Clash of the Titans: Hubble's Universe Unfiltered

More bio.... after a bit of hiatus ........

Education Book Cases Books and magazines were all over the place, when I was little. My early memories were sitting on somebody's lap and looking at pictures from an open book. Pa, my Grandfather, who lived downstairs with Nana, was always reading the Charlotte Observer, or playing solitaire. I especially remember him in his favorite chair as the Sunday morning light poured into the living room through the glass doors that opened out onto the tile terrace. The big chair with wings, scroll work arms, wicker work and all from another era, was big enough for his lean frame and a wiggle worm three-something boy. His legs were not so good anymore, and I think it hurt him to be on his lap. One of his favorite comic in the paper was "Bringing Up Father", in vivid color every Sunday. While everybody else in the house was busy getting ready for church, I would pester Pa to read it to me. He always obliged, explaining the humor patiently, as I squirmed. I was amused at the surrealism of the strip. The funny way Jiggs was drawn with his hair a constant red cowlick, Bart Simpson for the 30's, and Maggie with her airs and aquiline neck and nose. Jiggs and Maggie, their constant battles, the Irish nouveau riche, a Beverly Hillbillies precursor. I was fascinated the way the people and objects depicted in the pictures on the wall Pictures on the walls would not stay in the frames, but became part of the living space. There was a juggler whose ten-pins invaded the space of the entire cartoon frame, going outside, the pins going to the ceiling. Things like that. A child picks up the details. I think that I became a bit of a rebel artist, exposed to comic drawing like that. I did not want my crayon drawings to "stay in the lines!" My crayons would bounce all over the paper, and the outlines did not seem to be the point. The wonderful color that my waxy thrusting, jabbing marker was laying on the page, the life that was being created right there, from my own hand and arm-motion, was the whole reason for this scribble. Pa also taught me about the playing cards. and about Solitaire, the seven-card spread and the nine card spread. Ace King Queen Jack. There was a lot of card playing in those pre-TV days everywhere. His friends would come over often. Mama would always be going out for a bridge game somewhere, or her friends would come over for games at the house. (I well remember being in my high sided crib, screaming because Mom and her girl friends were playing bridge in the next room. I got a spanking. I could only lie there and listen to the bidding. "One heart." "Two clubs". "Two no-trumps". My vocabulary grew.) In earlier days, before the War (World War 2): Often, Pa would have someone, almost always Mama, drive him in his big Hudson to the M & M Men's Club, on Union Street just north of the business district for a card game with his buddies. (I cannot remember what the initials stood for. "Men and Machines?") Decorated in heavy, dark, very masculine furniture. The place smelled of good cigars and leather. Set back from the North Union Street, beside the august Victorian Central Methodist Church, the municipal building was simple art deco in design, Bauhaus influenced. Down stairs was the Public Library. At the back, there was a big meeting space with a grand mural spanning the entire length of the room. An artist had been commissioned to do it during the WPA era, probably paid in part by New Deal Federal Funds, The artist and his wife came to town, creating much excitement, painting the history of the county in big impressionist strokes. The most attractive part was the ante-bellum era, with women, the artist's wife as model for most, dolled up like Scarlet O'Hera, and men like Rhet Butler. "Gone with the Wind" was soon to be released. The scenes depicted were framed in cumulous clouds. I do not know his name, but he was no Thomas Hart Benton, but it was quite grand for Concord. Outside the big windows, was the YMCA Public Swimming Pool, full of kids splashing the summer away. White folks only. It cost the same as the movie theaters, and I would later spend many summer afternoons splashing in the chlorine laced waters. Older kids and adults came at night. It was about all there was to do in Concord in those days. One terrible summer, a polio epidemic gripped the country, a desease that left the victim crippled someway for life.... and the pool closed and I could not play with friends across town... People with this Polio were put in “iron lungs” for breathing.... soon after, Dr. Salk discovered the vaxine and nobody had Polio anymore... While Pa played bridge and poker with his friends at the M & M, Mama and I would go "shopping" : walking past Belk's Department Store, the A & P, Mr. Gruber's meat market, Sappenfield’s Bar, another drug store, down to Uncle George's and Uncle Maury's Richmond-Flowe. I would get a cookie from Uncle George's glass cookie case, (an Oreo, or a fig newton. I was not allowed a Malimar, for some reason, but I could have a raison square, do not remember the name. It had a dark sweetness with a bit of bitter mixed in I came to love,) and go next door to Uncle Maury's haberdashery. (We never bought any groceries there, since the store made deliveries. Nana would order what she wanted every morning by telephone, and Shirley, a man!, would bring it early enough for Non to cook a great dinner for all. Pa would complain that his Brother-in-law was sending them all his over-ripe tomatoes) I loved the smell of the shoes. He had the best selection of everything in town. Shirts and suites. Socks and ties. (whenever I outgrew my shoes, Uncle Maury always had a nice pair of new ones for me.) Then we would repair to Gibson'

s Drug Store on the square, where Daddy worked, for a soda. Only I was not allowed to have cokes. They were still called "dopes", and were thought to contain cocaine. (I do not know to this day if they did. The formula is held under armed guard in Atlanta somewhere, in some vaulted dungeon. At least that is what we were told.) The tables were high for a yard ape like me, and I enjoyed scraping the chewing gum off from under the tables, which were about over my head. I crawled a lot anyway. Until I got caught, I would put the stuff in my mouth. Then I would get a spanking of sorts. She would meet her friends, Inez Eifford White, wife of our cousin Stokes, Miriam Coltraine, from the banking family, owners of Concord Telephone, Winnie Pegram Morris, Aunt Craig's sister. They did not work, I guess. Mom had quit her school job when she got married. Daddy made twenty-nine dollars a week at the drug store in those depression days. He had worked at Gibson's since high school, taking off a year to attend Davidson College, at 16, in 1924, just making it through his Freshman year! (But then a year later, went back for a second year....) meanwhile, Gibson’s waited... When the Great Depression hit, he still had a job... The Lafferty famly, present owners then, kept things going, and Daddy was very close friends with them. Plus! Eggs were a dime a dozen. A loaf of bread was a nickel. A quarter would get you into a movie. (Nine cents for kids under 12.) Back home, dinner would be set up in the breakfast room, between the kitchen and the dining room. Non would have a full meal ready. Nana would complain that the vegetables had too much salt and pork fat in them, but she could never break Non of the southern seasoning. Nana ate like a bird, a bite here and there, would take a spoonful of sugar raw for energy, and was quite thin, as were all her children. Pa liked hearty food, and would bring in hams, his one of his favorite meats. Steak, also, and would eat the fat, claiming it was the flavor of the meat. Hams, Nana would serve disparagingly. We always had fresh rolls. Nana did not approve of biscuits, since they were made with lots of lard. And store bought "light bread", was looked down on for its instability. Daddy would get a ride home at noon from one of his fellow workers, Pee Wee Bourage or Charlie Short, who had a plate in his head from an accident or war injury, I did not know which, or which war? "Much obliged", was Daddy's thank you call, as he got out, coming up the walkway. Bobu, Aunt Ellen, was still living at home, as my memories began. Before she married Uncle Laurin, she would walk home at lunch from Penn- Carrol Hosery, where she was secretary, or some other office job. She forbade me going into her room, next to the bathroom upstairs where we our rooms were also. After she and Lauren got married, that room became mind for several years. We all ate dinner together, and then Nana and Pa would take a nap for awhile, and Mama would try to, but she would have to read to me. I loved getting read to. Of course, Nana and Pa, and Boo, next door, would do it too. My first absolute favorite book was "Clementina, the Flying Pig" I had it memorized.... and if whoever was reading made a mistake, I would correct them....I could quote it verbatim. "Clementina was darling little pig. She was round and rosy, and had the curliest little tail you ever saw. No one ever ever paid much attention to Clementina, until one day, the horse looked at the cow in surprise and said: "What could that be growing out of Clementina's back?" "Its wings", said the cow. "Sure enough", said the horse!!!" Another book I loved was Peter Pan. It was much richer and more complicated. But Peter Pan really became a life favorite for me, since I hated the idea of "growing up". Arthor James Matthew Barry sure hit on a good note there, and I loved it. Before I was reading "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn", there was Peter Pan. Before "Catcher in the Rye" and "Of Mice and Men", there was Peter Pan. I never forgave them for letting a girl play the role in the movie. (I later learned, Barry wrote the part in this play for to be played by a female!) Suggesting that any girl would ever have the bravery, the charisma, the intelligence of PETER PAN. I never forgave Broadway and Hollywood for that. Actually, the cartoon version was not bad, but I refused to see it for a long time, because I was sure they would get it wrong. The story was already a movie in my mind, and I did not want to see any revisionist version of my private fantasy. Mary Martin was OK as Nellie Forbush in "South Pacific", but as Peter Pan? NO WAY!!!! If I could, I would prefer to live in Never Never Land with Windy and have fun with the Lost Boys and Tiger Lilly and the fairy Tinka Bell. About that time, Daddy bought the Harvard Classics, on some sort of inspired whim. This big box of blue books arrived at 25 Georgia Avenue one day. I must have been 4 or 5 by then. A six foot shelf of books containing the greatest writings of all times, as judged by professors at Harvard. All subjects were included. Daddy said if you read all the books, it would be the equivalent of a college education at an Ivy League University! Science was well covered with both "The Origin of Species" and "The Voyage of the Beagle". Essays by Faraday and Heimholtz, Kelvin and Newton. William Henry Huxley. Philosophy: Descartes, Socrates, Hume. And much much more. Literature was especially well represented: every thing from the Bible to I Promissi Sposi. The divine Comedy, Paradise Lost. Religion. Shakespeare. Mama read to me from"Folklore and Fable". Fontaine, to whom we were supposedly kin, Grimm and Anderson. Aesop. The stories were bloody and brutal. But I loved them. Mama liked to read these lying on the bed after lunch, begging me not to wiggle and squirm so much. Snow White and Rose Red. Strange beings with strange names. Rumplestilskin! Repunsel. Cyclops. Billy Goats Gruff. Boo was the best reader. Every Sunday, especially, after church, on her front porch in warm weather. Roses bloomed on an trellis over the end of this porch every spring. We sat in big green rockers, or on the floor, leaning against the bannisters. She wore these wire rimmed reading glasses, and made the stories so interesting. We would always start out with the Bible. We read through the Old Testament. She abridged a bit, leaving out the confusing and monotonous genealogies, the "begets". And the laws in Leviticus and Numbers and all. But I was quite familiar with Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and the magic ladder and wrestling with the Angel. Joseph and his many colored coat, and Potophor and Potaphor's lecherous wife. Samuel. David and Jonathan and Saul. Absolom and Soloman. After the Bible, came the secular. Twain's "Tom Sawyer" or "Huck Finn". Hardy Boys, I loved, and dog books like "Bob, Son of Battle". She read one called "Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks With the Circus", which described its characters so vividly, I still remember them. Also "Alice in Wonderland". Every Christmas, she would read Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". I delighted in Scrooge and Marley and the vivid depiction of the ghosts. Quite a stretching for a child to grasp the rich language and illusions of Dickens Victorian rhetoric. I liked Scrooge and his gruffness. He was like all the men I knew. Uncle George and Uncle Maury. Daddy, even. Self-righteous, intolerant, self assured. They tended to look down on the Bob Cratchet's and Tiny Tim's that were abroad as always. The opposite of Boo, who was as tolerant and giving, as loving as Jesus, Himself, or any saint you could name. The care-giver. Too bad, their was no one to be her care-giver, and she died in the State Hospital for the Indigent, alone, abandoned by all those she had cared for in her life. Family love as its limits, sad to say. Such is the nature of modern American reality. Boo was such a great reader, and this custom continued a while after I learned to read myself. Maury and Chal were read to up into there teens, it seems, for one Sunday, they had her reading "Of Mice and Men." Things were going along OK until some of the working class language Steinbeck did not hesitate to use, came out. A few "bastards" and a "son of a bitch", had Uncle Maury shouting from the next room: "Willy Willy, don't read that to them!!!" That just about ended the readings. The boys long since should have been reading it themselves. In fact, I think they had. But books were everywhere in the two houses. At Boo's, my great grandfather's library, mostly in a tall oak case with glass door, contained some complete editions of Dickens and Walter Scott. George Hazzard Richmond had entered Lees Mcrae College just as the Civil War began. His brothers left home to serve, but our Great Grandfather, the youngest, got to stay home at Woodside and tend the farm. Wish I still had all those books, and the case, but Mama gave most of them away when she and Dad moved to the coast in 1969. There was Robert Browning and Longfellow and Bobby Burns, and Lord Byron and Shelley and Keats. There was Shakespeare complete. Alas. When Uncle Maury became so senile and had to go to an institution in Pinehurst, I spent many many hours over there, going through the collection, books from the 1800’s, Dickens and Walter Scott, Tenneyson and Robert Browning... It was my favorite hangout in High School, too, and I read "Catcher in the Rye", a bunch of Faulkner and Hemingway over there. In a platform rocker, in front of the gothic window radio. On saturday's, the Metropolitan Opera. In 1948, the Democratic convention. I learn about life and politics. How fortunate I was with many places to hang out. There was peace and quite at Boos... our house was becoming a zoo... Even the basement, my science lab, project emporium space, sometime theater, y (yes, Hugh Craig and I put on a Christmas play down there once) was not safe any more! Family gets larger: In 1941, I was 5, not old enough to start school... but since I seemed smart enough to handle it, they enrolled me in a private school: Miss Mary Probst set up a kindergarden in her house on East Corbin St. She then offered a class for those like me with birthdays after January, for first grade education... so we could start public school in the second grade. Then began my first love affair. Jenny Lou Gillon, a distant cousin, Daddy said, became the main focus of my mind... I sat next to her. I kept my arm drapped around her for some time as we learned the A B C’s.... and our reading book: See Spot Run... I was an unruly brat, and one time was sent into the hall for bad behavior, when who came up the steps but Winnie, Aunt Craig’s sister and Mom’s close friend! I knew dad would give me a belting when she told him I had gotten in trouble.... Winnie’s daughter, Mason Morris, a year younger then I, was in Miss Mary’s kindergarden... I tried to hide under the hall table, but it was not big enough.... In December that year of learning, a new term came to light: Pearl Harber... and we were suddenly at war... News on the big radio became important... and names like Roosevelt, Churchhill, Adolph Hitler, Benito Musselini, plus words like Nazi’s Fasciasts Japs... bumbers bumbs.. ration cards... we listended as a family in the “Back Sitting Room” as scratchy reports came in of manoevers, armed forces, all sorts of new words... squadrons, black-outs, bunkers... When it came September 1942, I started 2nd grade. The Saunder’s family had moved in behind us, and I became best bud’s with Conway: James Conway Sanders... whose father, James Partee, and mother Frieda, lived in a small rent house, with an outhouse for a bathroom... a wood stove in the kitchen where these great looking biscuits and veggies were cooked daily.. and a lunchbucket taken down to the mill some blocks south where Partee worked. Dollimae,(Dolly May?) Conway’s older sister was very beautiful, and I forgot about Jenny Lou. Conway by the way, explained to me why Mama was getting so fat! In a little shack he had built out back he drew anatomical pictures illustrating the birds and the bees.... as it was referred to.... replacing in my mind the fact that it was a stork that brough babies into the family. Conway told me all this after our first day in the second grade... he was put in a different room from me.... Mom knew all the teachers since she tought there before getting married. It was explained that Miss Annie Hoover was a better teacher for Conway, from a working class family, and I, an undisciplined brat from the bourgiousee, would be better off with Mrs Cassel, a must stricter and no-nonsense type of gal, and we went round and round for a while... she kept me in after the first day to tame down my way-ward antics...I did not want to write down every number from one to fifty!!! and I made the mistake of refusing. Boo and Nana and Uncle Maury were down the street to where I would be crossing Georgia Avenue after the short walk down Grove Street.... I was forbidden to cross the street by myself ... and very conserned about my safety. And I was yelling that I wanted to be with Conway in Miss Annie’s room. That afternoon, back home at last, was when I got my introduction to the male-female responsibility for human reproduction.... A week Later, I had a brother... and Mrs Cassel let me go to all the rooms and tell the teachers that Mama had a boy, weighing 6 pounds, and 18 inches long... Miss Bell Means, across the hall, Miss Annie down at the sunny end, where Conway got to attend, Miss Ruby Raeford, some others I cannot remember, and last, the dreaded Principal, Miss Ora Hill! , When Maury was born, three days after cousin Lindly, that September, 1942, as a sickly baby, could not drink Mama's milk, but had to have expensive formulas, I was no longer the center of her life. This little crushing event was not unnoticed by Daddy. He roared with laughter telling the story for years: Mama, lying in bed, saying "Bring me my little darling." I said, according to Daddy, in all innocence, "Do you mean me, Mama?". But I did not mourn my loss for long. I moved next door to the indulgent comfort of Boo and Uncle Maury. Uncle Jack was in the army then, and Aunt Craig was staying with us during those terrible days... and was also nine months pregnant that September. On the 9th, there was a carnival in town, and the two couples enjoyed rides on the Ferris Wheel..... later, Craig’s labor began, and Mama went along to the hospital with her... and the nurse had to ask which one was having the baby! That night it was Craig, and she gave birth to a boy, cousin Lindley, Chalmers Lindley White.... His crib was in the big room upstairs... Three days later, Maury Richmond was born! Another crib! Our dog, Spot, slept under his crib, and Jack and Craig’s spaniel Roxie, under Lindley’s! Maury was sickly and as mentioned before, had to have special formulars. But after a few months, Mom found herself pregnant again. Aunt Ellen, “Bobu”, found her crying.... in fear and frustration over a second child coming so close on... and family income so small! The next year, in October 1943, Chalmers White was born... a very healthy and robust baby.... Daddy had to change jobs to make more money for the growing family. He started working with Life of Virginia Insurance Company. He bough a car.. a 1935 A-model Ford. One seater. a bit small for the big family, but Pa’s big Hudson was still going.....But, still, all our friends had bright shiney new post war slickies... I became quite embarrased by our poverty.... *

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...

October 15th, 2010

Before the light arrives in the early AM.... like old Mother Hubbard, I went to the cube yard to get my doggie a bone, but when I got there, the cupboard was full and confusing, so I just said "fuck it" and the dog got none. she would eat the cat food, but I just realized that I could build a cat-feeding station beyond her reach....

I am watching some seriously fucked up things on Tumbler. must watch that... my old mind probably does not need that.... fading fast... must go to NC Thanksgiving. Pray that Bert is still with us then... must go visit... will go cook for Alice.

Maury said he talked to a barred owl this morning. I think owls say: "who-cooks-for-you" I have a horned owl near by... have not seen her in a while... or heard her, as a matter of fact, but next time will try to get it to respond. Maury says he will try a different tone of voice next time... lower. More male....