Mother…
is in the photograph below. She is pictured with her friend, Thelma McGee. This photo of Thelma McGee and Slena Mae Peebles is of 1945 vintage. My mother and Thelma McGee were lifelong friends. This photo accompanies the article written entitled “Mother”.
Related Articles
- Mother… (rememberingtheshoals.wordpress.com)
Mother…
is a two-syllable word that means so much to so many people. But that one little word has the ultimate importance once the person that owns that name is gone.
Sue Burden and I were talking after she had lost her mother in January of 2007. She stated, I am now an orphan. Imagine that, being an orphan when you are our age. I did not comprehend the profoundness of that statement at the time. We had both already lost our fathers and that was hard, mighty hard. Hard. I. Say. She went on to state that losing Daddy was hard, but losing her mother seemed harder; she questioned if it was harder because now she felt like an orphan. She said she no longer ‘belonged’ to someone; there was no one left that ‘had’ to love her no matter what. Others could choose to love her, but they were not commanded or required to do so, like a Mother.
A handmade gift from my daughter
I did not learn the aptness of the statement until just nine months later, I too would be an orphan. Mothers have such power and do not even know it. Think about it. A child can divorce a spouse; but a child can not ‘divorce’ a mother. Mother is the first to hold a child at birth. Mother is the one that mends broken hearts. Mother is someone a daughter looks up to when little; someone she just can not get along with in the tween and teen years; someone who is a built-in babysitter when the daughter becomes a mother herself; and the one the daughter strives not to become like, until at a certain age the daughter decides that she is her mother after all. And, hopefully, does not feel that to be a bad thing. It is then that a daughter and mother become best friends forever.
But then comes the time when Mother does not exist anymore except in the hearts of the ones she loved and sacrificed for most of her life. And, yes, Sue was right; is right. Maybe it is because we both lost our fathers first, but for some reason at the loss of our Mothers we both have the ‘orphan’ syndrome. Or maybe it is because Mother could take little pieces of nothing and make something to be cherished out of it – like the pillow she cross-stitched for my daughter about how a Grandchild is special. Before she gave it to my daughter, her first great-grandchild was born and she added to the cross-stitch “and Great-grandchildren, too.” Maybe it is because as my colleague said, you KNOW who your mother is and that creates a bond stronger than steel. Afterall, it is a scientific fact that when soldiers fall on the battlefield, the one they cry out for is Mother. As an aside, could that be why the military forces the servicemen/women to write back home to Mother first? And losing Mother is not easy to get through. Maybe it is not something you get through but something you have to endure. Either way, it is hard.
The cross-stitched Mother with flowers and butterfly was stitched just for me by my daughter. I have kept it for a lot of years now. I think that little item, along with a little white satin heart-shaped pillow that had Mothers are Special stitched on it are my best-loved treasures from her; with the exception of the diplomas and degrees that she earned and the obvious exception of my grandson.
Now I understand Roy Acuff‘s song from long ago titled “Will the Circle be Unbroken“. I believe that Sue would agree with me that Roy Acuff felt like an ‘orphan’ on that day, at least he conveyed it in his strong presentations of the song. The lyrics make this lonesome plea…
I was standing by my window on a cold and cloudy day
When I saw the hearse come rolling to carry mother away
Will the circle be unbroken by and by Lord by and by
There’s a better home awaiting in the sky Lord in the skyI said to the undertaker undertaker please drive slow
For this lady you are hauling oh I hate to see her go Will the circle be unbroken by and by Lord by and by
There’s a better home awaiting in the sky Lord in the sky
I will follow close behind her try to hold up and be brave
But I could not hide my sorrow when they laid her in her grave
Will the circle be unbroken by and by Lord by and by
There’s a better home awaiting in the sky Lord in the skyWent back home and home was lonesome since my mather she had gone
Found my brothers sisters crying what a home so sad and lone
Will the circle be unbroken by and by Lord by and by
There’s a better home awaiting in the sky Lord in the sky
On the next article, there will be a photo of my mother and Sue’s mother to honor them. They were best of friends just as Sue and I are best of friends now – and have been all our lives.
This poem was given to me many years ago by my daughter as well:
God made Mothers God knows that children always need someone to show them the way; A special someone warm and kind to care for them each day... He knew that children need someone compassionate and wise to teach them how to walk and talk and sing them lullabies... God knew that children always need a love beyond compare tohelp them in so many ways, to understand and care - and that is why God made Mothers.
Bang, bang, bang…
have you heard that incessant banging for the last thirty plus years?
That was me banging my head against the brick wall on my Murray line for longer than my youngest child, now thirty-one, has been alive. I started family research on a serious note back in the early 1970’s. Though to disclose the truth of the matter, I started back in my earliest childhood listening to stories of the family lines from all my elders. I was the only girl in my family and I always seemed to be around the adults at family gatherings. So, I got to listen and ask some questions. I got to hear the tone and inflections associated with those oft told stories. Some stories were funny and some were tragic. Some relatives were very good salt-of-the-earth kind of people; others were scoundrels. But, I loved and cherished them all because they were family. Those stories of my elders are some of my most cherished memories. I wish I could bottle and sell the memories as I saw, heard, and immersed myself in family history. I have always found family mesmerizing. But, alas, I found that even as early as I was interested in family facts, that even by that time most of the elders had gone and become history. There were a few reliable sources and I made the highest and best use of them as I could. And I wrote it down.
I was able to trace my Murray line back to John M Murray and could document no further. I located information on him back in the 1970’s, before computers were even invented – probably. I knew him to be an ancestor, but could not document his father or even where John M Murray was buried. I located information on his service in the War of 1812, the Creek War, and skirmishes and battles in the Mississippi Territory way back then in the seventies. I even located his obituary in a northern Alabama newspaper. The obituary clearly said that the old soldier of the War of 1812 had lived to be nearly one hundred years of age and was buried at Vance’s Station in Limestone County, Alabama. After decades of searching, I finally just concluded that Vance’s Station must have been one of those ‘lost’ cemeteries. Sad. True. More below the fold.
Related Articles
- War of 1812 nearly divided U.S. republic, author says (nationalpost.com)
- Between ‘kindred’ enemies: Book provides new interpretation of War of 1812 (canada.com)
- Drums Along the Niagara (online.wsj.com)
The Depression era…
now, that was a very hard time for everybody.
Before they were married they would walk around in Courtland. Once while they were walking a bear was there, right
Slena Mae, Preston, RD, and Ellen Peebles 1934
there in a yard of a home that still exists today. It must have scared Drue because she recalled it decades later.
Living a sharecropper life is hard on the whole family. The second eldest daughter, Slena Mae Peebles, told of some of the sharecropping homes where the family lived. For most of them, they would put newspaper on the walls for what little protection against the elements it would provide. One place they lived she said the front porch was high and she and the other children would play under there. The cracks in the walls would let the cold wind right through. And the cracks in the floor would give a view of the chickens pecking under the house. She recalled they did not have toys or dolls to play with; but, rather, would break off twigs at the forks of a branch. The fork would make the legs for their headless, armless, faceless dolls. I might add that she played the game of Jacks with me when I was little, and I would venture to say that she was the Jacks champeen of the world, so she must have had lots of practice with Preston and Ellen growing up. Sometimes in the spring the girls would pick passion flowers, pick off just the right number of pistils or stamen. Presto, they would have a ballerina doll. Although, I doubt they ever saw a ballerina at that point anyway.
One son, R.D. Peebles, imagined himself a preacher. That is him in his little overalls. He would get up on that stump and place those little hands on his gallouses and preach. He would preach hell fire and damnation. At least as best a little guy was able. On that stump, he held very long sermons, it would seem. His sermons often consisted of the all important biblical admonitions of ‘dog’ and ‘hairpin.’ Now don’t laugh those were pretty impressive words for a little preacher. R.D.’s oldest daughter, Mary Jane Cochran, asked did I know that her Daddy had filled in as preacher at their church. I had not known that.
At Christmas they were truly excited to get an apple or an orange and maybe sometimes a piece of candy. They didn’t have much, but neither did others they knew, except for the Wheelers. Miss Annie Wheeler had a real porcelain doll. Drue had evidently seen or heard of it. Drue would show the girls a Sears and Roebuck catalog and ask them which dress did they like best. Preston, Slena Mae, and Ellen would pick out one they liked and Drue would hand sew them one like it. They would later put the pages to that Sears & Roebuck catalog to good use with a little crumpling. The girls’ dresses were made of flour sacks, as was their underwear. One day, Drue informed Slena Mae that she didn’t have any more flour sacks to make her any drawers and Slena Mae cried at that thought.
Drue’s first school was the Wheeler Basin Church building situated across the highway from the Joe Wheeler home. Slena Mae talked of going to school at Midway. Her teacher was Mrs Glenice _____ . She also taught me when I went to Colbert County High School. Children were often put to work in the fields of necessity. This limited the schooling that the children received. Preston could pick 300 pounds of cotton a day. Slena Mae and Ellen were not far behind. They also hoed cotton for pennies a day. The cotton picking would yield a whole 75 cents…or was the cotton the whole family picked that amounted to 75 cents per day?
Volumes could be written about the memories of their stories and their life. The photo accompanying this posting was made about 1934. The family had just lost a child of about eighteen months in age, J. W., to whooping-cough, iirc. Slena Mae told of the little one’s teeth marks that were still in the wooden eating table after he died. He made the teeth marks during teething as they would sit at the table.
In 1940 Reynolds Metals Aluminum Company opened at Listerhill, Alabama. They hired and trained a lot of local men. Robert Duncan Peebles was one of those men. They had moved to Sheffield. They lived in Sheffield the rest of their lives. After a train crushed into the car as Robert and co-workers headed to Reynolds to work and a long hospital stay, Robert D. Peebles retired from Reynolds Metals Company. He received a gold watch for his years of service. He was a mason, a bass fiddle and fiddle player, and he was talented in making things with his hands. Robert Peebles is the one that even when he died, all his grandchildren seemed to think they were his favorite.
A high school student interviewed Drue Peebles in the 1980’s for a school project that required an oral history of someone who lived during the Great Depression. When asked what did she remember most about the Great Depression, Drue replied simply. She said, “Being hungry.”
Remembering the Shoals 