My desk sits beneath the window of my bedroom/office, the largest room in my house. The desktop is solid oak, five and a half feet long and two feet wide. It is supported by curved wrought iron legs with the face of a Roman god on each foot. The worn surface is ideal for writing (I use yellow legal pads) and for “putting things on.” There is even a long, wide filigreed iron shelf between the legs to hold spillover clutter.
That desk came out of my father’s office at the bank in Thomasville, Alabama. I have three other things from his bank.
First is one of the bank’s checks, with my eldest sister Edith’s picture on it. Daddy had two sons, but when a beautiful baby daughter came along he was so proud that he had her picture printed on all the bank’s checks. That was a long time ago, 1901 or 1902, I believe.
Then I have a paperweight with a stone base on which three monkeys sit in the familiar pose: one has his hands over his ears, one has his hands over his eyes, and the last has his hands over his mouth. Their words of wisdom are carved around the base: “Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil.” The number 235 is carved on the back, so I suppose this was a limited edition of a popular paperweight. Chipped and discolored by decades of use and age, it is easily the ugliest item in my house but I treasure it because it reminds me of Daddy’s philosophy.
My third small “relic” is a needle case. Printed on the front are the words:
Compliments of Farmer’s Bank and Trust Co.
Thomasville, Ala.
Capital $100,000.00
Undivided profits $25,000.00
“Pioneers of West Alabama.”
Inside are an assortment of needles, small calendars for 1910 and 1911, an advertisement for the bank showing a well-dressed man pulling an equally well-dressed but dripping wet woman out of the water. “We can help you out,” the caption says. On the back is an explanation of the gift, saying, in effect, that the needles “point the way to the bank.”
I wish I still had one of the metal baseball-shaped banks that once were given to Thomasville children to encourage them to open their own savings accounts.
Most of what money came my way went into one of those little cast-iron banks. I never had an allowance. Mother told me years later that when I was offered an allowance, my feelings were hurt by the idea of being paid each week like a servant. I preferred to look under the brass candlestick on the mantel in my parents’ bedroom where they put loose change for general use.
I did fill my baseball bank often enough to make several deposits into my father’s bank. When the bank failed in the early 1930s, I was wiped out financially, lost my life savings. But that was the least of it.
I learned of the bank failure while I was in Mobile on a school trip. The Thomasville High School band used to go to Mobile to march and play in the Mardi Gras parades. We rode in a flatbed truck which had sides and benches added to its bed. Riding it a hundred miles to Mobile took a long while and was not comfortable.
I rode in my first streetcar in Mobile. At one point I pulled the cord by my seat, the car stopped, and the conductor helped me off. I was too embarrassed to tell him I had not known what the cord was for and had not reached my destination, so, tired though I was, I had to walk about another half mile.
When I got home the next day, my father asked, “Did you bring any money home from Mobile?”
“Yes, sir. I brought three or four dollars.”
“Then that is all the money we have in the world,” he told me.
Thus I was introduced to the Great Depression. We survived. People who owed money to my father paid in produce or whatever they had. I recall buckets of yellow and green label Alaga syrup lined around the whole baseboards in our kitchen.
After Daddy died in the summer of 1936, we lost our house and all of our furniture except for the glass-front bookcases with their hundreds of books, most of which I still own.
I also have a small cherry drop-leaf table that was by my father’s bed. Its drawer still smells of his Prince Albert tobacco and his pipe.
Mother and I moved in with Aunt Bet and Tabb—who was Mother’s age—in their house behind ours, facing the highway to Grove Hill.
The piece of furniture I miss most is our dining room table. Aunt Bet brought it from Texas to Thomasville when she came home to live. Actually, she came home to have her second baby, a little girl bearing the family name Tabb. Arrangements for the trip back to Thomasville had been made when her four-year-old son Jamie broke out with measles. Aunt Bet was never a woman to be deterred. She put a hat and veil on Jamie to hide his measles spots and came on the train, no doubt spreading measles across four states on that long journey.
Aunt Bet never returned to Texas. She never mentioned her husband’s name again. None of the members of the family ever knew what happened to him.
In addition to Jamie and the measles, Aunt Bet did bring home her dining room table, a massive piece of furniture. It was solid oak and could be extended with leaves to seat twenty people. The legs were hand-carved dragons, complete with scales and big mouths. As a child, I liked to play under that table, pretending to ride those dragons. After Aunt Bet’s death, the table was sold.
After I was married, with Byrd Goodman’s help I tracked down the new owner of the table and tried to buy it. I explained how I enjoyed riding these dragons when I was a little girl.
“My children like to ride them, too,” she said, and she would not sell it.
Craftsmen in a Texas prison made that table. I still want it. And I still wish I had kept one of those baseball banks.
See? She started me on a project but I haven’t thrown away a single piece of paper on my desk, have not even arranged any neat stacks of stuff. She makes me waste so much time!
All She managed to do was remind me of a favorite piece of doggerel:
Cleaning Up
No matter how
I shred and toss
This aging clutter
Still is boss.
I expedite
With all my might,
But still this room
Is a messy sight!
Friends are thoughtful about bringing food: jellies, preserves, pies, cakes, homemade rolls and biscuits, Brunswick stew, figs, peaches, country syrup, and vegetables fresh from the garden (I like to shuck the corn, pull off all the silks, and eat it raw, right off the cob). But ninety-two-year-old appetites can’t deal with the bounty—every bit of it appreciated. Some days I am tempted to open a curb market on my sidewalk!
I’m a right good cook (simple foods) so meals are no major problem. She and I do argue occasionally about the prolonged use of leftovers. Being a child of the Great Depression, I have a hard time throwing anything away, especially food.
My mother and Aunt Bet were brag cooks. Their reputations for making cakes, candies, date logs, chicken salad and rolls were unchallenged in the Thomasville community. I can close my eyes now and still hear Aunt Bet saying, “Tiptoe through the kitchen. Don’t shake the floor. I have a cake in the oven.”
When I was a little girl our kitchen was in a building in the backyard, unattached to the house. Many Southern kitchens were.
I liked to cook until She arrived on the scene. Now everything takes so much longer to do. By the time I plan the menu, prepare the meal, eat and wash dishes, it’s time for exercise and a nap. Medicine must be taken then, too.
Then it is time to