Time Marches On!

Today I attended a graveside service at Evergreen Cemetery in Elba for a sister of my friend. It was a beautiful, sunny, cool morning and not a cloud in the sky.


 I got to the cemetery early and searched for the graves of my maternal great grandparents, William Cole Smith and Barbara Ann Mays Smith, his 2nd wife. I didn't know they were buried there until I started working on the Smith Family genealogy a few years ago. Over the years I have taken photos of graves of my ancestors and for this blog, I am going to post them here for a record of all of these. Today I will include my maternal grandparents and tell where they are buried.





My mother's parents were Oswald Cole and Bessie Jewel Mayberry Smith. They are buried near Danley's Cross Roads at Liberty, a country cemetery. Until a few years ago there was a Methodist Church across the road from the cemetery. The church has been moved.





Mama Smith's parents, Joel Thomas and Emma Elizabeth Mayberry, are
also buried at Liberty cemetery also. Great Grandmother Mayberry's family were Spratlings from Waverly, AL. This would be my great-great-grandparents. Papa Smith's grandfather, Joshua Cole Smith, went back to NC during the Civil War and we don't know the location of his grave, although we have pictures of his father Samuel's and grandfather John Smith's graves in Reidsville, NC.



My mother, Ruth Smith Wilson, and my dad, James Lawrence Wilson, are buried at New Ebenezer Baptist Church cemetery in Curtis community, between Elba and Opp, AL. We own the plot behind them.

Remembering Elmer Taylor

Elmer Taylor

Today I went to the Elba funeral home for visitation for the older brother of Annette Taylor Farris, one of my school classmates. James Elmer Taylor, age 89, passed away at his home in Auburn where he and his wife Grace moved a couple of years ago to be near one of their daughters. Elmer was school principal at Elba a few years after I graduated.


He was one of 3 sons of Pine Bell and Bonnie Taylor. The others are deceased. All of 7 girls are still living and came from all over the U.S. to be here for the funeral.


Here's what I remember about them: Annette was my age and we were classmates all through school. She and I were co-valedictorians when we graduated from Elba High School in 1952. I remember spending the night with her in their big white house just west of Elba (near where the new school is now located). We had fun flying down the big, pinestraw--covered hill behind their house on cardboard or wooden barrel boards. (I don't know what held the barrel boards together.) Annette's father drove a school bus, picking up students on the way to Curtis, and then bringing the older students back to Elba High School. Her mother was our lunchroom cook. I remember the delicious peach cobblers (pies) she would cook.


Annette's sister Mary Jean, just older than she, joined the Elba High School band while still a student a Curtis. She brought her trombone to school and we were all so excited to see a band instrument up close. We were even more impressed when she put the big instrument up to her lips and made sounds come out of it!! I could hardly wait to join the band someday.


Annette lives in Jonesboro, Arkansas and Jean resides in Claremont, CA. Cupidean was next and she lives in Enterprise. I remember Frances, who had red hair like mine, and who taught the 3rd grade one year at Curtis. My sister Christine was in her class. I think she only taught one year and then went back to Troy to get her degree. I remember that Chris really liked being in her class. Frances has lived in Pensacola, FL for a long time. She was at the funeral home today, recovering from a knee operation. I was pleased that she remembered me and also asked about my sister. That was in the late 1940's! Annie Laurie, another sister retired back to Elba a few years ago and lives near us. I see her often. Her daughter Judy was not much younger than Annette, and often came to school with Annette before she was old enough to go to school. I think maybe Annie Laurie was living with her parents at that time and that her husband was overseas (WWII). Today I saw Oleane and we talked about when she and my mother's sister, Nellie Faye, left Elba in the 1940's to go to work in Washington, DC during the war. They both met their husbands there and never came back south to live. There was another sister Lucille and I didn't see her today. I think she is still living and at a retirement center at Spanish Fort, FL.


I didn't know this until recently when Aunt Ida told me, that my Mama and Papa Smith lived in the same big white house and operated a dairy there before the Taylors moved there to live. Mother never told me this.


It's sad that you have an occasion like this to bring people back together. I've only seen Annette probably once or twice in 55 years. I wish we could have had more time together today but there were lots of people waiting to speak to the family at the funeral home so I came back home after a brief visit with the Taylor girls.


I'm happy that I got to visit with Elmer and Grace Taylor many times in the last few years. He was a classmate of my Aunt Ida's. They had lots of Curtis class reunions and sometimes Aunt Ida invited me to attend. When I called to tell her about Elmer's passing, she said she thinks she is one of two surviving classmates, at age 89. The other classmate is in a nursing home in FL. Aunt Ida lives alone in her home in Brewton and we visit on the telephone every Sat. morning.


A few years ago the Taylor family was honored at a Curtis School Reunion.

Learning to use a computer

After we retired in 1996 and moved from GA to Alabama, first to the family farm, and 5 years ago, selling the farm and moving to the little town of Elba, we started doing things we had always wanted to do but didn't have time. We both wanted to learn to use a computer. Our sons Ron and Bill both work with computers and were most helpful in getting us set up and offered lots of instruction in learning to use our computer. We learned to use email and at the beginning we did not have local access and in order to receive or send email, we had to dial a long distance phone number. So we didn't do email very often. Then someone opened a server site in nearby Andalusia, in an old service station, and named it Alaweb. It was still "dial up" but not long distance. The problem with that was nobody could call us if we were using the computer to send email or use the internet.


We learned to do income taxes on the computer and volunteered to do income taxes for AARP, free. Pictured here is Jim with a couple at the Elba Sr. Center where we had our "office" each spring for 8 years. IRS furnished us with laptop computers, printers, etc. and trained us. We used professional accounting software. We gave it up in 2006 to have more time at home in the spring and to be there when James got home at 2:30 pm every afternoon.


Jim wanted to edit and print a bulletin for the Rotary Club each week when he joined the Elba Rotary Club. I helped him design one and did most of the layout and we would print it on legal size paper and fold it. This went on for about 2 years and then a new member joined who had a printing shop and she started making professional bulletins.


By this time Jim was hooked on using the computer and started researching his family history. So.... we needed 2 computers. I kept the old computer and Jim got the new one. We have each updated those computers several times. We now have flat screen monitors and enjoying high speed internet through our local cable TV company. We've come a long way since 1996!!


Our sons loaded all kinds of software on our computers; some I'd never heard of, i.e. Excel, Power Point, and others. I have since learned to use both and couldn't function without these two programs. I use the tutorials to get what I need to know. We enjoy using Photoshop to edit digital photos from our cameras.


I love to do power point programs and slide shows. I have learned to scan photos to use in the slide shows. Couldn't do this without "cut and paste" that I have mastered.


Just this week Jim gave me an early Mother's Day present - an Epson projector to use with the Dell laptop computer our son Ron gave us recently. (Now we have 3 up-to-date computers and a slide projector.) We are producing two slides show; Jim is doing one for his Class of 1952 class reunion in September and I am making a slide show for a presentation for the S.A.R. on April 17th. We opened up the box with the projector two days ago and had fun figuring out all the cable connections, etc. It was exciting when we pressed "play" and voila!! There was our slide show on the screen.


I have a blog and Jim maintains our church website (http://www.elbaumc.org/). He used MS Front Page to learn how to create and maintain the website. I read a blog from a local church group last summer and decided to do one of my own. It's been so much fun remembering things from my past. I am making CD's of my blog to give to our sons and grandchildren someday.


Email is a big part of our daily life. We check it when we first get up and several times during the day. Even have this little guy announce "You have mail, madam" when email comes in during the day. We each have our own email account. Unfortunately we don't take time to write letters by hand anymore - just send email.


My philosophy is to learn all you can, everyday, while you are able. I love creating new things on the computer. It's the greatest encyclopedia in the world. Google can locate almost anything I want to know. We create maps of places we want to go and use the white pages to locate phone numbers and addresses. It's great when you want to look up a new country somewhere in the world like in Africa. I have my recipes on the computer and when I need one, I go to the computer and locate it much faster than I can by looking in my cookbooks and recipe cards.


Our 5 granddaughters all have computers of their own and when they come to visit, they enjoy playing games on our computers, sending instant messages and email or listening to music.


Picture here is our youngest, Caroline, and her sister Katie when they were spending a week with us one summer (Grandma Camp).

Who do you look like?

The above photo is the only baby picture of me that I know about. My Aunt Barbara gave it to me a few years ago. It is probably in the summer after I was born on Nov. 25, 1934. My hair was red.  I'm sitting on the hood of my daddy's car. Aunt Barbara said my parents used to take me for rides in the evenings when it was very hot and humid, so I would fall asleep.


I remember people telling me that I looked like my mother, Ruth, my grandmother, aunt, etc. when I was growing up. Even now people tell me that I look so much like my mother (who died at age 48 in 1963, when I was 29). Recently I came across some old photos of my mother and father and am posting there here.


I love the expression on my mother's face. And her little bare feet. I don't know what she has in her hands. She's probably about 2 here.


I think I probably look more like my daddy who had fat cheeks! I had red hair and neither of my parents did, but there were redheads in my father's family line of Grimes.
I really like the detail work on the dress he is wearing. My grand- mother Wilson was a great seamstress and probably make this lovely outfit. His hair was so black most of his life.


I copied this photo from a cousin Jimmy Blankenship, whose parents Ellie and Ted, lived with my great grandmother when he was young. My dad's name was written on this photo taken about 1915. 

School Days at Curtis Jr High, Elba, AL

Curtis School, grades 4,5,6 in 1946. I am in second row from top, in the middle, in front of the principal, E. C. Griffin. I was in the 6th grade and my teacher, Miss Arvie D. Fuller, is on the top row, 4th from left. Fourth grade teacher was Mrs. Doris Pinckard, 3rd on top row from left. Next to Mr. Griffin is Mrs. Jean Johnson, 5th grade teacher. The two girls on my left side were my best friends - Janice Cowen and Evelyn Jones. We are still friends and see each other often.


Several of my classmates in this photo are deceased: Ted Cowen, James Huggins, Jean Johnson, Grady Blocker, Ronald Courson, Jack Foley, Jean Griffin, Annie Myrle Archie.


"Father time took its toll on Curtis Junior High School, as it did many other country schools. The rural population slowly shifted to the cities and small towns where the factories, mills and other industries offered employment for the parents. Farming had become mechanized and many of the farm workers were no longer needed. Modern transportation provided students the opportunity to attend larger, more progressive schools. All of this meant too few students left in the country schools.


Curtis Junior High School closed at the end of the 1966-67 school term. It was indeed a sad day. A few years later, the building was destroyed by fire completely erasing all visible evidence of the school. Nothing can erase the memories in the hearts and minds of the men and women who attended school at Curtis" - taken from History of Curtis School by Jimmie Lou Cowen.


I am standing on the front steps of the old school in 1976, about 10 years after it closed.


For the last 22 years, we have had a Curtis School Reunion even though the school closed at the end of the 1966-67 school term. We meet the 2nd Sat. of October each year at a pavilion we built behind the Curtis Baptist church a few years ago. My friend Janice Cowen Hudson and I organized the first school reunion and we have been in charge every year since. We held a fundraiser to get enough money to build the pavilion behind the church. Another fundraiser was held to get an Alabama Historical Commission historical marker to erect at the site of the old school.


We always have good attendance and honor one of the families each year, as well as an outstanding student.

Some childhood memories

From time to time I get emails that talk about things in the past and "Do you remember, etc." I enjoy reading them and remembering my childhood experiences. I read one today that jogged my memory and I decided to write down some of my early memories (before I forget them!).


About the only high tech thing I remember from the past was our battery operated radio! There were no portable radios or boom boxes in those days. This was before the internet, cell phones, CD's, DVD's, e-mail. It was even before electricity in our home, or air conditioners, refrigerators, electric irons - so many of those modern applicances.


We played outdoor games. Like hide and seek or going to the mill - playing in the front yard at dusk while our parents rested on the front porch. Then when it started getting dark, we would catch "lightning bugs" and put them in a jar with a lid and would take them to bed with us to see if they would light up the room. Out in the country there were no street lights to light up the sky and we enjoyed looking at the stars and finding the milky way and other constellations. It was so exciting to see shooting stars.


At school we would go outside at recess (morning and afternoon) and at lunchtime, and play games such as London bridge, hop scotch, jump rope, hot potato. Mother, May I?, Bum, bum, bum, Here I come, jacks, dodge ball, kick the can, and many more. I remember a game called "freeze". You were slung about and then when you were turned loose, you had to freeze in the position you stopped. We would also spin around until we got dizzy and fell down laughing because we were "drunk". We played these games at home when friends would come to visit.


We would save string from the fertilizer (guano) sacks in the spring and wrap a small rubber jack's ball, until the ball was large enough to use for a baseball. We also had a ball of this string to use to fly homemade kites, made from greased brown paper (to make it strong). I always wanted to make a long tail with pretty bows tied to it so you could see it sailing in the sky behind my kite.


Summer days seemed so long and we would be so tired at night (from playing so hard); and it would be too hot to go to bed early. We would open the windows and listen to the crickets outside or owls and other night critters. It was always damp and cool early in the morning, but this didn't last long after the sun came up.

We would buy penny candy from the rolling store and some of my favorites were peanut butter and banana flavored little square candies called "Kits", dum-dum suckers, peanut butter bars, BBats suckers, Jack's cookies, and many more. I loved to buy Cracker Jack to see what the prize would be in the bottom of the box.


I remember the first day of school was always so exciting. My feet always hurt from wearing my new shoes (I went barefoot most of the summer). I remembering wanting to wear a new dress on the first day of school and usually it was too hot, but I would wear it anyway. We weren't allowed to wear shorts or pants to school.


Other memories include climbing trees and I was never a good climber. Once I climbed my Uncle Clem's ladder to the top of the windmill and sat there and cried until he came home to help me down. I still don't like heights. I get dizzy when I look down below.


I remember swinging as high as I could go and try to reach the sky. Friends would push each other until the swing was going very high, and then they would run underneath the swing.
We would swing from vines in the woods, pretending to be Tarzan.

Christine, Nell and Sue

Rainy days meant we would have to play on the porch or in our bedrooms. We would put on plays, or play with our paperdolls we cut out of the Sears catalog. Or play school, and since I was the oldest, I was usually the teacher. When the weather was nice outside, we loved to make playhouses, using boards, etc. to outline the rooms of the houses. We sometimes got into trouble when we used eggs in our mud cakes. I am pictured here with younger sisters Chris and Sue. Notice the bandage on my left hand. I almost cut my finger off with an ax, driving stakes for our play house. Mama Smith put coal oil on the wound and wrapped it tight with some clean white cloth. I have a scar on my left index finger from this mishap.

Back to front:  Sue, Nell and Christine

If someone had a bike, they would give their friend a ride on the handlebars. I remember my first bike when I was in the 6th grade. I had "wheels" and could go places and not have to walk.


I remember going to Bible School every summer and we always had Kool Aid to drink. We didn't have this at home very often so it was a special treat.


When we were in fear for our lives, it wasn't because of drugs, gangs, shootings, etc. We just didn't want our parents to be mad with us. I always wanted to please my parents and tried not to disobey them.


We made decisions by counting out "eeny-meeny-miney-mo" - there's more to this rhyme that we used to say but I don't use that word anymore!


I remember in the summer when I was a teen ager, we would go to "singing schools", staying all day for a week or two at each school we attended. Our teacher, Mr. McKinney, was very strict and you didn't misbehave. We would sing gospel songs and take turns leading the singing. I wasn't very good at being a song leader. I love lunch time when we sat around eating our lunches we brought from home. They sat all morning inside the building and were soggy. I still like soggy tomato sandwiches which were my favorite, with salt and black pepper on the tomato. I guess we had water to drink. I don't remember having soft drinks. And there was always a piece of homemade cake or cookies with our lunch. Sometimes we would have a banana or pineapple sandwich.


This is enough "remembering" for one day. Times were simpler in those days but I really wouldn't want to trade them for more modern times. I love my central heat and air, electric applicances, hot water, refrigerator and car! I even learned to use a computer in my old age and digital camera. I don't care much for today's music and haven't asked for any devices to download music to listen to while I am out walking

Handmade Quilts - Warm Quilted Memories

When I was growing up, we all had handmade quilts on our beds in the winter. We didn't have warm blankets until much later. Mother would order a bag of cloth scraps and use that material to make quilts. Her sister, Aunt Bob (Barbara) loved to piece quilts by hand. I remember my grandmother Smith usually had a quilting frame hanging from the ceiling in one of the bedrooms and she would sit for hours, quilting. Ladies would get together and have a "quilting bee" and help each other complete their quilts. I can remember mother attending a few of those when I was little. We would crawl underneath the quilting frame and play with our dolls or take a nap on the floor.


When I left home in Sept. 1952 to go to college at Troy State College, I bought a nile green cotton thermal  blanket to take to school. I really did miss my quilt I left at home. It was too large for the twin size bed in the dorm.


When Jim and I got married in Oct. 1953, my Aunt Bob gave us a quilt top that she pieced for me, using scraps from dresses she had made for me over the years. I recognized the fabric the minute I spread the beautiful Dresden plate quilt out on the bed to look at it. She told me to put it away and someday I could quilt it. Unfortunately I never learned to quilt (and didn't try because I don't like to thread needles!).


Thirty-five years later when we were living in Haleyville, AL , Aunt Bob came to visit us. She asked where the quilt was that she had made for me. I took it out of my cedar chest and she was disappointed that I had not quilted it. She took it home with her and got it quilted by a group of ladies at a church in Elba.


I proudly display my "patchwork" heirloom quilt, folded at the foot of our bed on top of a chest. I have shared with our grand- daughters the history of the quilt. I've even helped some of them make small quilts, using the sewing machine to piece the fabric.


I made James a quilt for his 50th birthday in 2006 and it is now a wall hanging in his bedroom, over his bed. I used the computer to copy pictures and transfer them to the cotton squares. Then I put the squares together with solid strips of cloth. I threaded about a dozen needles at the time and stuck them in a pin cushion and set about "quilting" around the squares. He loves his train quilt (most of the squares relate to his hobby of trains.


When I get too old to drive, or work in the yard, I will take up quilting. I might have to get someone thread my needles for me. You can purchase quilt pieces already cut out and ready to sew into a pattern. It's much easier now than when Aunt Bob made my lovely quilt. And you can have yourquilt quilted on a quilt machine these days. No more quilting frames hanging from the ceiling!