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.