Reflections

Time traveling…again

I’ve spent the past few days attempting to restore all the photos to my blog that were “lost” in the process of changing servers recently. I’m about half way finished with this tedious task! During this long process, I’ve reread many of my old posts. Thought I would share this one again. It was originally published on May 7, 2009. I’m amazed at how our senses can take us back to another time and another place…

The taste of a delicious, hot Southern biscuit reminds me of my Mama’s wonderful cooking. One bite of homemade banana pudding with the golden brown meringue, I close my eyes…forty three years pass…and I’m home again.

If I get even a slight whiff of the perfume “Windsong” by Prince Matchabelli or of the men’s cologne, “English Leather”, it’s 1966 all over again and I’m a young newlywed.

If I hear the song “Aldi-La”, it’s 1964 and I’m sitting in the coffee shop at Mississippi College (I think it was called “The Wigwam”) with my roommate, Linda, who had just broken up with her boyfriend and we are both in tears. If the old movie “A Man Called Peter” is playing on the classic movie channel, I think of a Saturday night in 1963 and a young man named Ross.

Sometimes our senses can even play tricks on us. Not long after my father passed away, I was shopping at the grocery store and saw an elderly gentleman who looked so much like my father, even down to the slight parkinsons tremor and the gait. I found myself closely following him for two or three aisles in the grocery store…it was almost like looking at my Daddy all over again. I managed to pull myself together long enough to park the shopping cart and left the store in tears.

Touch. What can I say? I’m a hugger. I come from a long line of huggers. The human spirit can only go so long without being touched…held…hugged. There have been dozens of studies on how many hugs a day a human needs. As a Registered Nurse, I spent many years taking care of patients and made sure I incorporated some form of touch besides the routine care…a pat on the back or arm…a reassuring hug. Perhaps this is also why the studies have attributed having a pet to a sense of well-being and an overall decrease in blood pressure.

Have you ever noticed how much we learn from our sense of touch? How many times have we seen something that we’d never seen before and our first response is to want to touch it. Ever notice the sign “Do Not Touch” in a museum or exhibit?

I walk into a fabric store and my senses are overwhelmed with row after row of bolts of fabric…all different colors…patterns…textures. I’m also overwhelmed with memories of spending time with Mama in a fabric store when I was growing up. She was an excellent seamstress and made most of my clothes. We’d spend time together selecting a new pattern and find the fabric for it together. I did the same thing with my children…and, now, my daughter with hers. Mama had so many offers to sew for payment, but she reserved those talents for her family. She told me, “I only sew for love”…years later, after I began the tedious work of sewing for my family, I understood and said the same thing to my family. Who knew that would come full circle?

First day in Heaven…

Family, Reflections

I’ve been thinking about Heaven since yesterday. My eighty seven year old “second mother” of almost four decades went to be with the Lord yesterday morning in Memphis, Tennessee. She had been really sick for the past two weeks, and we had all prayed so hard for a complete recovery. Our Heavenly Father answered those prayers. He took her home.

I’ve had the most wonderful, peaceful vision of her reunited in Heaven with her loving husband, her son (my husband of 39 years), her parents and grandparents, my parents, my sister and a host of other family and friends. I’m sure, by now, she has talked to Jesus and finds Heaven “glorious” (her word!).

For those who know the Lord, the Bible says “absent from the body, present with the Lord” (II Cor. 5:8), interlocking circles…not one single moment in time when we are not with Him. Sadly, due to the distance (I’m in Oregon) and the time (the funeral is tomorrow), I couldn’t be there this weekend. I will be traveling South in a couple of weeks for some wonderful, unhurried time with family then…

This is Bobbie, my other mother of almost 40 years, and me at my younger son’s wedding four years ago. As the music played at the wedding reception to introduce the wedding party and family, the two of us “danced” in together. She was fun loving…

Bobbie and Frank…this photo was taken many years ago when he was home on leave during the war. She was always a snappy, snazzy dresser. With red hair and green eyes, she loved dressing up and wearing beautiful, vibrant colors.

This photo below was probably taken about 1944. Bobbie and her firstborn, my future husband, taking a walk. I was born on his birthday exactly two years later. Notice her suit. I love the clothes from the 40’s!

A sweet family portrait. This photo was probably taken during the early 50’s. I love Penny’s curls! Actually, my daughter’s youngest daughter looks a lot like Penny here!

I think the photo below was taken at Libertyland in Memphis. They were probably about my age here.

Mama and the pizza…

My Southern Heart, Reflections, The little house on Victor Drive

It was the late 1950’s. We were living in the house on Victor Drive with the sunny windows and the knotty pine dining room with the corner china cabinets. It was a time of early rock and roll, dancing and pizza. Our first introduction to pizza was from George, a big, strong, dark-haired cajun planter from Louisiana. All these years later, and I remember George Broussard like it was yesterday. He was Glenda’s boyfriend and Glenda was Dot’s best friend. So we all spent a lot of time together in that little house on Victor Drive.

George had a booming voice and a great laugh. His conversation was sprinkled with a few cajun words here and there, and he loved to kid Mama. One weekend, he brought a large, filled-to-the-brim pizza over for lunch. We’d never even seen a pizza. I have to admit, at first glance, I had my doubts. All these years later, I’ve had the best Chicago pizza in downtown Chicago…so I’d have to say I know good pizza. I don’t know where George got it, but that was some pizza! Mama took one look at it and had her doubts too. It, obviously, wasn’t Southern vegetables and cornbread. She almost didn’t try it, but she did…and she fell in love with George’s pizza. The best I recall all these years later, I’d say it was a thin-crust, SUPREME pizza and it was, indeed, delicious.

Quite frequently after that, George would arrive with Glenda on his arm and toting another gift for Mama…a pizza supreme. I’m not sure that George ever knew that Mama became a serious pizza fan after that. She tried making it from scratch from time to time, but when she was in a hurry, she’d resort to Chef Boyardee. Not too sure that George would have approved of that…

Pizza closeup with salami and vegetables on an old wooden background.

The paper trail…

Family, Family History/Genealogy, My Southern Heart, Reflections

When I was younger, and the family members with most of the answers were still living, I was too busy to care. I was a young wife with three children to raise, a home to take care of and a nursing career. It never occurred to me to search for “ancestors” or even to ask about them. What a shame – the answers were there.

For the past few weeks, I’ve searched for information about William Merle Jordan – or “Mike” as he was affectionately known. He was my oldest sister’s first love…in all honesty, the love of her life. They met in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the mid-forties. I wish I had asked my sister just how they’d met. I’ve seen pictures of Mike…a handsome young man with striking blue eyes. I see those blue eyes now in his daughter, Sharon. I see a remarkable resemblance to him in Sharon’s son, Michael. My sister did tell me the story about the days not long after they’d met, when Mike worked as a “milk man” in Clarksdale. Quite often, on an early morning, he would leave two quarts of chocolate milk in the old-fashioned glass bottles on the door step of our home as a gift for my sister and the family, a sweet simple gesture and a luxury at that time.

Dot and Mike were married on March 1, 1947. They were young and in love…they were happy. They lived for a time in Clarksdale and then we all moved to Memphis. My parents purchased half a large two-story duplex on Chelsea Avenue. Uncle Lester and Aunt Ethel purchased the other half. Dot and Mike had the attic apartment, which my sister Gerry says Dot decorated like Country Living and that it was so cute.

My sister, Dorothy. She was probably in her late twenties or early thirties here.

My niece, Sharon, was born on September 16, 1948. I was two and a half years old at the time. I must have thought they’d given me a real live baby doll. She had a beautiful olive complexion and big blue eyes just like both of her parents. She also had a shock of thick, dark hair. I love the photos of her with that dark hair sticking straight up! She was a beautiful baby and is still beautiful.

My sister, Dot, holding Sharon and me sitting beside them. Notice my arm on Dot’s knee and Sharon’s little hand on my shoulder. You also couldn’t miss my brown high tops! This photo was taken on the steps of the large duplex on Chelsea.

These were the years following WWII. Times were hard and jobs were scarce. Mike traveled to Texas with his brother Charles to find work. He had lined up a good job as a truck driver which was to have started the first day of February 1949. In the meantime, he was working on a shrimp boat. On Monday morning, January 24, 1949, there was an explosion aboard the Wilda L, a 54-foot shrimping boat, eight miles off the shore of Freeport, Texas. Both the owner of the boat and William Merle “Mike” Jordan were lost to the sea. A search of the waters and through the debris in the hull of the boat failed to locate their bodies.

My sister and Mike’s mother traveled to Freeport, Texas, most likely by train, right after they received word of the explosion. Years later, my sister remembered those dark days, staring out into the deep waters of the Gulf, watching as the Coast Guard searched in vain. She was twenty-one years old at the time with a four-month-old baby girl. Mike was twenty-three.

On the telephone the other day, Sharon and I both cried as she read to me from the last letters that Mike wrote home to her mother from Texas. He had high hopes and dreams of a better life for them. He loved his baby girl and talked of dreaming about her for several nights in a row. He told my sister to “tell Dianne to be a good baby”. I had never thought before about having known Mike, but I did. I had been his baby sister too.

Sharon says that, over the years, it was just too sad, too difficult, for my sister to talk about Mike very much. After a while, she just quit asking. Now, there are so many questions wanting answers. When Dot and I were working on the McGregor and Haney family histories, she was also working on Mike’s family history. Through the archives of Ancestry.Com, I have found some information. Mike’s younger sister, now eighty, was able to fill in some of the blanks, but, still, there are so many more unanswered questions.

We’re not giving up. On my next visit South, we’ll travel to Clarksdale and to the Mississippi State Archives in Jackson, Mississippi. Hopefully, before then, we’ll find some of Mike’s father’s family members. Right now, it’s still a mystery, but the answers are out there. Hopefully, someone will also have photos of Mike’s father.

Sharon does have one small, piece of paper with her Dad’s actual signature on it. Amazingly, it bears a striking resemblance to Sharon’s…

Note: My sister did not remarry until Sharon was in high school, when she married Tom Kemp. He was a wonderful man who loved Dot and her family like his own.

The Mamie Road Mystery…

My Southern Heart, Reflections, The little house on Victor Drive

It had been fifty-five years since we had lived in that little house on Mamie Road. It was bound to have changed – together with the neighborhood which had been in the countryside when we lived there. During my recent visit home to the South, Sharon and I both wanted to visit that house again and see the neighborhood. We knew, of course, it wouldn’t be the same, but we still wanted to see it. We wanted to see where we had lived so many years ago…

She reminded me that, now, it isn’t the safest neighborhood – definitely not one we’d visit after dark. I still wanted to go and so did she.

I can’t remember what I bought at the grocery store for supper this week; but, in the recesses of my deepest memory, I found the street address for that little house – 3972. Strange, isn’t it? As we drove down Mamie Road, however, nothing looked right. Time had brought so many changes and none for the better. There was a used car lot on the corner now and the little grocery store on the other corner where we used to walk to get things for Mama was now a rundown business of some sort. All too sad. There was some sort of compound behind an elaborate fence where one of the houses used to be and there was one too many houses.

We finally realized that when we lived in that little house, there was a treed vacant lot next door to us. That’s why we thought we had such a big yard to play in and that’s why there was room for a large garden. Once we realized that, we knew which house was ours. Sharon had a photo (which unfortunately I forgot to scan) that even had the house numbers on it. I was right after all…it was 3972 Mamie Road.

According to the records at the assesor’s office, the house was built in 1947…which meant we either bought it new or not long after. Thankfully, our little house on Mamie Road looked nothing like the current one below. Ours had white clapboard, a dark roof and black shutters. There was no front porch then – just steps. There was no front chain-length fence with a satellite receiver on it. There was an old-fashioned screened door which we’d, no doubt, get in trouble for slamming as we went in and out. There were tall trees and there was grass instead of a front yard of dirt. There was plenty of green grass to do cartwheels on. I do remember that…