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