More letters from Mom about life on the home front in the 1960s…
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Friday night May 17, 1966
Dear Rock,
It was good to hear your voice the other night. When I answered the phone I never dreamed it would be you. When it rang, I grumbled my way over to answer it, wondering why Danny did not do so. He usually gets to it first. Anyway, thank you for calling. I hope we did not run up your bill too much.
Oh, how about this fancy writing paper? One of my Sunday School kids gave me a box of it for Xmas.
At the present time, I’m knocking my head against a stone wall trying to talk them into a little tolerance. I’ve forbidden them to use the word nig— in the classroom. I finally got one of the little girls who said she doesn’t like colored people to admit that she actually doesn’t know any.
The conversation got started Sunday morning because five negro girls have registered to attend the high school next year, but none for Suwanee Elementary. Melanie Owens said she was glad, because she didn’t like them.
Lee Ann Early said the most sensible thing, which gave me some hope. She came out with, “I don’t know whether I like them or not. I don’t know any except Big John at the 1-Stop, and I like him.”
It gives me the creeps to see these kids being brainwashed by their parents. I know I have no right to fiddle with their beliefs, but as long as they are in my Sunday School class, I don’t have to listen to it, and I can at least try to get them thinking in a Christian way.
I know I’ve got about as much chance of changing their little minds as a snowball in Hades. We’ll probably find a cross burning in our front yard some night. Oh well.
We are all okay. Danny is 12 feet tall. His voice is changing, and he hates it. Betty is growing up fast. She reads and writes as well as any of us. Smitty gives too much of himself to that bank, but what can you do. Lee comes home from Athens every weekend. He looks good. I am still not smoking, and that is a miracle in itself.
Much love,
Mom
Mom with the girls in her Sunday School class in 1968. She was still teaching.
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Sept. 21, 1966
Dear Rocky,
I will not have time to finish this. It is 15 to one, and I have an appointment to interview the Brown sisters here in Suwanee. They are both up in their nineties, live in that old house on the left at the end of Sheltonville Rd.
Anyway, I am going to write a human interest story about them for the paper. Wish me luck. I don’t even know how to start an interview. I hear, tho, that all you have to say is hello, and they will talk a blue streak.
Well, I got the interview, and it went really well. Those are two of the neatest old ladies you ever saw, wonderful sense of humor, very friendly, memories like steel traps. One is 93, the other 96. I dread writing the story because they rambled on from thing to thing in no sequence. I’ll let you know how it turns out. I want to get Dan’s Polaroid to take a picture for the story.
Another chapter for my book: last Wed. I went out to go to Mama’s for lunch, and the car caught fire.
It had stalled, and rather than flood it, I waited three minutes. When I tried again — POP! she caught fire, flames licking out from under the hood.
While Lee threw sand on it, I ran for the telephone. I told the operator to get me the Suwanee Police. She connected me to Buford. The cop said Lady, I can’t send people all the way out there. I cussed him out, thinking it was the Suwanee PD.
Finally, he said to try Sugar Hill, which I did. They got here inside of ten minutes. Meanwhile, Lee and I had run our legs off getting sand and dirt to throw on the fire. The car was hot as a furnace. I expected it to explode any minute. The Sugar Hill police stayed until it stopped smoldering.
About that time, the Suwanee police car pulled up. Since I thought I had been talking to him earlier, and he was so snotty, I shook my fist at him and shouted “You needn’t come out now!” That made him mad, and he turned around and scratched off down the driveway.
When I found out my mistake, I called both the Buford and Suwanee stations and apologized. They towed the car to Osborne Chevrolet to get it steam cleaned to see the extent of the damage. I detest that car. Never have liked it nor trusted it.
Marie Everett is getting married. Donald is on his way to Vietnam. Daddy got a thousand dollar raise, but what it amounts to is another $60 per month. We will try to save some of it for income tax time.
Daddy is on one of his periodic diets. He started Monday and has done well so far. I don’t know how long he can lay off the peanuts, tho.
Guess I had better stop. It is time for the bus, and Betty and Dan will not let me write in peace.
I love you,
Mom
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Mom’s letters, as I mentioned in the beginning, had been packed away for decades in a box in a closet. Why, after all that time, did I decide to drag them out?
Because a few weeks ago, for reasons unknown, an old memory surfaced about the funeral of one of their neighbors. Maybe, I thought, Mom had the details in an old letter. She didn’t, I’m sorry to say.
Let me explain something about funerals in the old days. Years ago, burial customs were different, especially in rural areas. Traditionally, the deceased was placed in a casket at home and a “wake“ was held.
Family and friends came to pay their respects. They brought food. Some might stay with the family through the night. Burial took place the next day.
The memory that surfaced was about a wake in which the casket was too big to fit through the doors of the house, so it had to be passed through a window.
Twice. The first time empty, the second time occupied.
But I couldn’t remember the identity of the neighbor. I thought it might have been Rogers Brown, whose house was across the road from the Smiths, but I wasn’t sure. So I asked two people who were there, my brother Lee and my sister Betty.
Lee said it was Rogers Brown, definitely. Betty said it was Grady Anglin, no question.
Lee is a decade-plus older than Betty, so their memories of things are bound to differ. Probably, they’re both right. For all I know, caskets were passed through windows regularly.
On a visit to Suwanee in April 1972, Mom and Dad help my son Dustin take his first steps.
What an amazing gift her writings are to you and those of us you share them with.
Thanks. Mom was a great lady.