Black and White Wednesday ... Bits and Pieces

Whoops! I thought I would make it brief today with little bits and pieces, but I find myself unable to stop. Pull out some of your old black and white photos you cherish to share and join Terri, Your Friend from Florida!

My mother's little sister, my Aunt Nancy was only 10 when I was born, so over the years, I have been much closer to her than other aunts and uncles. We saw her quite often and she came to stay with us after we moved to Tulsa. She married at 16, so I was about 5-6 years old when she visited us and helped mother while she stayed. This is so embarrassing, but hilariously funny at the same time. My sister and I took our baths together and both of us were so modest, we wore our panties in the bathtub! You may wonder why Mom didn't give us separate baths, but I'm guessing the expense of water and also Mom being so tired at the end of the day … or week!! So it was just easier. My poor Mom! Anyway, Nancy was just shocked as she could be that we wore our panties in the bathtub. Roberta and I used to get into little spats in the tub, as kids will, and I remember Mom pulling us out, drying us off and Daddy bending us over his knee for a little spanking after we had our pjs on. 

Years later, (like many years later), we were visiting the McCoy relatives and this little confession just happened to be blurted out! To our big surprise, we discovered that our cousins, Charlene and Debbie, had done the very same thing at those ages!!! Too funny. We had the best laugh over that!!

She had something in her pocket!! 

I remember when Nancy was dating my Uncle Gene and sometimes getting to be with them when they were together. It made me feel so grown-up to hang out with them. I also remember going to Aunt Nancy's wedding. When our parents finally bought a record player a couple of years later, Granny gave us kids all Aunt Nancy's 45 records, Elvis, Ricky Nelson, and so on! We thought we were in heaven since the only records we had were what Mom and Daddy got when they bought the record player … a Christmas album and Roy Acuff!! Roberta and I stood in front of that record player and sang our hearts out to Roy Acuff and later Ernest Tubb. Hey! We were country when country wasn't cool!

This is my mother's younger brother, our Uncle Sonny. He was a real tease and from what I understand, he loved teasing my mother because she was so sensitive and cried easily! He was one of the uncles who came to stay with us in Tulsa, too. I realized over the years how generous my parents were to offer hospitality to their family and try to help them even though they were struggling to keep their heads above water themselves. I loved Uncle Sonny and his wife, Dolly. She had been married previously and lost her husband and baby boy in a car accident. After marrying my uncle, she gave birth to four stillborn children before she finally had my cousin, Lonnie, who was a real cutie and we were so happy for them. (We also inherited Dolly's collection of all her 78 records after she and Sonny were married … Rosemary Clooney, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Glenn Miller and the like.)

Us with cousin Lonnie Wayne

Sonny and Dolly had a house with a front yard covered with good climbing trees and we would play there for hours. We loved that they had bunk beds in the bedroom where we stayed and one Christmas, my little sister had too much pumpkin pie and lost it all while on the top bunk. You know what they say? What goes up must come down! And it did. Shower right beside me!

This photo was taken on my Aunt Gerry's wedding day. She was my mother's older sister, Doris Geraldine, and she was a sweetheart. I understand she married young to get away from the hard times on the farm. Bless her heart! She married someone who turned out to be a bit of an odd character, to say the least. At the time they were married, he was a traveling preacher, but later turned out to be a hoarder and somewhat paranoid … something about the FBI! ;-) It got progressively worse over the years, but she stuck with him. She always had a smile and a quick laugh, along with a lot of wisdom from lessons learned along the way. Their front yard was so full of stuff … junk? … Aunt Gerry said people would drive by their house just to stare! Drive-by starings! (Maybe that's why the FBI was tailing him???) At least she had a good sense of humor about things.

Aunt Gerry and her family lived in Illinois and we visited them a few times over the years. One particular summer we loaded up in our 57 Chevrolet … our family of 5 and my Uncle Sonny, Aunt Dolly and Lonnie Wayne! No AC in that Chevy and an all night road trip to Illinois from Arkansas with four kids!! Whew! 

The 57 Chevrolet with me inside, my mom holding my brother and

my cousin, Lonnie Wayne, holding his ears!!!

We had so much fun at Gerry's house going over to Indiana to the zoo, swimming, and just playing. One funny thing that happened when Gerry and her family came to visit us was that we all loaded up in the car to go to some museum (probably Oral Roberts headquarters. Everybody loved touring that place). We got a little ways away before my Mom screeched, "Oh my goodness!! I forgot the baby!!" In her excitement, she left baby Phillip at home!! It was a while before she could live that one down!

When my mother's cancer had progressed so much, dear Aunt Gerry came to visit her and finally just quit her job to come stay with my mother for a while. All of Mother's family were so good to surround her with loving care and I will always be thankful in my heart for them. When Gerry came to visit me, we discovered we both loved Ricky Skaggs and just enjoyed each other's company getting to know each other better. She came to visit me after my husband had passed away. When Aunt Gerry died, my sister and I really wanted to go to her funeral and as we tried to make it happen, God provided in the most wonderful way as the airline just happened to be having a special that weekend and we flew together to Colorado.

My precious Granny! I can't say enough about a woman who loved and was loved so much. She had the best laugh! She persevered through many hard times and came out the champion. Over all the years, she and Grandad would faithfully come to visit us and our visits to her were always fun. We loved going to her house, she danced with us, she cooked big meals and told everybody where they could sit ... she never sat down, she was always waiting on everybody. More tea? More mashed potatoes? A little more fried chicken? How about some cake when you're done? Her kitchen was big and we all ate together in there, with us kids at the card table. She also always had a big Hershey bar in the fridge and I would sneak in there to steal pieces from it while we were there. Granny had a box filled with old pictures for us to look at and a music box with a pretty figurine that went round and round as it played "I Went to Your Wedding."

Granny let us drink real coffee, loaded with milk, and may have been a bit partial to little girls because once when the boy cousins were there at the same time, she didn't have enough syrup for everybody's pancakes. "Now boys, why don't you eat jelly on your pancakes and let Connie and Roberta have the syrup??!!!" Haha! Granny baked her special birthday cakes for everybody's birthday. I remember how much she loved Lawrence Welk and the Lennon Sisters. That did not sit well with me because I was jealous of them. After all, were not my sister and me her favorite singers? We always had to perform our newest songs when we were with them while Grandad took movies of us singing and doing our little mimes.

She and Grandad always sat very close together 

and worked the crossword puzzles each day.

Granny had a very big yard with many tall trees and beautiful snowball bushes. We had many Easter egg hunts there and hunted those eggs until they were completely inedible from being handled so much. Granny's house had a cellar door to play on just like the song Playmate, and we did. Her house was a happy place to visit. 

Good times at 705 Maple Avenue

My brother with cousins Johnny and Lonnie Wayne

One day when my sister and I were playing in the far back yard, we discovered a small headstone nestled in the grass with very faint writing on it. From what we could make out on the stone, it was the burial place for a baby from a very long time ago. Granny didn't seem to know anything about it and I guess it just went unnoticed as the yard was being mowed. 

She wrote this little note in a small white New Testament she gave me.

Above all, Granny cared about our hearts and making sure we knew Jesus! 

This is my Daddy's youngest brother, our Uncle Charles, and my cousins, Glen and Jimmy.

I don't think these guns were for play - they did some real shootin' there in the country.

Uncle Charles lived with us for a time and worked with my Daddy. Charles began dating the girl who lived across the street from us there in Sand Springs. Her family was quite a mess and provided a show for our family on Saturday nights as their Daddy would come home very intoxicated. You could hear them and the mother and two daughters, Bobbie Jo and Sue told us how they would all have to hold the man down. Pretty shocking stuff for my parents (and us kids) who were naïve as to the ways of the world. Anyway, Charles and Sue married, but it wasn't a good union at all and ended up in divorce. I will spare the details here because all of them have passed and will only say what a pity that sometimes people bring different kinds of baggage into relationships and never have the skills or desire to cope with it and grow from it.

This precious little girl Teresa is the first child of my Uncle Charles and his wife, Sue.

Teresa and my brother were pals!

Charles abandoned his little girl and her mother. My mother, being the caring mother she was, continued to care for them and so we would frequently go visit Sue and Teresa. Mother would bring Teresa to stay at our house and we also took her with us a few times to Arkansas so she could visit her Grandma McCoy.

Paulette was a cousin I never really knew, but she was my age. Her Dad was my Dad's older brother and he had five children. Their family was distant geographically and relationally from everyone else. Although they lived in Kansas most of the time, they lived in Arkansas for a while and I feel sure that's where this picture was taken because of the way the "house" looks. My parents lived in a house similar to that while I was a baby. My memory of my uncle's family is strange because we took a road trip to Kansas once to visit them only to discover their house was crowded to the hilt and could not accommodate guests. My parents visited with them and then we found a motel to stay in overnight before returning home. What makes me laugh is the next morning, I remember Mama waking up my sister and me and telling us in awe that "the motel room costs $7!!!" Oh my goodness!!! That was quite the experience for them.

My Great Grandmother Sanders. What a woman!

Judging from all the photos I've seen taken at this house, we visited her for quite a few holidays. Since children were to be seen and not heard at her house (or when she was around), I mostly remember sitting still when we visited. Her home had a second story and I was fascinated about what might be upstairs, but only remember being allowed up there one time. It was a mystery to me and so my memories there are only of sitting and also seeing my Aunt Nancy be married in that house. Later Great Grandma Sanders moved to Tulsa and her house there was somewhat more relaxed. The prior owners had left a children's playhouse in the back yard which we found to be a fun place to play. Grandma also had a bedroom filled with books and each one I opened were too grown up for me and had notes and lots of underlining in them. Hmmmm, I'm thinking I may have inherited that gene as I love books and all are marked up. (The few books my mother owned, I did my share of printing my ABC's in!)

Grandma Sanders did soften up and mellow over the years and was quite tenderhearted over my little brother, Phil! He stole her heart and she baked him birthday cakes with a little car on top. She may have given him that little guitar he is holding.That never happened for the rest of us!!! She did bake banana nut cakes for my Dad, which is very interesting because I don't think she really approved of my parents marrying. (Grandma always had a bandage on her nose as long as I could remember as she had cancer on her face, but because of her religious beliefs, she would not see a doctor. Cancer eventually took her life at 84.)

To wrap this up, I'm posting a photo of my Dad which was taken in front of his old schoolhouse. In a previous post, I had said I wish I had a picture of it not realizing that I did have one.

Daddy as a boy

And a young man about 30

wearing his signature hat!