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If it hadn't been a blue frost night on January 31, 1941, I may have been born on the front porch of that little faux brick, tarpaper-wrapped shack that sat smack-dab beside and facing the railroad tracks in the Rose Hill area of Flomaton, Alabama. On the wrong side of the tracks. Mama chewed her knuckles, clawed the sheets and sweat buckets while Dr. Sally used forceps to deliver my sweet little noggin. Three older siblings lay in beds in the back room having competitions with the dreaded whooping cough. Dr. Sally told Mama that I would be...
I'm taking this advice from Rick Bragg: "I'm tired of explaining myself and I ain't doing it no more; just write from the heart." So here’s to you, my writing hero. I don't know how else to write except my own experience. So, in mid June when the peaches were bending the limbs, we ate them fresh off the trees as we sat afork in-between. Mama had us toting big old galvanized washtubs of peaches to the work bench under the shade of the Chinaberry tree so as to prep them for canning. The peaches kept ripening and falling to the ground, some c...
So today I saw a post of Texans washing their prize longhorn in the local car wash. Pros and cons of comments set me to remembering my childhood and how Mama & Daddy saved time and energy by doing things the easiest way possible while letting us enjoy life to the fullest. As the slight cool opening of the hot summer day ahead I remember hearing Mama & Daddy talking in the kitchen as they made breakfast for us. Somewhere in the bluish time of day-breaking: the smell of bacon and sausage frying, the smell of coffee as the old aluminum percolator...
18 summer rolls around to find myself facing the honor of starting school in September, a 7th grade nobody special. Classroom for 7th graders was assigned to the musty basement of our 1928 built A. D. Kelly School at Wallace, Alabama. My summertime field work gave me time to save my cotton picking money to start the year all dressed in whatever Sears & Roebuck would sell me for my pennies on the dollar along with any Atmore cousins hand-me-downs that may come to me in a care bundle. Loved those hand-me-downs. Nobody at dear old Wallace had...
I decided to write about my connections to fiber. My earliest experiances was with COTTON, then NYLON, now at age 78 I mostly deal in Raisin Bran or Honey Bunches of Oats if you get my drift. I have written mostly about my childhood expriences with all the ups and downs of life in the poor lane while living and loving every minute of it. I'm moving into the years of my forced adulting. 1959.......... A year filled with things like Prom, senior trip to Washington, DC, final exams and graduation night when W. S. Neal Principal T.G. Price handed...
So somebody took a nickle from the change box. Mrs. Tew was standing there hand on hip, frown on her face. Justice was coming and now. Mrs. Margaret Tew was my second grade teacher, her son Bryant was my classmate, her husband B.G.Tew was our principal, their little Boston Terrier was our hall moniter. Buddy had dubs on being petted. We petted, he lifted his leg wherever a bush was growing. Buddy slept under Mr. Tew's office desk. Buddy took treats from Mrs. Ruth and Mrs. Essie, our lunchroom ladies. Buddy was "The Dawg". The laws of Tew were...
So here I sit this day pondering on what my offspring really feel about me as a Mom. In all honesty it doesn't matter now because they turned out as awesome humans, so I must have been okay, RIGHT? From the moment I felt the first fluter of life I was elated and crying at the same time. They both caused me to get fat and fatter. They caused me to eat everything in the kitchen and from all the Tom Thumbs that sold Little Debbies and wash downs of Tab. Calories were high on my doctors attention. Tabs would take care of the calories, RIGHT? I...
Escambia County Alabama Jr. High Schools, Wallace, Huxford, McCullough, McCall, Damascus, Henley Roberts and North Brewton met each May to play in tournaments for a trophy. Boys played baseball, girls played softball. This is my memory of a softball tournament played on the gray dirt and crabgrass field at Huxford. 1956 was the defining year. Wallace had never won a tournament trophy to my knowledge. If the Gods smiled on us, this would be the year of, The trophy. By the grace of God and assigned by our Principal Mr. B. G. Tew, Mrs. Lena C....
I walked into the house from the front porch. The rickety old screen door slams behind me. Out of the mist of time I'm at the kitchen table with my whole family. It's in the early part of May 1954. Mama has the newest little Smith in her lap as she spoons beans into blue speckled aluminum plates for the toddlers. They sit on the old wooden bench with three more of us. Nine Smith children along with Mama and Daddy makes for crowding. Six sit in ladderbacks all scrounched together. I hear spoons and forks clatter, coffee cups dinging against...
I'm writing this story in honor of my brother Jarvis. He was known all his short forty nine years as "Humpy". Humpy got that moniker from a fall from the farm wagon when he was just a little tike. Daddy and Mama were clearing some land where they thought one day would be where they planned to settle and build our family a house. Baby Jarvis was in the wagon and somehow tumbled out to hit the ground. The family lore had Daddy and Mama saying he was like Humpty Dumpty in the fable nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty. Humpty got shortened to "Humpy". In...
Escambia County Alabama Jr. High Schools, Wallace, Huxford, McCullough, McCall, Damascus, Henley Roberts and North Brewton met each May to play in tournaments for a trophy. Boys played baseball, girls played softball. This is my memory of a softball tournament played on the gray dirt and crabgrass field at Huxford. 1956 was the defining year. Wallace had never won a tournament trophy to my knowledge. If the Gods smiled on us, this would be the year of, The trophy. By the grace of God and assigned by our Principal Mr. B. G. Tew, Mrs. Lena C....
My first grade teacher at Wallace School, Miz. Marbel Currie taught me everything I needed to know. Anything else I learned was by accident....... First, she taught me to listen, ask permission to speak by raising my hand (very trying). With my family so large and all having something to say, I hadn't developed the skill of listening or waiting to speak. We all talked at once (Grissett side) and somehow learned to winnow important information. Mama & Daddy were tired and just let us run with it. Most talking was around the kitchen table as we...
My earliest memory of Easter had to be around the time I was about two/three years old. I have a vivid memory of watching my older siblings look for eggs around the grass clumps, little trees and washes in the red clay of a dirt pit near Cowpen Creek outside Canoe Alabama. Our family lived on third avenue in Atmore so this was a trip out of town for us, the distance of about ten miles. I know this was the place because Mama and Daddy told me they brought us here to swim and play in the water at Cowpen Creek. They said, as a baby, I loved to...
Mrs. Essie Roberson and Mrs. Ruth Crutchfield were two ladies held in high esteem during my childhood. Why you may ask? Because they cooked and fed me some of the most delicious food outside Mama's kitchen. The two of them were the only two that ever cooked at A. D. Kelly School in Wallace Alabama as long as I was a student. That was from fall of 1947 until spring of 1956. I don't know when either of them retired from lunchroom cooking, but it was surely a loss for our beloved "Wallace". Lets look back through the memory of this farm raised...
I don't remember when I became aware of that far off from Barnett Crossroads Alabama place was, but I knew I needed to see it. The need to "SEE ROCK CITY" way up in Tennessee somewhere stayed on my list of things to do and see. "Bucket list" hadn't entered the lexicon of this little country girl at that time. On top of a mountain near Chattagnooga, I planned to tour the ROCK CITY GARDEN, RIDE THE INCLINE, SEE SEVEN STATES and go deep underground at RUBY FALLS. I knew that Blue Star Highway # 31 running from Mobile to Chicago went thru Birmingha...
I lived my childhood years on an unpaved dirt road. A typical Alabama red clay dirt and gravel road. A road with no name, no direction signs, just dusty, rub board ridged in dry weather. Boggy, slippery, washed out and gully cut in rainy weather. We lived between Barnett Crossroads and Stanley Crossroads, a distance of four miles. Estimated two miles to either crossing. If we needed to explain where we lived to anyone, we simply told them to look for a white asbestos sided house with red trim and roof, half way between the two crossings. Our...
THE MUSIC PLAYED. Our radio was dialed to any local radio station during the day for news, Farm & Market Reports and Country Music. Saturday nights the dial was set on WSM clear channel 650, for the Grand Old Opry. That was the time for Daddy and Mama to enjoy their evening of music. We listened also. Lordy I loved listening to Earnest Tubb singing, "Walking The Floor Over You". THEN. WLAC 1510 AM GALLATIN, TENNESSEE...circa 1956-,59. Our old Zenith dialed to Randy's Record Shop at Gallatin, Tennessee. 50,000 watts of clear channel. Monday...
We camped. It was cheap and fun. Oil Embargo 1973-74 we had saved enough money to take a trip to Colorado. Lamar had been stationed at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and always wanted to show me the place that inspired him to go to college. He was an airman assigned to the motor pool and drove those big old coach buses that he shuttled the cadets to concerts and the ski areas. He saw how a fellow with a degree had the upper hand and he wanted some of that. Honorably discharged, wooed me, married me and convinced me to keep working...
I was born, not to the manor, so to speak with hair of curls, but with straight as a board hair. Now some boards are not exactly straight, but warped. Daddy hated warped boards. I hated straight hair. Anyway, we took what we were given and ran with it. Mama put my hair up in curls on Saturday nights using rollers cut from strips of two ply paper grocery bags hoping for Sunday blessings on her little undainty daughter. My hair was Saturday night fresh washed and rolled into little torture knots while we listened to the Grand Ole Opry. Saturday n...
Lamar and I set out to Center, Texas for a looksee. Lamar (The CEO) has talked for years about going to Center to find the reason why his Granddaddy Joesph Holland, founder of Hollandtown, Florida went to Center circa 1915-1919. Why he didn't move there is still unknown. He knows from family lore that it was at the suggestion of a friend to move there, buy some land and raise cattle. If Granddaddy Joe was planning to complete that venture his plans were cut short due to his unfortunate death in April of that year (1919) from injuries caused fro...
Y'all know by now I have no secrets and even less shame. I tell my stuff first so if anyone else ever writes about my mess, my version should be the one you believe. My children are by now mostly shamed into letting me run with it, so thats a good thing. They can use all my stories to publish a book and enjoy icecream from the profits. Okay, so I just saw a video of my favorite FB kids playing in a rabbit hutch and the chicken pen which fired up my memory of a moment in time of my own childhood holding a church revivel in our chicken house. "...
Something snags in my memory seine to lodge and stay around until I deal with it. I rummaged around for the past few days to remember a happy time spent with childhood friends. Then a bittersweet memory floated up. The McDills ( name changed to allow dignity) lived in an old shack just over the hill and down the fence line from where we lived. Poor was just a suggestion, destitute was getting close to describe the family situation. Mr. McDill was "off". Mrs. McDill was a pillar of fortified steel. The kids that were still at home were worm...
"Happy Birthday Earline, hope it's your best one ever". Well howdy do, it gets better every year. Now it's public and thank you very much. Let me tell you all a bit about myself in case you haven't yet figured me out. I was born in the wee hours of the night on January 31st, 1941. Being the dead of winter it was COLD. In fact, my memory of how cold my birthday was is from hearing my parents tell about the situation at our house during my birth. My family lived in Flomaton, Alabama on the south side of the railroad tracks ( south side/wrong...
My Mama and Daddy were old school rounded to the highest power. We answered with, "yes sir and no sir and thank you ma'am and please". No short cuts....................otherwise. So this being the day the Lord gave us to be glad in it, I'm sharing a Sunday lesson on honoring thy Father and Mother and leaving the last piece for Mr. Manners. So, it was Sunday, the day for being on time for Sunday School and Church and hosting the Preacher for dinner. Dinner being the mid day meal, this day being Sunday and feeding the Preacher called for FRIED...
It creeped in before we were aware. The holidays are behind, the decorations are put away, the fruit cake all dried and hardened to a lump of ugly has been thrown out for the critters to pick through, then the COLD days turn colder. School is back in session. Sigh! Fog of memory clears. On one of those late January Sunday afternoons of laying beside the wood burning stove or fireplace all wrapped in that ratty old blanket playing monopoly or checkers we scatter the pickup sticks and jacks to answer the urge to breathe fresh air. So outside we...
