daughterofthedelta

“I was sending news to the Jackson Daily News at the time of the Emmett Till case but was not expected to cover anything as big as that story and so was spared that, though it would have been an interesting one to cover. Local people resented the wide news coverage so it was just as well I missed that one.

“In 1986 a man who said he was employed by a television station in Chicago which was an NBC affiliate, called me and asked if I could give him any information on what happened to Milam and Bryant and other information on the Till case, since he was preparing a documentary on the case and planned to come to Greenwood later. Even this long after it happened I was hesitant to talk to him too much for fear of being quoted. He had interviewed Till’s mother in Chicago and said she had started a club called ‘The Emmett Till Boys Club.’ He did come to Greenwood but I only talked to him on the phone. He told me that Milam was dead and that he had found Bryant operating a store in Ruleville which was similar to the one in Money.

“In 1954 the Supreme Court had handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring that school segregation was illegal, and little did we realize the impact this would have on our schools or how it would affect our lives and those of our children.”

Leflore County Court House, Greenwood, mid-1950s

“The Civil Rights Era, though generally thought of as being the ’60s, really began in Leflore County, Mississippi, in the late summer of 1955 with the brutal killing of a fourteen-year-old Chicago Negro, Emmett Till.

“I was working for a North Carolina chemical company for a brief time that summer, and we had set up an office in a room at the old Holiday Inn. I remember walking into the office one hot day in August and Dan Farrell, my boss, who was a North Carolinian, asking me if I had heard on the news that a young Chicago Negro had been reported missing. The boy had been visiting his uncle, Mose Wright, who lived near Money, and Wright had reported to Sheriff George Smith that two white men had come to his house after midnight and driven away with Till.

“Till had apparently gone into the store in Money which was operated by Roy Bryant and whistled at Bryant’s wife and said, ‘Bye, Baby’ to her. Mrs. Bryant was operating the store that Saturday night while her husband and his brother-in-law J.W. Milam were out of the state.

Bryant Store, Money, late 1950s

“Till was beaten and his body weighted down and thrown into the Tallahatchie River, where it was discovered later. Milam and Bryant were arrested and charged with the murder in Tallahatchie County. The horror of the story drew newsmen from all over the country to cover the trial in Sumner in Tallahatchie County. The pair were acquitted by an all-white male jury, and later a Leflore County Grand Jury refused to indict them on charges of kidnapping. It was inevitable that Mississippi and Leflore County were to be targets in the upcoming Civil Rights struggle.

“Before Milam and Bryant were brought to trial they were supposedly being kept in the Leflore County jail over the Labor Day weekend. The National Guard was called out to provide security around the Court House, and they marched around the block, armed and ready for any possible disturbance.

“The Fourth of July and Labor Day have always been big holidays for blacks and usually have meant an influx of their kin who have left the Mississippi Delta for the North and who return home driving Cadillacs and other fancy automobiles, many of which are said to be rented for the trip southward. So it really wasn’t any different than on previous holidays, but the report was circulated that a steady stream of cars with northern license plates were headed to Mississippi and that there could be trouble.

“As the guardsmen marched around the Court House, a car carrying a load of Negro passengers broke down just as it reached the north side of the Court House by the Yazoo River. Sheriff George Smith approached the car after the occupants had gotten out and started trying to push it. When the sheriff asked, ‘What are you up to?’ the driver got the car started and dashed off, leaving his passengers stranded there and frightened to death. It turned out they were local Negroes who just happened to break down in the wrong place.

“I asked the sheriff if Milam and Bryant had really been housed in the local jail that night, and he laughed and said they had not, but they were trying to conceal their whereabouts and let people think they were.”

I have typed up the first installment of Sara’s Civil Rights Era memoirs, which will go online early tomorrow morning. As a rule, I will not be commenting on these posts or  adding background material unless I have something very relevant to contribute. Photos will be included when available.

My memories of these times are those of a child, although a child who was unknowingly living on the edge of history in the making. Sara was in the midst of it every day and was often stressed, worried and even frightened for her family when events began to spiral out of control. I remember the palpable tension in downtown Greenwood and the hubbub in our house when newsmen from all over America piled in to send their wire stories and hook up their telephoto machines. It was all exciting but confusing to me, as my family’s relationship with blacks had always been cordial and pleasant and I could simply not understand the anger and harsh words that we saw nightly on the national news and daily on the streets of our little town.

I will leave the observations of those times to Sara, who somehow juggled the demands of a job that had grown into a challenge she never expected with her intense devotion to raising two girls and taking care of Russell. Looking back at it all from the safe distance of almost fifty years, I am amazed at what she did. Tomorrow we will stand back and listen to her tell the story. Thanks for listening.

Just a note: I’m going to start posting Sara’s Civil Rights memoir by this weekend, I hope, or Monday at the latest. Please be forewarned, if you have been reading Sara’s stories recently or all the way back to last April. These recollections are of her most challenging professional days and there is rarely humor or light-heartedness. Greenwood was the epicenter for massive social upheaval and the citizens and leaders of this town don’t always come off very well, nor did they deserve to come off well. Mistakes were made and opportunities missed, but there were also brave people trying to do their best on both sides of the issue. Sara witnessed it all and she reported it all as best she could. But she was deeply impacted by the times and the place in which she had been raised and that will be evident in some of her opinions. So I invite you to share these fascinating memories with Sara, but leave any judgemental attitudes somewhere else. Thanks.

Before we move on to Sara’s Civil Rights Era memoirs, let me tie up the loose ends for those of you who don’t know our family.

Russell retired (not altogether willingly) from the grocery business in the late 1980s. He immersed himself in gardening, a hobby at which he was quite skilled, grandparenting, puttering around the house and yard and generally delighting in being the Wise Old Man of the East Adams neighborhood. His mind was clear as a bell even as his physical health declined, a victim of all those Salems for all those years. Had he not been a smoker, we might have him with us today at a jolly age 94. I wish.

I have to share my favorite Russell story, along with a promise that his story will someday be told in more detail on this site. We spent so much time together doing so many fun things, from working in the grocery stores to riding around Greenwood at night to shivering in cold football stadiums watching our Greenwood Bulldogs and Ole Miss Rebels, but the very, very best thing we did was toss baseballs. He would pull up in the driveway, exhausted from a long day or days out on the road for H.J.Heinz, and I wouldn’t even let him get in the door before I had a baseball glove in his hand. We would toss balls back and forth in the yard until he just begged to go in and see Sara and prop his feet up for the 5:30 news. When I was five, I broke my right collarbone badly in a fall from a horse and was in a very limiting brace for several months. After the brace was removed, Russell was gently helping me along with our ballgame in the backyard, but noticed that my dominant arm was so weak that he said (and I will never forget this), “Charlie, you’re throwing like a girl. We gotta do better than that.” He patiently coached me to throw in an odd three-quarter motion that, I guess, maximized what arm strength I had. I never lost that motion and I managed to play ball with my male buddies well into high school and with my son, Jim, all through his childhood. Now here’s the memorable part of this tale: In 1991, Con Maloney sponsored a contest to name Jackson’s new minor league baseball team, having lost the Jackson Mets to another town. I won that contest with the suggestion, “Jackson Generals.” The prize was season tickets to the ball games, a trip to the parent team (Houston Astros) season opener and the honor of throwing out the first pitch ever for the Jackson Generals. The night of that game, Sara and Russell came down and Jimmy, Emily, Jim and I joined them in special seats behind home plate. When it came time for me to go out on the pitcher’s mound for the ceremonial first pitch, the very kind young Generals catcher walked out with me and asked me how close to the mound I wanted him to stand so I could get the ball to him. Trying not to hurt his feelings, I told him to get back behind the plate in his usual crouch. He gave me a dubious look, shook his head like “Oh, boy, this is going to be embarrassing” and squatted down behind  home plate. I wound up, went into my Russell-inspired motion and fired that ball right across the heart of the plate. The catcher stood up, laughing and giving me a “thumbs up” before he rifled the ball out to second base. I could see Russell on his feet in the stands, clapping and beaming  and bursting with pride. Probably the only dad in his group who could ever say he saw his child pitch in a professional ball park.

A year later, he was gone. All those cigarettes had destroyed the blood vessels in his intestines and he slowly and painfully bled to death over a six-month period. We all knew he was not long for this world, so we had time to say goodbye, but that didn’t make it any easier. This sweet, sensitive man, child of the Delta and reluctant soldier, peddler of pickles and ketchup and soup and baby food, daddy and granddaddy extraordinare, slipped away in Jackson’s Baptist Hospital early on the morning of June 16, 1992, with Sara sitting right there by him.

They had 45 years together, wonderful years that should have started earlier (but didn’t, thanks to WW II ) and lasted longer (but didn’t, thanks to Salems). Sara was predictably devastated and bereft, but she rallied, as we knew she would. She had experienced losses before that would have knocked a lesser woman to her knees and she knew how to fight back. She continued with her creative pursuits and was always finding a new project. T. D. Wood, her old Delta State boyfriend, came back into her life for a few years, and that was a joyful and fulfilling relationship that ended when, as Sara put it, he “ran off with an older woman.” (Sara and T.D. were 82 at the time, and the hussy was 83 or so.) We laughed and teased her about being dumped twice by the same guy, but in retrospect she was really heartbroken and her social life diminished after that.

Jimmy and I moved back to Greenwood in 2005, ostensibly for professional opportunities but also to help Sara through her declining years. She was one tough lady and made her own way until the winter of 2008-2009, when the post-Christmas dark days seemed to close in on her. She was dangerously frail and began hearing voices and seeing old friends and family members who simply weren’t there. Or at least we couldn’t see them. In a move that broke all of our hearts, we relocated her to an assisted living home in February, where she truly tried to be happy and involved. But it wasn’t 409 East Adams and it wasn’t home. She became more and more reclusive in her room and in August, 2009, she slipped into a coma from which she never returned. Cathy and I had been so worried about how we were going to get her through her first Christmas away from East Adams in almost 60 years, but she took that decision out of our hands. She died peacefully on  September 11, a big news day, which would have been her choice. The Greenwood Commonwealth and Memphis Commercial Appeal both ran long articles about her career as a journalist, which would have pleased her so much.

The house at 409 East Adams was bought by the perfect young couple and their two little girls. It just shines now with light and life and family activities, and it makes me happy to drive by and see it in such good hands.

The emotional coward in me will not let me sum up my parents’ lives and their impact on mine at this time. Let’s move on into the Civil Rights era and Sara’s description of those days, and put the “summing up” off for a few weeks. At least until after Christmas.

One more tale before we go, though: When I left Sara’s room at Indywood on the morning she died, there had been a leak of some sort in the storage closet next to her room. The housekeepers had moved all of the contents of the closet out in the hallway. So, as I left that dark room to go meet with the folks from Wilson and Knight, the hall was lined with Christmas trees. I had to laugh before I cried. I don’t know how she did it, but Sara left us with a reminder that Faith, Hope, Love and Santa always endure. Merry Christmas to all.

“I have never had any delusions of being a skilled writer or of ever writing a book in the hopes that it would be published. Twenty-five years of newspaper reporting and seeing feature stories published with my byline have pretty well satisfied my writing ambitions, but I have long felt the compulsion to share my memories with my children and grandchildren so that they might know what my life has been like, to share some of our stories, to learn a little about their ancestors, and to remind them to hold on to their own memories, to treasure each day and each year. They all add up to a total life story.

“In writing my own story I have relived each year of my life, have recalled long forgotten friends and events and have reaffirmed my belief that no one has enjoyed life more than I, and no one had been more blessed. Of course there have been sad times, tragedies and heartache, all of which helped to make us maybe a little stronger and more able to face whatever may come. But the good times of growing up in a big loving family in a small town, knowing the wonderful love of a mother and for too brief a time a daddy, and then having a devoted husband and two wonderful daughters and four precious grandchildren have made the remembering worthwhile.”

These are the last words of Sara’s original memoir, completed in 1990 and never updated, despite our pleas that she do so. Tomorrow, or soon after, I will finish Sara and Russell’s tale for those of you who do not know “the rest of the story,” and soon after that I hope to put Sara’s Civil Rights memoirs online at this site.

In Sara’s day, when a newspaper story was complete and the writer was satisfied, that would be indicated by the notation: -30- . It meant the job was done and done well. You will still see it at the end of a journalist’s’ obituary, a quiet tribute from one professional to another. So from this writer to the one who taught me all I know of the craft, thank you. Thank you. I hope I’ve honored your memory.

-30-

“I would start about Thankgiving cooking for Christmas and would freeze all kinds of goodies. The cutout cookies were one of the first things to go in the freezer and then the cakes. I made enough cakes for me and Mama, which was usually at least eight all together. Everybody’s favorite was the coconut, which I finally quit making because the coconut was ruining the porch carpet as were the crumbs from Mary Carol’s favorite, the Waldorf red, which contained two bottles of red food coloring.

“For nearly forty years I made candy at Christmas to give to all our friends and to get fat on ourselves. One years I made twenty different kinds. We would dole out some thirty boxes each Christmas and the kitchen would be hopelessly sticky for months.

“I have never understood the people who say, ‘I’m glad it’s over’ after Christmas because I am never ready for it to be over. Along about September that magical spell starts coming over me, and I want to start making decorations and buying things for Christmas, and before it gets here I am just as excited as the kids. It is just my time of year, and I love everything about it, the Christmas music, the stores, the cooking, the decorating and most of all the wonderful memories.”

I’m sure a psychologist would have had a field day with Sara and Christmas. Somehow this holiday of holidays brought out her inner child, her creative streak, her penchant for perfection and her generous nature. For weeks on end, the candy rolled out of the oven and across the kitchen counters, and cute Christmas plates were crammed with pinwheels and divinity and bourbon balls and fudge and those elaborately decorated teacakes. When it reached the point that the Crisses had nowhere to put down a supper plate, it was time for “the list” to be made and we fanned out around Greenwood with these much-anticipated plates of sugary wonders. You and I have both seen the looks on the faces of folks who appreciate your thoughtfulness but who really don’t want whatever culinary offering you’ve brought to their doorstep; that look was never seen when Sara showed up with goodies. She was the master of the Domino’s sugar bag and the Bundt cake pan and if you were on her candy list, you were one lucky family.

I’ve already posted about Christmas Eve at 409 East Adams, an event that those who attended will never forget or manage to reproduce. What I may not have mentioned is that every square inch of the house would be decorated. Bows up the banisters, dolls and dollhouses and manger scenes on every table, Victorian carolers on the front hall coatrack, Norman Rockwell houses on the mantel, Christmas bedspreads, red and green throw pillows, holly-design curtains, even the infamous red and white Christmas toilet paper that sent Tiny into a tailspin when she thought she was having a GI hemorrhage. If you stood still at our house from mid-November on, you were likely to be decorated. And as the years passed and Cathy and I grew up and went to our own homes, Sara filled much of her time with making even more decorations and trolling Big Lots and Patsy’s junk shop for more knick knacks and “cute things.” The attics filled up, and the tradition which Jeff, Jenny, Emily and Jim will always hold dear was Thanksgiving afternoon, post-Betty Jane’s turkey and rolls, making dozens of trips up and down those stairs carrying Santas and dolls and wreaths and garland and The Christmas Tree. Sara perfected the art of decorating styrofoam balls and must have made 500 of them, and her tree was a wonder to behold. She ringed it with her famous dolls and would sit in the living room for hours on end, just admiring her handiwork. Well deserved rest.

After the marathon of Christmas Eve, it was hard to wind down and get ready for Santa. Cathy and I would be tucked in in our pine-paneled front bedroom, wound as tight as springs, listening for Santa to tiptoe in the front door. (We had a mantel but no chimney…..go figure.) Cathy always managed to slip in some kind of little alarm clock and the set-off time crept backwards every year, to the point where we were bouncing out of bed, through the little closet that connected the downstairs bedroom and into Sara and Russell’s room by 4 a.m. Sara was as excited as we were and bailed right out of bed, but Russell was not amused. While we paced the kitchen, he disappeared into the bathroom and I honestly thought he would never, never come out. Years seemed to pass. He would finally emerge in his old plaid bathrobe, cigarette in hand, and shuffle into the kitchen for coffee. At which point Cathy and I burst through the kitchen door into the living room, where dark shapes and all the magic of Christmas lay waiting. When Sara flicked on the lights, there were toys and books and bikes and playhouses and more than you can possibly imagine. Russell would take his seat on the couch with a cup of coffee and watch his girls squeal and laugh and compare. Sara had to be right in the middle of it all, playing with the toys often before we did.

I remember not one single Christmas on East Adams that was not perfect, the stuff of Jimmy Stewart movies and Bing Crosby songs. There was so much joy and love and wretched excess, and Sara just reveled in it. And now, from the perspective of adulthood and economic reality, I have no earthly idea how she and Russell did what they did. From the exciting day when she would pick us up at Bankston with the brand new Sears Christmas catalogue in hand until the late Christmas Eve night when all those toys had to come down from the attic (I think they were in the attic; she never confessed), their meager paychecks must have been stretched to the screaming point. There must have been whispered discussions and so many things that they wanted that were put off, just a bit longer, so Cathy and I would never know the first whiff of disappointment on December 25th. I stand in amazement at my parents, yet again.

Christmas has rolled around again and last night I saw Sara’s boxed-up Christmas tree and Rubbermaid containers of styrofoam balls out in our storage unit. There were no trips up and down the stairs last Thursday, and I know every one of Sara’s grandchildren would have given their right arm for that opportunity again. Weren’t we all blessed to have Sara Christmas running the show? At this point, I am sad, and that must be shaken off, because the one emotion Sara would not tolerate at this time of year was gloom. If we honor her memory, the refrain “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” must be remembered and honored.

Melanie and Susan, Christmas Eve circa 1963

“As little ones kept being added to the family we could always count on having more children around and more presents under the tree to be opened.

Howard, Russell and Son, armed with cameras on Christmas Eve

There were a lot of funny incidents to remember, such as the time Howard broke one of my Christmas glasses, which I had bought at Weiler’s [Jewelers] when they were going out of business and busted out of his pants when he leaned over to sweep up the pieces of glass, and also the time that Tiny went to pieces in the bathroom when she used our toilet paper, which had red Christmas designs on it, and thought she was having a hemorrhage.

Mamie, B.J. and Tiny, Christmas Eve at Sara's house

There was the time when Tiny’s granddaughter, Beth, was about two and Uncle Roy looked at her and said, ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ which was just his normal way of talking to kids, and she thought he was Santa Claus. Big and Uncle Roy always enjoyed the parties as did Mama. Big was especially happy when she could get into the ‘Wild Turkey’ which was her favorite whiskey. Uncle Roy never took a drink in his life.

Susan, Tricia and Uncle Roy

Sara, Melanie, Rena Roach, Mamie, Christmas Eve circa 1967

“One year we dressed up Pam in the Santa Claus suit (at the Gwin’s house next door) and she appeared at the party as an elf man. She did a pretty good job of fooling her younger cousins until Melanie spotted her shoes and said ‘Those look just like Pam’s shoes.’ We all got a big kick out of the elf man. Another time Son dressed up in a Santa suit, and every year our friend Son McMillan from Minter City called on the phone and pretended to be Santa Claus and talked to all the children.

Jessie and Cathy, Christmas Eve circa 1966

“Probably Georgia had the most fun of all. She always said this was all the Christmas she had ever had, and she would go home loaded with gifts after standing at the sink for hours washing up all the dirty glasses, bowls, etc.”

Georgia and me, in our usual corner, circa 1964

There is no way to adequately describe the Christmas Eve parties at 409 East Adams, which began in 1952 and grew and grew until the early ’90s.  Sara began decorating every inch of the house around Thanksgiving, and she met the Christmas tree truck in the Kroger parking lot (the old Kroger, behind Fincher’s) as soon as it rolled into town. Those poor truckers didn’t know what to do with this little lady who examined each tree as it was being unloaded, fingering the needles for freshness and potential to hold hundreds of ornaments. Russell (who knew better than to be off on a sales trip on this afternoon) would load the anointed evergreen into the back of the station wagon and off we would go with that year’s prize, plunking it into a bucket of water on the back porch until time to haul it into the designated spot in front of the living room window. It was always so tall and so full that Russell had installed an anchor in a ceiling beam to hold it up and it fell his job to crawl underneath daily and refill the water tank. He was so sick of the whole tree business by Christmas Day that the poor old dried up husk would be out in the ditch by lunchtime.

The presents would begin filtering in a week or two before Christmas Eve. Mamie’s were true artworks, sheltering carefully selected gifts from the big stores of Columbus, Ohio. They arrived by train and brought gasps of wonder as they were unpacked from the crate. Then Tiny would come in with big boxes of gifts, followed within a few days by Betty Jane, Tricia, Rawa,  etc. etc., etc. Keep in mind that at the height of this tradition there were 8 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren, each of whom got a gift from each of the 5 Evans offsprings and various cousins, great-aunts and various folks who wandered in from year to year. If you do the math, it’s easy to understand how the gifts crept further and further across that huge living room and it would take a good half-hour for Tiny to hand them all out to the children.

The anticipation was almost unbearable, especially for me and Cathy, as we had to live with all those presents filling up our living room. We would creep in and shake the boxes with our names, trying to guess what treasures were hidden inside. As the days crept closer to Christmas Eve, Sara bustled around the kitchen without rest, always with a Perry Como or Bing Crosby holiday record going in the background. Then, on the appointed day, Russell got in the act. His fiefdom was the meat and his very presence in the kitchen flipped some sort of harridan switch in Sara. She would chase him out and he would tinker around the back porch, adjusting the big heater on cold nights, laying out the very well-stocked bar, sweeping off the carport, anything to stay busy until he could creep back into the kitchen. Cathy and I learned very young to stay out of the way. Georgia arrived after lunch and just took care of details as she always did. By the time the short December day began to darken, it was as if all the joys of Christmas were descending on East Adams, as aunts and uncles and grandmothers and cousins and great-aunts and great-uncles and some folks that we couldn’t quite identify came pouring in, laughing and hugging and kissing and settling in for the Best Night of the Year. The men gravitated to the back porch, and my memories of my uncles B.J. and Howard and Son and Gray are always spiced with the smell of Scotch and bourbon. The wives found their chairs in the living room, balancing plates of Sara’s candy creations and cheese straws and decorated Santa teacakes. Howard and Son cranked up their 8 mm cameras, blinding us with the flashes and capturing us all for posterity. The children were reasonably well-behaved, entranced by that cascade of gifts spilling out from underneath the tree.

Some invisible signal would be given for the cousins to settle down and for Tiny to take her traditional role as the hander-outer-of-gifts. My spot was inviolable, just to the right of the tree, with Georgia. Always with Georgia. She got as many gifts as the rest of us, but wouldn’t open hers until she got home to her tiny house off Avenue I. She helped me with mine and was just as excited with each present as I was. Then she would help me carry them all back to my bedroom, the only safe place to shelter them from younger cousins (Yes, Susan and Trey, I’m talking about you) and to be savored later. By the time all the presents were handed out, Russell was patrolling with a massive black garbage bag, sweeping up the ribbons and wrapping and styrofoam peanuts like a human vacuum cleaner. The tree looked sadly barren, but it was the only sad element in that room.

Plates were loaded with ham and turkey and casseroles and homemade rolls and cake slices, and eventually everyone would start drifting out for their own Christmas Eve preparations in their own homes. We would tidy up a bit and help Georgia pile all her gifts and a bottle of Jack Daniels and all the cash which had been quietly stuffed into her apron pockets into the car, and, during the very best years, all of us and the Bartlings would drive down to watch the outdoor Nativity tableau at the Presbyterian Church for a little while. We had to stay long enough to see the curtains drawn back and the angel appear, although it seemed that many years the designated angel was someone with a less-than-stellar reputation around Greenwood, eliciting caustic comments from Sara. Then we would carry Georgia home, see her safely inside and head back to our house to try to wind down and go to bed.

All of our generation, plus one: Susan, Pam, Trey, me, David, Cathy, Beth, Melanie and Bill, Christmas Eve 1970

We’ll cover Christmas Day tomorrow, but suffice it to say that no children in the history of the world have ever had better Christmas Eves than the grandchildren of Jessie and Howard Evans in those years of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Sara was the conductor of that orchestra, but our sweet and thoughtful aunts and uncles and grandmother were the instruments that made it sing.

Sara, Tiny, Son, Mamie and Tricia

Don’t give up on Sara’s memoirs; I’m throwing out the leftovers today and hope to be back in business, with at least two more postings, by tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving and Egg Bowl weekend to all!

409 East Adams, a rare Christmas snow, with Sara's handmade door decoration

“I never had any desire to live anywhere but Greenwood, and the huge oak tree in the backyard which he [Russell] protected with stakes when it was just a twig next to the swing set reminds us that this really is where our roots are. At least our children will never be in the position their Daddy has been of not being able to call any place his childhood home.

“There are so many memories that are important to me, but I think probably the Christmases stand out most of all, those wonderful Christmas Eve’s with all the family here for our Christmas party. We started having the party at our house in 1952 after Mama had been sick. Before that we all ended up over at the Stott house at one time or another on Christmas Eve but there was really no party. Our crowd grew each year and often included some outside the immediate family. We first served them from the kitchen counter, but as the family got larger we moved the food to the back porch, along with the bar.

Christmas Eve presents waiting to be unwrapped

“Our decorations grew too until the big attic is now half full of Christmas decorations. For many years we dressed up a life-size Santa Claus who wore a realistic false face complete with beard from Sears, a suit which Pam had worn in a program, and the big black riding boots which Russell had taken off a dead German officer during the war. He sat in the ‘Grandpa rocker,’ which belonged to Mama’s Daddy, and had his bag beside him filled with little favors we made for the children who were invited over to see him and get a Christmas cookie. We would have continued to have him with us at Christmas if his rubber face had not turned yellow in the attic and made him look jaundiced and the rabbit fur which adorned his suit started to shred. We still have the boots.”

An early version of Sara's famous living room Santa

It’s going to take a while to describe Sara’s Christmas obsession, so tune in over the next day or two. I promise it will put you in the holiday mood and make you tired before Thanksgiving has come and gone.