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I understand now why Mama enjoyed being in her own house by herself. I enjoy being by myself when possible. It gives you time to be your own person. With the progression of Alzheimer’s, Mama became forgetful and unable to function. Her reading, writing, and mental activities were no longer helpful to her. Mama’s life started as a journey. Each thing she did throughout her life fitted into life like a puzzle. Her favorite past time to keep her brain exercised was working jigsaw puzzles. She liked to work the last piece of the puzzle, so I would hide a piece and slip it to Mama to make sure she had the enjoyment of fitting the last piece in place. Her life was like a puzzle of a million pieces, and on October 3, 1998, God held back the last piece of her puzzle in the palm of his hand and when her puzzle of life was finished, it was God who worked the last piece. It was so beautiful, it is now hanging on a wall in Heaven awaiting her loved one’s to enjoy it with her.
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Lucinda (Lucy) Alley was born July 7th, 1901 in Stokes County, N.C. She was the oldest of nine children born to Mary Alice Martin Alley and Alexander Martin Alley. Lucy always called her daddy, Papa. Lucy’s mama and papa farmed. Lucy had to stay in the house most of the time. She had to help take care of her younger brothers and sisters. Occasionally Lucy went to help out in the fields. One time when she was helping while papa was plowing, something frightened the mules and they ran away dragging papa with them. Papa got caught in the swingletree and his face was torn up real bad. The accident scared Lucy so bad she very seldom went back to the fields.
Papa was a very religious person. He was a real good singer. He bought an organ so he could gather his family together around the organ and sing songs from a primitive Baptist Hymnal. Lucy was also a very religious person. She was baptized in the river. Lucy enjoyed talking about going to the river and having foot washings. Lucy became a member of Rosebud Christian Church. You could tell she loved God by the glow on her face.
Papa would buy Lucy and Roxie clothes. Roxie always had to have the best and most expensive clothes. Sometimes Papa would switch the prices to fool Roxie in order for Lucy to sometimes have the best and most expensive clothes.
Lucy was a very mischievous person. One time when Roxie needed some Black Drought (a laxative). Roxie ask Lucy how much she should take. Lucy told her to take the whole bottle full. Therefore Roxie took the whole bottle full.
One time Lucy and Roxie were picking at each other over Wheeler Lewis. Roxie said to Lucy, “I wish to the Lord You (Lucy) had Wheeler!” Lucy said to Roxie, “I wish to the Lord You (Roxie) had him because the Lord wouldn’t have him (Wheeler) so he saved him for you (Roxie)!”
There was a time that Lucy decided to make Roxie and Nora a hat. Lucy made their hats from Poison Oak. Lucy didn’t know it was Poison Oak and she didn’t break out from the Poison Oak, but Roxie and Nora’s head was full and their face was so covered that their eyes were almost swollen shut. They just itched and scratched.
Lucy was educated in school, in church, and by Life’s experiences. Lucy said, “You can do anything in this world that you set your mind to do.’’ She said it was always easier to succeed than to fail. Lucy taught that the necessities of Life are God, Family, Health and Love, “Respect them and cherish them because no amount of money or achievement will ever compare to them. Lucy was an honor student making all A’ throughout her school career. She was Valedictorian of her senior class. There were only nine students in her graduating class. Lucy graduated from Walnut Cove High School. She received her teaching certificate from Appalachian in Boone. Lucy received her teaching certificate July 1, 1923. She was proud of her achievements.
Lucy became a school teacher. She taught the first through the seventh grades. She taught in a little two-room school house at Palmyra in Walnut Cove. And she taught in a little two room school house near Bethlehem Church which is on the Salem Chapel Road near Bethlehem United Methodist Church. Lucy taught Hester in the second and third grades. Robert taught Hester in the fourth and fifth grades. Roxie used Lucy and Robert’s license to substitute for them when they were out. They had to walk for miles to school through the heat, the rain, the cold and the snowy weather. Hester jumped out the window at school one day. Lucy was going to give her a good switchin’. While walking home from school, Hester would run ahead of Lucy and sit down on the ditch bank. When Lucy would almost catch up with Hester, Hester would run a little further so Lucy couldn’t catch her. Hester knew when she got home that Papa wouldn’t let Lucy whip her.
In 1918 when Lucy was only seventeen, there was a big influenza epidemic. I remember her saying, “There were so many dead, they had to wait till Spring to bury them.
Papa had a brother (John William Alley). He was never married and he always lived with Mama and Papa. Papa was cutting down a tree one time and a tree limb hit him in the eye. Papa had blood poison as a result of the accident. After developing blood poison, Papa died about a week later on March 26, 1926.
Lucy seen Papa come in the front door and go upstairs in May. He went in Uncle John’s room and came back down stairs and went back out the door. After that occurred, Uncle John died June 6, 1926. There was only two months and eleven days between the deaths of Papa and Uncle John. They lived at the old Johnson place at the time of their deaths.
Once upon a time in the little country town of Walnut Cove, N.C. there lived a little girl that grew up to be a lovely young lady. Her name was Lucy Alley. Lucy had pretty long hair and a charming smile. She was tall and slim. She wore high top shoes, Calico dresses and petticoats that reached down to her toes. Lucy also loved to wear hats.
Lucy always attended church. One Sunday evening while attending a Lawn party at church, Lucy met a good-looking man by the name of Roscoe Franklin Larimore. They courted and fell in love and married October 15th, 1924 at the courthouse in Danbury, N.C. by a Primitive Baptist Minister, the Elder S.H. Reid. Roscoe and Lucy moved to Florida. Back in those days, there were no speeding “Automobeels”. The cars went very slow and they were cranked by hand and the tires were pumped by hand. Therefore they traveled by train to Florida. Lucy and Roscoe lived at Lake Okeechobee. Their first child, a baby girl, Frances Pauline Larimore, was born in Florida on August 24th, 1925. Roscoe owned a produce business in Florida. He had $10,000 in the bank. He lost everything because the banks went bankrupt because of the Great Depression. Lucy didn’t like living in Florida, so they moved back to the Wheeler Lewis Place which was located across the road from Bethlehem United Methodist Church Cemetery. Roscoe helped dig the graves in that cemetery back in those days. Back then he used only a shovel. While living at the Wheeler Lewis Place, another little baby girl arrived, Margie Elizabeth Larimore on April 2cd, 1928. Due to a fatal disease, Spinal Meningitis, little Margie’s stay on earth was very short. She was only one year, two months, and one day old when an angel came and carried her away on July the 17th, 1929. Shortly after the death of little Margie, Lucy gave birth to her first baby boy on May 30th, 1930. His name was Lawrence McDonald Larimore. He was born in the little White House at the top of the hill on Salem Chapel Road near Bethlehem Church. Another little baby girl was born in the little White House at the top of the hill on September 3rd, 1932. She was given the name Virginia Dare Larimore. The last of the five children born to Lucy and Roscoe was another boy, Norman Franklin Larimore, arriving on December 8th, 1937. He was born at the old West Place. Mama never went to a hospital while giving birth to any of her children. They were all born at home.
Mama always called Daddy, “Rock.’’ Rock was a farmer. He and Lucy went through some very difficult and trying times during the depression years. I remember when I was about three years old, Mama would fix Daddy some water in a quart jar and I would carry it to him while he was plowing in the field behind the house. I would wait for him until he came to the end of a row and he would stop the mule and we would sit down on a little ditch bank and talk while he drank his water. I was happy being his little water girl. Mama raised a lot of chickens. They laid their eggs under the house. When Daddy came in from the fields in the evenings, he would watch me while I crawled under the house to gather the eggs. On occasions mama would kill one of her chickens. She would ring their heads off. Then she would scald them with boiling water so the feathers could be plucked off easier. Mama usually made a big pot of chicken and dumplings. She didn’t go by a recipe. She made everything from scratch. Mama could take almost nothing and make something.
When Lucy and Rock lived at the old West Place, they stored their sweet potatoes in the cellar. They shared the cellar with their neighbors, the Waddles. Rock stored his potatoes on one side of the cellar and the Waddles stored theirs on the other side. Pete Kiger came over to get some potatoes from the Waddles. Pete was on the wrong side, so he was getting “Rocks” potatoes. Mama hollered down to Pete and told him not to get those because they were “Rocks.” Pete told Lucy, “these aren’t rocks, they are potatoes.” Mama would tell about that and have a big laugh.
When I was a little girl I would stand on a stool every night and comb Daddy’s thick black hair every night. There was no television back then. Mama and Daddy had an old floor model battery radio. It stood beside the front door. Daddy was standing in front of the radio one night and Mama thought he was just reading. But he was folding a page in the Bible. It was the page the sixty sixth Psalm was on. He folded the page three different ways. Daddy sat down and talked to Mama and told her that if he could live three months from that day that he could die satisfied. Mama showed me that page many times over the years and explained to me that if Daddy lived exactly three months from that night that he could die satisfied. On the morning of his fifty-fourth birthday of February 21st, 1938, he suffered a major stroke and died suddenly. During that three months he paid all his bills and left his house in order. Daddy arose early on the morning of his departure from his earthly home. He piled the wood on the old grate in the fireplace and built a big roaring fire. I lay in the bed and watched the big burning fire on that chilly wintry morning. Mama and Daddy had just gotten Lawrence and Frances off to school. I watched Mama and Daddy as they stood in front of the fire as they embraced each other with a hug and kiss. Then Daddy came and lay down on the bed with me. He hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. He said to me “Whatever you do, I want you to be good and finish school”. I was only five years old at the time. Daddy left my bed and went to the doorway of the kitchen. He sat down in an old ladder back chair to put his shoes on. He was preparing to go to his plant beds. All of a sudden he wasn’t feeling well. He laid down on the other bed, where Norman was. Norman was very sick with pneumonia. It was about ten a.m. when Daddy became ill. When Dr. Fritz arrived just before noon he told Mama that Daddy had already departed his earthly life. They took him away and brought him back in a casket. Because I was so young I really didn’t understand at the time what death was, I just figured he was sleeping. Someone held me up over him so I could take a look at him. His hair didn’t look as it did when I combed it. So they let me comb his hair again.
Friends and neighbors were showing up to pay their respect and support. Most of them sat up all night. One of the neighbors picked me up to carry me to her house to spend the night with her. But I cried, kicked, and screamed so much that she took me back home. I sat in front of the fireplace all night. I suppose I was just a curious little girl. It was snowing when they held Daddy’s funeral at the house. After the funeral he was taken to his final resting-place at Bethlehem United Methodist Church.
There aren’t many things worse than losing someone you love. Mama said, “There’s not much you can do to change the direction of things and none of us can ever go back.” In the days that would follow, Mama had to come to terms with the reality of the situation and with her grief. There were so many tasks to be done Mama had to keep her hands busy and her feet moving. Even though “Daddy drove new “Automobeels,’’ Mama didn’t ever drive, so she had to rely on friends and neighbors to help her out. Two of Daddy’s sisters wanted to adopt us girls. Aunt Ollie McGee and Aunt Jettie McGee told Mama she couldn’t take care of us four children by herself. They had only boys and that was their reason for wanting to adopt us girls. Mama told them, “Where there’s a will, There’s a way.” Mama had to struggle but she was determined to keep her children together. That was the kind of LOVE she had for us.
Mama could no longer take care of the farm. Therefore, she rented a real old house at Dennis, N.C. This was a very small township between Walkertown and Walnut Cove. Mama paid Mr. Frank Grubbs one dollar a month to rent the old house. It only had two rooms. There were no windows in the house and only one door with no lock. There was a space where a door once hung. Mama put a large piece of cardboard over the space and placed the old Victrola against the cardboard to hold it in place. The cardboard didn’t go all the way to the top so Mama packed some of her quilts on top of the Victrola to keep the rain, snow and wind out. There wasn’t even a screen door, so the flies, misquotes and bats kept us company. We lived so far out in the country we seen more of those fellows than we did anybody. The sun could hardly find us and the only light we had came from the glow of old kerosene lamps. Our bathroom was a little shack out back. Our Charmin was newspapers or leaves. Our bathtub was an old tin tub. We had no well and no running water. We had two wooden barrels behind our house, which were used for catching rainwater. Some times we bathed in the rainwater in the barrel in the backyard. That was the water we used for our Saturday night baths. We took our bath once a week in the tin tub beside the old kitchen stove. We all had to use the same tub of water. All of us had to dry off with the same towel. We used the rainwater for washing our clothes. Our clothes were washed once a week by scrubbing them on a washboard in the old tin tubs. I remember how Mama would say she had sore palms from scrubbing clothes on washboards and hanging them on the clotheslines to dry. It took Mama all day to make the lye soap that we washed our clothes with. She made enough to last for about six months. We had to sit our irons on the stove to heat them so that we could iron our clothes.
We lived so far out in the country, we only had one neighbor and neither of us had a well. We walked together about a mile through the woods and had to wind our water from our next closest neighbors well for drinking and cooking. We sat a water bucket in the kitchen and everybody drank from the same dipper. Sometime the dipper was made from a gourd.
The only toothbrushes we ever had were the ones we found in the woods while going to fetch our water. We had to look for black gum trees and break the small limbs to make the toothbrushes. We didn’t have toothpaste.
The only snacks we ever had were the ones the squirrels had to share with us. They were the hickory nuts that we found while walking through the woods. The farmers gave us popcorn that they grew on the farm. We would take it home and Mama popped it by the pan full.
We couldn’t afford to buy wood so I would go out in the woods and drag the old dead limbs to the house. Mama and me chopped the limbs small enough to burn the wood in the stove to keep warm. It was a lot of work but we had free wood and we stayed warm.
Our house was just behind an old colored church. The church just had one big room. We could sit out in our front yard and listen to the preaching, singing and shouting. Those folks really got happy. We even went to church with them sometimes and just sat in the back of the church. The colored people came from everywhere and held a reunion there once a year. They all brought food and spread it out on long wooden tables. We didn’t have food to take but they welcomed us as anyway. I had never seen so much food in my life. It was all home cooked. They had fried chicken, pies and cakes, etc. That was one day of the year which we knew what it was like to have a big Sunday Dinner. Their reunions lasted all day.
The church had no foundation. It sat high on rock columns. When those folks shouted it’s a wonder the church didn’t fall off those rock columns. I played under the church. One Sunday evening while I was under the church looking for DoodleBugs, I looked up the road and seen Buck Caffey walking down the road with nothing on but his shirt. Buck Caffey was our closest neighbor and he liked his booze. I left my DoodleBugs behind and ran to Mama as fast as my legs would carry me. I yelled to Mama, “Buck Caffey’s coming down the road with nothing on but his shirt.’’ He was as Mama would say, “Dog Drunk.’’ Mama closed the door and propped a chair under the doorknob. She climbed up in a chair and peeped through her pile of quilts. She watched him to make sure he went home. Later that evening me and Mama and Mrs. Caffey were walking through the woods to fetch some water. What else was lying in our path but Buck’s pants? What we had seen, anyone would have walked out of his pants, because he sure didn’t even have a Huggie on. Mama sure did have some big laughs over that incident all through the years.
Our favorite months of the year were always spring and summer. Mama, Norman, and I walked four miles to the cemetery and four miles back to our house. Back in those days the church had no upkeep. So we had to keep the weeds off and fill the graves with new dirt when they would sink in. We had stopped along the way because Mama had a lot of friends she chatted with. Daddy had a sister that we would stop, see, and rest with on our route. We carried buckets and picked gallons of berries along the roadside. She canned all the berries we could pick in half-gallon fruit jars. We ate lots of biscuits and berries during the winter months. Our house was at the edge of an apple orchard. Mr. Frank Grubbs also owned the orchard. He gave us all the apples we wanted. Mama and I peeled lots of apples and sliced them so mama could spread them on a big white cloth to dry them in the sun. Oh Boy! Mama made some good fried half moon pies with the dried apples. We set Rabbit Gums (traps) and caught quite a few rabbits during the winter months. Mama would kill them and skin them. She fried them and made gravy and biscuits. Boy, that was good eatin! The farmer’s gave us most of our milk and butter. Sometimes we had buttermilk. Mama would cook a big pot full of pinto beans. We were so poor that if there were one bean left in the pot, mama would keep adding water for us to dip our biscuits in. Mama never threw a biscuit away. When they were two or three days old and no matter how hard they were, we had to dip them in coffee and eat them. Mama always kept lard, flour, milk, beans, sugar, and large jars of peanut butter and coffee on hand. Things were rationed during World War II and we had to have ration stamps to buy items such as sugar, coffee, fuel oil etc. Mama made some bread puddin’ that was so “Goood.’’ We rode on a wagon for about two miles to help make molasses. We stripped the sugar cane stalks and it took hours boiling them to make the molasses. We put butter in them and mashed them together. Mama made biscuits, and when we put those molasses in hot biscuits, we had some good eatin’. Mama didn’t get but $15.00 a month from welfare so we had to depend on nature for most of our food. Mama always told us, as long as we had a biscuit we could survive. My school lunches were a biscuit wrapped in a piece of newspaper. The other kids made so much fun of me with my biscuit, I sneaked and threw them out the bus window and did without lunch. When we were hungry, Mama made sure we had some kind of food. Mama said, “The Lord had a way of providing for us some how.
Our Christmases weren’t waking up to presents around a tree decorated with pretty shiny lights. We gathered around the old kitchen range with Mama’s LOVE and the glow of her shiny face. We shared three apples; three oranges, a bag of nuts, a box of stick peppermint candy or a box of Horehound candy and Mama’s favorite candy, which was those Chocolate Drops, filled with cream. Mama passed the nuts out one by one so we had an equal amount. I suggested Mama get a whole orange and apple and cut two each in halves for us four children. She deserved the whole one because she had such a special LOVE for us. It was a love that no other person could ever give us. We did have the greatest gift of all, “LOVE’’.
Back in the 30’s and 40’s when flour and chicken feed came in cloth bags with pretty designs on them. Mama saved her bags and about every one she knew saved theirs for her. Mama washed them and made us some pretty dresses. She even used them to make my nighties. Sometimes you could see the brand of flour on them, which was Carolina’s Best. The words should have said, “Mama’s Best’’. Mama would sew all night to make our dresses.
Mama entertained us by singing her favorite hymns and telling us about things she use to do. When we went to Grandma’s (Lucy’s Mama) to spend the weekends, we attended the old brush arbor prayer meetings. We went just as we were.
Mama enjoyed the reunions we had at Grandma’s. The reunions would begin early in the morning and last until dark. Mama made the lemonade and it was so good, when she was asked how she made it, she told them she stirred it with her feet. When we spent the night’s at Grandma’s, Mama was asked where everyone slept. She told them we all sat down on our fist and rared back on our thumb. Uncle Zan and Aunt Iris lived with Grandma when they were first married. He was real good to Mama. He came after us most of the time when we wanted to go to Grandma’s to spend the weekends. Zan was Mama’s brother. Mama called him Preacher, I called him Zan, Grandma called him Zander, and Iris and most of his friends called him Alex. When my daughter, Renee came along she called him the Watermelon Man.
I Remember Mama when she used her head and hands to stay busy as she struggled to keep bread on the table and shoes on our feet. When we wore holes in our shoes we had to put cardboard in them and wear them until Mama could get us some more shoes. She made quilts, crocheted Afghans, crocheted tablecloths, bedspreads and doilies. She even crocheted a door curtain with the words Home Sweet Home. She could just look at a picture of crocheting and she could make it. When she helped people strip tobacco, she would save the old tobacco twine and tie it together to use for crocheting. She would bleach the things out which she made from the twine and they would come out pretty and white. Mama made throw rugs by tying old rags together. Every time anybody came in, she would go get her pretty things out to show them. Everyone would just brag about her pretty things she made and Mama was always quick to tell them to pick them out a doilie and take it with them. She enjoyed giving people some of her work. She never threw any thing away.
Since Mama never drove an “Automobeel’’, when she needed any thing from the grocery store, Mr. John Ham, the owner of the little country store in Walkertown would deliver whatever we needed. One day when he made a delivery, he told Mama about an old house behind his store. He told Mama she could contact Mr. Trav Ward, who owned the house. Mama contacted Mr. Ward and he said she could rent or buy the house and just pay him a little whenever she could. The house wasn’t much better than the one we lived in at Dennis. Mama chose to buy the house. It had two rooms down stairs and the upstairs was just one big long room. There was a long front porch and a small back porch. It was just another old unpainted plank house with a little shack down behind the house for a toilet. Can you imagine what the stench of an old out house smelled like. It wasn’t “Evening in Paris,” but more like evening in the holler.” The old house also had an old wood shed.
When we moved in the house, it was strangled with weeds. We didn’t even have a lawn mower. I used an old pair of scissors and I crawled around on my knees to cut the weeds. Our neighbor, Mrs. Bet Jones, let me borrow her old push blade mower. I had to mow her yard in return for the use of her mower.
We didn’t even have a refrigerator. Mama had an old wooden icebox. She kept it on the back porch. The ice man came twice a week to deliver ice. She paid 25 cents for a block of ice. The icebox was used for keeping our milk and butter etc.
The rain pattered down on the old tin roof. The house leaked so bad we had to set every pot and pan we had on the beds to keep dry. When the snow blew in through the cracks, we didn’t have to go outside to make a snowball. We could lie in bed and watch the sun peeping through the cracks when it came up. We could count the stars at night and we put duct tape over the cracks so the moon couldn’t see us undress at night.
Mama enjoyed her upstairs. She was such a pack rat you could hardly get around upstairs. The floor was piled full with old hand me down clothes and old rags that were used for piecing quilts. There were two old iron beds, which we slept on. We didn’t get much sleep because our mattresses were nothing but old straw tick mattresses. The straw was either poking at us or the bed bugs were biting us. The only way we could kill them was to strike matches and burn them. It’s a wonder we didn’t set our bed on fire. Them fellows loved the hot weather. We had no fans or air condition. Mama would say “Whew’’ it’s hot. We weren’t proud of those little guests. But they moved in and we couldn’t run them off.
The house was so cold in the winter we felt like we were living in a refrigerator. We could set a bucket of water in the room where we slept and it would be frozen solid by morning. I would drag old wood up from the woods and keep it in the little wood shed. We had a woodbin behind the stove. Mama had a pet chicken named Polly. Polly stayed in the woodbin. When Polly went outside, she always knew where to come back to. That was the woodbin. I tried to keep the woodbin filled with wood and coal. The job of looking for wood and coal never ended. The job of choppin’ wood didn’t end. I split some for kindling and I kept a little pile behind the stove for starting fires every morning. I wanted it to be warm for Mama when she got up early. I chopped so much wood it’s a wonder I didn’t chop my feet off. I walked up and down the railroad tracks picking up all the coal that fell off the coal cars. The train ran almost through our front yard. Mama couldn’t afford but one ton of coal each winter. That wasn’t much. I picked up more coal from the tracks that fell from the train than Mama could afford to buy each winter.
Mama had the determination to pay for her house. She sold quilts and crocheting which she made, she kept children and stayed with Mrs. Stillie at night. Mama helped work in tobacco for the Sheriff. We looped looper clips till two and three o’clock in the morning. After we looped a big pile, Mama wound them into balls about the size of basketballs. She was only paid 15 cents a ball. Mr. Crews would come by once a week and pick them up. She received about $4.95 for 33 balls.
Mama went to work at Firestone in 1943. Firestone was a company that made things that were used during the war. This was the first and only public job Mama ever worked at. She only worked about fourteen months because when the war ended, Firestone closed and she was laid off. When Mama was working, she would buy a box of O’Henry candy bars once a month. She gave each of us a candy bar on Saturday night. On Sunday’s she bought two pints of ice cream and divided it between us. Some times the candy man came by. If she could afford it she would buy a box of Rainbow Candy bars. Mama did accomplish paying for her house while she worked at Firestone. She bought the old house for $450.00. She had Mr. Stillie add two rooms onto the back of the house. He did a very poor job. Those rooms leaked worse than the old part.
Mama always enjoyed spring. When I close my eyes and my memory takes me back to when I can see Mama with her apron and her bonnet on her head and going outside to plant her flowers. I can see her leaning on her hoe and talking to her neighbors.
Each spring an old man came by and plowed the garden. Mama just had him plow the whole back yard so she could have a garden. He didn’t charge but $1.00 for plowing. Mama worked the garden, making the rows etc. with her hoe. She planted a big variety of vegetables. Mama even planted popcorn and when we harvested that popcorn, we shelled it off the cob and Mama popped it, that was the best popcorn we ever had because Mama’s hands planted it. She planted a row of sunflower seeds and they grew to be the tallest and prettiest sunflowers I ever seen. She planted them for the birds to feast upon. Mama just had a green thumb. She could break off a piece of any flower and root it. This was her way of producing so many flowers. No matter how busy Mama was, she let us know that everything she did was for us. That was the kind of LOVE she had for us children. Her life was very painful as she wished more for us than she could afford. Mama and me just helped each other. Mama wanted a cellar under her house so she could store all the canned foods, which she produced from her garden. Lawrence dug a big hole under the house. Then before he could finish what he started, he was drafted into the Army. Every time it rained I had to dip the water out of the hole.
When Bobby and I got married, we lived with Mama for several years. Marilyn and Linda were born while we lived there. From babyhood to kindergarten, they grew to be very mischievous kids. They made use of the hole of water under the house by drowning Mrs. Jones’s cats. If they didn’t drown them they were hanging them in the trees. They were like greasy pigs. They were slipping away all time. They slipped away and went to Mr. Grubb’s chicken house and played ball with his eggs. They threw them against the wall and broke them. Mama enjoyed relaxing in her front porch swing. But with those two girls there wasn’t much time for relaxing. Mama liked to watch for the train and she could hear it blowin’ for miles away. One day while the train was stopped in front of her house, Marilyn and Linda crawled under the train and went to Burton Whickers’ store which was just across the road from Mama’s. Mama was a good Guardian Angel because she didn’t let the Engineer start the train until they came back under the train and they were safely back on Mama’s porch. When they came back under that train, Oh! Boy! Was Maw Maw waiting for them with a great big switch. They did everything they could to aggravate their Maw Maw. I’d like to go back and rest in the old front porch swing and have Mama sitting there beside me. In my memory I can still see Mama’s smiling face as she waved at the Engineers and conductors. They always waved back at her. Mama was always excited when a train was being pulled by two engines. She said, “It’s gonna be a long train.’’ Sometimes there would be as many as a hundred cars. While Mama was sitting in the swing, I would pick her little bunches of Violets and Daisy’s. I sat beside her in the swing as she would take a daisy and pick the petals off one by one as she said, “He Loves me, He Loves me not.’’ I remember the rooms as they were in the old house. Her most prized possession in the house was her sewing machine. It set at the window where her swing was. Her house was her castle because she worked so hard to pay for it and she was proud that she put a shelter over us children.
The porch had an old rough board floor with cracks between the boards. If anybody dropped money on the porch and it fell through the cracks, Linda would crawl under the house to get the money and Marilyn would poke an ice cream stick through the crack to let Linda know where the money fell through. But as of today Linda is still not afraid to crawl under a house. The porch was so rotten that one time when Tommy came to see Frances, he stepped onto the porch and his feet went through to the ground, and I had fun just standing there laughing at him. Marilyn was so frightened by a spider as she opened the door to the little shack outback one time, that as of today she screams if she sees a spider.
Uncle Dave Martin, (Grandma’s brother) was shot and killed on Christmas Eve of December 24th, 1947. Mama went out to get the paper on Christmas Morning and as she read the headlines, she was so upset, she started crying and screaming, “Lord somebody shot Uncle Dave”. Mama and me and Norman had just spent the week-end at Uncle Dave’s just before the tragedy. Hester and Frankie were living in California at the time of the tragedy. Frankie was just a baby at that time. Mama called Hester and begged her to move back here and live with her. Therefore, Hester left California, she and Frankie came to live in our old house at Walkertown. Hester was working, so Mama became a baby sitter for Frankie. Hester became a second Mama to us. She helped buy groceries. This really helped Mama very much. She decided to move out just before Frankie started to school. Grandma Alley came to live with us shortly after Hester moved out. Grandma was so funny. She could read the coffee grounds in my coffee cup, the things she would tell really happened. I wore the same dress to school for about two weeks. We had very few clothes. I washed my dress every day when I came home from school. I ironed it and had it ready for school next day. We had to heat our irons on the kitchen stove. Grandma told me if I didn’t have but one dress, I could go clean and I could smell good. She told me that I could always dust my body with Johnson’s Baby Powder. Grandma became ill with Pneumonia in April of 1958. She had just recovered from Pneumonia. One morning when we went by Mama’s to take Marilyn and Linda before going to work, I went in to see Grandma, I gave her a big hug and ask her how she was feeling. She said, “Jenny, I feel fine, but I’m so sore, I don’t know if I’ll ever move again. She was sitting in a chair beside Mama’s sewing machine when I left. When Bobby and I went to pick Marilyn and Linda up that evening after work, Grandma had suffered a fatal heart attack. She died suddenly on April 22nd, 1958. Marilyn and Linda were standing at the foot of her bed. When she ask Mama to get her a drink of water. Mama went to the kitchen to get Grandma a drink of water. By the time Mama came back with the water, Grandma had already passed on. Mama passed out from the shock of losing Grandma so suddenly. Mama always made the best of a bad situation and always looked to God for help and guidance. Mama didn’t ever work on Sunday’s. There was no television as it is today. The way she kept her brain exercised was by working crossword puzzles. She even drew a puzzle that looked like a snake. She loved working jigsaw puzzles. Working a jigsaw puzzle was always a shared Love.
Mama kept Bo and Renee until they started to school. Mrs. Bet made Bo chocolate cakes. Bo said, “Nobody could make a chocolate cake like Mrs. Bet.’’ Bo is 48 years old and he still has a cravin’ for one of Mrs. Bets chocolate cakes.
Mama was in a wreck January 3rd, 1972. She had spent the weekend with us. I had gone to work. Bobby and Bo and Mama were on their way to Mama’s house on Monday morning as a car rounded a curve to fast and nearly hit them head on. When Bobby swerved his truck to miss the car, his truck rolled over and came to a stop upside down. Bo and his daddy were okay. But Mama’s head hit the windshield and she had a swollen face and both eyes were black and almost swollen shut. Her knees were swollen and hurt real bad. She had to stay in bed at our house for three months while recuperating. She didn’t get but $1300.00 for her injuries. Mama was getting too feeble to climb the stairs and since her house was so cold, she used her money to buy herself, a used trailer. We tore her old house down and put the trailer where the house once stood. Even though the trailer had all the modern conveniences, Mama was much happier in the old house that she was so proud of.
Eventually and slowly two unwanted friends moved in with Mama. They were very cruel to her. Alzheimer’s moved in first and then Parkinson’s followed. They slowly robbed her of her mental skills and then tried to destroy her memory. At times Mama suffered from depression and she would rage out at anyone around her. Mama always avoided the negative and thought positive. She never lost her sense of humor.
Mama had this little riddle she enjoyed sharing with everyone. It went as follows: Black is the back, slick as a mole, got a great long tail, and a whoppin’ hole? Answer: It’s a frying pan. Even though Mama told funny things to make us laugh, she shed a lot of tears too.
It became difficult for Mama to carry on a conversation. She asked the same questions and repeated the same things about when she was young over and over again. People got so they just didn’t want to talk to her anymore. I listened to her if she told me the same thing a dozen times. People ask me how I could do everything and have so much patience. I told them how Mama struggled to raise four children by herself. Mama didn’t even go to a hospital to give birth to any of her children. We were all born at home. I didn’t forget how she kept a roof over our head, bread on the table, and shoes on our feet. She tied my shoelaces, when I lost a button or ripped my dress, Mama repaired it. When we were sick, she held us in her arms. She kept us warm. Mama made me think of a bird that works so hard to build it’s nest. That little bird protected it’s babies and dropped food in their mouth. I remember the years when Mama’s health was good and the strength she had while watching over me. I wanted to do the same thing for her. There were so many things I didn’t understand until I was older and had children of my own. I really didn’t realize the kind of LOVE she gave until she was gone. And that LOVE is embedded deep in my heart forever. I became the Mama and she became the child. I was caregiver to Mama practically all my life. When the task became too great, Linda, (her grand daughter) just stepped up to the plate and became the pinch hitter. She was the best one too. We had to take care of her mail, do her grocery shoppin’, run her errands, transport her to the doctors, and finally the day came that we were managing her whole life. The toll is not on the caregivers alone, but it has an impact on the entire family. I always felt guilty about not spending enough time with my own family. Linda sacrificed much of her time, which she could have spent with her husband. I’m grateful to Linda and Bobby for what they did. I would have taken care of Mama if I had to beg from the streets. Linda and Bobby missed a lot of vacations etc. because of all the time they spent doing things for Their MawMaw. One time when they planned a weekend outing to the mountains, they went by to check on MawMaw before leaving and when they opened the door to the trailer, the smoke tried to prevent them from entering. MawMaw had gone to sleep while her eggs and bacon was frying on the stove. That canceled their weekend outing. They couldn’t go and enjoy themselves for worrying about MawMaw. We decided that Mama could no longer live alone. Mama was blessed to have Linda looking after her. We sold her trailer and she moved in with me. I chose to take care of her in my own home rather than put her in a nursing home. She lived with me for sixteen years before the Angels came to carry her to her Heavenly Home. She is now at Peace and Rest in the great beyond. My heart was filled with tears, when they carried her away early on a Saturday morning, October 3rd,1998. She fought as long as she could. Mama was a tough woman and she had a special way of touching people’s lives and her Spirit will remain with me always. She always had a cheerful word for everybody. I lost not only my Mama but I lost someone that talked to me about Jesus and someone that prayed for me. Mama was the queen of my heart and I sacrificed most of my life to protect her. All her hard work and sacrifices had been worth everything I went through taking care of her. One thing that she told me that will remain with me forever was hearing her say to me, “If you have Faith as a grain of mustard seed, You will say to this Mountain, move to yonder place and it will move and nothing will be impossible.’’ “Matthew 17:20.’’ I’m sure my Mama didn’t want to be a burden to anyone. One thing always remained the same, “It was Mama and Me.’’ Now she is gone and it is just me and I am lost and I sure do miss her. The hardest thing I ever had to do was putting my Mama to rest. She set standards for her loved ones to follow her into Eternity. I long to spend Eternity with my Mama and Daddy. She could be a very stubborn and determined woman. The good and the bad times we shared will remain with me forever. That old Photograph Album, Mama used to carry around was filled with old black and white pictures. She could tell you about everyone's life in those old Photo’s. And she saved obituaries of everyone she knew. Mama and Me walked through the cemetery so many times just reading the names and inscriptions of her husband and little Margie and her friends and relatives. There were so many of her loved ones in that cemetery, there was just a feeling she was close to them. Wherever they are gone, they will always be remembered. And now when I walk over that cemetery where Mama once walked, I can see the glow on her face and connect with her soul. I’m sure that’s the way she felt when she was standing over Roscoe’s grave. When she was there, she was so peaceful and I believe she could hear God from Heaven’s Gate. Mama remained until the end Faithful and true to her one and only true LOVE, Roscoe. Lucy and Roscoe are resting in peace, side by side in the cemetery of Bethlehem United Methodist Church. I cherish those memories of long ago when I could walk along the country roads with my Mama while on the way to the cemetery. I have every confidence that I will be reunited with Mama in Heaven. I know I can go to her but she will never return to me. Second Samuel 12:33. I’m content to remember Mama as her departing was in the Fall as the Autumn leaves were beginning to turn their golden colors. It was a sign to me that she is walking the streets of gold. As I keep looking upward I see her as a shining Angel.
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