August 27, 2009
Her Papaw and Her Gran. Central Florida. Early 1970s.
Picture of a picture. Camera set on text mode. Colors “revived” in Photo Filtre.
This from M*****, on Flickr, who writes:
I don’t know much about cars. Is this my uncle’s Nova?
Papaw was born in Iuka, Tishomingo County, Mississippi in 1915 and raised in Pleasant Site and Florence, Alabama and in Hayti, Missouri. In the 1920 census his family were living in a railroad camp where his dad was working on the railroad. The census taker wrote in the margin “not on any road”. His mother had 12 kids and died young of cancer. His father remarried twice and had 8 more kids for a total of 20. Papaw never went to school. He learned to hunt and fish and trap and ran moonshine. My mom said he had a talent for being able to fix things with practically nothing. I guess he had no choice. He was a hard drinker and a philanderer. He died from malignant hypertension a few years after this pic was taken. A few months before he died he told me that I was a “mistake to be born”. I was 6 years old. My mom said he wasn’t right in the head but I believed him. Truthfully I’m glad the old bastard isn’t still around. I know I would never let him be around my kids if he was.
Gran was born in 1917 and raised in Cherry Valley, Arkansas. Her dad was a farmer and her mom was a nurse and midwife. She was brought up on her parents’ farm and graduated from high school. She was ambidextrous because being left handed, teachers tied her left hand behind her back and forced her to write with the right one. She was a decent hardworking mother of 8 children. Papaw ran off and left her so many times with all those children and she never learned to drive. They almost starved and froze to death when he left them one time in a migrant farm worker camp in Lilburn, Missouri. They were in debt to the company store and the old bastard who owned the place wouldn’t let them leave. They had to sneak out at night with what they could carry. She had severe asthma all her life and at night when we were little we used to pray that she wouldn’t die because we could hear her coughing and strangling and struggling to breathe. She never drank or smoked . . . or cussed. Except for once when Papaw came home drunk and she told him, “Oh, Harvey, why don’t you just shit and fall back in it.” She passed away in 1985. Shortly before she died she put her hand on mine and said, “M****, don’t be like me.” I guess I am like her a lot. I still miss her very much.
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Tell her that is indeed a Nova–or it may have been called a Chevy II. Same thing. It may have been a Chevy II Nova.
Papaw looks rather like my Uncle Jimmy.
Cooper, was there a photo of your Uncle Jimmy in that family history you put together?
I love saying Tishomingo.
“Don’t be like me,” breaks my heart.
Tishomingo Blues.
A real (old) song.
And a book by Elmore Leonard.
“Don’t be like me” seized hold of me, too.
Sheila, that’s a catch. Beautiful rendition. Worked me over.
I was riding to lunch once, with my “boss,” Kristopher, and one of our younger managers, Matt (who, a few years back, was once a student of Danny’s when he taught undergrads at Rockhurst), when Matt said, “I think I want to branch out, you know? Drink vodka, like Rick, instead of beer.” I said, for comedy mostly I suppose (but the truth sometimes hits home like a thigh-bone on a high-hat) “Oh, Matt, don’t th’ow ye young life away like I did. You still have a chance.”
I’d have to look, Sheila. I don’t think Uncle Jimmy is in “the book”. Just imagine that Papaw and a likely looking cousin of Jerry Lee, maybe, and that’s pretty much it.
Jimmy”s wife Billie, however, was nowhere nearly as tall as Gran. She was not quite 5′.
Sheila, this is great–thank you. And Rick, you are the dearest man alive. Your memories and the way you give them to others always gets right to the heart of why we tell stories.
This picture reminds me of many people I have met in East Texas. You always get introduced with an aside to the effect that “Wayne’ll give you the shirt off his back”–and then you find out that he spent a little time in the penay tinchery for that thing with the dogs. And then there’s Darla, likes to feed the preacher and then wonder if the Lord would have eaten so much.
Glad y’all looked and read and liked. That census worker’s notation, not on any road, got to me. Papaw’s father was a railroad man, but his family was not on any road. It sounds as though rambling ways were passed down from father to son.
Akin to the pay-off of a long-time friend’s family anecdote:
[Bang of a screen door.]
“Leroy! You get in this house this instant and take a bath! With Lifebuoy!
“You stink!”