Corsicana is where it all began for our family. That's where our parents grew up, met and fell in love. They married June 30, 1949 and almost stayed to live and raise a family there, but then it all changed and they moved to Louisiana to make a life together. But we have strong roots in Corsicana. It will always be a part of us. We've had the privilege of knowing and being related to wonderful people who lived and grew up there. I've had the most enjoyable times of my life in that quaint little town. Lately my mind has been full of memories from the times I spent there.
I remember....
Riding around on bumpy brick streets in big, stout, cars that are now considered classics. Walking on brick sidewalks to Mr. Harris's grocery store that had wood plank floors and a screen door that slammed just right. We would buy gum and comic books and he would put them in a brown paper sack and we would walk home reading and chewing. After we'd walked the two blocks back to my aunt Mollie's house, we would go up to the "sleeping porch" as they called it and turn the window air conditioner down as cold as it would go, snuggle under the crisp white sheets and read our new comic books under the covers. Richie Rich, Archie Arch, Wendy the Good Witch and Casper the Friendly Ghost were some of our favorites.
I remember my Aunt Mollie's pink gingham dress, my personal favorite. It cinched at her tiny waist with a belt and it smelled divine because it smelled like her. I remember an attic full of treasures that contained trunks and trunks full of World War 2 uniforms, a memorial American flag, clothes and jewelry and hats and wallets and old eye glasses. Much of the discovered treasures had been stylishly worn by some of our ancestors. And it was there that we began to learn about our family that had long passed before we found their belongings in the attic.
We would ask our aunt Mollie so many questions about family members we only knew through photographs. She would tell us stories about James Gibson and Margaret Jane and Owen Lynch and Joseph Garvin and farms and old dirt roads and riding in wagons and trains. She was the oldest of six children and I would try to imagine what it was like when she was growing up.
I thought they were these beautiful, glamorous people, because so many of their pictures depicted them in beautiful clothes and coats. But in reality Mollie had gone to business school to become a bookkeeper and she lived through the depression as well as the death of two brothers, three brothers going to war, car wreck deaths, grandparents as well as her own parents deaths. It was probably just like what life is....hard, terrible, wonderful, exciting and disappointing. Not so glamorous.
But her faith was always apparent to us. She was born and raised Catholic and before bed at night, and after she had put her hair net on and applied her heavenly smelling hand lotion, she would gather us around to say some amount of the rosary before we snugged up in our beds for the night.
She lived in the family home by herself for a lot of years, and she had to be the bravest woman I ever met because of it. I remember being so afraid of that big, clapboard sided, two story house on 212 N 18th Street. It was exciting and terrifying all at the same time. When I was little I thought that someone or something was lurking somewhere in the house just waiting to get me. In fact I was convinced of it. I was also wrongly convinced that multiple people had died in the house. THEY were the ones I was mostly concerned about. They were the ones I was always keeping my eye out for. Turns out no one died there.
But one time when looking in attic trunks, I saw a man all laid out in a casket surrounded by lots of flowers. Well the closer I looked, the more I realized and recognized that he was lying in state in the living room of 212! Gad freaking zooks. Someone call the police, because that man was coming for me. That man, was my great grandfather, and to this day he has yet to show up to get me. MAYBE I was over the top about some things when I was young.
If I could go back and tell my 10 year old self something it would be, "There are no dead people who are going to pop out and snatch you into the depths of darkness and you will survive every single night you sleep at 212. Please enjoy it more and be less afraid of everything."
On this side of adulthood, my fright seems so silly. But back then it was so real, and even though Mollie was very patient with me about my fears, surely she must have wanted to smack me a little. But I never knew if she did. She was as close to a perfect human being as you could find. Sweet and kind, small and demurring. She was always bespectacled in old fashioned wire rimmed glasses and never raised her voice. If she had a bad thought about something or someone, she never expressed it. The only person who could get her a little riled up was her darling baby brother, my father. But even then she would be laughing at him in spite of his causing her frustration.
I remember one day that she and I were going to bake a chocolate cake, and we did. But we didn't put either baking powder or soda in it and it came out heavy and dense and it was a disaster. She felt terrible about it. She never thought she was a very good cook, but she made the best meatballs and spaghetti, and that big old house smelled the better for it when she made it.
Even after all these years since I was in that house with my beloved aunt, I could walk every step of it with my eyes closed. It was a grand house to visit, with rooms galore to explore and play in all day. Mollie's mother Maggie had built it to use as a rooming house after her husband died. So Mollie lived there with her mother and her five siblings, as well as strangers so that the family could make money. And I loved that house so much, even though I was scared of it. I still hate that it's no longer ours, but even if it's not still in the family, it's a part of us and our family history.
Mary Margaret Walker, Mollie, was the eldest member of our family when she passed away in June of 1991. She never married and never had her own kids, but with her soft spoken manner and her love of family, she made a tremendous impact on her nieces and nephews. She was the most precious, old fashioned lady and I loved her with all my heart.
We all did.
She is one of the best things about our family history.
1 comment:
What a lovely tribute. Wish I remembered her.
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