Day 3 - My Parents

My parents.

Me and my Daddy.

Me and my Mama

Daddy

Mama

It's everything I can do not to say " They were perfect and we had an idyllic life, they lived long and happy lives and ..." But that wouldn't be true. I have a list of things I would like to change. I would love for them to have had an easier life. I would have loved for both of them to have had more leisure time together. I can't wish for much more to be different than that. To do so would possibly delete myself from their life or from the life we had together and that, knowing what I know now, is something I wouldn't change.

My dad, Thomas, also known as Tucker, was a big man. He was 6 feet tall, had green eyes that turned brown when he was angry, and fists as big as hams. His mother was a Cherokee princess. His mother died when he was just a little boy and his Daddy remarried. Daddy was the baby of 11 siblings. He was, according to my Aunt Hattie, spoiled rotten. But he was smart, too. She told tales of how daddy would have a nickel, and although Aunt Hattie was 3 years older than him, he would convince her that a nickel was more than a dime because it was bigger.

To be sure, he was smart. He could build anything he wanted to. He built the cabinets in our house, and the nightstands beside our beds. He built little footstools, book shelves, what-not shelves, boats, flying Jennys, and gun racks. He gardened for as long as I can remember. He fished, and took us on vacations every year. We spent two weeks traveling through the mountains every year and every year he and Uncle Ray went on a little side trip after we'd set up camp, and they came back with a 5 gallon gas can full of moonshine. I can remember seeing him drink a half of a coca-cola, and filling the rest with what I thought was water, and then drinking it. He would rub his thighs, and say " That's mean whiskey." 

Daddy was a man of opinions, and he never hedged on saying what was on his mind. When my sister and her husband divorced, she wanted to bring her new friend over to the house to meet Daddy. He saw them coming and when she came in the front door, he was in the kitchen. She told daddy she had brought someone for him to meet, and not missing a beat Daddy said " I know enough people already. I don't need to meet anymore."

He served in the Army and broke his ankle ice-skiing in Iceland.  Mama used to tell us how when he was sent over-seas, he wasn't allowed to tell her where he was being sent. The Army would open and read your mail so he couldn't tell her where he was. They had worked out some kind of code because they had an idea of where he would be going. He managed to get a postcard to her that asked about Mary, his sister in law, and that meant he was in Iceland. If he'd asked about Mattie, his other sister, it meant he was going to England. He spent time in Germany and told us how they would heat an iron poker in the fire and shove it in your beer when you ordered one because they didn't serve cold beer over there unless you specifically ordered it.

After he got out of the Army he came home to Georgia to my Mom and two older sisters and brother. Times were hard and went to work with my Uncle Ray at the cotton mill in Greensboro.  After that closed he moved the family down to Charleston and went to work at GARCO as a spinner and mule operator in the asbestos mill. He worked there till he retired on disability after 2 heart attacks. He died in 1984 of lung cancer, caused by asbestos.

My mother was a beauty. She had green eyes, dark brown hair, and long, shapely legs. She apparently caught my Daddy's eye and then his heart. They got married in January, and shortly after that Daddy was sent to Germany. Mom was pregnant with my sister. When she went into labor, my great-grandmother went outside and got the axe from the woodshed and put it under the bed - to cut the pain. No joke... Wive's tales were rampant.

Mom was a housewife. For years she stayed home and raised babies. My two sisters and eventually my brother, kept her busy enough. For a time, however, she worked in a sewing factory making mens' shirts.  I believe it was called Schooltimers.  I remember hearing stories of how they had to ration things during the war. You got coupons from the government that allowed you to get sugar once a month, flour once, or twice a month, coffee, tea, and other items. They rationed it out because the soldiers needs were priority.

My mother, for all that she was a stay at home mom, uneducated beyond high school, and was not in a circle of women who were her equal in education, was an extremely intelligent woman. She read biographies, loved history, and could tell you practically anything you wanted to know about Hitler, the Reich, Mussolini, Churchhill, Kennedy... She amazed me. Listening to her was almost like listening to one of the PBS history shows.

She wrote. She wrote poems and songs, and for some unknown reason, she felt it was important to scribe every song on every album that she owned. Over and over, day after day, she would play a 33 rpm record, lifting the needle to play a few words of the song until she could manage to write down every single song. She worked crossword puzzles and NONE were too hard for her. She did a lot of embroidery and I am so grateful to have a couple of dresser scarves and pillow cases that she did her handiwork on. And cook? Oh my gosh, could she cook! Her coconut cake was the real deal! Fresh coconuts, cracked, shredded, the milk saved, flour, eggs, sugar... No cake mix ever sullied her kitchen cupboard. It came from scratch only and tasted like heaven. Chocolate cake, homemade chocolate icing (which I make when I want a cake and which everyone wants to know what icing I use...). I'd set my mother's biscuits against any you can find and we'll bet that hers were softer, lighter and tastier than any you've ever eaten. My sister worked for a restaurant in Charleston, and the cast of Land of The Giants were coming in to town and were going to have dinner there. My mother made a whole pan of biscuits that were no bigger than a nickel for them. They raved about them!

She had the patience of a saint. One of the radio stations had a contest where you had to write the radio station call letters as many times as you could on a postcard. I remember her trying pen after pen, finding the finest tip, and using a magnifying glass to write WQSN all over that post card. My sister Linda entered it also, and between the two of them, I think they took first place and second place.

As parents, I couldn't have asked for better. They struggled and did without to make sure we had food, clothes, shoes, and a roof over our heads. We had so little it seemed but looking back, we were so rich. We didn't have a pantry full of cookies and candy, our shelves were stocked with instant grits and soup... We got our popcorn from the big 4 quart pot and some lard, and popcorn on the eye of the stove. No microwave for us. We didn't even know what a microwave was. Back then a computer that would store 6 or 7 kilobytes of information took up an entire room and it ran on spools and tapes and wheels and dials... Weird.

If we wanted grits, we cooked them. Nothing instant. Now, when Kraft Macaroni and Cheese came out in the box, we DID get that and I honed my skills as a culinary chef slaving over the right blend of milk, and butter and salt to taste. My little sister and I would stay up late on Saturday nights, each of us would cradle a bowl of hot macaroni and cheese while we watched Out Of This World... My older sister would pop a big bowl of popcorn and we'd melt a little butter on it, and watch scary shows till the National Anthem came on the screen and the television station went off the air.

Daddy went to bed with the chickens and he got up with them too, so he wasn't up for all the late night goody fests.

Years later when my mother went to Arizona for the birth of my neice, Daddy apparently thought I could cook... That's another story all together but he gave me heads up on one thing - men won't survive on Macaroni and Cheese, popcorn and french fries. If I expected to get married, I needed to learn to cook.

I miss them both with such an ache in my heart. If you have your parents, you can't begin to know how much you take them for granted without meaning to.

This is my Mom and Dad. That chair off to the left is his chair. The door behind them leads to their bedroom and that heater behind them was the sole source of heat for our whole house.

I remember running as fast as I could to get in my Daddy's chair when I heard the car door shut and his footsteps on the porch. If I claimed the seat first he had to buy me out of it with a candy bar... I know now how much a nickel bar of candy was worth back then, and yet, he had one for me almost every day.

I miss my mom. I remember on a whim asking her for french fries and her getting up to peel potatoes and fry them for me.

I hated liver. When she cooked liver for the rest of the family, I was the only one who wouldn't eat it. She always cooked me a hamburger instead. She loved me. I love her.

She suffered a major stroke and discovered she had diabetes in 1980 and Daddy took care of her. Years of her pampering him paid off, and he treated her like royalty until he got cancer. He couldn't hardly do for himself but he still managed to do for her. When he died, it was like someone turned off the light in my mother's heart. She had no will to live, and in her eyes I am sure, no reason.

Two years after he died, she followed.

My parents. To have known them was to love them. Ask anyone.

Tucker and Helen.

Rest in Peace and know I love you.