Aunt Bob

My mother had 4 sisters and 2 brothers and a half-brother. She was one of the oldest. Her older sister was named Mary Barbara Smith, and we called her "Aunt Bob". Here is a photo of the older children. Standing next to my mother Ruth, in the back row is Aunt Bob (on the right). The boy in the middle is William Joseph (Joe Bill, who died May 2007 at age 90), on his right is Ida who just turned 89 and the baby is Nellie Faye who died in 1985. Younger children were Amos (Pete) who lives in Elba and the youngest was a girl, Martha Ann (Polly) who died in 1992.


Now back to Aunt Bob (Barbara). She is probably the one we all remember best because we saw her more often.


At an early age, she started staying with our Papa Smith's sister, Daisey Winston who was an invalid following a stroke.


My earliest memories was of Aunt Bob was when we would visit her at Aunt Daisey's house and observe how she cared for Aunt Daisey.


I couldn't understand anything Aunt Daisey said, but Aunt Bob knew exactly what she wanted. They lived in a big house with a porch across the front where Dorsey Trailers now has a paved parking lot. Aunt Bob and Aunt Daisey spent a lot of time sitting on the front porch every morning and afternoon. There was a vine creeping up to the roof that provided shade from the sun. I remember that it was called a coral vine and had pretty pink blooms. I have a vine just like it and it brings back memories. Aunt Bob lived with Aunt Daisey for many years, until Aunt Daisey died in the 1950's.


By this time Aunt Bob was in her early 40's. She moved into a house nearby that Aunt Daisey's sons gave her, and her parents (my grandparents) lived there with her. She decided to become a nurse and entered nursing school in Dothan to be come a practical nurse. She graduated from nursing school and went to work in a Dr's office in Elba.


Then she decided to get married to someone she had known all her life, Roy McDowell. He was in WWII in the Pacific and when the war was over he came home and started working for the Ala Highway Department. We all thought it was neat that Aunt Bob had a boy friend. Neither had ever been married. So in their early 50's they decided to get married and the wedding was held at Aunt Daisey's son Roger's new brick home. In the meantime, her father had died from a heart attack and her mother was living with her. After Aunt Bob got married, her mother (my Mama Smith) went to live in the new Elba nursing home and she loved it there. She had friends around all the time. She lived to be 91.


Back to Aunt Bob. Uncle Roy died in 1975 with leukemia, a few years after their marriage. Aunt Bob had become friends with his sister MaryMcDowell Newton and the two of them became very close friends and where you saw one, you saw the other.

Aunt Bob loved to do handwork. She could crochet and knit and made all of her nieces sweaters and doll clothes. She made dresses for me and my sisters. I'll never forget the dresses she made for me to take to college. She helped me make my formal for the prom one year and for that I was so happy. We lived in the country and rode the bus to school. Sometimes I would walk to Aunt Bob's house after school and spend the night, especially when there was something taking place in town that I wanted to attend. My friends would come by and pick me up.


After we all grew up and moved away from Elba, we would always go to see Aunt Bob when we came back home to visit.


Aunt Bob checked herself into the Elba nursing home one hot day in August in the early 1990's when her air conditioner stopped working. She just packed her suitcase, called a taxi and never came back. She called to tell me her new address and new phone number.  She asked if I would come to Elba (from Albany, GA) and clean out her refrigerator!  Of course I did, and cleaned her house.  I thought she would be coming back soon, but she never did.  The house was flooded in March 1998.  


Several years later, Aunt Bob began to have heart problems and in October 1998, her heart just stopped beating one Sat. afternoon. I was with her at the hospital and left to go to a Grimes family cousins' dinner, to see everybody and told her I'd be back later. She died while I was gone, with my sister-in-law Carol in the room with her. She just closed her eyes and went to sleep, without a sound.


Aunt Bob was buried beside her husband in Evergreen Cemetery in Elba.  

Hog Killing Weather

When I got up this morning, I looked outside and the ground was white with frost and the temperature was in the low 20's. I murmured to myself, "it's hog killing weather". How many times I've heard my granddaddy say that on cold winter mornings. I'm so thankful we don't have to kill our own hogs to get our meat for the winter!


I remember those hog killings as if they were yesterday even though they were 60+ years ago. Hog killings at our place usually took place around Thanksgiving or soon after. I don't know how they predicted weather to know when there would be a cold, dry day for this event. Neighbors would start gathering to help with this all-day event very early in the morning. One spring one of our sows had baby pigs and there was a cold snap and one little pig almost froze; in fact his tail did freeze, and fell off! Daddy brought the piglet home and we put him in a pen at the edge of the yard and fed him, and of course petted him and he became a playmate. That is until he (Charlie) grew up and started uprooting mama Wilson's flower beds. We had to leave him in the pen after that.


During the summer he grew up and became very large. In the fall I heard talk that he might be selected for the hog killing and I was so sad.
Found this photo on Google On the appointed day, I stayed home from school (pretending to be sick) to see if they were going to kill Charlie. And they did! Shot him right between the eyes, and proceeded with the hog killing ritual. I don't think I ate any pork all winter that year. Hog killing was necessary to have food during the winter. You can go to these websites and read all about how it took place.
http://www.geocities.com/thurlane/hogkilling.html http://www.rootsweb.com/~tnweakle/Hog_Killing.htm


We had a smoke house which was a small wooden building without a floor. There was a fire pit in the center of the building and hickory wood was used to keep the fire going at all times when there was meat hanging from poles suspended from the ceiling. The meat was "smoked" to cure it. My favorite part of the hog was thick bacon, fried crisp and sausage links. Mama Wilson would make whipped cream for us to eat with our sausage and I remember how good that was. I don't think I would like that combination now. I didn't like scrambled eggs and brains or hogshead, or some of the organ meats.


What I did like were the crisp crackling's left in the big black washpot when the fat was melted into lard for cooking. Mother would make cracklin' cornbread. Some of the fat left over was used to make lye soap. They seemed to always find a use for everything. They even cooked the pig's tail and feet.

My First Permanent

When I was in the 5th grade I begged my mother to let me get a permanent wave and cut my red pigtails off. I wanted short curly hair for a change. I didn't like having my hair combed and braided every morning before going to school. I think she relented and let me get a permanent so she would be relieved of having to comb and braid my hair.


I found this photo on Google
and it looks just like the
machine in the beauty shop where I got my first permanent.
The instrument of torture stood tall in the corner of the shop. There were wires or electric cables hanging from the top of the pole and metal clamps on the end of each of the long cords. After having my hair shampooed, the beauty operator put an awful smelling liquid on each strand of my hair and wrapped it in foil strips, rolling it up and putting the clamp over the roll. I just knew I would be electrocuted when she turned on the switch. I still remember holding on to the arms of the chair when I heard a sizzling noise which was the steam evaporating when the heat was applied to my hair. The odor of the solution almost made me faint. But I just knew I was going to be beautiful when it was all over. I watched the ladies underneath the tall hooded dryers as they smoked and read True Romance magazines. I was out of my "environment" and felt so grown up. I was alone during this experience. My Aunt Barbara took me to the beauty shop and told the beautician that she would return for me later. I was very apprehensive that something would happen to me but I tried to be brave. When the timer went off, she began to remove the clamps, unroll the foil papers and led me back to the shampoo bowl to wash the foul smelling lotion from my hair. I was afraid she was also washing away the curls I wanted so badly.


But not so! I looked in the mirror and I could not believe what I saw. To my horror all I saw were dark red curls that looked like snakes crawling all over my head. I almost cried when she used a comb to pull through the tangles. She then rolled my hair into little spit curls and held them in place with a metal bobby pins, which burned my head when I had to sit under one of the funny looking dryers and left to toast. I remember how my ears and eyes burned, and was concerned about the odor and wondered if it would go away any time soon.


When the dryer buzzed, she came and led me to a table with a mirror. She removed the bobby pins and started to comb my hair. My head felt as big as a basketball! I had never seen so many curls on one head. I had wanted curls but not this many. She looked me over and smiled at her
"creation". I tried to smile but all I could think of was would anybody recognize me!


I remember my daddy coming to town to pick me up at my aunt's house, and he tried so hard not to laugh. He had begged me not to get my pretty red curly hair cut and permed. We went home and the next day when I got up I tried to comb my hair and it was so tangled and matted I had to get mother to help. We worked and worked to get it looking decent so I could go to church, but to no avail. She let me miss church that day and we worked some more with my hair, trying to straighten it a little. The machine literally burned my soft curly hair and it looked like dried corn silks, and was so frizzy. It was weeks before my hair was long enough to get all the damaged hair cut. I never asked for another permanent. I have only had 3 or 4 more perms in my lifetime, all making my hair frizzy. Mostly I wear my hair cut short and naturally curly. I only go to the beauty shop to get haircuts these days. No more perms for me.

Joining the Wellness Center

All of this workout equipment was new to us. I bet we are going to be sore tomorrow. We tried out a lot of things and the cross training (like cross country skiing but sitting down instead of standing) was the one that stretched our legs and worked out our arms.

Headlines in newspaper: Fitness Counts More than Fatness for Living Longer. I read this and decided that I will probably never be the thin person I would like to be but I can become more fit. Actually at my age, if I lost a lot of weight, I would have so many wrinkles. I'm not at the obese level - yet.

So last week Jim and I joined a 10-week program called Scale Back Alabama, http://www.scalebackalabama.com/ (it's all free). This is the first week. We attend classes every Monday at noon at Opp Mizelle Hospital. The classes are taught by the hospital dietician. We participated last year and I lost 10 pounds and have kept it off. Now I want to lose 10 more.

We brought earphones from our portable CD players and used them to plug into the TV monitors mounted on some of the machines.

But most important, we signed up for 3 months of fitness training and exercise at the hospital's wellness center and plan to work out 3 days a week for an hour. Today was our first day. We went early to be measured, and all the other things they do when you start out (body fat measurement, etc). Then we checked out the machines we would be using

. Neat place! The wellness center is in temporary quarters right now while the new center is being built, which will have a big heated swimming pool across one end of the new building.

When we work out on Friday, I will take some pictures of us on the machines and post here so you can see the action! We were happy that we weren't the only seniors working out - they all were our age or older, working out in the middle of the day. I guess younger people were all at work!

Trees, trees and more trees

Trees by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Guess you know by now that I love trees. When we moved into our present home there was nothing but bermuda grass in the yard - not one tree! So in 2004 we started planting trees.


First we planted 4 Leyland cypress trees. One was not a good specimen and we bought it for only $3. We planted this tree at the back corner of the house, thinking someday it might provide a shade from the hot afternoon sun. Pictured here is the small tree and another photo as it looks today.

When we moved from the farm, I brought a potted plant and a small oak was coming up in it. I stuck it in the flower bed and didn't expect it to live. Four years later look at the size of it now!

In the summer of 2004, I bought 3 Natchez Crepe Myrtles and a friend gave me one. I planted them in the hard clay soil and it didn't rain all summer. They have grown so fast and I prune them at least once during the summer.

Our Texas Granddaughters

Elizabeth (Lizzie) and Allison (Ally) Gilmer are our oldest granddaughters. They live in Austin, TX. Lizzie goes to Univ. of TX and Ally attends North Texas Univ. in Denton, TX.


 There's 4 years difference in their ages. This year Lizzie will be 24 and in March, Allie will be 20.


Liz always loved this pink shirt with the face of a cat with big eyes. She once told me that she thought she was "part cat".

Christmas in Clemmons, NC

Liz and Ally  at our farm in AL

Sharing

Texas bluebonnets

Little Women

One of my favorite books when I was growing up was Little Women. Watching our 5 granddaughters grow up reminds me of the antics of the sisters in Little Women. We have 2 married sons. Bill has 3 girls and Ronnie has 2. Today I am posting pictures of Bill's 3 girls to show much they have grown in 11 years. The first photo of Katie, Nerissa, Bill and Caroline was made only one month after the death of the girls' mother, Barbara in November 1996. My sister Carolyn, who was living in Indianapolis, made the Christmas vests for them and spent a week with them in SC to help out. Then Bill and the girls came to Alabama to spend Christmas with us on the farm.

Easter

The next photo was taken at Easter a few years later when Nerissa was about 12, Katie 10, and Caroline 6.
Nerissa was wearing braces and wore her hair pulled back in a pony tail, and this was before she started wearing contacts.


Then last December I received this latest photo of Bill and the girls. They are now 18, 16, and 12. Nerissa is a freshman at Clemson Univ in SC, Katie is a Jr in high school and Caroline is in the 6th grade.

Bill took the girls to England for Christmas holidays to visit their mother's relatives. They had not been since 2000 so I'm sure the relatives were very surprised at how much they had grown in 8 years. Nerissa went alone one summer about 2 years ago.


As I get older (in my 70's now), time flies! And Christmas seems to come more often. I hardly get things put away when it's time to get them back out again. And I know that the girls will be grown before I know it.


Tomorrow I will post photos of our other two granddaughters, Elizabeth (Liz) and Allison (Ally) who live in Texas. They are both in college and it just seems like yesterday they were babies, and then later coming to spend time with us in the summers. We don't get to spend as much time with them as we would like, but when we do it is "quality time" and we keep in touch with email and cell phones. Nobody writes letters anymore. I have saved many of their drawings, letters, and cards from past years.