Let it snow!

"The Big Snow" in Elba, AL on Feb. 11, 2010
My brother Perry Wilson took this photo of our house on Friday morning after we had 4" of snow - a rarity in this part of the country. And we were not here to see it!


We left Elba on Feb. 10 to go to Virginia Beach, VA to attend the funeral of Jim's brother's wife. We stayed Thursday night with our son and family in Florence, SC. It snowed in Florence, SC on Friday night, after we left to go to VA. We were always one day ahead of the big snows.


After having lived in parts of the country where there is always plenty of snow, we were not too unhappy about missing the snow. How well I remember the winters in Minneapolis, MN. Lake Minnetonka near where we lived would freeze over and there were ice houses out on the lake where people would go to fish (and party and drink beer, etc.). Then we had snow occasionally in north Texas and Winston, Salem, NC as well as Florence, SC. When we moved to Elba, we gave away our snow shovel - thinking we'd never need it again.


Last Friday was a holiday in Elba - schools were closed and county roads closed. It was also a very sad day for our back-yard neighbor. It was the day of Sammy Morrow's funeral.

Saying Good-By

Today we leave for a trip to Virginia Beach, VA to say farewell to Suzi, wife of Jim's brother Larry, who departed this life yesterday, Feb. 10 at 1 p.m.


Suzi called and left a message on our answering machine last Monday afternoon at 2 pm while we were away shopping in Dothan. We returned home around 4 and listened to her message. She called to say they were thinking of us last week, the anniversary of James' death, and meant to call but never got around to it. She just wanted us to know they remembered us and she chatted a bit before hanging up. Before we could return her call, the phone rang and it was Larry, her husband and Jim's brother, calling to say he was at the hospital with Suzi; that she had a stroke early that afternoon (soon after she called and left us a message). The Dr. pronounced her brain dead the next afternoon and they removed the machines on Tuesday night and she died yesterday, Wednesday, at 1 pm.


Life is so fleeting - here one day, gone the next. She was only 62. She retired a year ago and she and Larry had so many things planned. They have spent the past several months remodeling their home in Virginia Beach, VA. We were there last June and saw their beautiful deck. Then we visited with them again in KY in July.


We are leaving to go to VA Beach today, stopping overnight in Florence, SC with our son Bill. He will go to Va with us.

Getting My Saturday Night Bath

When I was growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, we lived on a farm and didn't have running water or electricity. Mother heated the bath water in a reservoir on the side of the wood cook stove, and in big pots on top of the stove. In the winter we would bring in the big metal wash tub and fill it with water and the smaller kids could sit in the tub, sometimes 2 at a time. The water was not thrown away until the last bath, but mother just kept adding hot water until everybody had a bath.


All 7 of us (6 girls and l boy) had to get a bath on Saturday night so we would be clean to go to church on Sunday morning. I liked to get my bath early in the afternoon and shampoo my hair and mother would put my hair up in rollers.


You would take your feet out of the tub and step on the cold linoleum floor and start shivering.
Our house was heated by one fireplace in the main bedroom where we would gather to get dressed in the winter.


I like to believe our "humble beginnings" made all of us survivors in the fast-paced world of today. We all enjoy and appreciate the inventions we could only dream of back in those days.


I like my new jacuzzi in our new 14x14 bath that we added on last year. What a luxury, but oh, how I enjoy it. Especially on cold winter nights, or when I've been outdoors working and my muscles ache. I dubbed it "My Spa".


When I have the jets open on full, and the water is splashing about, it always brings to mind this old Bobby Darin song of the 60's.

"Splish Splash, I was takin a bath
Long about a Saturday night

A rub-a-dub, just relaxin in the tub

Thinking everything was alright

Well, I stepped out the tub,

put my feet on the floor,

I wrapped the towel around me

and I opened the door, and then

Splish, Splash! I jumped back in the bath.

Well how was I to know

there was a party going on!"

When I don't have time to linger in the jacuzzi, I go to another corner of the bathroom and enjoy the refreshing walk-in shower with the big shower head. It feels like it is raining when you are in the shower. I love it!

I have a "Saturday Night Bath" almost every day of the week and am so thankful for modern baths.

February is moving on - fast!

January is now history and February is marching on fast! The past 3 days have been a blur for us. For several days we were nervous and anticipating Feb. 2nd and wondering how we would handle the lst anniversary of James' death. Everything went fine, remembering Father Tim's favorite scripture in Jan Karon's Medford series of books: Phillipians 4:13. (Go look it up!)

The weather is much the same except it wasn't raining this time last year, but was so very, very cold. In the 20's the day of his funeral on Feb. 5th and the wind blowing, making it even colder.

We got up on Tuesday, Feb. 2nd, had a good breakfast and I went to the gym for 30 minutes to walk while Jim had coffee read the newspapers. We had telephone calls and e-mails from many of our family and friends that day. Tuesday morning, Jim took out a DVD that our son Bill made from old family videos over the years that had a lot of pictures of James and we actually enjoyed watching them and listening to him talking and interacting with his cousins and nieces, teasing them and playing with them. I thought it would be sad but it had so many good memories for us and I'm so glad we have sound with the pictures. It was like sitting and visiting with James. Thank you Bill for those precious memories. Ron is doing the same with his old videos, making some more memories for us. Not only were we enjoying seeing James but it was fun watching everybody else grow older. Most of those nieces and nephews are married now with families of their own.

Jim invited me to go to his Rotary Club luncheon and I accepted. After lunch, we took a trip to cemetery 8 miles out in the country in the Curtis community where I grew up, to put some flowers on my parents' and James' graves. It's been so cold that many of the Christmas poinsettias are still on the gravesites, so our yellow daffodils really stood out among all the red flowers!! February is daffodil season here altho they are a bit late this year due to the cold weather we're having.

February 2 came and went and we survived the day and had many happy memories to draw on, and family support.

One of James' favorite sayings was "you shouldn't worry about that. You can't do anything about it!"


And we look to Phil. 4:13 to keep us moving along..........

John Smith Genealogy

My ancestor John Smith was not the one that married Pocohantas. He was of Quaker background and migrated to NC from Pennsylvania and settled in Rockingham County.

A few years ago my cousin Harris Winston gave me an old family history book, "The Smith Family Geneaology" by J. Fletcher Smith, 1903. It was very fragile and falling apart, so in 1982 I retyped the entire book and put the original away. I updated the book to include my great grandfather William Cole Smith's line.

Now, 28 years later, I am updating our family section once again. This time the update was copied from Jim's ancestry.com and My Legacy files on the computer. All entries are up-to-date, including the last child born in August, 2009.

The hardest part was making an index of all surnames in the 1903 book, and the pages where they occur. Jim just clicked "index" on Legacy and the index appeared! So easy.

We made a copy today of every page (98 pages), using the "duplex" feature of my HP printer to print front and back of each page. It's exciting to learn to do something new. I knew that feature was there but had never tried using it. I will have copies made of the book for family members. We'll also place some libaries and in state archives in AL and NC.

It was interesting reading about our ancestors in the 1903 account. Many were Quakers and lived in the Greensboro, NC area.

Samuel Smith, son of John Smith, is the ancestor I used to become a member of the DAR. He didn't actually fight in the American Revolutionary War, but made gun powder for the troops to use. He was turned out of the Quaker church for his participation in the war.

His son Joshua Smith migrated to Opelika, Alabama and was the father of my great grandfather, William Cole Smith. William Cole Smith had 2 wives, and a total of 10 children. One of his sons was my grandfather, Oswald Cole (O.C.) Smith. Another son, Joshua Drayden, owned a general merchandise store in Elba called Smith Brothers. Many of my grandfather Smith's brothers and sisters were living when I was growing up and I got to know many of my great aunts and uncles.

Pictured here are children of O.C. and Bessie Mayberry Smith. My mother Ruth is on the left on the back row. Two more children were born after this photo was made.

Keeping Busy

For 13 days in a row, we had temperatures below 40, dipping into the teens at night. This is certainly not Alabama weather! We really enjoyed our fireplace during these cold days. Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day and high temperatures. YEAH! I spent some time cleaning and pruning at the old Folsom house downtown - one of my projects.

I cut the article below from our weekly newspaper, The Elba Clipper, telling about the front yard flower garden I created and maintain. Read on.....

A Night at the Movies

Thanks to our Netflix movies (2 a month), we can spend an evening "at the Movies" in the comfort of our own home! We set aside a couple of hours when we get our movie in the mail to sit back and enjoy it.

Sometimes we like them; sometimes we don't! But we watch them anyway. It was so difficult tonight for me to watch a Disney Movie, "National Treasure -2". I thought it was going to be about the assassination of President Lincoln. It was more like an Indiana Jones movie. A lot of action and cliff-hanging scenes and for that reason I never knew what was going on. Jim loved all the action! But then he didn't like "The Devil Wears Prada" and I loved it! Most of the time we agree on what we want to watch.

We look at the movies we can choose from, and it's hard to choose a title from so many on the list. We were so disappointed in the P.D. James movies. We loved her mystery books and for some reason the movies did not live up to our expectations. First of all they were in color and her books were in b&w in our minds; sinister and mysterious. We only watched one and cancelled the others in the series.

We don't have a movie theater in Elba so this is how we go to the movies - via mail! Not even a movie rental place anymore.

I remember when I was growing up that we would come to town on Sat. afternoon and daddy would drop us off at the "picture show" while he had errands to do which including eating raw oysters at Ben Conner's oyster bar on the square.

The only time I remember our entire family (before Alice and Carolyn were born) going to a movie was a cold rainy night we all got inside the cab of the truck (2 adults and 5 kids) and went to Elba to see "The Enchanted Forest" which 

came out in 1945. Mother had heard about it and wanted to take us. It was a great movie.

Another great movie I saw there was when we had a 4-H Rally for all the schools in Coffee County in 1947. The morning was spent competing in sports and games, and after a picnic lunch we all walked from Elba High School football stadium to the Elba Theater to see "Song of the South". That was such a happy movie and I loved the songs.

My friends that lived in town got to go to movies more often. One of my high school friends actually worked at the movies which I thought was a "top job". She got to see all of the movies - good and bad.

Even now I love going to the movies and watching them on the big screen, with surround sound.

We have to travel to Enterprise or Dothan to go to movies. Our most recent one was "Blind Side" and it was so good. And before Christmas we went to see "Julie and Julia" which we both enjoyed. I wanted to see "It's Complicated" with Meryl Strep but one of our granddaughters said she didn't think we would like that movie, that it was "R" and had vulgar language. I'm glad she was looking out for us! (I'll catch it on Netflix someday!)