Pawpaw was a Frenchman who came to America and settled in New Orleans. Big Granny was born in Mississippi and at the age of 8 her mother dropped her off at an orphanage in Pontotoc. Pawpaw drove a milk wagon and delivered milk to his area customers. Big Granny had grown up living with foster families and had to work hard at whatever task they put before her (often farm work) so she was as strong and capable as any man and worked right along side my grandfather in the dairy business. She and Pawpaw employed a few black gentlemen and women to help with the dairy. My mother often told me about the closeness among the families and of the fun times she had with her playmates. I’ll never forget her telling me that skin color among the children simply wasn’t an issue.
Big Granny would entertain me by fashioning “frog houses” in the wet sand outside the dairy barn. She would bury her foot in the sand and carefully remove it leaving the imprint of the little “frog house.” Funny, I never saw any frogs move in! One Easter she hid a sweet little doll with a tiny pink bed and blanket in the border grass for me to find. As I grew older I spent part of each summer with Big Granny and PawPaw after they sold their dairy and moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas. There they managed a two-story apartment building. I recall taking swimming lessons, visiting the I-Q Zoo, walking downtown with Big Granny and having Sunday School on top of the mountain. Many times from the screened public porch on the second floor of the apartment building, I would watch as a blind man led by his guide dog would fill his water jug with spring water from a spigot outside of one of the bathhouses.
I honestly don’t recall a lot about my PawPaw. He and Big Granny didn’t seem close and never seemed very affectionate to my way of thinking. He was much older than she. He would call me, Cheree, in that lovely French accent of his and I loved the sound of my name pronounced that way. He would sit outside the apartment building in the afternoons, reading magazines, smoking his pipe or a cigar. I can still recall the permeating smell of PawPaw’s cigar whenever I rode in his aqua and white Nash Rambler. He was always busy in the apartments working to make the tenants happy. My favorite picture of him, a full profile of him sitting on a park bench, resting his hands on his walking cane seems to reflect the sadness I think he probably felt.
I knew my Big Granny was a bit gruff and sometimes would talk sternly to me and then love me up, and over the years I realized that the trip to the orphanage she and her mother made when she was only eight years old colored her entire life from that point on. She later revealed to me the abuse she suffered from the hands of workers on the farms where she was being fostered. I think she never felt worthy around many people and except for the grace extended to her by Jesus would have been a very lonely woman. In my mind’s eye, I can see her sitting in her chair or on the couch holding her Bible and reading it for long periods of time. The wonderful Words of Life she read on those precious pages made her life meaningful and connected her with the Father who adopted her into a family that would never give her up. She often gave devotionals in her church and one of the devotionals she wrote was read at her funeral – Stepping Stones to Heaven.