bit of leg, because she had no shortage of suiters and had two more children without the support of a husband. She drove her own mule and wagon, lived to be eightysomething (like me) and was nice enough that her son Alexander, my third great grandfather named his daughter for her, Gatsy Susan Gray.
I feel a special connection to both of these Gatsys. The first one's father had been a soldier in the army during the Revolution as witnessed by a petition made by his widow many years after the war seeking a widow's pension due to wives of veterans of the war. It would have been typical for her to wait until she was destitute to ask for help. Like all the ancestors I have met through these stories they were very poor tenent farmers. They grew tobacco as a cash crop, taking it to the market in September, and turning over half the money to the landlord. Tobacco continued to be the cash crop of North Carolina until just a few years ago when smoking was found to cause throat cancer. Now most of the fields are converted to growing cotton, the fiber which almost lost it's popularity when synthetics came out just after WWll. Hence the field of cotton surrounding Sandy Bottom Church.
In 1865 at the end of the Civil War, the second Gatsy was a twelve year old girl, on another tenent farm when she had an encounter with a Yankee soldier. Story to come.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Sunset
When one reaches age 80, as I did this week, one must acknowledge that it is the sunset time of life. Three very important things occurred: (1) my mammogram result came back negative (2) I had my driver's license renewed for five more years (something tells me I will not renew it again) and (3) my family gave me a surprise birthday party at Ruby River Steak House.
Tedder had a hard time convincing me to go. It's your birthday. You need to dress up and celebrate this great milestone in your life. I need a steak (nice dinner for a change??), so do it for me! I suggested Bajio's instead because it is much cheaper, but as we passed there it was packed.
There were a lot of people at Ruby R, but he confessed he had made a res, and we walked into a room with Katy and Steve who had driven from Salt Lake. Five grandchildren who go to BYU were there. Our oldest granddaughter, Carolyn's Paige, had worked weeks on a special book for me. It is filled with pictures of all our family and letters from every single one, including our three daughters' husbands! What a treasure it is. There is even a letter from our grandson Eric (Elder Enrique Taylor, serving in Oaxaca, Mexico, written in Spanish).
So, this morning in Relief Society I had some good news to share. Paige, besides being an exceptional professional artist, is a computer whiz like her dad. She has just set up my blog, and it is my hope that all my family will try to read it often.
Last week I read that the US House will seat a new Rep this month whose father was a share cropper in the south. As a black man, it is considered a phenomenon. My circumstances were the same, but I have never thought of myself as being anything but blessed with opportunities. My color was never a handicap, but being a woman may have been. I will write about growing up in the south, some family background with an attempt to make it interesting and amusing.
Stories of my marriage and childrearing years and profiles of our three daughters will be separate from my professional experiences of forty one years in education. Many of my experiences are unique, and I hope they will be interesting to read.
Along the way I hope to share a few recipes, and some practical advice. One of my faults is that I am a "know-it-all", and cannot resist giving advice, solicited, or otherwise.
For years I have been working on a novel about a school teacher. Would anyone be willing to follow it, if I do it in serial form, a saga done in weekly installments?
Tedder had a hard time convincing me to go. It's your birthday. You need to dress up and celebrate this great milestone in your life. I need a steak (nice dinner for a change??), so do it for me! I suggested Bajio's instead because it is much cheaper, but as we passed there it was packed.
There were a lot of people at Ruby R, but he confessed he had made a res, and we walked into a room with Katy and Steve who had driven from Salt Lake. Five grandchildren who go to BYU were there. Our oldest granddaughter, Carolyn's Paige, had worked weeks on a special book for me. It is filled with pictures of all our family and letters from every single one, including our three daughters' husbands! What a treasure it is. There is even a letter from our grandson Eric (Elder Enrique Taylor, serving in Oaxaca, Mexico, written in Spanish).
So, this morning in Relief Society I had some good news to share. Paige, besides being an exceptional professional artist, is a computer whiz like her dad. She has just set up my blog, and it is my hope that all my family will try to read it often.
Last week I read that the US House will seat a new Rep this month whose father was a share cropper in the south. As a black man, it is considered a phenomenon. My circumstances were the same, but I have never thought of myself as being anything but blessed with opportunities. My color was never a handicap, but being a woman may have been. I will write about growing up in the south, some family background with an attempt to make it interesting and amusing.
Stories of my marriage and childrearing years and profiles of our three daughters will be separate from my professional experiences of forty one years in education. Many of my experiences are unique, and I hope they will be interesting to read.
Along the way I hope to share a few recipes, and some practical advice. One of my faults is that I am a "know-it-all", and cannot resist giving advice, solicited, or otherwise.
For years I have been working on a novel about a school teacher. Would anyone be willing to follow it, if I do it in serial form, a saga done in weekly installments?
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