Do you sing as you are milking a cow? Do you talk to the cow and ponder your thoughts? I wonder if the young farm girl was thinking about a certain young man? On that long ago day, the cow knocked over the bucket of milk on Gretchen just as J.B.H. came walking up. She stood up to speak with him. They had been given permission to go courting. At a proper time, he would propose marriage, the young couple just nineteen and twenty. Of course, she said yes, wet apron and all. My family has always celebrated the eleventh of November 1917.
He was tall and good looking and she was pretty and petite. "I am going to marry that girl, someday," Papaw told his brother when he first saw Mamaw. He and his brother had come over to her community to help clear wood after a bad storm.
The old time courting often occurred at "singings", a day long get together at different churches. Most churches had itinerant preachers traveling to different communities. The neighbors would sing shaped notes from hymnals, breaking for dinner on the grounds. The young people would group up and walk down the road or climb in a wagon for a ride. Another courting activity would be simple "play parties" given at family homes. Being God-fearing, Christian folks, there weren't any shenanigans going on.
Mamaw and Papaw married inside her family home. She wore her best dress. When I was a teenager, I taped a great interview with her about her early life. But being that has been a few years ago, I can't place my hands on it. Of course, tapes will last forever and there will always be tape recorders. I wish I had written it down.
She told me about the party after the wedding vows. The whole house was filled with family and friends. For several days, ladies in the community had helped the family prepare food, especially cakes and sweets. Mamaw often made a delicious Jam Cake for our visits home. I have made one or two from her recipe. I like to think a Jam Cake was among the bridal offerings.
This was their beginning, making life on a small farm in Southwest Arkansas. My grandfather would be called to Little Rock Camp Robinson until WWI was over. Armistice Day. Then they began raising a family of four children to adults. A curved glass picture of a sitting infant hung in their living room. By the time I realized young ones might pass through a mother's arms, the mystery and sadness kept me from asking her the story. He was just whispers and buried in the family cemetery under a marble stone topped with a little lamb. He was their firstborn.
We celebrated their Fiftieth Anniversary on November 11, 1967 with great fanfare, a house of family and friends. A real tiered wedding cake and this time, a beautiful dress especially made for the occasion. Papaw stood, still handsome and proud just as a new groom.
Well-wishers poured out onto the large porch, often carrying wrapped presents with gold-themed gifts such as sets of golden towels, glassware, a clock and even the heavy gold-wrapped Family Bible usually gifted from the family. A guardian of pieces of paper or written recognition of weddings, births and deaths. The dash - the living of waiting minutes, hard hours and happy days rarely written down except in family letters in boxes on my top shelf.
I can see the bright yellow leaves of the nearby Hickory tree reflecting in through my office window at late morning. The soft golden glow is temporary but enough to catch your breath. To change the thoughts of the hard days our community is walking through. Other communities have courageously walked before us, showing strength and perseverance, to help us find our own peace, our own Armistice Day.
