Until I was about 11 or 12, summertime meant days spent outdoors, roaming around the yard or fiddling around in the creek or climbing the surrounding hills.  Summertime around the house meant going barefoot.  And going barefoot meant stubbed toes. Oh! It seemed that all summer I had a bandage wrapped around one big toe or the other! A bandage that covered the idoine…the disinfectant of choice at the time.  When I didn’t have a stubbed toe I had a bee sting. The grass in the yard was largely clover which attracted honey bees.  When I ran through  the yard the toes on the ends of my feet would often scoop up an unsuspecting bee intent on collecting the nectar from the clover.  Because I was running so fast, the bee would be forced right up between two toes clear to where they were attached to my foot….and then it would sting!  Usually this would put me out of action for about three days as my foot would swell so much that I was stuck indoors with my foot on a footstool.  Ahhhh, summertime!

When I took Dick home with me to meet my family, it , of course, meant that certainly my big brother would want to come and take a look, maybe do a little evaluating.

One way to bond – or not- was to hike Devil’s Nose, the mountain (little mountain) that looked out over a wide valley, up one way and down another just over the way from the pasture field, as we called our home on 50 acres of non-tillable land.  I learned long after I was grown and had left home that young boys from Rogersville made the trip out from town (about four miles) to climb Devil’s Nose as sort of a rite of passage.

Well, when Charlie came to the Pasture Field to take a look at this fella I had brought home it was not surprising that he suggested the two of them make the trip up the Devil’s Nose.  It, however, was surprising that I was included in the trip. The three of us headed out across the field and across the road and began the climb. Nothing unusual about that. We talked some of this and that. On up we went.  About half way to the top, Charlie called  a halt so we could rest a bit and catch our breath. We sat around on the ground under some trees, talking.  Suddenly, Charlie jumped up and danced around and around, grabbing his leg and hollering. He finally said he had something up his trousers.  I told him to take his trousers off and shake the critter out, but it seemed he could not do that because of my presence!  Finally, I turned my back and he did the deed….out scrambled a lizard!  Never occurred to me that he would be so modest under those circumstances!

   When the children were young, our family had the opportunity to spend the summer in Washington, DC.  The time, of course, was filled with many new experiences including a fair amount of trips to the National Mall.  To take home from one of the gift shops the two younger ones chose to buy kites. Beautiful kites. Kites they had seldom encountered. (Remember, this was pre-internet, so none of us had then been bombarded by everything under the sun!)

Fast forward a few weeks and now back to home.

The boy and the girl were out in the yard practicing getting their kites into the air in preparation for the Kite Day at school the next day. Much excitement. And then. The girl’s kite came spiraling down. Result: broken beyond repair. Dejection.

That night, after the children had all gone to bed, the boy called to me. When I went into his room, he said, Tell C. she can take my kite to school tomorrow.

When all is said and done, love wins out.

If memory serves…and memory always comes through, just not always as one expects…anyway, if memory serves, sometime in 1941 our family made the last trip I can recall to Texas to visit our daddy’s relatives.

What sticks in my head from this trip are really scattered images, more than anything. Motels didn’t exist then, so we stayed in Guest Homes. Here, people would rent a room to travelers so they could rest overnight.  It was there, I think, that I first met the concept of a pallet. This was a sort of improvised  bed on the floor made of blankets or light mattresses.  By providing these, whole families could stay in one room.

Once we had settled in at my Uncle Floyd’s and Aunt Mildred’s, the cousins all began to get a sense of each other.  My cousin Miggie, the one  closest to my age (5) and I spent a fair amount of time playing in mud puddles looking for tiny just-hatched frogs.

But the Big Event was the trip to the drug store for ice cream cones.  One Sunday, we must have been there long enough for the usual activities to have lost some of their appeal, for the cousins were hanging around the house. Now, I need to explain that my daddy loved children and often did things with them, but he didn’t attempt to act their age.  He would put up with a lot, an example of which I am about to tell you.  

As I said, we had been hanging around the house that afternoon, and we ended up hanging around the chair where Daddy was trying to read the Sunday paper.  We clambered around, someone found a comb, and we began to comb Daddy’s hair. By the time he had reached this age, his hair was pretty thin and he wore it a little longer on top than on the sides and back. So we combed and pushed and pulled for a while with never a complaint from him. Eventually, someone fetched a pink ribbon and we tied it in his hair.

That done, we wandered off to do something else, and after a bit Daddy asked if we wanted to go to the drug store for ice cream. No one wanted to be left behind, so out the door we trooped, all five kids and Daddy.  Amid much giggling and fooling around we got our cones and headed home….Daddy apparently never remembering that he had a pretty pink ribbon on top of his head!

Through the years, as the children were growing up, our family piled into the car each summer and drove some 700 miles to visit the Brooks side of the family.  This always  meant spending time with their grandmother in Rogersville where we had a wonderful time doing not too much of anything.  Certainly making stops to see various elder relatives was a big part of the visit.

But usually, on our way home, we would spend a couple of days in Knoxville with my brother’s family. With six children among us, ages 12 on down, there was a lot of milling around.  And sometimes we would all decide to go to the mountains. One summer we all piled into my brother’s van and drove from South Knoxville for what seemed like hours, eventually rounding a corner that might easily have been in a big city, but with which I have become all too familiar since Dick and I moved to the Sevierville area. This was the big intersection where Chapman Highway crossed Highway 66….all roads leading into the Smokies. Maybe the intersection wasn’t really so big….it was just CROWDED! 

Once through that, it was smooth sailing.  Before long we reached the area that Charlie had selected for to hike a bit. After streaching and gaggling about a bit, we wandered onto the trail. It was a beautiful day, just right.  And, of course, we talked as we walked along.  Charlie kept telling us about the beautiful flaming azaleas that bloomed in a grassy area just off this trail, and, he said, they should be in bloom just now.

So, we meandered along, not being serious hikers, but just enjoying the sunshine and the trail and being with each other. Soon, Charlie said the flaming azaleas should be just around the corner.  And we rounded the corner…but no azaleas. So, we just moved along.  Before long, Charlie said the flaming azaleas should be just around the corner.  And we round the corner… but no azaleas. We all laughed and teased Charlie a bit and went on down the trail. When, for the third time, he announced that the flaming azaleas were just around the corner, we were not so quick to believe him, and sure enough, there were no flaming azaleas around that corner, either!

Once more came the promise of flaming azaleas…but by then most of us had wandered on back toward the parking lot.

And we never let him forget the hike we took to see the flaming azaleas that apparently did not exist!

My mother and my older brother put me through my last two years of college.
       My father had died during exam week of the winter quarter of my sophomore year at Tennessee Polytechnic Institute at Cookeville.
     TPI was at that time a good school, and I suppose still is today. The best English prof I ever had was Dr. Mangum. And it grinds at me that I never told him so. One of so many “wish I had”s.
However, the spring quarter of that year convinced me that TPI was no longer the place I wanted to be, and so I transfered to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. One of my daddy’s fellow Masons offered to lend Mother the money for my junior and senior years, but she declined, telling him that she and Charlie could manage. And they did. A gift I have never lost sight of.
      The gift I want to write about here, however, is the graduation gift Mother gave both to me and to herself: a trip to Texas to visit Daddy’s family. Neither of us had been to visit them for years, although when Daddy was sent on a job out that general way, he would detour to Houston or Witchita Falls. But they had too much going on in the middle years of their marriage…building a house, raising children, sending two to college…to make a trip together.
    So this trip was a BIG deal.
     Mother began preparations, I suppose, by clearing this with Daddy’s sisters and brother. Then she arranged for a young niece to stay with my grandmother who lived with her. Next, she took the car to the Ford dealership where Daddy had all through the years had his work done and traded when he needed to. She explained to the mechanic whom she knew that she was making a trip to Texas and she wanted the car thoroughly checked. A few more preparations, and we were set!
       We put two suitcases in the trunk and drove down the highway….what a great feeling…for 18 miles….As we came to Bean Station, just at the junction where the road to Morristown intersects, the radiator overheated. Badly! Ugg! Mother pulled to the side of the road, looked at the mystery
under the hood (which I’m confident she knew little about), spotted a phone booth literally in the center of the intersection, and headed straight for it.
     Mother called another Masonic fellow of Daddy’s. This gentleman had several times approached Mother about selling her a Chevrolet. She had always said she really wasn’t ready to turn in her Ford, but she would keep him in mind when the time came. Well, the time had come. When he came on the line, she asked what he had on the lot that she might be interested in. He described two cars; she chose one, told him where she was, and asked him to bring it down as she was on her way to Texas.
     He brought the car. We moved our luggage from the Ford to the Chevy. She signed the papers on the front fender, and headed on down the road spewing exhaust all the way!

Needless to say, she never bought another Ford.
(…More to come.)

As must certainly be during any and all wars, basic food was short in the Civil War. And so were any sort of treats.

In East Tennessee, the two opposing armies flowed back and forth and the foragers of each spread out like fingers to strip land …the little farms, the homes…of anything that humans could eat.

I have not been told of the hunger my ancestors might have suffered, but clearly, store bought items were scarce.

My great-grandmother’s parents and younger siblings lived on a hill about a mile and a half from Rogersville. These Beals and their Steele relations were farmers.  But the Beals built their house high up on the hillside where they could overlook their fields and the road that passed from Rogersville on out to the Holston River. The Steeles built on the bank of the river another mile and a half from town, where they could run a ferry across to the other side.

But back to the time of my story. The War had been under way for some while when someone in the family came in, excited, with a little bag of coffee. They had been without for longer than they wanted to think about. Immediately, someone filled the coffee pot with water and set it on the stove to boil; then just at the right time, someone added the coffee and stirred.  They left it to simmer a bit…they wanted to savor good, strong coffee.

Just as it seemed about right, someone yelled from the porch,”A horse is coming up the road!”

Immediately, everybody froze.  Except the mother. She went across the room, away from the stove, lifted her long skirts, and said, “Put the pot between my feet!”

A soldier walked his horse into the yard, slowly dismounted.  He came onto the porch and opened the door.   Came slowly in.  He said, “I smell coffee.  Do you have any?”

They must have lied. No. No. We don’t have any.  We had some earlier, but it’s all gone now. We drank it all. Something like that.

He looked all around, poking here and there. But he didn’t find anything.

He didn’t look under the long skirts of the unmoving woman standing against the wall.

He turned and left, mounted his horse, and slowly rode down the road.

I never have been just too sure about some details of our family. Especially if I’m trying to figure out relationships that involve folks a couple of generations back.

My mother’s people were long-time settlers in East Tennessee, and some of them came and went, to and from Virginia, a few times before they finally decided to stay.

My grandmother was a Steel; her father married a Beal. His sister married Grandma’s brother. And that brings us to my grandmother’s double first cousin who told me this story.

In the hills of East Tennessee, during the Civil War, as I suppose in any area that is enduring war, there were not just two groups fighting. There were the Yankees, the Rebels, and then there were the Bushwhackers that everybody had to be on the lookout for.

The father of the Beal family up on the hill and an older son were both in away in the army. There was a young son still at home. He was about 14 and itching to be off to battle. The family had forbidden him to go. He was too young. He was needed at home. Two men of the family were already off somewhere fighting. No, he mustn’t go.

But he did. Ham (short for Hamilton) ran off to …? What? Adventure? Do his bit as “man”? who knows now what he must have been thinking.

Cousin Jay was a complete Southern gentleman. He never called any of these folks Yankees or Rebels or Bushwhackers. I’m not sure which side Ham joined up with, but it didn’t last long. One day the family received word that Ham had been caught along with some others and was being held in the county jail in Rogersville. He was to be hanged at dawn the next day.

Long before dawn, the family sent their servant to town with the buckboard wagon to bring home Ham’s body.

Up in the day,as they waited on the front porch, they could see a cloud of dust being kicked up down the road toward town. They stood, trying to get a better look, and after a bit they could see their own wagon with the poor horse being driven at an awful pace and with an awful clatter.

The servant was standing, whipping the horse, and shouting, “Ham’s out and mounted! Ham’s out and mounted!”

The, I think, bushwhackers (though Cousin Jay would never say exactly who) had come through during the night, raided the jail, releasing all the captives.

           Like many children, I loved to hear my mother talk about the time when she was young. To my ears, she grew into adulthood in a wonderful era. And, to a certain extent, that is true. And that is what I will try to share with you.
Mother graduated Maryville College’s High School program, Maryville, Tennessee, in the 1920’s. She then took a job up in the mountains, teaching school. I never found out just where that was (Take a lesson from this: Ask! Ask while you can!) She took the train, I assume from Maryville, up to a stop not too far from the school. When she stepped off the train, there was always a school board member there to meet her. The community that had hired her would not allow her to walk the mile or two to and from the train because they felt she would not be safe from some of the older boys thereabouts. She roomed with the families of the students, rotating from family to family. She said they were always so kind to her.
        Mother was called the Little Teacher, not because of her size, but because she taught the little children. The school had two rooms, one for the little children and one for the older students. The other teacher was called the Big Teacher.
        Mother fainted a lot that year apparently due to hormone imbalances…or ? …. She also went home each weekend.
          And at the end of the year she went home to Maryville and from there on to St. Petersburg to join Grandpa and Uncle Conrad who had gone there to find work. Grandpa had always earned his living building houses, often building one, moving the family into it, and then selling the one they had just vacated… or something like that! He was a very capable builder and an honest one. He was so scrupulous that his family had a hard time making ends meet. And then, in the mid-twenties or so, when work slowed in East Tennessee, they heard that building was booming in Florida. So they went to join the famous Building Boom. And to hear her tell it, it must have been a truly exciting time for an 18 year old to be there.
       Grandpa hung a sheet across the corner of the room where he and Uncle “Connie” lived, and Mother went off to find work. She couldn’t have landed a better job: with the local newspaper.
       There was activity everywhere, and she and the friends she made at the paper, along with her sister Mary and brother John who had joined the family, made the most of it. She told of a group of them going out along the coast for dinner….a dinner which began with raw oysters….which she had never seen before. Gulping those things down whole, she quickly ate or drank something to hold them down, for she admitted to me she was NOT going to let her friends know she could barely stand them!
By that time Grandpa had managed to find a house to rent and brought Mama (our grandmother) and Uncle John then in junior high school and the youngest, Charlotte, to join the rest of the family. It seems that off and on during this time various friends from East Tennessee also came to find work and either lived with them or hung out at their house. Mother said often Grandpa would stop on his way home from work and bring a whole huge bunch of bananas slung over his shoulder. And Mama would make whole dishpans full of lemonade.
      My Uncle John was the fourth of the siblings and in junior high school. He didn’t like school. This surely must have been accentuated with his older sisters and brother out and about earning money. However, each day Mother would drop him off in front of the school. He would dutifully go in the front door and down the hall. And out the back door. He had found a job in a tobacco shop within a block of the school. At the end of the day, he reversed the process, going in the back door, down the hall, and out the front door to be picked up by his sister Alix. I don’t know how long this went on before the family caught on.
       One of the things Mother did while there was to go barnstorming. Pilots would tour the country, stopping in towns large and small to give folks a ride in this new creation….the airplane. So, of course, how could she miss this? Often, the air show and rides took place on someone’s farm. Taking a ride in a plane was one thing, but the term barnstorming came about because a stunt these pilots often performed was to take the passenger up in the air and fly around a bit and then swoop down through the open door of a barn and out the other side.
      How could I picture this mother of mine some twenty or so years later to be such a dare-devil?
      I was reminded of this tale years later when our daughter, Alix,jr. (named for her grandmother) on her first job at a newspaper in Evanston, IN, talked her editor into letting her take a ride on a hot air balloon and report on it. She has a picture of her way high in the air in the balloon.
      Aunt Mary and Mother from time to time wanted to go somewhere which required a car, something neither of them had. So one day Aunt Mary said, “No problem. We’ll just rent one.” So they did, although neither one of them could drive. They had, however, observed Grandpa and Uncle Conrad driving, so what more could they need? Aunt Mary got behind the wheel and away they went. I never heard where they were headed nor how far they got, but…I do know that when they needed to stop…well, Aunt Mary had not mastered the art of stopping. So, she just drove the car into a tree. No more of the story was related. Repercussions with the car rental? Uncle Conrad’s reaction when he had to rescue them??
        During these months with lots of young people coming and going through their house, one young man became a fixture: Lyle Beman. He came to like the family (or was it just one member of the family?) so much that after a time he and Aunt Mary slipped off and got married. This was followed in due time by the birth of their daughter, Lillian, and the world has never been the same. Lillian was unique from the beginning and eighty-one years later still is (and proud of it). Well, consider that she was born into a household of busy, active aunts and uncles, mother and father, and grandparents, plus various young friends from back home. Maybe sort of like being in a beehive?
         They say all good things must come to an end. I don’t know if that is really true, but this era in the lives of the Wohlwends certainly did when the Crash followed the Boom, and the family moved to Boston, having heard there was work there.

Children are one part of a complex operation, consisting, in part, of family, community, neighbors, schoolmates, etc., etc. Because this is true and because children generally accept whatever composes their universe, they tend not to question nor to take particular note of the general movement within their world.

 There’s a lot I didn’t know about Daddy. He just was. And that was fine with me.

Now, of course, there’s so much more that I wish I knew. Maybe that’s a part of being human. You think?

Our Daddy did not marry until he was 31 and much after I was grown I caught a glimpse or two of his prior life. These glimpses came mainly from a few photos showing him holding up a brace of geese or a string of very large fish. Where they were taken or when I never found out, for I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer. Daddy didn’t like to talk about his years before we came along, although once in a while we could get a little information out of him. But that is for another post.

He did bring along with him to Tennessee his love of fishing, and I can remember some of his fishing trips. He would get up VERY early and cook a HUGE breakfast for himself, including bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes, something the family did not ordinarily have. Mother was not part of this. (probably by mutual consent!)

Way back in the 1940’s there was no bait shop where a fisherman could buy bait, so he had to figure out how to get the bait to make his trip to the lake or the river work. Daddy would go seining for minnows in creeks somewhere over near the mountains —don’t ask me where; I was just excited to be allowed to go along. The creeks might have been somewhere around Clinch Mountain. That’s my best guess.

He took me along on many of these trips, and while he seined, I played in the creek looking for crawdads.

More than once Daddy’s glasses fell out of his shirt pocket and into the creek and he had to go home without them. And once my sandal slipped off my foot and raced away in the swift water. We never found it. I have no memory of what Mother’s reaction was when we came home and had to tell her!

I can still see the crawdads and almost feel the cold, cold water pushing across my feet.