My grandmother with her husband’s family

My paternal grandmother Edith married when she was fourteen, on October 4, 1911. Her husband – my grandfather, Harry – was thirty-eight, twenty-four years old years older than his bride.  My grandfather is the in the front row on the left. My grandmother, his new bride – is in the second row standing, second from the left –  the short young girl. I have spent a fair amount of time trying to imagine what my grandmother’s life was like and what was going through her mind at this time of her life.  It sound atrocious that my grandfather took a child bride. But the way the story was told to me was that my great-grandmother, Edith’s Mom, died when Edith was one year old. Her father re-married and put her out of the house when she was a teen because his new wife didn’t want her there. She was essentially an orphan and there weren’t any homes for fourteen-year-old girls then.

A close up of my grandparents after they were first married.

My grandfather Harry had been married before and he had two children from that marriage. Their son was reported to have some affliction, perhaps Down’s Syndrome. My grandmother Edith was hired to take care of this son. It might have resulted in a marriage of convenience, but I believe my grandmother loved my grandfather and that he cared for her too. I have spent some time looking at this photo and my grandmother’s face. Fourteen years old. Alone and no one to turn to. Pregnant. Bound to a much older man. Finally having someone to take care of her financially and a home. Her expression looks blank. She doesn’t look scared. She has no idea how her life is going to be. Bewildered might be the right word to capture how she feels. Hardened might be another term that best describes her. I think she looks remarkably confident and resilient at fourteen years old.

Laundry with 14 children

Her first son was born March 29, 1912. That was five months after she was married. The baby reportedly weighed thirteen+ pounds. Her midwife or doctor told her that she wouldn’t have any more children. She had thirteen more after the first one, ten boys and four girls total. Her husband would be ill most of his adult life and she would be required to provide for the family AND care for her children. They survived the depression by my grandmother taking in laundry for others and for farming out her 10 sons to area farmers during those times. But somehow she provided a happy home. The bond between my aunts and uncles was close and real. My aunt’s account during this time that their Mom “somehow” scrapped enough money together to buy the material to make them suits for Easter. Another remarked that she received a watch for a graduation present. She was sure that my Grandmother made payments for a year to be able to purchase the watch for her. After dishes were finished after the evening meal, they would play rummy at the kitchen table or my Grandfather would help his kids with homework. It is astonishing to me that my Grandmother was able to create this great childhood for her children – with only a little help from her husband.

My Dad’s family in 1939

This photo was taken in 1939, three years before four of her sons would go off to war. She is here with all of her healthy children and her sixty-six year-old husband. I found newspaper articles about my Dad in some newspaper archives that describe a very active family. Most of the boys and some of the girls played high school sports. My Dad was on the tumbling, volleyball, basketball, and football teams. Other uncles were also on the teams, making all-area honors. I have several photos of the younger uncles playing in the yard and by the creek. It appears to be a pretty wholesome family.

4 sons in WWII

In December 1942, my Dad enlisted in the war and reported to Camp Wheeler, Georgia.In October 1943, my Dad arrived in Africa for duty in WWII and joined his older brother Frank in the region. In December 1943, my Uncle Jim was the fourth son to enter the war. I have telegrams that were sent to my grandmother telling that my father was missing in action and then seriously injured and hospitalized during the war. I can’t imagine getting these telegrams with little information. It was another serious sacrifice that she made when her sons served their country. I remember when my grandfather died. I was six years old. We visited him at my grandparent’s house and my grandfather was in a hospital bed in the living room. I remember the tender care that my grandmother gave to my grandfather. She truly cared for him – it didn’t seem to be a duty.

My grandmother realized the importance of family. It was perhaps because she didn’t have one that supported her when she was growing up. Without having the rich family experience herself, she crafted a wonderful household for her 14 children, even in dire economic times. When her children married and had children of their own, there were over eighty people in the immediate family, too many to gather in one home. In 1956, My grandmother started an annual tradition of our family reunion, held at a park where each family would bring a covered dish to share. There were games for the kids to play and a whole afternoon where all of her children could gather and celebrate their family. This reunion is still a tradition even though my grandmother, grandfather and most of her children are now gone.

Some people are given a birthright in form of money or an inheritance. No one in my family passed down any material goods for sure. My birthright comes instead from my grandmother doing the best she could with the little that she had. “Nothing we can do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future.”

©Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

Me and my Dad

My Dad died twenty-eight years ago. He had a massive heart attack when he was sixty and lived for a couple of  days after it. My husband and I hit the road to drive back home as soon as we heard that he was in the hospital, but we got there right after he died. My baby son was 2 months old and we stopped often on the road so I could nurse him. We ran into fog and was behind a 9-car pile up on a Tennessee  highway and we stopped for the night because traveling wasn’t safe. We called home before we left the next morning and heard that my Dad had died overnight. I didn’t get to say goodbye. My Dad didn’t get to see my baby son. He would have loved that. I would have loved that even more.

My Dad was the best dad. My Mom told the story that at my Dad’s 40th class reunion, each classmate had to get up and tell what accomplishment made them the most proud. All other men mentioned their career, or the car they drove, or the house they lived in. My Dad talked about his children and how well we were doing, how smart we were, and how happy he was. It was pretty progressive for a man of his generation to speak of his children. She said he even choked up a bit – maybe because he was nervous. But Mom wanted us to know what he had to say about his life and his accomplishments. He was telling his truth, even if it meant exposing some emotion.

My Dad saved a man’s life once. At age 58, he worked on top of a stack at an oil refinery. He used high-pressure air hoses to clean the stack. While working beside my Dad, a co-worker fell into the stack. Without company training, my Dad instinctively knew that his co-worker wouldn’t live long inside the stack without air. There were poisonous gases inside the stack and getting oxygen to him was critical. My Dad took one of the air hoses and pointed it into the area that his co-worker fell. His quick thinking gave the emergency response team time to climb the scaffolding to the stack and rescue the worker. My Dad received a citation and a plaque from the company for his quick-thinking. His photo was in the newspaper. Not only was he my hero, but in the eyes of his co-worker’s family, he was Superman.

A dance with Dad

My Dad enjoyed his organic garden, telling corny jokes, playing with his grand-kids, and getting to know people – especially new acquaintances. He lent money to friends who were going through hard times, even when he endured going without work himself. He volunteered as a football coach for “Pee-Wee” football in our community. He spent extra time with my blind cousin to make her feel special whenever he saw her. He taught us to dance  Saturday night in the living room when the Grand Ole Opry was on TV. He worked hard to provide for us as best as he could. He was essentially the laughter and soul in our family.

Even though he was one of 14 kids in his family, and grew up in a family were affection wasn’t really shown, my Dad somehow knew how to let us know that we were special. He parented us better than he was parented for sure and our lives were much better than he knew as a child.

Father’s Day used to be a tough day for me. But now I just spend some time with the memory of my father and the rich feeling that I am truly blessed to have had the father that I had.

My Dad

For my father’s funeral, we read a poem by Emerson that described my Dad exquisitely. He wasn’t a rich man, or famous, or prosperous in his career by any means. But he did triumph at being a father. He truly did the best that he could.

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

©Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. Kimberly Nixon

During my childhood, I only had two real family vacations. I have vivid memories of both of these vacations – I can remember the tiniest details of each trip. Traveling in the car through the countryside made quiet an impression on me. Other than visiting my mother’s brother in Indiana or going to Cedar Point for the day, we stayed close to our home in Ohio. It was a real treat to venture for an extended trip on a “real” vacation.

My childhood vacation in Tennessee

The first vacation was when I was seven. My Mom grew up in mountains of Tennessee and though she left the hills when she was young, her brother and his family still lived there.  My older brother, my Mom & Dad, and my two sisters and I fit into a borrowed truck with an attached camper on the back and we drove to Tennessee. We stopped at roadside picnic tables to retrieve the prepared fried chicken with honey from inside the camper. Mom thought it would be a good meal for our travels because stopping to eat along the way at a restaurant was too expensive and fast food was not very available. We loved the chicken with honey, but the bees loved it too and swarmed us as we tried to eat it. My dad’s potato salad and Kool-aid rounded out the lunch-time meal. It was a perfect lunch for a family with kids.

The Smoky Mountains

Before we went to my Uncle’s house, we spent some time in the mountains at a camping ground. We feared the bears and stayed close to the camper during the day. There was something about this trip that made my mom anxious. She was not enjoying herself and perhaps her anxiety rubbed off on us. I thought at the time that she was afraid of the bears as well, but found out later  – much later – that she was claustrophobic in the camper. She couldn’t sleep at night and stepped out to be able to breathe, only to be chased back inside by mosquitos. She later remarked that she grew up without indoor plumbing or electricity, and by cooking over wood. She had absolutely no appeal for camping. It reminded her of her tough upbringing and she liked the comforts of home. Camping was a means to an end, as we could afford to take this vacation in the camper. We would not have been able to pay for a hotel room for sure.

We visited a Cherokee Indian reservation in the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and watched an exhibition and tribal dance that the natives put on for visitors. Bears lived in the area and we saw a baby bear just off the road. We wanted to hug it – thinking it would be like our stuffed animals at home. But my mother was aware that the Mama bear some distance away would be protective of her cub and Mom kept us away.

After a few days of camping, we arrived at my uncle’s home in Eastern Tennessee – near Cumberland Gap. He lived in the country, near a pond and a wooded area. We warmed up pretty quickly to our older boy cousins and were playing outside. Cousin Bruce pushed us on their swing set. Mom came off the porch and asked us if we had seen Jane – my youngest sister who was three. We didn’t know where she was. Panic surrounded us when my Mom ran inside the house, then back outside shouting her name. Mom started out into the wooded area near their property, shouting her name more and more loudly. She instructed my Dad to check near the pond. Neighbors quickly sensed that an emergency was occurring and dropped their activities to join in the search. Eventually someone called the sheriff to report my missing sister. My Mom started to cry and she N-E-V-E-R cried. I went back into the house to see if I could find her and looked under beds and in closets, but there was no evidence of my sister anywhere. After what seemed like an eternity, my aunt came out of the house carrying my sister. Jane became tired after playing outside and retreated to one the bedrooms to take a nap. She had crawled under a makeshift mattress on the floor that we slept on the previous night. It had been propped up to dry when one of us wet the bed the night before. She was under it far enough to conceal her nap. Afterwards, Mom seemed as protective as the Mama Bear that we had seen a few days earlier. She kept a watchful eye on us all. She enjoyed visiting with her brother and sister-in-law, but we could tell she was ready to return home.

Our second vacation didn’t happen until I was in high school. My dad’s favorite childhood cousin had come to town for a visit and asked my Dad to return to Michigan with him for a week. My Dad was unemployed and it was easy for him to take the week off. This cousin lived near a lake located on back side of a state park in Machinaw City. They intended to fish for a week – just like they did in their younger years when they were free and unencumbered with family. The following week then, we would drive to Michigan to visit for a few days and drive back with my Dad.

The trip to Michigan was in our family car and it held 6 of us. It was crowded  and we even took a tent with us as there wasn’t room in the their house for us all. My younger sister’s boyfriend came with us and my Mom forced my Dad to sleep outside with the kids to make sure that all was totally proper. We all drove north to visit the locks at Sault Ste. Marie and even ventured into Ontario, Canada. It was a big deal that we left the United States – even if it were only for one hour.

The thing that impressed me the most was the blueberries. We strapped the handle of gallon plastic water jugs that had been cut back at the top to our belt loops and set out in the woods to pick blueberries. I ate twice as many as I put in my gallon container. I tried to conceal how much I ate, but the blue on my teeth gave it away. We still came back from the woods with gallons of blueberries. For dinner, we celebrated with blueberry pies and cobbler. It was probably the best dessert I ever had.

We drove home as quickly as we could. We now had seven in our Chevy Impala and with four in the back seat, we couldn’t get home fast enough. It really was an adventure to go on vacation. But sometimes just the process of getting away makes you appreciate home even more.

©Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

I have a plethora of  first cousins – fifty-eight at last count. My Dad was one of fourteen children and most of his siblings had several children each. Most of my cousins lived in my home town and I had regular interactions with them. I also have several cousins from my Mom’s side of the family. They lived in another state and we didn’t see them very often.

Several of my many cousins

On Sundays, my Dad would take us kids for a drive  and we would drop in unexpectedly at his numerous brothers & sister’s houses – as well as his mother’s.  I remember making the rounds when my mother had a baby and was in the hospital for a few days. He threw us in the car and we visited between eight or nine of his siblings that day. He told the same stories and details to each family and all the cousins were impressed with the idea of a new sister. We played with all of the cousins’ toys and games and returned home with new appreciation for the fun of playing with cousins. There was something special about it. We didn’t know them that well (there were so many), but they seemed to like us and treat us in a way set apart from other childhood friends that we had. The connection was  a mystery to us – we were bonded to each other in a way we didn’t really understand.

My Grandmother’s House – My Dad and his family

There was always another family or two at my Grandmother’s house. There were several cousins that I didn’t know well, but it was like a school playground in her backyard. We climbed trees or played some kind of ball while waiting for our parents to visit. We went there unannounced and it was a surprise to us to see who might be there.  I knew the cousins that lived closer to us much better than the ones that went to another school. But they were all interesting to me. There was one other cousin that had red hair as I did and it intrigued me to see how she handled the teasing. Sometimes I felt like I was looking in a mirror. There were four boy cousins within a year of my age. Their antics were very impressionable to me when I was about seven years old. They decided to have a peeing contest to see who could pee the furthest from behind the line. I couldn’t figure out how to participate, but observed that their antics looked like they were having fun.

My grandmother started a tradition of a family reunion sixty-seven years ago. There was not room for all family members to meet at one location, so someone reserved a park shelter and we all met there. Every one would bring a casserole or dessert to share and the kids were usually treated to ice cream or popsicles. There were some organized games for the cousins, but the best fun was the impromptu activities that occurred on the playground. I didn’t know who were brothers and sisters with each other and didn’t know who their parents were, but it didn’t matter. It is still a tradition even though the older generation has mostly died. It is mostly just the cousins and their offspring that attend now. The connection still exists. Our histories are forever entangled.

My parents lived around the corner from my Dad’s brother Jim and his wife Mid. They came over to our house each weekend to play pinochle and my cousins Brian and Shelly came with their parents.  Brian was exactly a year younger than me and Shelly was three years younger. Sometimes we played our own card games to play, but usually we found more interesting activities. We went outside for hours until late in the night to shoot the basketball. Several times the ball would hit me in the face because it was too dark to see it. To this day I can beat anyone I know in the game of H-O-R-S-E. Brian worked on his ’56 Chevy in his high school years and I hung out with him and observed his hobby. In college I changed the oil in my own cars and changed out the water pump when it malfunctioned. In our activities together, Brian became my brother. The photos of my antics with my cousins may have faded, but my memories have not. These memories are the essence of my childhood in a very large family.

©Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

To an outsider, Mom probably appeared to be a dour person. She was nice to people, and she always taught us to be respectful. But unless she had a reason to really be friendly to someone, she didn’t necessarily smile. Now to her family and friends, she laughed more often. But to people who she didn’t know, she gave a grave impression.

My Mom Smiling

Part of the reason for this was because her childhood was difficult. Another reason to keep an austere demeanor was that she was ashamed of her smile. She feared dentists from a very bad childhood experience. I recall a story about the dentist in the mountains where she grew up wasn’t a dentist at all, just a town barber that owned a chair that would tilt back. The only remedy for a toothache was to have it pulled. Out of fear, she simply didn’t visit the dentist. My mother conserved her smiles and laughter.

But when my mother did find something funny  –  Oh My! – laughter would erupt out of her. She had no control over it. One event that triggered this was someone falling down. She couldn’t help it. She wasn’t mean, in fact, she would empathize over the embarrassment and certainly hope they weren’t hurt. But if someone fell, particularly an awkward fall, my mother would start to quiver. She’d bit her lip, her eyes would start watering, she’d hold her side and then explode with laughter. She would laugh for a long time. Just as she would get it under control, she would catch someone’s eye who was enjoying this spectacle, and she would start all over again. It could go on for what seemed like an hour. We grew up in Ohio and the winters were icy. There could be several episodes of people falling on ice each winter. She was never able to control herself. Each time was like the first time that she had ever seen someone fall.

Another instance that would elicit this outburst of laughter from Mom was someone mixing up their words while speaking. Actually, Mom did this quite more than most people, and she laughed at herself as well. If, for instance, someone said “amn dapple”, meaning to say “damn apple”, she commenced into another spell of uncontrolled spasms.  Man, she would crack up. An hour later, she would return to her serious expression, as if her portion of humor was over for the day. That is, unless she tried to relay the story to someone else. She would start laughing all over again in the re-telling.

I remember when I was about six years old an event that made the top of the all-time story-telling list in our family. My younger sister and I were playing on the swing set in the back yard. My 5 year-old sister wore corrective shoes and one shoe was larger than the other on the sole of the shoe. There was an old tin coffee pot in the back yard (perhaps used to water plants) and while we were playing, my sister ran and accidentally put her shoe into the coffee pot. Her foot wouldn’t come out of the shoe and the shoe wouldn’t come out of the pot.  My sister was crying because she was walking around very awkwardly with the coffee pot stuck to her shoe. I ran inside to tell my Mom what had happened. When Mom saw the predicament that my sister was in, she started laughing so hard that she could not do anything but convulse into laughter onto a swing on the swing set. She couldn’t  help herself. She was hysterical.  Eventually, the neighbor man saw that something was amiss and came over to cut the coffee pot off of my sister’s foot with tin snips. My sister was fine. There wasn’t a thing he could do to help my mother.

My Dad a few weeks before he died

When my father died unexpectedly at the age of 60, laughter was Mom’s best medicine.  She mourned and cried to be sure. She weeped uncontrollably many times. But two episodes happened during the course of the funeral that caught her off-guard and the laughter started. She didn’t mean to be disrespectful – in fact, my father would have enjoyed the circumstance. He agreed that laughter – even through tears – is the best emotion.

At the funeral, Mom stood at the casket and greeted the MANY people who came for visitation at the funeral home. As the night wore on, a trio of ladies that she didn’t know came into the room. They seemed to move in one unit as if they were tied together. They all had scarves tied under their chin and huddled together as they approached the casket. The site of them was humorous. Mom stood the side, and waited to talk to them. One of them said while dabbing her eyes, “Boy – he must have been really sick for a while.” (Pause) Another one said, ” Yes, this just doesn’t look like him at all”. (Longer Pause) The third finally said, “Wait a minute, this isn’t John – we must be in the wrong room.” Mom heard all of this and just started laughing so hard that she started crying and couldn’t stand up straight. She summoned me to come over and escort her out of the room. She thought that people would think she was crazy because she was laughing so hard, so she pretended to be breaking down crying. She left until she could compose herself. It took several minutes for the laughter to stop.

A few weeks later, my two sisters and my Mom went to the National Monument Memorial Stone Company to pick out a headstone for my father’s grave. My father received a flat military stone for his gravesite, but my mother decided that she wanted a headstone as well. On the way, they started talking about some of the “memories” of Dad and they started laughing. As they pulled up to parking lot, they were already laughing pretty hard. Then my sister opened her door and caught her foot and fell out of the car.  My mother witnessed it and you can guess the state she was in. As they walked into the place uncontrollably laughing, the fellow that was trying to help them was fairly perplexed. I imagine that was the first time anyone came into his store acting like that. They really tried to stop and gather ourselves before we went in but it was impossible. Somehow they managed to purchase a double headstone for both my father’s grave and one that would serve in the future for my mother’s as well. It had my father’s name, his date of birth and his date of death. On the other side, it also had my mother’s name, her date of birth and a placeholder for the future date of her death.  I would have liked the grave stone to also say “A smile starts on the lips. A grin spreads to the eyes. A chuckle comes from the belly. But a good laugh erupts from the soul.”

©Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

My Mother told some stories that were just a bit difficult to believe. Now, I’m not saying that she was fibbing or anything. They are, certainly, her stories and her history. I’m just saying that they seemed a bit far-fetched. Several years before my mother died, my sisters and I persuaded our mother to travel with us to Tennessee. We wanted to hear the stories that she told in the environment that she grew up in. We wanted her to point out where her houses used to be, where her father’s schoolhouse was located, and mostly we wanted to re-live her childhood years with her. What an adventure for us all.

The Creek

The House by the Creek

We had always heard about the creek that ran behind my mother’s house when she was growing up. We knew my Mom was terrified of  bodies of  water. She reasoned to us that when she was 4-5 years old, the creek behind her house flooded.   Her Dad couldn’t swim and her brothers Warren and Bill had to break the pigs out of their pen.   The next morning, the water ran very swift between their house and their neighbor Nan’s.   Warren swam across the swift water, got Nan’s horse, and rode everyone across to eat. It was necessary to get to Nan’s house since she fed the family after my Mom’s mother took off with another man and robbed a train. They would have a big breakfast at Nan’s and then she would pack their lunches — sandwich of cold biscuit and cold meat or pinto beans and cornbread.

When we traveled to the site of this infamous story with my mother, my three sisters and I could see where her house had stood and couldn’t see a creek or river of any sort. We questioned our mother about her version of the story and perhaps the creek was only a few inches deep (but probably seemed deep to a four year old), it started to rain. The rain  flashed off the mountain and filled the ditch behind the homestead in a hurry. Perhaps there was merit to her story after all.

Rufus

The SchoolHouse

While we were standing there at her old home site, she pointed up the road where the one-room schoolhouse used to be where her father taught. It was a gravel road and the road was named “Campbell Road” after her father in honor of  his years of teaching at this school. My mother started relaying the story about going to school with her father when she was four years old. There wasn’t any childcare at her home since her mother moved out. The desks in the schoolhouse were two-person desks but she had her own desk and her own schoolwork to do. That is, unless one of the older students misbehaved. In that case, the misbehaving student was moved to the empty seat at my mother’s desk. Rufus, it seemed, occupied her desk as often as he did his own. And when Rufus was at my mother’s desk, he tormented her relentlessly. My mother got in trouble then for the commotion that was caused.

She told us this story and she was getting intense in the re-telling. Her arms were flailing as she was standing on the side of the road with us. And as she spoke, an old model Ford – perhaps a 1955 – drove slowly down the mountain on the stone road. This car slowed down and peered cautiously at this group of women  – my sisters, Mom, and I – by the side of the road. He said, “Mary?”. My mother remarked back, “Rufus?”. We couldn’t believe that Rufus, the tormentor was there in person. It must have been a set-up, we thought. Again, she proved that this story indeed was historically correct.

Wearing Bibbed Overalls

Mary Jean in a Skirt

My mother was the youngest child in her family, with three older brothers. During the Depression, she told the story about never having a dress to wear. Instead, she wore hand-me-down bibbed overalls from her older brothers. According to her tales, she was thirteen before she owned a dress. The week that mother died, her older brother came to spend some time with her and with us. As my mother slept, I asked my Uncle about this particular story. He said that it wasn’t the same memory that he had. My mother had twin cousins who were two years older than she was and they had some money in their family. They donated their dresses to my mother throughout her childhood. He said that my mother was a tomboy and that she refused to wear the dresses that were given to her. I later found a photo of my mother when she was 8 years old. And she was wearing a dress and leggings.

As Frank Delaney says in Tipperary “Memory is a canvas – stretched, primed, and ready for painting on. We love the ’story’ part of the word ‘history,’ and we love it trimmed out with color and drama, ribbons, and bows. We always decorate our essence.” My Mom was entitled to the ‘story’ part her family ‘history’. And I am so blessed that she shared these stories with me.

©Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

For every story told in my family, there are innumerable mysteries. I wish I had asked more questions of my relatives when they were alive to get answers to those burning questions I have now.

My grandmother

For instance, my father’s mother – the one who had fourteen children – once told me when I was a  teenager that she traveled in every state in the United States, except for two. She died in 1981 at the age of eighty-four and to my knowledge she lived in poverty for most of her life. My grandfather died in 1962 and my grandmother never re-married. I don’t know when or how my grandmother did her traveling. I don’t doubt that she did it, but it surprises me that she had the desire to see our country and that I never heard of her travels.

Ruby

I went to visit my mother’s mother in Washington, D. C. in 1983. Ruby left my mother’s family when my Mom was  a baby. She robbed a train and was convicted of her crime. When I visited my grandmother, the woman who I only saw two previous times in my life, I was polite with her, caught up on her current life, let her visit with my eighteen-month-old son, but didn’t ask her too questions about her life. For example, what she did after her prison sentence, what her life was like when she was growing up, how she met her husband – my grandfather, and was it true that she was a secretary for a congressman in Washington, D.C. She did tell me that she grew up Catholic, and that her childhood wasn’t a happy one. She had a doll baby that belonged to my mother that had a ceramic face – and I didn’t ask how it survived her years in prison. I wish I could have that visit over again.

My father – World War II

My Dad was in World War II and his war experience at the age of twenty in Europe in the midst of war, must have been incredible. My sisters and I asked him several times about his war years, but he refused to talk about it. We knew he was injured/wounded three different times, but he would only talk about the funny things. We have re-created his trek through Europe and the battles that he must have been in, but it would have been rich to hear his impression of this  personal, but historic adventure.  I relished the 50th anniversary of World War II when veterans of this war finally talked about their years in the war.

<Ancestry.com® is having a contest called The Ultimate Family History Journey™ to help their customers find answers to their family mysteries. The winner gets $20,000, 8 hours with a genealogy expert, and additional experts to fill in the blanks. Perhaps that’s how I might get some answers to my questions.

©Copyright 2010-2016. All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

It was Scottish tradition that when the patriarch died in an Scottish family, the oldest son inherited all the land and the others received nothing. And, as luck would have it, my Scottish ancestor was not the oldest. My great-great-grandfather left Virginia and moved to the Appalachian mountains with his family. The mountains of Tennessee reminded the Scottish people of their native land. They set up their homesteads despite the rugged terrain of the land.

Campbell Mountain

My great-great-grandfather was given a land grant in 1830 of two hundred and fifty acres and my great-grandfather was given a total of twelve hundred acres, perhaps for in return for their Revolutionary War service. This area is known  as Campbell Mountain.

1830 is right after the treaty with the Cherokee to move them to Oklahoma, and ten years after Daniel Boone roamed the area. Davy Crockett moved from Tennessee in 1834, after being defeated in his seat for the US representatives. He disagreed with President Andrew Jackson about the Indian Removal Act and angrily left for Texas. Jamestown, Tennessee, a mountain town, was established in 1828.

Timothy’s birthplace

My grandfather Timothy grew up in a house in a valley next to Campbell Mountain close to a mountain spring. Farming was his family’s livelihood. He stayed on the mountain after he grew up and became a vital part of the community. My grandfather helped with the family farm, but also was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse.  He stayed there until he and his brother lost the land during the depression due to unpaid taxes. He started a grocery store in a building next to their house. Timothy worked as the Justice of the Peace — he had trials and received no salary.   He was able to keep a percentage of the commission from  the fines and fees collected.

Justice of the Peace Decree

My mother grew up on this Campbell Mountain in eastern Tennessee. It was Appalachia, not only in geographic location, but in extreme poverty and way of life.  Not one thing was easy for my mother living in this part of the country. We heard as children about walking to school in the snow barefoot. But it wasn’t until we returned to the area with her that we realized that this was exactly how she got around the mountain and traveled to school. It was not exaggerated. We had more respect for her when we realized that it was also uphill all the way. And she may have had shoes, but the condition of them would be in question.

Because my grandmother left her family, my mother was in charge of the household and did the family laundry in the nearby spring, cooked dinner over the wood stove, and read at night by kerosene. My uncles who were older than my mother, ran moonshine through the mountains during prohibition. They knew the mountains better than the revenuers and were able to outwit them. This area of Tennessee didn’t have electricity or running water until after World War II in the late 1940s.

My mother left this area for college, but returned  after graduating from Martin Teacher’s college in 1941. She taught at a nearby school in  a mining community called Stockton, teaching all eight grades and seventy two kids in a one-room schoolhouse.   Many of the students were older than she was and disobedient.  She stayed there two months.   Her brother had taught there and had carried a gun back and forth to school with him after being by a parent there.

Her father lived three miles  out-of-town, and was  teaching at neighboring Round Mountain, at the same time my mother taught in Stockton eight miles away.  There was a corduroy road in between the two towns and the logs broke in the road and the car fell in. During the war, tires were scarce and my mother drove down the mountain on the rims. The stick shift came off into her hand while she was driving down the mountain and panicked about how continue her travels. It was treacherous traveling around the mountains.

It was also treacherous living there. In 1955, my grandfather died at the age of sixty-eight. He returned to his home place on the foothills of Campbell Mountain in the Campbell family cemetery. Buried next to him is my mother’s sister-in-law – her best  friend – who died in childbirth delivering her seventh child at home on Mother’s Day 1953. Her baby girl also died and lays at her side. And next to her is her husband – my mother’s brother – who when burdened with the remaining six children and a problem with alcohol, died of a broken heart one year later.

For those who are born in the  mountains, the struggle can never end until their lives end.  For the ones who manage to survive, a feisty zest for life remains after the lesser parts are scraped away. My mother was feisty.

©Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

When I was a child, New Year’s Eve was the second best day of the year. Christmas day comes first, of course.  We anticipated New Year’s Eve with almost as much enthusiasm. My parents were married on New Year’s Eve, and every December 31st we celebrated their anniversary as a family.

Mom and Dad on their wedding day – December 31

Beginning in the morning of the last day of each year, my father would start by telling his version of their courting years and the day they got married. My mother had her version of stories as well and it seemed like the only story they had in common about that day was that it was very cold outside. As they waited outside the Justice of the Peace’s office in Valpraiso, Indiana, a snowstorm blew through and my father offered his coat to my mother and then wrapped his arms around her to keep her warm.

My Mom had a son before my parents were married. They dropped him off at a sitter’s house and then drove to Indiana to get married. There was no waiting period for a marriage license there. My father was a man who pinched pennies and it occurred to him that if he married my mother the last day of the year, he could get a great tax deduction. Because my mother had a child, it was a double bonus for that tax year. He did not marry my Mom because of the savings, but he did marry her the 31st of December instead of in January to take advantage of the tax situation. It was a running joke throughout their marriage about my father’s great deal.

Family Photo after Wedding

My parents were thirty-three and thirty-two when they married. They met at a diner where my Mom was a waitress. She worked there during an economic slump at the factory. My father would come into the restaurant to eat, but after a while he dropped by just to see my Mom. During their courtship, Dad would go to her house after she got off work and visit with her and her son. Later, because my Mom had a child and couldn’t afford a sitter, my Dad would leave and go out on the town with his friends. It bothered my Mom that he left her to go out with his friends – instead of staying for the whole evening. They argued about it and when he left, she told him “not to let the doorknob hit him in the a**”.  After she refused to see him unless he fully committed to their relationship, a few weeks later my father asked her to marry him and they decided to elope.  And my father adopted my mother’s four year-old son. My father re-told the story about the doorknob throughout the years. He admired my Mom’s spunk and his eyes twinkled when he told this story.

New Year’s Eve was the only day of the year that our family went out to dinner. It was quite a gift from my father to agree to the extra expense. His treat for my mother to spare her one day a year from cooking dinner. We usually went to a restaurant called FAYLI. It was a diner that was near a highway in town and was often frequented by truckers. We found out later that it stood for “Food As You Like It.”  They had a large booth in the corner and all seven of us could fit in there. We were allowed to order what we wanted. Every year, my mother ordered chopped beef  with mashed potatoes and gravy. I remember that each of us kids would order a cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake. My Dad would order whatever they had on the special menu varying from liver and onions to corned beef and cabbage. He interacted with the waitress, telling her the reason for our dinner and we would often get extra cherries in our milkshakes or a free dessert. My mother was unusually giddy at these dinners and I remember much laughter and more courtship stories coming from our corner booth.

My parents on their 25th Anniversary

After dinner, we would return to our house and my Mom and Dad would have a cocktail – usually Seagrams and Pepsi. My parents never drank and it fascinated us to see them drink alcoholic beverages on New Year’s Eve. We also never had soft drinks at our house, let alone potato chips and other snacks. This one time a year though, they splurged and we had our chips with homemade potato chip dip, and  as many soft drinks as we wanted. They brought out the Tupperware tall plastic glasses that were used only when company came and we put ice and Pepsi in them. I still enjoy a soft drink out of a Tupperware glass as it brings back memories for me. Sometimes their friends would come over to our house and they played pinochle at the dining room table while the kids watched TV or listened to our records on the turntable. Other times, when their friends didn’t come, we would play our favorite marble game called Aggravation with all of the kids old enough to play.  Because my Mom only drank once a year, she would often fall asleep on the sofa for a short time during the evening after her two cocktails. I don’t remember watching the ball drop on Times Square on TV, but I do remember watching my parents kiss at midnight. They weren’t usually publicly affectionate, so any physical interaction was memorable.

New Year’s Eve was a special day at our house. When I think about details about that day in my family, it reminds me of an episode of “Leave It to Beaver” which always had a happy ending. I love that my parents celebrated this day with us and took the time – and money – to make it so special for all of us. I play my own black-and-white memory video in my mind of my happy childhood and episode one is a typical New Year’s Eve day with my family.

©Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

My Mom made all of our clothing. She purchased underwear and socks, but used her Singer sewing machine to stitch together everything else that we wore. It was the only way to cloth a family of seven on my Dad’s income of under $10,000 a year. Our family “made do” in many areas to survive having little money.

It was always a big family outing to go to the clothe store. We marched into the  store and always started by opening the large catalogs with all of the photos of models in  various finery. These books were more like wallpaper catalogs than the Sears and Roebucks variety. They were heavy, very large, and sometimes required two of my sisters to turn a page. They were on tall counters with stools underneath that tipped easily. We precariously balanced ourselves on the stools while choosing our next outfit. We had to use our imagination when perusing these catalogs as the finished product would not be the same as we viewed in the photos of the models. The material we would chose was the mystery ingredient. Hondo Crouch, the Texas journalist who started Luckenbach, Texas called himself an imagineer. We were definitely “imagineering” when we designed our next school outfit.

The quilt Mom made for me

After choosing a pattern that we “imagineered” would suit ourselves (pause for pun . . .), we would write down the pattern number, and then proceed to very large drawers that contained the actual patterns. We picked our size from these heavy drawers, deciphered how many yards of fabric we needed, and then marched off to the fabric aisles. If we found a desirable bolt of material, we would pick it up and carrying it around to show Mom. Imagine a nine-year-old carrying around several bolts of fabric that were almost as long as we were tall. We received much help from the fabric store employees during this process. In retrospect, they were probably trying to preserve the contents of their store.

It was a complicated ordeal process, compounded by having four of us vying for our mother’s attention all at the same time. We gave the list of how many yards we needed of each fabric bolt to the store employee, then proceeded to  pick out buttons, thread and zippers as needed. It was a day’s work to get it all collated at the fabric store. It was several weeks work for my mother after we returned home. I don’t believe that she enjoyed sewing all that much. It was an activity that was necessary for our family.

Prom dress – made by Mom and me

Unlike taking my children shopping and coming home to have them try on everything, we had to wait a number of weeks to try on our new outfits. Usually we tried them on several times before they were completely finished. We had our own personal tailor – Mom – who made adjustments for fit all along the way. We learned early to sew buttons on, put in a hem, and eventually learned the whole process so that we could make our own clothing. In high school, I didn’t go shopping with friends to find my homecoming dress. Instead, I visited the fabric store and purchased the makings for the ideal outfit. There were some mistakes along the way, but when you make your own clothing, you can’t take it back if it doesn’t fit. You just figure out how to fix it or just live with it. Thanks goodness the 70’s were wild with patterns and colors. Some of our mistakes were not so noticeable.

In the fall of 1976, I left for college, my brother moved to Arkansas, and my younger sister got married. My mother’s household went from seven people to four instantly. Her workload was reduced immensely and I think it was a shocking, but welcomed,  change. She suddenly had some time on her hands after years of making our clothes and canning all our food. And she had yards of leftover fabric from her sewing adventures over the years. She started quilting.

My clock dress – Made by Mom

I received a quilt from Mom for Christmas the first year of my marriage. It was a patchwork quilt containing all of the material that made up my clothes from my childhood. I loved it! Each square brought back a memory of years past. My favorite was a block that had different clocks in the twelve-inch squares. Each clock had a different time on it. I remembered my dress from age six and using that dress to learn to tell time. I laughed to see the material from the 70’s contained in the quilt. Paisley and pastel polka-dots were definitely from the 70s era. My plaid homecoming suit – worn on a homecoming date with Paul – was another memory. My mother helped me finish the suit in time for the dance – I had trouble with getting the zipper sewn in correctly.

My mother made her quilts like she lived her life. She took whatever scraps were available and stitched them together as best she could.  This quilt from my mother gave me comfort and warmed me with memories of her love for me in my childhood. It was appropriate that this quilt was made of pieces of my childhood memories. Being loved still brings me a richness to life that nothing else can bring. I have my memory quilt to prove it.

©Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com