Author Archives: elainehaley

MY GRANDMOTHER”S IRON BED

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The man’s name was Hardin Porter and he was suppose to be a cousin to my Dad’s mother, but I have searched the family tree and have yet to shake out a Porter from its branches. I know he existed, because I have an article about him rafting logs down the Rough River in Grayson County, a dangerous and highly skilled job. The article mentions his sons, Harvey and Mike, who remembered their Dad careening downstream at the rear of a 200-foot log raft, yelling orders to the oarsmen: A lick to the left! Two licks to the right! Half a lick to the left. It was a tough and rowdy bunch, and I think I might hesitate in suggesting any kinship to them if they were alive today, but times were different in Kentucky at the turn of the century. The newspaper article I have came from the Courier-Journal about 24 years ago, and Hardin’s son Mike was 78, his father long dead. It was a great story that told about a way of life wilder and more grueling than I can imagine.

In between times of rolling logs down the river, Hardin was a farmer and raised cattle. I do not know if it was a common occurrence, but the facts passed down to me were that on at least one occasion he took a trip to Louisville on the train to sell a load of livestock. He returned without mentioned anything of his adventures to his family, but when a train car full of furniture arrived for him the next month, his sons questioned their Dad about the extraordinary event. He had to admit that he had gotten drunk in the big city and did vaguely recall buying the things. Having no storage for the items, he was forced to sell them off at a discount to family and friends. My Grandmother bought a beautiful iron bed for the princely sum of two dollars cash, or perhaps $1.50, depending on whether my sister or I have the better memory.

I don’t know what color it was in the beginning, but I recall it in my grandmother’s house painted a ghastly shade of dark brown. Perhaps because of the cheap price, they did not value the massive thing, and were trying to make it look like wood. As all members of the family can attest, it is a solid piece of furniture, possibly indestructible, so I imagine all of its friends from the freight car are still around the country somewhere, unless they were melted down during the war to make tanks. My sister was in possession of it after my grandmother died, but she graciously passed it on to me when Eva was born. It came over the Appalachian Mountains to Virginia in a u-haul trailer with other assorted pieces, to furnish her then empty room in our first suburban home. The trip was memorable because it’s when my husband and I confirmed some fundamental things about our children and Pontiac products. Two facts were crystal clear as we pulled into a mountain gas station at 3 in the morning, with steam pouring out from under the hood, and hysterically tired children in the back seat. Since it was our fifth, or perhaps sixth stop to fill up the radiator, we were quite sure that our babies really, really, did not sleep in cars, and the cooling systems of Pontiac station wagons are really, really, not designed for hauling trailers.

There was a lot of cursing and grumbling as we hauled the heavy frame up the stairs late the next day, but I have a feeling the bed has heard it all over the years. It looked innocent enough, decked out with a coat of white paint and adorned with an antique quilt made by a great, great, aunt. You would never know by looking that it had lived such an exciting life. In many ghost stories, pieces of furniture hold memories from long ago, and I like to think that some part of my grandparent’s energy is somehow tied to the bed. I remember sleeping in it when I stayed overnight at Mamaws house when I was a child, bundled under homemade quilts on a feather mattress. Eva was never really fond of the bed, because it provided no soft, cozy, resting spot for her back. I also fussed with her often about the two tiny brass balls that were screwed onto the ironwork as finials. Evidently the desire to unscrew them was unbearable, and I would have to crawl around under the bed to search for them frequently. Because it is one of the few physical links I have to fond memories of my grandmother, plus the fact that the grandfather I never met slept in this very bed, it will continue to be a part of my family as long as I live.

So I am grateful to Hardin Porter, a man I never met, but have tried to imagine from the first time I learned about the bed as a child. His story was a bit risque when I was young, what with the drinking and all, but as I have grown older, I view it in a different light. I doubt that Hardin traveled as far in his lifetime as the bed has, and I picture him in the unaccustomed bright lights of Louisville, tempted to check out one of the establishments where you could actually go in and order a drink from the bar. I like to think he stayed in a hotel, had a bath in a big claw foot tub, and dressed in his cleanest duds to go out and do the town with his cattle money. If he had been a hard drinking man, he would have been more cautious, but unaccustomed to spirits, he quickly became drunk and was vulnerable to whatever shyster took him in. I have no idea if that’s how it happened, but I enjoy the false memory of him waking bleary eyed and puzzled the next day, checking out of his hotel, wondering where his money went, then catching the train home. My children, who are exhausted from my constant probing curiosity, will be amazed that I never asked more about Hardin years ago when his sons were living.

While others study the great tides of history, I find myself drawn to these trivial rivulets that are rarely recorded. The human equation tells us why, not just what and when, and even though we know mortal weakness all too well, it is somehow comforting to know we didn’t invent folly. The bed sits solid and substantial, and for me, a tangible symbol of both abiding love and reckless behavior, the kind of conduct we all say is idiotic, but that we secretly find intriguing. I hope the bed, along with the story, will pass down in the family, and that unscrewing the brass finials will fascinate some future grandchild, or great grandchild.

p.s. Lulu Estelle Renfrow Crume, my grandmother, was born April 1, 1882 and died September 1, 1970

Miss Annie’s House

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She was barely 17 when this wedding picture was taken on July 4, 1907. The childhood she remembered was a golden dream, and her father, a magical figure. She loved to talk about his farm in Hickory NC, a mini factory that turned out every item used in daily life; woolen and cotton cloth, shoes, cured meats, cheeses, canned and dried vegetables and even the coffins for the community. She never said who built the coffin her father was laid in 1909, but she grieved always for the years the typhoid had stolen from them. She kept true to her rural roots as much as was possible, while living on a small city lot in Durham. The backyard was an explosion of beautiful flowers in all seasons, kept with such care that no random weed or leaf was allowed to lie peaceful in it for a day.

Her stiff-necked German husband built her an exquisite house, but he did not agree with her ideas on appropriate interiors. To furnish the house in the style she wanted Grandmother took to her sewing machine and made quality clothing for the finest families in North Carolina. When Mr. Gantt refused to waste money on a college education for their girls, she sewed up enough money to put them both through Duke. When I met her in 1972 she was as tiny and fragile in appearance as a sprite, but I soon discovered she had an almost magical strength of body and spirit. She told me stories that her granny had related to her about the civil war, and held tightly, against all reason, to a hatred for the Yankees. She talked about barn raisings and corn huskings and grand parties that went on for days. With a twinkle in her eye she told me that when a boy pulled back the husk on an ear that contained colored corn, he got to kiss the girl of his choice. Even in her last days she had a style that made me certain that she was the girl most often chosen. I treasure those talks, because she gave me a window into daily life of a bygone era, and introduced me to my children’s relatives.

They were all gone when we met, taken like characters in Greek tragedy. Eva, her daughter, and the namesake of my own child, died after a valiant struggle with cancer in 1961. Her husband went in the summer of 67, spared from the awful blow of their grandson’s suicide that fall. Early the next year, her only son fell from the top of the winding stairs he helped build, and died after striking his head on the needlepoint loveseat at the bottom. She was left alone in a 20-room mansion where ghosts lived like invisible cobwebs in every corner. When we came to visit we slept comfortably in the beautiful old rooms filled with their whispers. No one was allowed to sleep in sons room which was kept as if he had just stepped out for the night. Left alone for so many years, she was in the habit of talking out loud to them, keeping them tied tightly to her side as she had in life. It was a house where one could imagine pathways into other worlds, perhaps through the doors of a massive wardrobe, or taking an extra turn on the stair. My children were fearful on the winding staircase, because I cautioned them so often. I did not mention the tragedy that occurred there, but I’m sure they could sense it in my tone. I always felt safe with the ghosts of the house, and imagined them brushing past me, smelling of magnolia and the slightly acid-musty odor of mahogany wood and heating oil. Even today when I open the china cabinet grandmother left me, a tiny whiff of that smell still lingers, but the ghosts seem to have departed with her.

In February of 1984 my daughter Eva awakened one morning and startled us all by saying, Grandmother will die in the spring, after my birthday. It did not take a seer to know that a 94 year old had little time left, but we never spoke of the possibility and could not imagine a toddler having a concept of death. We celebrated Eva’s 3rd birthday on March 31. The call came from Durham in mid April that grandmother had a stroke but was doing well. I called her in the hospital and assured her we would come down and stay with her when she was able to come home. I told her about my garden full of new peas and asparagus, so she asked me to save a few for her. She related an odd dream to me that was recuring every night. She was in a garden with a tiny picket fence, only a foot high. All her dead family members were standing on the other side of the fence, hands outstretched, asking her to take the one step over and join them. We got the call that she had taken that step on May 7, the eve of her beloved grandson’s birthday. Even with every warning, death always surprises.

When my ex husband remembers his dreams they are often of that house, cool in the evening breeze, the kitchen warm with the smells of cooking. As the son of a minister who moved every four years, Durham was the home of his heart. I have had a recurring dream that I go to her attic and find amazing treasures and mementoes that were forgotten when the house was emptied and sold. It is a dream of nostalgia for all things we have romanticized about the past and a longing for those ghosts to have been flesh for just a bit longer. My children barely remember her now, but her mark is on them, clear for every eye to see, passed as an organic memory from generation to generation. Someday they will inherit the furniture she defied her husband to purchase, but they will not understand the price she paid and they will not turn to search for her when they smell magnolias in the summer.

Fairy Tales My Mother Taught me

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I come from a long line of strong women, much to the consternation of the long line of men also associated with my family. I remember reading the stories of happily ever after women in fairy tales and imagined myself in those settings. After a few minutes I would realize that I was bored and went off to climb a tree or build a fort. I would sit in my imaginary tower for about 5 minutes waiting for the prince before I went off to do something more exciting. When I started dating I listened to other girls describe things their boyfriends did for them. I puzzled over why I never attracted the sort of man who threw his coat over a puddle for me, figuratively speaking, of course. I recall one day after I married my first husband when my girlfriend said, Michael shampooed the carpet for me yesterday. When I questioned her, she recited a laundry list of chores that her husband routinely did because he considered her too frail for hard labor. Thinking to shame my husband, I spoke up at the dinner table that evening,
You know, Michael shampooed the carpet for Carlene yesterday.
Maybe he’ll shampoo ours too, came the reply from behind the newspaper.

Now my first husband and I came to a parting of ways, certainly not because of the carpet, but I will never forget going to his apartment one day where he and his current girlfriend were living. I knocked at the door several times before he answered. Sorry, I didn’t hear you, says my x. The scene before me was the girl, sitting at the table reading the newspaper, and John, hand still on the vacuum he was running in the apartment. At that moment I realized a great truth. It wasn’t the men, it was me. It started me thinking about my grandmother, hoeing a half-acre of corn in the midday sun, in a bonnet she made from one of her chicken feed bags. I also remember her with an ax, cutting the head off one of those chickens for Sunday dinner. She taught me to scald the bird and pluck the feathers, soak them in salt water, then bread and fry them up on a coal oil stove. She gave me the basics of gardening, taught me how to make soap from wood ash and bacon drippings, crochet fluffy things to sit annoying under lamps and ash trays, and how to keep the dogs away from the rabbits she kept in a pen out back.

Now this was my dad’s mother, and she and her daughter in law had little good to say about each other. My mother could do all those things too, but she was a modern woman, a generation removed from the farm, and glad to see it gone. She had a hatred for dirt and poor housekeeping that gave me nightmares before my children were born, anticipating her arrival in my less than immaculate home. Not that she was afraid to get her hands dirty, which she proved by raising a garden, putting up wallpaper, making furniture, canning and freezing and even bathing a baby raccoon my dad brought home from a hunting trip. When my dad started his business selling auto parts, Mother proved herself an astute businesswoman, learning more about cars and their components than most any man in the county or even the state. She was caught in the odd time warp that occurred between WW II and the woman’s liberation movement. She had never been able to attend college, but she sent both of her daughters with the money she earned running a business in a man’s domain. When time came for us to work, she objected, telling us that our husbands should be able to support us and we really should stay home with our children.

The strange dichotomy that was my mother has haunted me all my life, but in many ways I am the living legacy of all my mother was, and all that my grandmother was too.
My grandmother, born right before the turn of the century into a poor rural family, knew a respectable woman must work from dawn to dusk if she expected to have a good life. Mother came of age in the depression and her image of herself varied strongly with the reality of the person she became. Both of them were pioneer women and my grandmother held to that image even though she had to support her family for a time. She knew that women, the weaker sex, required a husband, so she married and buried three of them. My mother was steel, inside a silk glove, but she believed herself to be more of a wildwood flower. My generation burned their bras and talked about free love, disdaining the materialism that our parents and grandparents struggled so hard to provide for us. Through all generations the tremendous magnitude of the relationship between mother and daughter continues to drive women crazy. We want to please, we want them to be proud of us, but at the same time we hate the part of ourselves that desires that approval. At least that is the way it is with strong women. I don’t really know about relationships between mothers and daughters that are of a compliant mindset. I’m not even sure they actually exist. For years I thought that my father was the boss in our house. I thought that because my mother told him he was with such skill and adroitness that I think she believed it herself at times. Perhaps the women who appear to be frail flowers are actually just cleverer than I. They don’t feel the need to prove anything, so they get their carpets shampooed and the chicken’s heads chopped off without having to compromise any parts of themselves. If that’s true, don’t tell me, just let my daughter know in private and maybe she won’t have to work as hard as I have.