I selected this item for my 30 Before 30 list because I am very fortunate to have a living and relatively young great-grandma. My maw-maw is 87 years old and still lives by herself up the road from my Meme (my grandma). She gets around fine and takes care of herself. To me, she has always looked the same, except that her once graphite colored hair has turned all white over the years. She wears her hair in a bun on her head and a sweet smile on her face and is probably the sweetest lady ever. At holiday parties and family get-togethers, she sits quietly in a chair someplace off to the side and watches as the rest of us act crazy, always with that sweet smile!
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| Isn’t that the sweetest lady you’ve ever seen?? Easter 2006 |
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| Maw-maw sitting quietly with her bun & a smile! Thanksgiving 2011 |
I have always wondered what Maw-maw was like as a young woman. Women in our family are not known for being sweet and innocent. We are generally very stubborn, head-strong, opinionated, and vivacious. All kinder words for saying we’re a collective hot mess! I was always curious to know if she, too, was a wild one! ALSO, if Tyler and I have a little girl, she will be named Madison Elisabeth. My Maw-maw’s name is Melverie Elisabeth. I’d like to someday be able to tell my little girl a thing or two about the namesake for her middle name. If we’re really lucky, she might be old enough someday to remember her great-great-grandma herself.
The Interview
On Christmas Eve, my cousin Misti and I walked up the road from our Meme’s to Maw-maw’s house to interview her. Misti had made a great list of questions and I brought along my “Story of a Lifetime” book which has tons of interview questions designed for this purpose (I’d highly recommend this as a gift!) We knocked on her door and she excitedly welcomed us in. She was wearing a long dress robe, her bun on her head, and that sweet little smile! She sat in her chair by the window (and by the phone – she loves to make phone calls) and welcomed our many questions! We explained that we wanted to interview her and learn about her life. She was surprisingly forth-coming and answered every question in detail!
Unfortunately, I had forgotten the video camera, so I was frantically scribbling notes from the interview in my book and we don’t have any of it on tape, but it was still really fun to hear her tell about her younger days. Here are a few things we learned:
Favorite Food – Meatballs and spaghetti, pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy
Favorite Dessert – Cheesecake
Favorite Color – Green
She did not go to high school. She finished the 7th grade at Rosepine. In those days, a lot of kids didn’t finish school. She used to walk to school every day and had to cross Flat Creek on a foot-log (a tree/log that had fallen across the creek & was wide enough to cross on foot) to get to school and back.
She has 1 sister and 2 brothers. She has 6 children, born in the following order: Faye (my Meme), Trish, George, Tanya, Kaye and Curt Jr.
She was born at Anacoco Creek in Louisiana (not far from where she lives now.) They lived with their grandma in a log shotgun house. Her grandma was a midwife and actually delivered several of her children! They moved back and forth between Anacoco Creek and Griffin Place when she was a kid (I still have to look up Griffin Place). Her daddy bought the property that she and my Meme and many other family members now live on when she was a teenager, before my Meme (her eldest) was born.
She worked very hard! She told us about her first job at DeRidder Steam Laundry where she says she did just about everything, including checking clothes in and out and dry cleaning. She worked there for 13 years. She also worked at Jim’s Coffee Shop that was across the street from the DeRidder court house. She would work from 7am to 4pm at the Laundry, then change in the bathroom into her uniform and walk to Jim’s Coffee Shop and work until midnight. She also said that Jim’s Coffee Shop didn’t have a restroom, so they had to walk across the street to use the restroom at the courthouse. I found that very odd for a Coffee Shop not to have a restroom! Coffee is a diuretic… hello? She also said that Jim’s was right next to a bus stop for Fort Polk (which was Camp Polk in those days, before it became a “fort”) and there were always military men coming into town!
She lived in Rosepine with her family and moved into DeRidder with her cousin Eloise. When we asked her why she moved, she explained that she worked in DeRidder, and there weren’t any good roads from their property in Rosepine to the highway to DeRidder, only wagon roads. She would have to walk through mud to get to the highway, then catch a ride with whomever to get to DeRidder. She named off a lot of family members and other people that used to give her rides to work, but she also said that she used to catch a ride with “a man who drove a bread truck.”
We asked if her places of work were segregated when she worked there. She didn’t seem to recall any segregation. She said that “a lotta colored people run them presses” at the laundry and that “there were black cooks but no black waitresses” at Jim’s. She does not recall many black people coming into the coffee shop as patrons, though.
Her love stories were the most interesting! First of all, it’s well known among family that my great-grandpa, Bill, was arrested for bigamy. He was a truck driver and was found to be married to 5 or 6 different women at the same time. The story I’ve always heard is that my Maw-maw found out he had been arrested in California when one of his wives there sent her a newspaper clipping of the arrest. What a scandal! I don’t know much else about him. After he was arrested, incarcerated and released, I believe he stayed in California. He is buried there and Maw-maw says he died of some kind of stomach cancer. I’ve found some information about him on Ancestry.com and have actually gotten in contact with some of my Meme’s half-siblings.
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| A newspaper clipping about Bill’s arrest. This could have been the one my unsuspecting Maw-maw got in the mail! |
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I learned that, sadly, Bill was the love of her life and he broke her heart. I asked her how long it took her to get over him and what happened and her response was, “I guess you don’t ever get over a thing like that.” I’d assumed it was a terrible experience for her, but it made me sad to think of my sweet Maw-maw enduring that kind of heartache as she was telling her story. She met Bill at her Aunt Martha’s. She and the other girls were there playing “Please and Displease” (if anyone knows what this game is, please tell me!) and he was a mail carrier for the military. He stopped at Aunt Marthas and apparently started playing this game with them. They were married January 7th of 1943 (according to her, but records show they were married in 1944.) My Meme was born a little over a year later, followed by my Aunt Trish.
After Bill was arrested and I guess their marriage was dissolved, she said that she met my Uncle George’s dad, Edward. She wasn’t over Bill yet, so Edward was a rebound. She then told us that Edward was SHOT AND KILLED in 1949 while she was pregnant with his son! Another heart-break! This is the first I’d learned that Uncle George never got to meet his father. 🙁
After Edward, she met my Aunt Tanya’s father, Don, who was a military man. I didn’t get much information on this guy, so I’m not really sure how she met him or what happened to him! I know after Don, she met Henry, my Aunt Kaye’s father. He worked on an oil rig and they lived together in Lake Charles for a while. He did get to be a part of Aunt Kaye’s life, but he, too, was SHOT AND KILLED! I just can’t believe the awful luck! Some man in Lake Charles killed him. Eventually, I’ll have to go investigate these stories more and get the scoop.
The last man in her life was Curt, my Uncle Curt Jr’s father. They met at Oaks Restaurant when she was working there. They were married in 1964 and were together until he died in 1998.
WHEW! Let me just take a minute to catch my breath after recounting all that…
What a tumultuous love life! Can you believe how much she has endured with this whirl-wind of lovers being arrested, shot & killed, and dying? It amazes me that she still has the ability to hold that sweet, sweet smile for us! I’m going to squeeze her really tight next time I see her. I was overwhelmed as she told me these stories, but writing it all out now has made it really sink in just how much she has been through.
Our interview was cut short because it was almost time for the Christmas Eve party to begin, but I would very much like to sit down with her again, this time with a video camera, and find out even more. For example, it is rumored that Maw-maw dips snuff! EWWWWW! While we interviewed her, she was spitting into a bottle, so its highly likely she was dipping! I’ve heard that she usually carries around a film canister of snuff with her. I want to get to the bottom of this! I also want to ask her more about what it was like growing up during the Great Depression. I want to find out what she feels are the most valuable lessons she’s learned in her life. There’s so much more to find out!
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| Maw-maw as a young lady… What other mysteries hide behind those cat-eyed glasses? |
Stand by for a Maw-maw interview, part 2! 😉
