Wedding Notice

Here is what the Concord Tribune had to say about our parents marriage:


The Concord Tribune
June 3rd, l935

Concord, June 3.--- Very beautiful and most impressive was the wedding Friday afternoon at 5 o'clock in the First Presbyterian Church of this city, of Miss Jane Elizabeth White and Preston McKamie Faggart. Dr. W. E. Davis, pastor of the church, officiated, using the ring service of the Presbyterian ritual.

Harmonizing effectively with the stately colonial architecture of the church, the decorations were quite simple but beautiful. Against a background of potted evergreens, white double larkspur was arranged in silver vases, and smilax was entwined effectively under the windows. The family pews were marked by graceful Easter lilies. Tall white tapers set in two seven branched candelabra lighted the wedding scene.

Samuel Goodman, organist, and Miss Elizabeth Woodhouse, soprano, rendered the wedding music beginning the prenuptial program on the tower chimes with "Faithful and True", "Parlez-moi d'amour," "I Love You Truly", and "Sunrise and You."

He then played "Kamenoi=Ostrow" by Rubenstein, and "Largo" from the "Symphony in D" by Cesare Franck.

Miss Elizabeth Woodhouse, coloratura soprano, sang the beautiful wedding song, "Beloved It Is Morn." Miss Woodhouse was attired in an afternoon model of pink lace with blue hat of horsehair braid. Her corsage was of white roses.

The four ushers, Everett McKinley, of Kannopolis, Joe Foil, Nevin Sappenfield, and E. L. Morrison, Jr. of Concord, were the first of the bridal party to enter the church.

The bride had as her only attendants her two sisters, Misses Ellen and Isabelle White. Their costumes were exactly alike, being afternoon gowns of beige lace over pink and blue maline hats worn off the face, and blue sandals, they each carried nosegays of mixed garden flowers.

The bridegroom, attended by his best man, Wallace Morris, entered from a side door and met his bride at the alter.

The bride entered with her father, Chalmers Lindley White, who gave her in marriage. Her wedding gown was of apricot lace, floor length, and with it she wore a hat of brown horsehair braid and brown sandals and carried an arm bouquet of white roses and lilies of the valley.

Immediately after the ceremony, the bridal party, the two immediate families, and the out-of-town guests were entertained at an informal reception at the home of the bride's parents. After the reception, the bride changed to her traveling costume of gray with navy accessories, and left with the bridegroom for a motor trip through the Shenandoah Valley. Upon their return they will reside in Concord at the home of Mrs. H. I. Woodhouse.

Mrs. Faggart, the eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers Lindley White, received her education at Converse College and for several years has been a member of the city school faculty, a position to which she has been appointed for another year.

Mr. Faggart, son of Mrs. A. M. Faggart, and the late Mr. Faggart, attended Davidson College, and for some time has been connected with Gibson's Drug Store.

Among the last of the pre-nuptial affairs given for this popular couple was the stag supper Wednesday evening at Hotel Concord for Mr. Faggart by the men of the bridal party.

After the rehearsal, Thursday evening, the members of the bridal party were entertained informally by the bride's parents.

Charlotte people in Concord for the wedding included Mr. and Mrs. Tom White, Misses Rose Ellen and Eloise White, Mr and Mrs. W. C. Taylor, Mrs. Winney Barron Pegram, and Miss Helenora Withers.

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Sam Goodman, the organist, was one of Dad's good friends... he had had a singing career in opera, for a while, in New York... encouraged me when I started learning the piano... Had a fascinating house with a lot of sculpture, sacred art and artifacts fancy lamps, carpets, an electric organ, and a grand piano. The house was Latin in design... a patio with a fountain, arcades beyond which were the bedrooms on one side, the dining room and kitchen opposite.. open in the back.... His sister, Miss Addie kept house with a lot of bird dogs, they made a terrible fuss when we visited, and had to be shut up elsewhere. A country place, they ran some cows as well. Dad said his family made a fortune, early investors in Coca Cola! Sam and Addie were the sole heirs... We visited them at Christmas, usually... I remember the fruit cake, very dark and soaked in spirits. Sam smoked Old Gold cigarettes, I remember. Down to the last mm!!!

Elizabeth Woodhouse, the singer at the wedding, lived with her family next door.... very close to Mom and Nana, especially. Mom always talked about Mamie Woodhouse like she was another mother. But when Elizabeth practiced her singing, Pa and Uncle Maury, covered their ears. Coloratura soprano is horrible, I guess, to a lot of people, especially difficult.... Uncle Maury is said to shake his fist: "Oh isn't that awful!!!" Dad said that Sam did not approve of her musical selection.... The Whites at listed as out of town guests were Mom's cousins... Tom White Sr. was Pa's brother, and had died a few years before. Aunt Maybelle, his widow, was a frequent visitor to 25 Georgia Avenue. She said I sailed in and out like a blue streak. Her favorite expression, seems. She talked a blue streak too.... but they all did... getting words in edgewise the way to go around there.

Wedding Bells Ring

Mom and Dad got married May 31st of 1935. That means that Mom was turning thirty-one that June 11th, and Dad was 29, December 7th, his birthday. The flowery, detailed write-up in the Concord Tribune included in another blog. Wedding in the Frist Presbyterian Church's new sanctuary on Union Street, and the reception at 25 N. Georgia... Pa Built the house to Nana's wants.... Nana wanted large rooms, living and dining, for public entertainment, in in the front, and had her bed room and a smaller "back sitting room" or family room in the back. Both rooms had fire places.... connected to the one chimney... one for wood in the living room, and a coal great in the back sitting room, with another fire grate upstairs in a front bed room. I do not think I ever saw a fire upstairs, where we lived, Uncle Jacks back bedroom had been turned into our kitchen.

Mom graduated from Converse College, down in Spartenburg, South Carolina in the mid 20's, majoring in education... and then taught 2nd grade at Central Primary School, 2 blocks away in Concord, corner of Spring and Grove Streets... Her salary was $99,00 a month.... For depression days this was OK, if you lived with your folks... and Dad made more as assistant with Gibson Drug Store, on the corner of Union and Depot, right in the very heart of downtown Concord. Then owned and run by the Lafferty family, great personal friends with Dad. A job he had had since he was 14. And kept till 1943. Twenty plus years. Did two years at Davidson College... not consecutive years, though. I was taught math by one of his class-mates. Prof. Kimbough almost fluncked me in in Trig. He and Dad never got along... He was like Harry Potter's Professor Snape.... I think, remembered Dad making fun of him. Something about a pair of flashy shoes too tight for Dad, he sold to Kimbrough, too tight for him also... money was not refunded. (At the reception of my freshmen year, when we were meeting the faculty, Prof. K. shook my hand, said he was in school with my father, and asked me if he was still alive.... Dad said some bad words when I told him that!) Resentments sometimes last a life time!!!! I got Dad's transcripts later, when I requested mine!!! His were a mixed bag of b's, c's, d's and dropped courses. Sort of like mine... apple falls not far from tree...

Although the Great Depression was raging, the wedding was well attend, and the silver and china they received were beautiful. Silverware was still de rigueur, wedding presents. Mom's pattern was Kirk's Repousse´, the oldest pattern still made in America.... flowery and hard to polish. Sterling. After the wedding, they took off to Virginia, to honeymoon along the newly built Blue Ridge Parkway. I do not know whose car, Dad did not as yet own one. Probably Pa's Hudson... The White family was a little surprised at this union, their first child marrying a man with few or no assets, but, the story goes, Pa gathered Mom, brother Jack, sister's Ibel and Bobu together and said that full blessings would be extended and that Dad's more humble circumstances were not to be held against him. I think Nana expected her to marry rich... Joe Foil was very much in love with her, after all. Joe's dad was Pa's good friend, they often went hunting together.... called the Major for his military service: Spanish-American war? Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders? But no. Love takes it's own course. They had been in school together since ever, same class because Dad was so smart, or such a problem, he was pushed up a couple grades early... you graduated high school after 11 years... SO... Jane and Press were the item... Dad's career a bit spotty, but personable, fun loving, voluble. Mom, practical and stable.

When the Prohibition Amendment passed, it put on brakes for the roaring 20's for sure. Dad, working at the drugstore, could help out, by-pass the dryness of it all, and mix a little ethyl or methyl with the sodas. Every drug store had a soda fountain. And there were four in Concord, at least when I came along. Nobody dreamed of supermarket stores like Eccerds. There was Pearl Drugs, on the corner across Union from Gibson's. Porters, also on the south side of Union near Grant's Five and Dime. The "dollar" stores of the day. There was another in that same block as Gibson's, the name eludes.

Before marriage, Dad was sharing quarters with the son of a prominent banker, Tom Coltrane, whose aunt was married to the owner of Cannon Mills, maker of towels and stockings, the undisputed richest people in town... J.C Cannon had cotton mills all over the place and half the town worked in them. Mom dated Tom, but his drinking was too much for her. It was said he was drop-dead good looking, though. It was known that there was a lot of drinking going on, and Dad and Tom controlled some of it. They kept their personal stash in the tank of their toilet john. Their pad was up on Church Street and downstairs lived a couple, the Misenheimers. Dr. and Mrs Misenheimer. And Tom may or may not ... well, Mrs. M was a lively gal. One cold, icy winter night, Tom was found dead outside that house.. his head hit the steps when he fell. It really created a stir in town. Dad never gave me all the details he knew, and Coltrane Sr. kept it out of the papers. As he had the unexplained death of another of Tom's aunts, in New York's Belleview Hospital earlier.... the family had a wild and crazy streak, as most families do. Miriam Coltrane, Tom's sister, one of Mom's close friends. Dad played ignorant to whether he was drunk or not at the time, and whether the relationship with Mrs. M. was a factor. He said he lied to Mrs Coltrane about the drink, but he knew that they both knew anyway. I could never get a straight answer from Dad about the affair.

Gibson's was the social center of down town Concord for one of the several social crowds.... Mom and her friends would go shopping at the dress shop next door, and gather around those funny round tables for cokes and crackers, gossip and news.... I discovered a chewing gum mine under said tables and was roundly disciplined for chewing some!!!!! The shopping trip usually included a stop at Uncle Maury's men's clothing store beside and connected to Uncle George's grocery. Richmond-Flowe. I could go into the cookie jars and had to decide whether I wanted an oreo or a fig newton or one of those coconut cream things.... I could only have one. Groceries from there could be delivered to your house. Nana would call and put in the order that Nonne made up. And Shirley would deliver later in the morning. Shirley was a huge guy, and drove a great Ford pickup. Down the drive he came, and would leave the groceries on the back porch in cardboard boxes. I would make houses out of them. Pa would check out the groceries and rant about his brother-in-law sending them rotten veggies!!!! He may have returned them. Uncle George and Aunt Evelyn lived down the street. He was my grandmother's youngest brother, with two children, George Jr and Mary Gillmer... Mary G. rode a bike, sometimes giving me a ride on the back... It was scary, though.. my coordination was always in doubt... and taught me how to catch doodle bugs in the yard. Early Biology experiments. You take a wild onion stem and put it down the perfect hole of the bug, a hole the size of a pencil. Wait until the stem starts to move, then jerk it out... and lo and behold, an ugly segmented grub with a mouth like a front-loader...

I was the last person on my block to learn the trick of balancing, pedaling, steering a two wheel bike. Nobody could teach me, and I had to go on the back of my friends bikes. I finally managed to teach myself. I am completely self-educated. Invent the wheel, fool. And now I break this rambling narrative to go bike riding with my friend, Alice.

The Grands... family notes continue...

Pa, who sat in a big chair in the living room, beside a big stand-up console radio, read the Charlotte Observer every morning.... would read me the comics, especially "Bringing up Father". I think he related to Jigs... I loved the funny shaped people and the pictures on the wall with people and objects that did not stay in their frames, like in Harry Potter stories.... Pa often had a card table in front of him, playing solitair which he taught me... the 7 card and the 9 card spreads! Occasionally he had some friends over and they played bridge. Sometimes I could go with him to his "Men's" club where they played cards, and probably poker, as well as bridge. But Bridge was big with everybody we knew, except Nana and Boo and that generation....

He owned a big Hudson auto, probably vintage 1932... but had almost stopped driving by the time I came along. Mama was the official driver. She said that he had taught her to drive back in the teens when she was quite young. Being the oldest of her siblings, and times were prosperous, she had some advantages... like a horse, named "Queenie", of her own, kept at the local livery stable... every town had one then! After she had been driving a while, she said, Pa told her that she needed to go to the court-house and get a permit to drive... something called a driver's licence. A new rule. Earlier, Pa traveled a lot, worked for a New York clothing firm selling clothes. Swartz and Co.... I think was the name of the firm. When he went to New York, the he brought back presents and tales of the big city, Mom said. Pa had grown up on a farm near Rocky River, in Cabarrus County, and claims he graduated from the 3rd grade before going to work. Hunting was his favorite sport, and would come in winter nights with birds he had shot in his coat pocket. Nana would not cook them so he cleaned them and had Nonne do it. (Nana only cooked cakes and special souffle´s I remember.) The birds, Doves and quail, mostly. Sometimes with Uncle Jack they would go east Duck Hunting. I do remember pheasants... do not know where they shot them, not local birds!!! The guns stayed in a huge wardrobe on the back porch, and cleaning took all night, it seemed. Loud noise hurt my ears, and I did not like to go with them. One story he told stood out. A big scar on his leg, he told me, came from when he was a boy chopping wood in a distant field, and he hit his leg, opening up a huge bloody gash. Could not get any fast medical help, he found some raw-hide string and sowed the would closed himself. You could see white hole spots on either side of his scar! Probably true.

When Pa undertook to polish the brass andirons, I would try to help. But one time he got very mad at me for spilling the Brasso, and accidentally turning one of the heavy things against his bad leg!!!! I think that is how I got the above story. I remember that at Christmas time, It was a big deal getting in the Christmas tree, probably from his family farm or near by, which may or may not have been sold at that time. One year the tree was so big, they cut the top off!! no room for a star or angel or anything. The ceilings were nine feet high... The decorations were out of date, and a lot of candy canes and shiny ribbons and fancy balls and all. I loved this. Mama told me of the real old days when she was growing up, they would light real wax candles!!! Carefully!!! And the presents... I shook them all and guessed what might be in them for me. There was this big pecan tree between our house and Boo's, and every fall, a man would come by, climb up and shake the nuts down. There would be a lot, so many Pa would sew together these orange sacks, and there would be a bag for each of his children and friends... When the grandchildren came along, he loved them but too many at a time bothered him. Mama quoted him, saying you should have all your children before you are 30, and your grandchildren after you are dead! You could not tell that he believed it! Always loving, Pa.

Something that tells me global warming was... has been occurring for a very long time: When it got cold in winter, and Nana or someone would complain, Pa said it was not like it use to be! He remembers when you could drive a team of horses across Rocky River, it froze so hard!!! And Boo told me about the ice house at the Richmond place, down Corbin Street toward the Railroad Station where my great grandfather worked. The shed was over a pit lined with saw dust, and each winter, people would go the the lakes and rivers, and cut blocks of ice, bring them back to town and they would be put in the pits... and would last the summer. The refrigerators before electricity had a hole in the back, or where the freezer compartment was later, where you put a block of ice in daily. Ice came in horse carts daily. Before refrigerators, I guess, they just went out to the ice house and left their milk and eggs.... And the well house, they would sometimes build a trough that carried water to the kitchen. Boo tells that at one time, they had a wind-up fly shoo contraption that sat on the table. Had this propeller on top that created a breeze and kept the flys away from the food!!! Few houses had screens, it seems... The kids sometimes turned it into a toy and sent biscuits flying when the parents were not looking!

But Pa did not talk too much about his family... According to the White book, put together by our cousin Eugenia White Lore, Pa had 2 half brothers, five "real" brothers and a sister.... Nathaniel Green White, (1825-1895) his father, and mother was Nathaniel's second wife, Eleanor M. White (1835-1912)... I do not remember hearing anything about her, Mama was 7 or 8 when she died. Nana and the Richmonds talked about their family all the time, but Pa said very little... He was closest to his brother Thomas Jackson White, who married Maybelle Culp and had lots of children, favorite cousins of Mom and siblings... 3 girls and 3 boys... lived close by, moving to Concord when their father Nathaniel died.... Aunt Maybelle was one of those big talkers... and visited a lot. There were plenty of other related Whites in the town.... it sometimes seemed that who were not related to Mama, were related to Daddy... and there were some common to both families!!!!

Pa got more and more dependent on help, hired a black man, Mack who had his own car!, to help him in and out of bed. Mac took me to the fair once. Pa paid! But the Christmas before he died, when my brother's and cousins were coming on, he said he had enough and would not see another Christmas! And sure enough he died the next September... I was in the 6th grade.
He said that the Whites died at 75, long enough for a human to live. The Richmonds were built to last longer, but their mind died at 75.... he did not want his body to survive his mind... He saw Nana going into senility. And discovered how to humor her... I can see her now after his funeral... asking me where he was... It scared me, as I did not know what to say.... Did she not know he had died? Had she forgot? We had just been to the funeral. The funerals of both Pa and Nana, took place at their house. They lay in their coffins overnight right down stairs! lots of flowers all over the place. The funeral processions went through down town Concord to Oakwood Cemetery, the policemen at the square with their hats over their hearts... a mocking bird sang as the coffins were lowered. Uncle Jack noticed and said it was very nice and a good sign. Pa loved birds and new their calls!!! He could predict rain: "I knew it would rain... heard the rain-crow." A man can leave the country, but the country never leaves the man.... Pa died in 1946 and Nana in 195l.

Nana

Nana and Pa... my maternal grands. From my earliest recollection. We lived up-stairs in that big square house on Georgia Avenue, next to Boo and Uncle Maury... Nana was slim and nervous... always in motion.... losing her grasp on reality. She was born Janie Elizabeth Richmond in 1876, 60 years before me. She ate like a bird, sometimes taking a spoonful of suger raw... Married Pa in 1902.... good looking pair in the rather art nouveau oval portraits. She was the youngest of the Richmond girls, and had suffered from malaria as a child. She told of her doctor giving the bitter awful tasting quinine, the only thing they had then.... and later, after marriage, had a bout with typhoid fever, loosing all her hair from the high temperature. Mama was a teenager when it happened, and they used to quarantine the homes of people with dangerous contagious illnesses. Her hair grew back in beautiful curls, Mom said. And Ibel, her youngest sister was afraid of her new looks!

Nana was extremely nervous during the summer thunder storms. Mama said her fear of electricity was so bad, that on stormy nights she would not even let them play the piano! Convinced it would draw the lightening inside! A couple of summers when I was 5 and 6, I slept in the hall beside the stairs, because it was cooler there, and Nana would come sit on my cot and tell me about her life growing up during Reconstruction in Concord... already another lost world and way of life by 1936, when I was born. She taught me ten commandments. We went to church all the time... I still remember many passages from the Bible I was encouraged to learn. Much reading went on in those days. Radio was still a novelty and TV had not descended into our lives. The depression was raging, and times were lean. I learned the 23rd Psalm of David by heart... and they asked me what I wanted as a prize. I asked for a water sprinkler for the lawn. Fascinated with lawn hydraulics... love to watch the big oscillating sprinklers on the neighbors' lawns. So I got a brass ring shaped thing that did the trick, and my cousins and I would run through the waters on hot afternoons. Days of no air conditions, the front porch and shady lawn, the big windows always open, was what we had. The ceilings were higher, 9 feet at least...

Those stormy nights, she told me about her job at the Post Office, how she would walk to work so fast that Old Will Gibson would call from his shop, saying "Where is the fire, Janie??? Slow down!". She rode a her bicycle, too! And hated bananas! One time, a shipment of bananas arrived at the post office, and some were left there for the workers... she ate so many it made her very sick. And since that time she never ate another! And passed her banana phobia on to Mama. The only people I have ever known not to love that fruit.

There was a servant Nonne, big, black and authoritarian, an all knowing big mamma, in for no non-sense... She came 6 days early, cleaned, cooked breakfast and lunch, called dinner, the big meal of the day, and took home enough for her family. Her husband, James Parks, had the enviable job of being janitor for the prestigious First National Bank. Together they made enough to send their daughter to college!!! The black Normal Teachers College then in Greensboro. They lived in the "black part of town" Logan School, for the segregated folk.... Separate but unequal, really...

My Life and Loves

In this photo, from around 1946, you see my maternal grand mother, NANA, and her three sisters: Aunt Bell, Aunt Willie who I called "Boo", the most influential... and Aunt Lucy. They presided over my early intellectual, social, and spiritual education. It is my intent to write what I remember of my early education in this blog. It may come in short bursts or it may have expansive stories, but now is the time to do a lot of work I did not do in the first 75 years of my journey through life on an improbable, albeit wonderful, planet... beautiful, mysterious, populated with as much diversity to make discoveries never ending....

More shall be revealed...