This is a picture of my grandmother and my sister, Eleanor taken around 1962
When I was a child I lived on a dead end street in Beaver Dam Kentucky and there were no other children except my brother and sister who found their little sis a pest. My “Mamaw” lived next door to us and looking back I would have to say she was my best friend when I was a child. I was on her front porch as soon as I did my morning chores and ate my breakfast. She always had something for my second breakfast, often homemade biscuits that were different from my mom’s but just as delicious. She put butter and sugar on them for me and served them with her home canned peaches also sprinkled with sugar as she did not put much in when she canned.
We then went to tour her small “estate” walking from plant to plant, seeing when we thought the roses might start blooming or if there were any ripe grapes or raspberries ready to eat. We collect eggs from the chickens and petted the rabbits. She always wore a bonnet she had made from the calico fabric of the feed sacks and an apron made of the same, but rarely matching because feedsacks had little fabric. In the spring we picked poke salad and in full summer the little green tomatoes inside husks that looked like lanterns. Years later I learned these were Mexican ground cherries or tomitallias. I do not recall ever eating them and have no idea how she used them.
In the heat of the day we would go inside and sit on the pump organ bench together and she would play songs of men and women who took the wrong path in life, “The Cowboy’s Lament”. “Pearl Bryan”, “I have written him a letter”, “Come all you young Maidens”, and so many others. She had the patience to teach me how to do basic sewing, crocheting, how to make rag rugs and always let me cook with her, never minding that I made a mess. She would say, “Don’t worry, my middle name is mess.”
She was a hard working woman, fierce as they come. I have watched her spend the morning hoeing the garden, finish off the making of homemade soap, and then ring a chicken’s neck, pluck it and serve it with dumplings for supper. She buried three husbands, but always warned me not to marry, both directly and also indirectly by teaching me all those songs. I am so grateful for everything she taught me, even if I did not heed her warnings. But, now happily married to my third husband, I think I finally understand the contradiction of her feelings about men.
I know she has a story to tell of a life she lived before she was my grandmother. Nobody’s going to tell that story if I don’t. I’ve been working on it for a while and hopefully it will be out by spring. Since historic fiction is my happy place it will include a lot about the times in which she lived, 1882 to 1970. I know more facts about her than I did about Lydia, my Babies in the Bed heroine, but I will expand a lot based on what history teaches us about women’s life during those years.
In case you’re wondering, title of this post is the working title for her story, the book I’m currently writing.
Here she is back in 1902 on her wedding day.
