Grandma’s parents both died when she was a small baby of a few months old.  She and one of her brothers, Uncle Dave Ervin, were adopted and raised by Harriette and Tom Isbell and they lived in Englewood, Tennessee.  The house they lived in has been torn down. Perhaps it was because she was an orphan, but for whatever reason, Grandma was very tough.  She did have a hard life.  She was married and had three children before she was twenty years old.  She used to have to cook for Grandpa Joines and all of the farm workers when she and Papa lived with his Father.  All of that in addition to caring for her children. She always sewed all of their clothes, kept house and did all of the cooking and cleaning.

Grandpa Joines went to prison for making moonshine.  Someone told on him and the law found his still under the hen house.  Papa stood at the door with his rifle as they took Grandpa Joines away and Grandma begged him not to shoot because she and the children would be left alone with both of them in prison. Great Grandma Joines was killed by lightening and was not there to help Grandma.

I grew up in Grandma’s house and as I think of Grandma I think of the way she always wore a nice dress and even though most every day was spent cooking and cleaning, she always wore heels and made efforts about her appearance.  Whenever Papa’s brothers and their wives and families would come from out of state to visit home they would go to Papa and Grandma’s.  Grandma was someone who was easy to talk to and who enjoyed other people.

She was tireless and hard working and never complained about having to clean up after everyone else or for having to hand wash Papa’s handkerchiefs which I always secretly admired her for.  Whatever she was doing she always did with patience, not hurrying so she could rush to the next thing.

I remember when McNabbs lived below us she sat in the yard one day with Charlie and helped him with his homework.  She had only a 7th grade education but she encouraged Charlie and was interested in doing things like that.

Every Monday the Jewel Tea man would come to the house.  He would get this huge metal box and carrying it by the handle would bring it into the house and sit it on a chair and Grandma would look through it.  They would chat and gossip as she looked.  He would bring food packages, toys, household goods, jewelry and other things.  I suppose he was the modern version of the jew peddlers that filled the city streets and country lanes with their wares in earlier times.

Grandma would always buy something from him and the dishes we used came from the Jewel Tea company.  Grandma once bought me a pair of earrings from him.  The Jewel Tea man was just part of life back then.  After Papa built his grocery store we also got regular visits from the coca cola man who would leave three cases of cokes every week which Mother would pay for.  Later one of the uncles ended up with the empty bottles.  Back then the location of the city that bottled the cokes was on the bottom of the bottle and Papa would always make us guess which city was on the bottom of his empty bottle.

 

Of all the things that Grandma ever gave to me, this is the thing that I treasure the most, a keepsake, made in Japan, its from the 50s/60s, of a little girl in a bonnet, writing a letter with a cat by her side.  She got it when she went on a trip somewhere and she said it reminded her of me.  I think the kitten may have been what made her think of me.

I was always grateful for any kindness and maybe that is the reason I kept so much stuff and it has sentimental value to me.

Grandma could be a little bit of a troublemaker.  She once called me to the kitchen window and told me “Look there goes Ruth and Imogene to town and they never asked you to go”.  I once told Jean that Grandma caused most of the trouble between the sisters but Jean denied it and defended Grandma although not very convincingly.

 

Occasionally Grandma and Mother would drag the old washing machine from its corner to the center of the back porch and fill it with soap and water.  They would wash loads of clothes, bed linen, towels and anything else that was dirty.  Then they would rinse the stuff in two galvanized tubs that they filled with cold water and then run them through the wringer, put them into pans to carry them to the clothes lines.  Only quite recently has Nancy Helen stopped using the clothes line in their back yard, having grown up with one she also used one.

I remember going into the kitchen and trying to stick my finger into the batter when Grandma was baking a cake or making icing but she wouldn’t allow me to do that.  I remember one Christmas morning riding my new scooter through the dining room toward the kitchen door where she was standing as everyone got up to see us when we found what Santa left under the tree for us. She would just be disgusted at having to put up with me, she had already raised her children.  She would sigh heavily and that sigh became a very familiar thing to me.  I’m sure it was not a fair arrangement for her when we went to live with her after Daddy died.

Mrs Nona Cook, a neighbor and one of the McSpaddens, lived to be a hundred and three years old and didn’t have a wrinkle on her face when she died.  Back in the times in which they lived,  protecting your skin from the sun so as not to appear tanned or dark skinned was a sign of breeding among White people.  Only low classed people who had to do hard labor were dark skinned.  Women carried umbrellas or wore hats and gloves to protect their skin.  In the summer when Grandma would go out the back door for whatever reason, she would always stop at the door and put on a long sleeved top and doff her bonnet.  She always had lovely bonnets which she sewed for herself and I don’t think she even needed a pattern.

Often she would carry cans to the garbage or after gathering all of the food scraps onto a plate she would take them outside where she would put them on the ground for whatever cats or dogs we might have had at the time.  They  would lick the plates clean while Grandma pulled a few weeds from her flowerbeds or puttered around the yard and then she would bring the plate back into the house and finish washing dishes.

I remember one time she had a small wooden barrel which I have no idea what it was used for or where she got it.  But she had some material and she wrapped it around the barrel and added flounces and cording and made a beautiful little stool for me.  Then she took a precious little table that had a drawer concealed behind pull out handles and she made a pretty skirt for it so that I had a gorgeous dressing table and stool.  Somewhere she found a mirror to add to it.  We took it upstairs to my room and I used that little table and stool for years.  Today I would give anything for them, but I think Gussie Bryson took the pretty little table to Tellico Plains and gave it to some of her relatives.  What I wouldn’t give for the furniture that both Papa and Grandma just gave away.  A lot of it would probably be priceless today.  But as with most people, they valued the cheap new stuff that could be bought at the furniture stores in town just so they could have something new and the latest styles. Mother told us that a lot of furniture was burned in the fire place for heat when times were bad.

Every year at Christmas, Easter or other special occasion when all the daughters and their families would come home, Grandma would cook a feast fit for royalty.  The house would be full of relatives and she cooked for hours to prepare the food.  One of my favorite things was the Applesauce cakes that she would make.  She loved to cook and spent an awful lot of time in the kitchen.  Then she inexplicately seemed to enjoy washing the dishes.  I remember her aruging with the daughters when they tried to wash them.  One time she told one of them, No let me wash them, I need to wash my hands anyway.  I’ll always remember her saying that.

She would make the most wonderful Applesauce cake and frost it with either caramel icing made with brown sugar or with more ordinary brown sugar divinity frosting. I liked the caramel the best by far. Then she would take pecan halves and place them on top.  The best cake ever.  But she could cook just about anything.  She made the best cornbread and iced tea and I have never tasted any that is as good as hers was.

She would make what she called tomato soup but it was made with cut up potatoes and her canned tomatoes.  I don’t know what she did to make it so good but I can never get it to taste like Grandma’s did even though the recipe was just potatoes, tomatoes and onions!?  I remember that she would have extra tomatoes from Papa’s garden, so she would go out into the old barn which had dusty dirt floors full of wood lice and from the exposed beams she would take down a few Ball jars.  Spider webs were everywhere of course.  She would take them into the house, hit them a lick or two with the dish rag, rinse them in hot water and can the tomatoes.  I have had stuff go bad after I boiled the jars, but oddly she never lost any of her canned goods even though she was not particular about the cleanliness of the jars.  Dr Kimbrough told her hot water would kill germs and she firmly believed it.

The barn had no hayloft even though there was a space for one.  On one side it had a partition where Papa kept chicken coops, his scales to weigh his fighting chickens and just assorted stuff like that.  Once Nancy Davis talked me into climbing into one of the chicken coops.  Aunt Huretta had a fit and immediately shampooed her hair.  Nancy told me she wrote about that for one of her college classes.  At any rate, I would never ever use a Ball jar or anything else after it had been in there but Grandma did.

I have searched for Grandma’s cake recipe but cannot find it.  Maybe it is inside Grandma’s terrific cookbook which Mildred got after Grandma died.  Aunt Harriette gave me one that she said she thought was the one Grandma used and here it is.

Applesauce Cake

2 1/2 cups applesause
4 cups flour
2 1/2 cups brown sugar
2/3 cup of butter or shortening
2 eggs
1 teaspoon cloves
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1 cup raisens
1 cup pecans

Put 2 1/2 cups of applesace in a kettle and let it come to a boil, remove from stove and dissolve 3 teaspoons of soda in it. Mix rest of ingredients, flouring the raisins. BAKE AT 350 til done

Easy Caramel Icing

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup milk
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

Melt butter, add brown sugar, boil over low heat 2 minutes stirring all the time, add milk and keep stirring until mixture boils.  Remove frmo heat, beat until cool.  Add sugar until thick enough to spread.

When I lived in Chattanooga I used to catch the bus home after work but on my way to the bus stop I would go into the Russel Stover candy store and buy dark chocolate vanila creams.  On Valentines I would always buy Mother and Grandma a box of Valentine candy.  I bought Mother a huge box and Grandma a smaller one.  Neither Grandma or Mother ever acted like they were really pleased if you gave them something.  They barely acknowledged such things.  But I remember one time Grandma took her box of chocolates and was looking at it and then saw that Mother had a bigger box so she just dropped her box on the dining room table, snorted and walked into the kitchen.

Back in the dark ages when I was going to school, girls used to take home economics classes in high school which was required. One time we were instructed to buy material and a pattern and make a dress.  I went to town after school and bought some gingham material and the pattern, it was a dress with a gathered skirt and scoop neck with barely any sleeve.  I took the stuff home and attempted to cut it out and sew it together.  Grandma saw me struggling with it in the hall where I had the sewing machine set up.  She sat down at the machine and gathered the material and sewed in on the machine.  Then she helped me put rikrak around the bottom of the skirt and around the neck.  It turned out to be one of the cutest dresses and the teacher bragged on it when I wore it to school and my friend Ruth’s sister, bought similar material and tried to make a dress like it.

Another time I had to cook a complete meal for home ec class.  I went to town after school and bought pork chops, potatoes and some other stuff and when I got home I started to fry the pork chops.  Grandma came into the kitchen and told me I was not going to fry them because she was not going to let me mess them up. She cooked the meal and I never cooked anything I had bought. We had the best porkchops, biscuits and gravey but I was pretty upset about not getting to cook the meal.

One time when I was in about the first or second grade we walked home from school and as we got into the yard there was this person dressed in an old black coat and a halloween mask.  I knew it was Grandma but still it scarred me because she was acting really scary.  I ran into the house and she laughed and laughed at that.  I felt really stupid.

Once when Aunt Huretta was sick Grandma stayed in Chattanooga for a couple of weeks to take care of her and keep the house and help care for Uncle Charlie and Nancy Davis.  Before she had gone down there I had stepped on a thorne or something in the yard and there was dew on the ground and my foot got infected.  The first thing Grandma did when she got home was to come and look at my foot which had by then healed up.

I used to have to do her hair and she would offer to other people for me to fix theirs too.  I remember doing Rowena Bryson’s hair, she lived next door and was Homer Bryson’s sister.  I would have to do Aunt Harriette’s hair and one time Grandma and Aunt Harriette bought me a teapot with creamer and sugar bowl for doing their hair.  They also bought me a necklace and earrings at the drug store.  I fixed Grandma’s hair one time and she put on a pretty lavender dress and silk scarve, I took her picture with a poloroid camera and when Mildred saw the pictures she took them.

When late in life, Aunt Lucy, Grandma’s sister, would come to Madisonville and stay a week with Grandma, Aunt Lucy would always want to throw the dish water out the door rather than pouring it down the drain. Who knows why. They were born in the 19th century so who knows what they grew up with during those times. Maybe that was the reason, I don’t know.  But Grandma could be the same way. When I was little and I would be playing in the yard, more times than one, Grandma would come outside with a pan of dirty dishwater and throw it on me!  She thought that was very funny.

She once asked me out of the blue if I wanted her to make a quilt top for me.  She had a turtle pattern that was given to her by Ruby Cagle, one of Aunt Harriett’s good friends.  I told her yes and she made me one and then later Mother quilted it for me and I still have it.  She was always piecing on a quilt.  She would even carry her quilt peices down to Papa’s store when he came home for dinner and peice them at the store.  I have several of her quilt tops that were never quilted.  She used to keep her cut out peice-work in cookie canisters and I have several of her canisters that are very old.

She used to put orange seeds into her flower pots if she was eating in the living room watching tv.  I had two of those orange trees for years and years.  They must have been planted back in the 50s or so.  The small one was so pretty and one time Mother asked me if she could have it.  I gave it to her and she let it die.  The bigger tree died a few years ago when my cats used the dirt before they learned to use the litter box.  Those trees were so old and I hate it that they died.  I still have mother-in-law tongue that I believe was Grandma’s but I’m not sure.  She always had a red begonia sitting in the kitchen window and always had Evening Primroses growing around the yard.  She had calla lillies and lilac bushes and Irises that were the richest dark blue color and they were so pretty.

Grandma was never educated and never had much of a chance in life but she very often showed originality of thought and had a curious mind.  I think that she was born a sweet, intelligent and kind person but we are all shaped by our enviroment and parents play the vital key role in life.  Grandma never had either of her parents and never formed that necessary bond with them. I grieve for the person that she never had a chance to become.

But she left seven daughters who went on to give her plenty of grandchildren and great grandchildren and she was certainly not a biological dead end.  I look at the accomplishments of some of her descendents in my family and I think she did very well for herself and this world in spite of what life threw at her.  She did very well with the cards she was dealt.  And I remember her talking about how hard her life was but about how she was always happy in spite of it all.  Somewhere in Heaven she is probably meetng new people and learning new things as she always loved to do in this life.  She was tough but you have to be tough to survive and thrive in this life and she did.  She bloomed where she was planted.

 

Five generations: L to R: Debbie, Tommy, Harriette, Jessie and Rand