Daddy, Don’t Get Dead

An incident occurred when we were doing some renovations to the back room of the old house we purchased in 1972. Sheila and I had been doing some work that required a 12-foot ladder to reach some cross beams. Repaired a few times, the ladder remained rickety. With Sheila holding it steady, it seemed safe enough.
On one occasion, she had to attend a meeting with four of our children. I stayed home with our youngest—Sandra. My wife has always has had a foreman’s attitude. Her final instruction to me was not to climb that ladder while she was gone.
Feigning irritation, I said, “I’m not going to climb that ladder!”
As soon as she left, I decided to carefully climb to the top of the ladder, steadying myself with the exposed beams—suspended 15 feet above the floor—and complete the necessary task. It would only take a few minutes, and who would know the difference. Who would tell? A tiny, three-year-old, blonde kid—hardly!
I called out to my small daughter. “Sandra, come in here honey, so Daddy can keep an eye on you. Daddy is going to climb up this little old ladder, and I'll be right back down in just a jiffy!”
I carefully positioned her against the wall, away from the ladder.
“Stand over here, sweetheart, so you'll be safe, just in case this old ladder should make Daddy fall,” I said. I tried to sound confident for her benefit. I began my climb, muttering under my breath, “Ain’t no problem! I'll go up, do my job and come right back down.”
With each step, the wobbly rungs of the rickety ladder caused it to sway. Noticing movement below, I called back down, “Honey, stay over there against the wall! Daddy will be right back down.”
Having reached the pinnacle of my climb without the aid of a safety net below, my confidence began to waver. I began to think the task may be too formidable for me alone. I felt a slight tremor of the ladder. Just after the tremor, the ladder shook violently. At that very moment, I reached for the big overhead beam to support myself. The 12 foot ladder collapsed to the floor. Hanging by one arm, dangling like a chimpanzee fifteen feet above the floor, I suddenly realized something was burning. The hundred watt bulb was pressed against my arm causing my skin to sizzle. I let out a blood-curdling yell. The next thing I heard was the whimpering of my only connection—within miles—to the human race, my very frightened little daughter.
“Daddy, don't get dead!”
Those words burned into my memory, as the hot bulb burned into my arm,
Closing my eyes and saying a silent prayer, I gave in to the science of gravity. Fifteen feet later, I landed with a thud.
Assessing my injuries to be only a bruised ego and a sore body, I pulled myself up, and led my daughter to a room that required no projects.

Old Times There are Never Forgotten

Ringing in my ears of late has been the words to “Dixie,” and I realized I had a title for my next feature article with the line that sings, Old times there are never forgotten. Uncertain of what the article would be at the time the title, rolling around in my head, manifested itself to me, I finally realized it sounds like a great name to use for remembering things of our past.
Titles are great—be it for articles or songs—for instance, the country song I listened to the other night by Jerry Reed in which he named one of his latest, “I know a girl who sounds just like Jerry Reed when she sings.” The DJ broke me up when he began to laugh at the incredulity of a woman sounding like the crazy-singing, funny man.
I don’t have to get around very many people in my age bracket who don’t recall the things we did when we were young.
After a Saturday morning spent at the local picture show, we came home and re-enacted the cowboy movies—which starred Lash LaRue, Rocky Lane, Durango Kid, Sunset Carson or Buster Crabbe. When we tired of riding our chinaberry stick horses, we switched gears afterwards. It was fun to re-create the serial characters such as Superman, Batman, or Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy. “Gol-lee!” as a guy named Gomer used to say. It was really fun and our imagination was our vehicle.
If we knew what was good for us, there was no time for getting bored! If we got bored around the house, our parents could always find something to make better use of our time.
Besides, there was always time for a new adventure with the boys we grew up with. It might be a project making rubber guns in which we made great use of the last real rubber from the inner tubes from the old model T Fords, and later the cars from the ‘30s and 40s. Some of the more ingenious of the older guys could carve out rifles and make them shoot a number of rubber stingers at once.


If we had a dime, we could buy a store-bought kite from the Five and Dime Store which would provide us with hours of enjoyment. More than likely, for most of us, dimes were difficult to come by. In that situation, we could again call on our imaginations and some good old American ingenuity with things around the house. All that was required was a couple of light-weight sticks which could be bound together with twine. Next was paste made with flour and water from the kitchen. Add to that an old newspaper which could be glued to the twine and at the four points of the home-made kite. Presto! A kite was born! All that was needed then was some scraps from Mother’s quilting sack. After tying them together in a long, well fashioned kite-tail, we flew the home-made toy. Bowing the sticks just right and adjusting the tail for stability were the last bit of tweaking needed to make for long hours of enjoyment.
I think the best thing we had going for us in those days was a no-limit imagination. From acting out our fantasies of movie star heroes, to building our toys to play with, there seemed to be no end to what we could accomplish. We had a white Billy Goat that we could use for pulling us around our neighborhood. We could build cars big enough to coast down hills at very fast speeds while using ropes to steer with and very little for brakes except courage and shoes. Bicycles became imaginary motorcycles by placing a card or piece of cardboard in the tires where the spokes could hit it, instantly making the sound of a motorized cycle. Much like the chinaberry horses, the speed of our imaginary motorcycles was limited only by our imagination.

Oh, the things we could buy with a small amount of money which we could acquire by selling scrap iron, delivering circulars for the grocery stores, selling boiled peanuts for a nickel a bag at the livestock barn on sale day, selling the Grit newspaper around town for a dime, and of course working regular jobs such as delivering the Macon Telegraph or delivering milk door to door most days of the week.
With the price of cokes at a nickel, after going up from three cents apiece, and a very large cookie which was named a penny wheel cracker—appropriately named because of the price—to eat with it, the rewards of work was well worth the effort. For a nickel, we could go to the bakery and get our dose of sugar by purchasing a large cinnamon roll or a sugar-laden doughnut. Umm! Umm! Who among us who lived in the greatest days ever can not remember the greatness of ten cent hamburgers and if you wanted to save up and splurge, a hamburger steak could be had for a dollar or buck and a quarter. Move over Big Mac! You better hope the days of the hometown grills do not return or you and Ronald McDonald will be hitching a ride out of town.
I would be remiss if I did not call attention to another couple of things we did for entertainment—swimming pools and baseball games with our own heroes to enjoy. All we had to do to get into the swimming pool was to show up on Wednesday to help clean the algae from the walls, rinse and re-fill it with fresh water. If there was ever a better place to enjoy swimming, I don’t know where it could have been, and the price was right!

Our early heroes on the baseball diamonds came from Hawkinsville and Cochran, mostly. Major league baseball existed only in the north during our childhood, but we didn’t miss them because of our great local baseball heroes. I’m sure there was probably an admission price to the games but the truth is, I can never remember paying my way into a game because, I was one of the boys chasing down foul balls and home runs for my admission. There was no such thing as throwing out a baseball just because of a little wear and tear in the fashion of today’s stars.


Thinking back, old times there are never forgotten, and life without working for the things we had, and enjoyed, were just part of our lives.
Come on now! Wouldn’t young people be better off working from the time they turned nine-years-old like most of us did in the 1940s and 1950s. If it was like that today, they wouldn’t have time to think about pot, crack, and coke. Those three words could return to the dictionary as a deep pan, as what happens when a baseball bat breaks, before nailing and taping it back together, and as a short version of Co-Cola. Young people would be better off and they would enjoy working for what they get, while enjoying life to the maximum.

Old Men and Their Saws

December was a monumental month for my brother, Meredith and me. He turned eighty and I turned seventy. This goes beyond senior citizens. It is very old! But like the immortal and late Minnie Pearl of the Grand Ole Opry, “We’re proud to be here!”

Everyone in our family knows the work ethic of my brother, and anyone who knows him well can vouch for that. The project we found ourselves involved in last Saturday goes back to a phone call between us a week or so before then. I had informed him of a tree problem at the cemetery where our Grandparents and their two tiny infants are buried.

He told me they were going to Orlando to visit their children and grandchildren, before returning to his son’s home near Cordele to paint the inside of his house for him. To us, it seemed status quo for my hard-working brother who at 80 can outwork most people twenty years younger than he is.

“When I finish painting his house for him, I’ll come on up there and we’ll take our two chain saws and take care of the tree problem,” he said. I had all the confidence in the world that we would indeed be able to take care of the tree problem. He never sees a task that he can’t handle. I knew I would serve in a backup role, because he knows one speed—wide open.

We arrived at the burial place of our kindred dead, and while I was pouring fresh fuel into my saw, I heard the unmistakable sound of his Homelite roaring as the limbs began to fall. Two pulls later and my Stihl saw roared its own growl. Two old men and their saws showed the cedar tree who was boss as we applied a fresh trimming to the offending evergreen. Shortly thereafter, the limbs which had been threatening to take over the four graves lay still on the ground. Next, my sister-in-law, Jenny and Sheila assisted us in dragging the limbs away from the burial sites. A few more necessary trimmings of limbs which may have had future plans to grow in that direction were unceremoniously hacked away while the women folk applied some elbow grease with a steel brush and some bleach to the headstones which had been losing the battle to the dank mildew which had been left alone for too long.

Soon, we took out some portable chairs to sit for a spell and rest. I told you we were a couple of old men with chain saws, but even we needed to take blow for a few minutes.

As I looked at the restored gravesites of Mama and Papa, as our grandparents were called when they walked the Earth, I couldn’t help but think how pleased they must be that someone still cares enough about their final resting place to beautify it for them. It felt good to my big brother and me to be able to do it.

Turning 70 Piece of Cake

The day was a normal “get out of town for awhile” day. It is the kind of day when Sheila spends the money and I tolerate it. Sometimes I push the buggy for her and other times, I tell her I’ll wait on the bench up front while she goes about doing what women do in a store.
It is a fact that men can go into a store to shop, pick out what they want and be back outside in ten minutes flat, assuming the cashier lines are not extremely long and loaded with women who have been in the store for a couple of hours. That being the case, it might take 20 minutes, fifteen of which we wait for the women shoppers to check out.
This day, the 27th of December had been enjoyable, that is until I began to tire. She said, “I just want to run into WallyWorld for a few minutes.”
“I’ll just wait out here in the car,” I replied.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to get some shampoo?” she asked.
After an exaggerated sigh on my part, I asked her to pick it up for me, and she said for me to at least walk into the store with her. After another exaggerated sigh, I relinquished and said I would go in and wait for her on the bench. That seemed to make her happy. Go figure!
I didn’t even sit long enough to squirm and she was back with one small bag. I asked her what she bought, to which she replied, “Your shampoo!” Shaking my head in bewilderment, I asked her why she wanted to stop in the first place. She just threw her hands up and said she would do it later. You talk about looking a gift horse in the eye, I said, “Alright, let’s go.”
She jumped in the front seat and said she would drive. It was not dark, so I started to protest and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “Do you want to get something to eat?” I asked.
“Yes. Let’s pull right in here and get some Italian,” she said.
“I meant something like a Krystal cheeseburger.”
“No. Let’s go in here.”
I was pretty tired by that time so I decided that sitting down would be good for me.
She walked in just like she owned the place and said something to the hostess. I followed her into a side room and then wham-o! As they say on television, I had been punked. The room was full of my children and grandchildren, decorated with balloons and ribbons and party favors.
If indeed I had a thought it was that someone had made a mistake, because my birthday was still four days away on the last day of the year. They quickly explained that this was the only time they could all get together and take me to dinner for my birthday. It seemed plausible enough to me, so we sat down at a very long table amidst a lot of laughter. I thought to myself what a great bunch of kids and grandkids. Everyone kept asking Sheila if she had been able to keep it from me, to which she replied that they all owed her a lot for putting her through the ordeal of keeping me from suspecting anything. I only smiled and thought she didn’t do anything except make me tired from shopping.
Children and grands kept coming by with wide smiles hugging and kissing me while wishing me a happy birthday. They also laughed at me a lot because they pulled it off on me. Keep in mind that it really wasn’t my birthday yet and I am quite old.
A couple of waiters began taking orders and before long we were all enjoying the Italian cuisine which all of us like very much. Afterwards, they presented me with a huge Red Velvet Cake—now I recall Sheila asking me a few days ago what kind of cake I would like to have on my birthday? It was pretty and it was tasty and the youngest of the grandchildren poked their fingers in it to make certain that it would be alright for PawPaw to eat it.
At this juncture, I might add that during my childhood my birthday was not celebrated with a party because it was too close to Christmas, however once Sheila and I were hitched that all changed because she said birthdays were always to be celebrated and she has stuck to that all these years. I really thought the kids would show up on New Years Eve—my birthday—and/or call to wish me a Happy one, so I was especially surprised and pleased with their love and generosity. But it had only just begun. They began to pass cards to me one at a time. The first one was a two-day stay, New Years Eve and New Years Day at the Orlando Marriott. I was thrilled, but secretly wondered why they didn’t make me reservations in Savannah, our favorite haunt. The next card dropped a couple of C-Notes from it and I thought OK! The next envelope was large and it had a couple of UGA Tee shirts, my favorite sports clothing right after the Red Devils. I was appropriately thanking them all for the gifts when they said there was one more. As I opened it I was stunned! There before my eyes were two tickets to the Capitol One Bowl where the Dawgs were going to play Michigan State. I was overwhelmed! I finally got it, but I was totally overwhelmed.
As I looked around with glistening eyes at my smiling, laughing family, I was truly touched at the best birthday I had ever experienced. MY son, Sam, Jr. and his family had driven down from Marietta; Sandra drove up from Tifton and Shannon from Cochran with her family. Sheri could not come from Ohio, Beth could not come from New Mexico, and Julie could not come due to illness in her family, but I was assured that all of them were co-conspirators in the deal.
Forget about the extra aches and pains from aging; Turning 70 was really a piece of cake.

When We were Young

Ah! When we were young. Life was a constant adventure. You see, when I married Sheila, I married three little girls also—Sheri, Beth, and Julie—a package that was a plus for me. I got my lifetime sweetheart and a ready-made family which was just right to help settle down a 26-year-old bachelor. There natural father didn’t want them—Sheila or the girls—a move that confirmed to me that he was an idiot. Case sera sera! (sic).
Having dated many women or girls as the case may have been before, I wondered what love was. It didn’t take too long for me to discover what love was with my Sheila. We actually were pen pal sweethearts when we were teens, having met inadvertently through the marriage of my brother Billy to her cousin, Janice. So romantic we thought, but the way of many teen love affairs, I went in one direction—the Navy—she went into another—marriage. Our paths really didn’t cross again until eight or so years later when my brother decided to play Cupid. He called to leave me a message on Memorial Day to come on down and meet an old friend, uh, flame named Sheila. I was intrigued, but unavailable that holiday weekend and got the message late. Undeterred, he asked if he could set it up for July 4th. After checking my calendar, ha, I said that would be my pleasure to come see about re-kindling the flame.
We began seeing each other each weekend thereafter for a couple of months, and seeing the need to slow down the Interstate travel, I said I couldn’t come down that next weekend. Guess what? She and the girls came up for the weekend. What a gal! We were married in early November after I returned from a government trip to California and Arkansas. I adopted the unwanted children, and we added three more—Sammy, Jr., Sandra and Shannon which gave us a round figure of eight in our family—parents included.
Life had a few bumps in the road for us along the way, but love conquers all as they say. Our children are all grown now and we have nineteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren as the tree limbs spread further out.
But ah, when we were young, we danced, we loved we laughed, we milked a cow, we raised chickens, turkeys, guineas, calves, dogs, cats, and one stubborn Shetland pony. In addition, we raised a lot of food on our land, and Sheila canned most of it through the years.
Well, I’m now seventy, and not sure how old my sweetheart is, but we’re still in love after all these years.

No More Renaissance Festivals

“Oh Come on Daddy,” Sandra begged, “it’ll be fun. They will have jousting and lots of beggars and period costumes. People will be eating turkey legs. You will really enjoy it.”
For those who don’t know Sandra well, let me explain that she can be a little bit weird sometimes. She is, after all, an artist. Her paintings run from the regular people settings which are really quite good to the very weird. I’m talking about nude women captured in anything from thorny briars to chains. I’m talking about angels with wings—perhaps one of them broken. I’m talking about a group of birds pulling someone behind them with a rope as they fly into the wild blue yonder. Maybe you get the picture of the personality of our little blonde kid.
Now, she didn’t have to convince Sheila—her mother, my wife—to go to the Renaissance with her. You see, her mother is where she comes by that personality trait, uh, the weird.
Well, I thought I might enjoy seeing Sir Lance-a-Lot on a white horse riding wide open with his jousting stick, uh, pole in an attempt to knock the bad guy on the black steed from his saddle. We’ve all seen it in the movies, but I decided to go along so as not to be dubbed Sir Blah Humbug by my wife and daughter.
When we entered this strange world of the weird, I did indeed see beggars making attempts to get anything from money to food. I thought to myself, I don’t need to do this. I can go by the interstate and see beggars working the cars, but they assured me that it was all part of the show, and to not get overly concerned.
Right-O!
What was in store for me was something that would haunt me for the rest of my life. As we strolled along minding our own business—especially me—I notice this very hefty maiden who was dressed in period clothes that were red and white. She had a low-cut blouse filled with dollar bills poking out of her very ample bosom. The only thing brighter red than her large hat was her bright red mouth. She wasted no time in putting the move on me right in front of my wife and daughter. I stepped away, and she kept up her pursuit, assuring me that she meant no harm. Before I knew it, she had knocked my white cap from my head, grabbed me by both of my ears and pulled me to her, successfully planting a very red image of her large lips on the side of my now blushing red face. Believe you me, if they had DNA back then, it would have been very easy to identify her as my attacker.
I hastily retrieved my hat, pulled away from the not so winsome winch and beat a hasty retreat from the big threat. She did not give me a single dollar from those ample bosoms, and I speedily escaped looking for the jousting contest.

Why Have Family Reunions?

The excitement has started to build for the Crenshaw Reunion. Reservations for cabins have been made. Parts of our family are committing to be there, and most are already looking forward to having a great time. So what is the big deal? We just had the 2008 reunion last month, and it is now eleven months into the future before the 2009 Crenshaw Reunion will take place.
What is in a family reunion? Like people, reunions come in all different sizes, shapes and places. There are usually some key figures in family history in which reunions are begun, or are held in remembrance of. My family—Daddy’s side—began many years ago having a birthday celebration for him somewhere around November 13 each year. Since Daddy outlived all of his siblings, he was the likely candidate. He did, however, have a sister-in-law, Aunt Alice who survived Uncle Sam, my namesake, and she also was treated to an annual birthday party by her six daughters. We usually attended that celebration as they did on Daddy’s birthday.
Someone came up with the brilliant idea of consolidating the two into a family reunion, which we did. November seemed to be a great month in Georgia for that to take place, and it worked well, rotating it at different homes or parks around middle Georgia, that is, until that really early winter Sunday around the latter part of the 1970s. We had a good crowd. We had it around a lake in Bibb County, and we almost froze to death, cutting short a reunion of two great families. More changes were initiated before the next year. Everyone decided to move it to wonderful October, almost always a more, friendly month weather-wise.
October has remained constant since that time. The only other thing that changed was the location. We adopted Indian Springs State Park, near Jackson, Georgia where it has remained constant for over twenty years.
Sadly, my father, mother, a brother and a sister along with Aunt Alice and several of her daughters have passed away since that time. If there is a downside to family reunions, it is that many die as the years go by. The upside is that many more have been born into the various splinters of all of our families, and therein is the problem with an ongoing family reunion. How do you get young people interested in becoming a part of the family get-togethers?
At a time when your children are young, they go because the family goes together. The difficulty happens when they become teens. Teens dance to a different drummer as any of us know who have them, or have completed the rearing of our children. They are experiencing new and different things, not all of which we always approve. The best thing is to start early letting them get to know their cousins, and by all means have something to make the reunion interesting to young people as well as those of us who have settled into senior status. Nothing bores young people faster than idleness. Nothing seems better to those of us who are elderly than sitting around in a good chair reminiscing about old memories or passing down tales that have been ingrained in our memories from having heard them over and over.
Young folks like action, such as hiking, boating, walking and campfires—even horseshoes challenge them. Oh, and don’t forget the great eats at reunions when the aunts and cousins delight in bringing their favorite dishes. Some even become legendary. Uncle Billy promotes his banana pudding each year, as does Uncle Meredith his fried apple pies. Many people show their insecurity by dipping their desserts first and then loading up a platter with all the dinner delicacies. It just gets to be fun. There is even a small amount of time for business, albeit a small amount of time for that. Usually it amounts to only passing the hat for donations for the shelter, paper products and drinks to accompany the meal.
So successful has the Crenshaw Reunion been, many of those attending have stretched it out to three or four days in a cabin, culminating with a drive into the north Georgia mountains for apples and cider while enjoying the early beginnings of Fall colors.
Sadly, not all reunions are as successful as this one. The Barlow Reunion which actually began first faded away as many family members died and others lost interest. But the biggest drawback to achieving success was the inability to recognize that a reunion must have young people to carry it on years later. In order for that to happen, they must be included in the planning and the excitement of taking part.
There is no better time than a reunion to seek stories about genealogy research. Who hasn’t said at one time or another, “I wish I had asked Grandma or Aunt Alice or Uncle Wright about this or that?” Those are the missed opportunities which can in many cases never be recaptured. For example: Long after the death of my father, we pondered why we had never been able to locate the gravesite of a Great-grandfather who we thought for years had been buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon. I don’t know the countless hours we trod over that sacred burial ground looking for his final resting place. Then out of the blue at a reunion, an older uncle said, “He’s not buried in Rose Hill! He was buried in Fort Hill in Macon!”
What?
With that revelation sinking in, and after obtaining directions to the newly-discovered cemetery, my son, daughter and son-in-law wasted no time in heading in that direction in quest of the long forgotten burial place of my great-grandparents and in less than an hour of walking, they came upon both graves and a small amount of rubbing the tombstones revealed the secret mistakenly thought to be in another place.
One year, after extensive genealogical research, my son and I embarked on an adventure to meet some cousins whom we had never become acquainted. The connection was my grandfather and their grandfather were brothers, yet through the years, we had never met any of them, that is until we met them on paper and through census records. Meeting them in the flesh was a different story altogether, as we tracked a couple of them down. One elderly woman was suspicious of the two men knocking on her door claiming to be relatives. After reassuring her that we only wanted to meet her and others of her family—with no interest in monetary gain—did she relax enough to listen to our story of finding genealogical connections with her family.
Bottom line was, enough were interested in finding out more about us, that when we invited them to come to our family reunion that year, we nearly doubled in size on that day. It was quite an enjoyable time meeting and attempting to introduce all of our family to all of theirs. There were many questions and not enough answers, but all in all, it was a great day.
And the young people enjoyed wading in the stream and walking on the rocks at Indian Springs.