More Memories

Greetings on this overcast, rainy day!

We went to visit my brother, Hugh, and his wife, Imazo, today, and to carry them, along with our oldest brother's widow, Mae, who is almost 89 and still getting around really well, to breakfast at the Cracker Barrel, which we try to do at least once a week.

We got to talking about when Mae met Bill, my oldest brother. It seems that Bill and she met on the steps of a church there in Knoxville back in the late 1930's. Bill was dating a friend of Mae's, and decided to kind of keep looking around.

Bill was only 17 years old at the time, and Mae was also 17, but he told her that he was 22, and she says he looked older than 17, so she believed him. He wore a dark suit, and a black hat, and looked the age he said he was.

Well, that particular evening, they had been to a revival at one of the churches, but not together. She was with her girl friend, that Bill had been dating and he met them there on the steps. It would seem that once he saw Mae, he was really taken with her, and he asked if he could walk her home. She said yes, and that was the beginning of their courtship.

After courting for some time, they decided to get married, and she had to get her dad to sign for her to get married, and she was surprised when Bill said he had to get his dad to sign for him. She said, "but you're 22 and don't need him to sign for you". He said, "well, actually, yes, I do, because I'm the same age as you are."

Mae and Bill rode in the back of her dad's old truck, freezing nearly to death in the falling snow, and her dad had a flat tire on the truck, but he got them to her brother's house till he could get the tire fixed.

They went to get our dad to sign for Bill and Dad was in the middle of killing hogs. It was late in the year and was snowing. Dad was so mad, because he had to quit what he was doing and go sign for them to get married.

Mae and Bill shared a love of baseball and they both worked at the Smokey's stadium in Knoxville selling hot dogs and popcorn, and also picking up bottles and cleaning up the stadium after the games. Mae told me today that if it hadn't been for the work they did there, they wouldn't have been able to have food to eat. In later years, they loved going to baseball games and were avid fans of the Atlanta Braves.

A couple of years later, Norma, my niece, was born to them, and not long after that, America entered World War II, and my brother, Bill, was called up and had to go. My nephew, Fred was born during World War II.

A picture is here of my brother, and his two children, taken with him in his uniform. Also, a picture of the four of them on vacation in Florida after the children were well on their way to becoming adults. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of Bill and Mae when they were just beginning their marriage.

Mae likes to tell me about when they were first married, they would come and get me, and take me out with them, and I was dressed in a little dress, and had on patent leather shoes, and socks and had curly blonde hair and what a feisty cute little girl I was. Shirley Temple was big at that time and I was told I looked just like her.

My brother, Bill, came home from the war, after serving several years in the Pacific Theater of Operations, and went to work at Alcoa for a great many years. Shortly after retirement from Alcoa, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, from which he never recovered and lived only a short time after being diagnosed. That was in the year 1986, and more story there, but not for this time.

That is all from Blabbin' Grammy today. May God's grace and love rest on each of you.

Bye for now.