My Aunt Mattie Lena took this photo and sent to us when we were living in Wurzburg, Germany in 1954. This is how I remember my paternal grandparents. I didn't see them very often after I got married in 1953. We always lived so far away.
We lived with Mama and Papa Wilson (Fannie and Jim) when I was little and I have such good memories of these times. It was during WWII and so many things were rationed. Living the country we were able to grow our vegetables, raise our own pigs and cows for meat and milk, and were pretty much self-sufficient.
My dad had a sugar cane mill and made syrup and when we couldn't get sugar (it was rationed), my grandmother would make syrup cake and it was delicious. We also had a lot of bee hives and harvested the honey to eat and cook with.
I remember the noise of the corn being ground into grits and the sweet aroma of freshly grown corn. We were not allowed inside the grist mill with the giant wheels turning.
Mama Wilson was a great cook. She would make the best biscuits to go with homemade sausage, red eye gravy, and served with whipped cream!! People laugh when I tell them we ate whipped cream with our sausage. Her tea cakes were so good. And I remember her lane cakes, fruit cakes, fig newtons, and custards. Everything she cooked was good!
She was also a talented seamstress, sewing on a pedal sewing machine. Most of the time she made her own patterns. She sewed for ladies in Opp and Elba, including Mrs. Claude Dorsey of the Dorsey Trailer family. They always bought too much fabric and would give her the left over fabric. Mama would fashion dresses for herself or us if the fabric was appropriate for our age.
Mama and Papa dipped snuff and Rooster Snuff was their favorite. They would wash the empty snuff boxes and we would put a mixture of sugar and cocoa in them and pretend to dip snuff. Once we got our "play" box mixed up with the real thing and I let my friend Evelyn be the first to take a "dip" and she was angry with me for a long time. She thought I did that on purpose.
Papa Wilson had asthma real bad and had trouble sleeping at night. He also had cataracts and back then the operation to remove them was quite serious. He was almost blind and spent a lot of time with us children, telling us stories and teaching us things. He taught me to count by dropping kernels of shelled corn into a jar. I can remember how excited I was when I could count to 100 (I must have been 4 then). He taught me how to spell a lot of hard words. He was our guardian angel. I remember we could go anywhere if Papa Wilson went along with us.
Papa Wilson always made the grape juice for church communion and Mama Wilson made the communion bread. My friends would come home from church with me on communion Sundays and we would play " church" and eat the left over bread and drink the grape juice.
My Mama and Papa Wilson were always very special to me. I'm sorry I didn't get to spend more time with them in their later years. They both lived to an old age; Mama was 83 and Papa was 87 when they died.
