Maybe Mildred?
For some reason that still escapes me I have never been very close to my Mother. Perhaps this distancing stems from the now infamous ‘buttermilk incident.’ After all, when a mother hands a child a glass filled with white liquid, what child would suspect that his dear mother is using treachery and deceipt in an attempt to ‘prove’ that buttermilk isn’t so bad once you try it? The results of that experiment lay not only in the bottom of the trash can (it was closer than the sink) but also in the deep recesses of my psyche. This early experience of mistrust was only reinforced over the years. Once a container of food or beverage was opened all bets were off as to the true contents. Truth in labeling laws never stopped my mother from constantly mixing things together, whether it was cereal or sandwich spreads or jelly. Is it any wonder that I still take a whiff of the milk jug before I let the contents pass my lips? Or perhaps my lack of closeness to Mom stems from her ‘country’ ways while I always thought of myself as a more sophisticated urban type…who knows? Whatever the cause, we weren’t as close as my father and I, but then he never liked buttermilk either. A couple of years ago my wife and I visited my mother’s youngest sister, Pearl, at her home near the South Carolina/North Carolina border. Although our visit with Aunt Pearl was short, a definite bonding occurred. She opened up to me and shared stories from her childhood that had long been suppressed. I heard stories of times when there was no food to eat, when furniture was scavenged for firewood in the middle of the night. I learned of a drunken father who gambled and drank away all of the money that normally would have purchased food and clothing, and then came home and took out his anger on his family. In my Aunt’s voice I also heard a sense of respect for her older sister, my mother. Aunt Pearl remembered the many times my mother took care of her. She also remembers my mother jumping out of bed in the middle of the night, running for the neighbor’s house. Dad was home and drunk, again. She remembers the many months my Mom was away, living with one family after another just to stay fed and clothed and in school. She also remembers when Mom started working for the Mar-Grace Mill right after graduating from high school. Her father and mother had worked at the nearby Lily Mill for years, and many of the area residents worked in the textile industry. It was considered a good job and it kept you out of the cotton fields. Many of the churches she had attended over the years gave her small amounts of money and clothing for college that fall, and the Kiwanis Club gave her a scholarship of $250. People who worked at both mills knew of her situation, they knew of her unusual determination to do whatever it took to stay in school, her quest for learning and her desire to continue her education. They also knew what it was like to work in the mill your whole life, living in Mill housing, dependant on the Mill for your entire existence, living week to week, sometimes owing your soul to the company store. Not exactly living in poverty, but always seeming to be one pay envelope away from the welfare line. They wanted better for her, and they knew if she didn’t go now that she never would. Even though their own destinies were set, maybe one of their own kind could escape and make it out. Maybe Mildred? Someone passed a hat, people who couldn’t afford to gave any way, and in the end it was enough. Through the generosity of the people of her home town my Mom went on to college, the first one of her family to finish high school, not to mention go on to under-graduate studies. She knows of no one else from that area who went to college. After two years at Gardner-Webb she somehow managed to save up enough to make it over her beloved Smoky Mountains to the Tennessee side to attend Carson-Newman College where she met, fell in love with and married my father. She moved with him to Texas where both myself and my brother were born, far from the mills and cotton fields of North Carolina. As my wife and I left my relatives in North Carolina the drive back to Texas allowed ample time for me to mull these things over. My mother had previously shared only a few stories from her childhood, and most of these were merely to contrast her rural upbringing with our modern, urban situation. Somewhere between the Carolinas and Texas I developed a new level of respect for my mother. I also began thinking about how some of these stories really needed to be put in writing. When I got back to Texas I called my mother and I brought up some of these tales of poverty and woe that Aunt Pearl had shared with me, and we took an interesting stroll down memory lane together. It was difficult to get details of the bad times out of her as she prefers to remember the early days, the good times, the happy times. All of that seemed to change the day Ben died, but that is another story. I am already the defacto ‘family historian’ and I have begun putting family records on the computer and the internet, but now I have also become a writer. The stories of my mother’s childhood were too touching, too sad, too ‘real’ not to be written down and recorded for posterity. My visit to the Carolinas is what inspired me to start writing the story of my mother’s and aunt’s childhood and I am now collecting letters from my Aunt and interviewing my Mother to begin filling in the blanks. Who knew that I would end up being the one to take such an interest in family history? Who knew I would be the one to take all the scattered memories and mix them all together into one container, one story? Who knew?