Sweet moment in time...

I remember the day this picture was taken...just like it was yesterday. Actually it was late June, twelve years ago. Our family had rented a large oceanfront house in the village of Duck, North Carolina, on the Outer Banks. The house was perfect with an almost floor to ceiling bank of windows and a spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean. We were all there - Bill and I, our older son and his new bride, our daughter, her husband and their 5 month old son (our first grandchild) and our younger son...as well as two good family friends who were there for a few days of our vacation.

The weather was perfect...perfect for taking long walks on the beach and playing in the surf. We had spent the morning building sandcastles and playing in the ocean on the day this above moment in time was captured. After lunch, my daughter had tried to get my grandson to take a nap. In the end, they both fell asleep on the over-sized L-shaped sofa in the family room.

There's something about seeing your baby with her baby, that tugs at your heartstrings and brings back memories. My grandson in the picture above is now twelve years old. He now has two younger sisters and a baby brother. My daughter was telling me just recently about how children grow up too fast. I know. Oh, how I know.

Mama and the violets...

The post below was featured today on my other blog, Thinking About it... I hope you enjoy it!

African violets will always remind me of Mama. She loved them. She loved growing them...along with her peonies, daylilies, daisies, roses, their large vegetable garden and several varieties of fruit trees. She loved taking a "cutting" (a leaf at the steam) and creating a whole new plant - or propagating them. Mama never took a botany class or a horticulture class, but she grew up on a farm in Mississippi. Maybe that explains her amazing touch and love of all growing things.

The first time Mama started growing african violets, that I recall, was after Daddy retired and she and Daddy moved to Mississippi. There, they built a new house in the country, next door to my sister's house on the hill. There was a large laundry room with a nice sunny window and that's where the african violets lived. All colors and varieties lived happily side by side and thrived. Mama would mix up the special blue food for the violets, which she kept in a gallon milk container beneath the cabinet, and would feed the beautiful african violets regularly with it. I don't know how she knew what to do, but she did.

Several months ago, my husband, the macho logger tree farmer, came home with two small african violets for me. They were potted in the tiniest little green plastic pots and were beautiful. Totally different but each one exquisite. One had dark purple blooms and the other one white lacy blooms edged in purple. I sighed and shuddered at my next thought - I was afraid I'd kill them.

I tried to remember just what Mama had done and then I googled african violets. Come to find out, even without Google, Mama had been right all along. African violets need to repotted right away in a special soil mixture just for african violets. I purchased the special soil and two larger pots made of a lovely green glazed pottery. The tree farmer repotted them for me. I cautioned him that "they don't like to be touched", which they don't. Somehow, he managed to get them carefully in the pot.

African violets don't like to be too hot or too cold. Basically, they like the same temperatures that people do. They don't like to be too dry to too wet. They don't like water on their leaves! They need enough indirect light but not too much. Come to think of it, they're just downright finicky, but they reward you for your effort with the most beautiful blossoms.

I'm beginning to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I have inherited a tiny speck of Mama's african violet gene...

Reflections...

One afternoon during my granddaughters' recent visit, I was sitting at the dining room table with them. The table was covered with fabric, thread, patterns and my portable Singer sewing machine. I was teaching my eight and almost ten year old granddaughters the basics of sewing - how to find the grain of the fabric, the selvages, laying out and cutting a pattern and safely operating the sewing machine.

In the midst of all of this, I mentioned that I wish I'd had a grandmother to teach me to sew and bake as I love to teach my grandchildren. It surprised them to learn that I had not known my grandparents. My father's parents died before I was born. My mother's mother passed away on June 10, 1951 and her father on June 15, 1952. I was five and six years old at the time of their respective deaths. I don't remember them. I don't remember what I called them. As I was growing up, my three older sisters talked about them...about how truly kind and good they were. Sadly, I don't have those memories. Consequently, all my life, I've been drawn to old people...kind, old people. Perhaps that's one reason I love being a grandmother so much...I know that I'm making memories for MY grandchildren.

Perhaps this is also why I'm so interested in my family's history. There are volumes of information and geneological history that I have collected thus far...my late sister Dorothy and I. I've loved finding nuggets of information during the course of searching through census records, ordering birth and death certificates and traveling to courthouses in several states.

I remember finding great++ grandparents...and realizing that had I been researching my family's history earlier in my life, my children might have had different names! I loved many of the family names I found. Some, not so much. There was a "John Benjamin", "Mahalley", "Matilda Caroline", "Octavia Caldonia" (with Caldonia, I knew her ancestors were from Scotland), "Silas", "Samuel Edward" and "Emmarella" to name a few.

I love the above photo of Mama. She was about eighteen here I believe.

My maternal grandmother, Mama's Mama...Modena Emmarella Seals Haney (1872-1951). She was most likely in her early twenties here.

I wonder what my sons would have thought about being named Benjamin and Samuel? And my daughter could have been Emma Caroline. Hmmm....

Music and memories...

When I was growing up, my older sisters (11, 15 and 18 years older) were playing the music of the fifties. I grew up listening to the sounds featured on the first youtube video below. My sisters were wonderful dancers. By the time I was ten and Sharon was eight, we could dance. I don't know...maybe we had watched my sisters enough. I don't remember that part. Neither Mama nor Daddy ever owned up to where (from which one of them) we all got the rhythm we had, but we could dance.

On the weekends, my sisters would occasionally go dancing. They would get all dressed up in the wonderful 1950's fashions with high heels and go dancing with their boyfriend/husband/fiance. Sharon and I were, of course, much too young, so we'd get in the hallway of the house on Victor Drive with the polished hardwood floors, turn the music up and "bop" (the swing music or boogie-woogie today). I don't remember Mama ever complaining that the music was too loud or that we were under foot. Most of the time, she and Daddy would be laughing at us. Eventually, we would get tired.

I was listening to some great fifties music this afternoon. Those mellow sounds of the wonderful saxophone of Ace Cannon were coming across the built-in speakers all throughout the house. I was dancing to Alley Cat as I cooked supper. I couldn't help it. The memories were tumbling in and I was a very young teenager again...dancing in the hallway of a little house in Memphis.

Of course, the music of the sixties brings back a whole new "set" of memories: high school, college, falling in love, being a young newlywed and, later, having two small children fifteen and a half months apart. Amazing, isn't it...?



*Remember to scroll down and pause the blog playlist music before you listen to the videos.

This is a neat youtube video with snippets of all the top songs of the fifties.

If you remember this time, you'll enjoy it.

If you don't remember it, you should enjoy it anyway!

These dancers are doing "the swing" but it looks a whole lot like "bop" to me!

After all these years, this is still fun...wonder if I could get my non-dancing husband to take "swing" lessons?!

All those questions...

I was born when my parents were forty-one years old...the last of four daughters. Daddy was the youngest of seven children, born when his parents were older. I never knew my Daddy's parents. They both died before I was born. My mother's parents died when I was very young, so I really never knew them.

I was almost twenty-one when I married. Life was busy as we had children and our family grew. Searching my family's history was the last thing on my mind at that time. I was simply busy with life. By the time my sister Dot and I seriously began researching our family history, our mother had suffered a stroke and lost her speech. Not long after that, Daddy passed away. Since Dot was the oldest, she remembered a lot...still, there were answers she just didn't have.

Now, I want to know more. I want to find answers for all those questions I have. I wish there were more photographs...

In the circa 1911 photograph below, Daddy appears to have been about five or six years old, maybe? It appears he was holding something under his right arm. I wish I knew what it was. My firstborn grandchild has the same coloring as the great-grandfather he never met...the same dark brown eyes, dark brown hair and beautiful olive complexion (no other grandparent or great-grandparent has the olive skin).

My firstborn grandchild and me...

Just a few of the questions I would ask now if only I could...

How tall were your parents?

What color were their hair and eyes?

What were your grandparents like? Were they musical...artistic?

What was Mary Frances Cooper's father's name?! Mary Frances Cooper was my mother's grandmother. Mama would have known the answer, if I had only known to ask the question!

Did your parents or great grandparents ever talk about Scotland or Ireland?

So far away...

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I'm the youngest of four daughters. We lost my oldest sister to Acute Myloid Leukemia almost five years ago. While I do I love living on a mountain in Oregon, there are times when I realize that I'm so far away...too far away. I just heard this morning that my sister Gerry is on her way to an emergent surgery in Tennessee...and I'm in Oregon. That breaks my heart that I'm not there for her right now. I'm the RN in the family and should be there with her. There are phones and email, but it's just not the same.

So, for now, I'll just pray. That's the very best thing I can do for my big sister right now...

(The photo above was taken many years ago, in our annual sisters' "lineup" pose. I was fifteen in the picture.)

Update: The surgery went well and the outcome was good news. Thank God!

Happy Birthday, Daddy...

As I remember Daddy's birthday today, I thought it might be a good time to share a few pages or memories from the family history book which my sister Dot and I were working on before we lost her to leukemia. I want to finish this book. I really do...because that's exactly what she would have wanted. If you've been reading this blog all along, then you know my Dad's whole world was my Mama and my sisters and me, and later the grandchildren too. He loved his family. He was a gentle, kind, loving person. In my entire growing-up years, I never saw him lose his temper or raise his voice. I never heard a curse word. Amazing, isn't it. I'm thankful that my parents were my parents. Happy Birthday, Daddy. I miss you.

an excerpt from the family history...

Daddy’s heritage lies deep within the gently rolling hill country of Mississippi, a fertile land with tall, green pines and abundant hardwoods. As we began the search for our family history, my sisters and I, once again, traveled down those winding country roads. We were struck with the quiet beauty of it all.

We found the little Piney Grove Baptist Church where our ancestors had worshiped, nestled in a sun-dappled clearing beneath the tall pines, and it would have been easy to believe we were standing in Cades Cove in the Great Smokey Mountains. Miles of farmland or forest stretched between homes as the wind whistled through the multitude of trees. It seemed time had stood still.

Although the site of the “old homestead” stands empty now, it was easy to imagine what life must have been like back then. Home for the Willis Nelson McGregor family was a large “dog-trot” style house which was built in the tradition of their Scottish ancestors who had migrated to Pontotoc from North Carolina and Tennessee. Situated on fertile farmland in the Springville community, their home was located just down the road from other members of the close knit McGregor family.

The youngest of seven children, Homer Stanley McGregor was born February 17, 1905 in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, to Willis Nelson McGregor and his wife Martha Sarah “Mattie” (Carpenter) McGregor. His brothers and sisters included Robert, Pearl, Quella, Lester, Daisy and Mazie. With two older brothers and four older sisters, Homer McGregor grew up in a home filled with the voices of family, laughter and music. With family roots deeply established, the McGregor children enjoyed the benefits of growing up in a community surrounded by a large number of McGregor and Carpenter (maternal) family members – including grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Highly respected for their strong family values and religious strengths, the McGregor family was well established early in Pontotoc’s history. Descendants of a Baptist preacher from Scotland, the generations that followed produced many other Baptist preachers and church leaders. Most of them were farmers and they all loved the land. There were often hardships that came with depending on the soil for their livelihood but they loved the challenges and rewards that came with each season.

My sister Dot penned these beautifully written memories of those growing-up years in Mississippi.

Sharing Memories. . .
by Dorothy McGregor Kemp

I will always remember Mama and Daddy as very hard-working and law-abiding people. Their family was the most important thing to them; and, in fact, the family was their whole life as they grew older.

Daddy had to work very hard as he had to support his family during some of the depression days, and things didn’t get much better for a long time after the depression; however, I remember that we had as much as most all of my friends and neighbors had back then. Daddy did his best to provide for our needs. Daddy had a lot of pride buying that little farm (in Rena Lara), and he graduated from plowing mules to a tractor which was much faster and easier. Daddy was so proud of that John Deere tractor. (I can just see him out in the fields now). Gerry and I, (Eunice wasn’t old enough) had to pick and chop cotton, but Daddy didn’t ask us to work as hard as some of the kids did, and Mama did not have to help in the fields like some of the wives did either. She took care of the house work, canning and sewing.

Mama always would have a huge and delicious dinner (not lunch) cooked for us at noon when we came home from the fields. The table would be full of several fresh vegetables, a meat (or maybe two), and always a dessert or cobbler, pie or cake, and everything was made from scratch. (She didn’t know what a cake mix was back then nor did she know what a “store bought” pie crust was. (It makes my mouth water to think about all the good food!) I can still visualize that table - actually, we had two; one long one in the kitchen and one on the screened-in back porch, where we ate often in the Summertime. And we had a long bench on one side of the table where we children sat.

Some of my best memories too, especially of Mama, would be the great tea cakes she would have baked for us when we got home from school - sometimes they were plain tea cakes and sometimes they would have chocolate icing (made from scratch) between them, and in the Fall and Winter months we always had baked sweet potatoes waiting for us in the oven. We had a wood stove, so the oven would stay warm for hours, thus the potatoes were too. (This was a snack for us - can you imagine children eating that now for a snack!)

Mama, as we all know, was a great seamstress. She made just about all of our clothes, except for the things that we ordered out of the Sears Roebuck Catalog. I will always remember that every Fall I usually would order a navy and a red cardigan sweater, and Mama would make me some skirts (always a plaid); and she also made us pretty dresses. (She was a perfectionist so they always looked great). We also ordered our shoes, and a coat occasionally, from the catalog. (Dear Old Sears - it’s too bad they don’t still have catalog mail ordering) but I still have my memories. Yes, Mama was proud of her daughters and she wanted us to look nice, so she did the best with the financial means she had.

We didn’t have much entertainment back in the 1930's and 40's, except for radio (and for a long time that was battery operated). But, I can still see Mama and Daddy listening to “Amos & Andy” while we ate supper every night which was (as I still remember) 6:30; and on Saturday nights we listened too the Grand Old Opry. On Sunday or Monday nights we listened to Lux Theatre. (Oh, if only the children now could use their imagination as we had to). Our other entertainment was “going to town” (Clarksdale) on Saturdays, especially in the Fall, after having picked cotton all week. Daddy would give each of us maybe a couple of dollars or less - which would probably equal to ten now - and we would go to the movie and also get a bag of popcorn, and usually after the movie, we would go to the ice cream parlor which really was a treat, as we only got ice cream when we made it in a hand-cranked freezer. (You see, for several years there we did not have electricity and had to keep our food cold in an ice box!) The ice man brought us say 100 pounds of ice that kept it cool, and we chipped off that for ice tea. (I can’t remember if the ice man came one or twice a week, but occasionally he didn’t make it and we were very disappointed). I remember that always around the 4th of July, for Mama’s birthday, we got extra ice to make lots of ice cream and our neighbors (the Hokes) would make some too. Oh, it took so little to make us happy then. Another exciting form of entertainment that we had were the traveling “tent shows” that came annually to Rena Lara and people within miles went to see that. Daddy always looked forward to going to those shows and taking Mama and us.

Daddy and Mama decided after living on the farm for several years to move to Clarksdale and then to Memphis where Daddy worked for General Electric until he retired. Then, I guess he wanted to move where the pace of life was slow, which would be the country or small rural area, so decided to make his final move to Grenada, Mississippi.

Mama and Daddy were kind people, and Daddy always had patience. Most of the time Mama had patience too, but sometimes her Irish got the best of her. I loved them both dearly and miss them so much! They were great people!”

Note: If you'd like to try my Mama's wonderful teacakes, you'll find the recipe here. Enjoy!