New Beginnings.... Goodbye Miss Annie!

Dad used tell me about Ms. Annie Wheeler and our family's history with her. I heard bits and pieces through the years but finally got him to tell me the whole story!

"Ms. Annie Wheeler was Fightin' Joe's daughter. When he died, she inherited all his land and his plantation, and she controlled it... Daddy and 'em wouldn't do nothin' without Ms. Annie's approval......I mean nothing! She named all the kids and everything! Course, I was scared of her as a bear cuz I'd hear everyone saying, "Oh, Ms. Annie ain't gonna like that!". But see, Daddy and 'em didn't tell her that they were moving... She had no idee... Ms. Annie Wheeler considered Daddy to be the very best sharecropper that she had... He worked on her plantation. Course, you know what a sharecropper is? You are able to live in their house and on their property rent free, but they get a third or a fourth... When you raise cotton or corn or produce, if they want it, everything that's raised on that land they got a third or fourth... And as best I remember, she got a third. Sometimes, cause they would have so much they wouldn't take that, but I remember that Momma used to can tomater soup for Ms. Annie ... She liked that.. Stuff like that ya know...

But, uh, in '42....because we moved to Moulton when I was in 3rd grade and that would have made me 7....I was born in '35....it was in '42... The War had just started... Willie Owens had moved to Moulton away from Wheeler and Willie and Daddy, and their wives, was real good friends... They came down, and I was a little ol boy... I wanted to know everything so when the grown-ups was talkin I would sit and listen....kinda like Josh does you know... I'd sit and listen. Well, Willie said, "Travis, you need to get away from this. You need to buy you a farm in Moulton. You need to get away from this. You won't never have nothin' as long as you work for Ms. Annie Wheeler. You'll be a sharecropper. You won't never have nothin'. You can buy you a farm. And I know where there's a farm is... You wanna go see it?" Daddy said, "Willie I don't have no money!". Willie Owens was on the board of directors for the Federal Land Bank, and he said, "Travis, I'll go on the note with you and you can buy this farm. Its a fine farm. Its the Warren place. Go look at it. You and Ider go look at it.". So they did. It was 160 acres about a mile and a half from Willie's place. I had never seen Momma and Daddy so keyed up and happy about something... Now that was in the fall of the year, and Daddy bought that farm. We had a 20 year note on that farm, and we paid it off in 5 years.

I won't ever forget it as long as I live. We loaded our stuff up on a pick-up truck, and Dan and C.B. had already carried away the cultivators and lot of the farm stuff. They hadn't told Ms. Annie yet. Well, Momma and Daddy went by, I think they owed her a little money and paid her off, and told Ms. Annie they were movin. Aw Lord, she had the awfulest fit I've ever heard. She talked to Momma and told her how sorry our family was and how much she had done for our family over all these years. She told what a bad bunch of...my Mother cried from the Wheeler Plantation to Moulton. I wont never forget it. I've never got over it. Ms. Annie, I don't view her like a lot of people do, cause I remember how she hurt my mother. It didn't bother Daddy, cause he knew how she was...it just rolled off his back, but it hurt Momma. She liked Ms. Annie. She thought she was a good person, and she respected her. She thought the feeling was mutual. I guess Ms. Annie felt betrayed. Maybe they should have told her earlier what they was doin, but they were afraid of her."

And so the Parker Family Farm was born.

Lord Ider... Ya dun killed him!

I've heard this story several times but I laugh every time... Some of the grandkids are protective of their grandaddy, and they don't like this story....;-). My dad told this one last year at Thanksgiving again..

"My Aunt and Uncle lived in Gadsden. Horace and Cass had two children and every year they went on vacation to Detroit to see the Detroit Tigers play. That was Horaces favorite team. They wrote a letter to Momma and asked if they could come and stay the night so they could get to Detroit the next day before dark. Now it was Dwight, Wayne, me, Nat, and Carl... and Billy Bragg was always around too.. So, six boys were always hanging around, so Momma called all of us together. She said, "Now listen, boys. I don't want to spend all the time fussin' at you boys. You must behave.. ". She looked at me and said, "Do you understand?". Now, I knew that the only answer to that question was, "Yes ma'am..". I knew right off the bat that I wasn't going to behave, and Cass and Horace hadn't been there an hour, and I had both of their kids crying...I just couldn't help it.. I was just so mean... Momma didn't yell.. She just looked at me and said, "Come here, boy...".

Now I knew what she was going to do... She was going to grab my arm and jerk me around fussin' on me and that embarrassed me! I was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world and the best athelete and that was humiliating.. So I ran... Now when Daddy and them first moved there it was up on top of this red hill... And they had gone down to the river when the water was low and got some
Smooth river rocks, kindly flat... Well, Momma reached down and grabbed one of those rocks and threw it at me... It hit me right on top of the head.. It didn't hurt, but I fell down, squallin' and carryin' on. Cass looked over at Maw Ider and said, "Lord, Ider... You dun killed him..."

Christmas Dinner at Maw Ider's.... Poor Man's Cake, Cob Battlin', and the Big Nickel

This is a story that Dad told me last year at Thanksgiving... I tried to capture how he told it as best i could...

Daddy was the oldest of 7or 8 siblings, and Daddy had to quit school help raise the family. My grandmother depended on Travis. The same thing happened to Momma. There was two Wileys, Ida and Frank. Momma's daddy, Vess Wiley, died when she was 6 months old. Momma's mother, she was a Kimbral, married Leander Terry. Momma called him Papa Terry, and he was the only daddy she ever knew. They had a bunch of children, I think 7 or 8. Well, Momma became the mother figure when her mother died. I told Betty, they'd come to our house at Christmas because going to Ida's was going Home. And my daddy, even with all those step-brothers and half-brothers coming in, made sure that there was plenty of food and that everyone was taken care of. Their lives were tough. Momma was in the 5th or 6th grade when she had to quit school too,and she became the mother figure of that family.

I know how much all of them loved her. Ida was just...... I've heard story after story from all my cousins about going to Ida's for Christmas Dinner. I told one in Sunday School the other day that liked to tickle everyone to death. Bobby was my red-headed first cousin, he Is deceased now, but he always used to help me with things over here or over yonder, he was a good electrician... Betty just loved him. Me and him and a couple of boys from work built that building out behind our house when we lived on Puckett... Well Bobby worked with me at Monsanto, and we'd work Christmas. You'd have to ask off for Christmas, and lots of time the older folks would get time off. So we would work on Christmas and lots of stuff would be shut down and not a lot of supervision would be there. We'd just sit around and eat and talk... Every year, they'd say, "come on, Bobby Red, and tell us about going to Aunt Ider's!" he'd tell the story about going to eat at Maw Ider's and the kids getting their plates and having to sit on the floor and eat. One of the favorite desserts that everyone would look forward to was the Poor Man's Cake. Maw Ider would always tell Bobby to get a small piece since it was everybody's favorite. He would watch all the adults going thru and getting their food and wait til all of them got theirs and then he'd always go back for another piece. What was so special about going to Iders was that there was so much food! There was a table from here to way over yonder full of nothing but desserts! Poor Man's Cake, Caramel Cake, Coconut Cake, fried apple pies, potato pies... Everything you could imagine... Poor Man's Cake had big ol Muskat raisins, English walnuts and pecans in it... It was kind of a dark cake like a Molasses Cake... It had thick caramel icing with half of an English Walnut on the top.

He'd tell about us playin in the barn, lookin out the winders, fallin in the hay, and cob battlin'... See, when you fed the horses, you'd put whole ears of corn in there and the horses would eat the corn and leave the cobs... We'd soak the cobs in water and throw 'em at each other... Man, they'd sting.... That was cob battlin'... We'd play all day and then Ider would start hollerin' for us to come in and eat again! And we'd go eat again! Ider would give little toys to all the kids... For years she gave all of em dollars. Jean and Boot's boys would call it the "Big Nickel". Go to grandmas and get the big nickel! Ha! Yeah, Bobby said he would always think as they were driving away, "Dad-gummit, it'll be another year til we can go back for Christmas Dinner again..."

My Father the Storyteller...

My dad has always been an exceptional storyteller. Whether it's the Christmas Story every year during the holidays or the yarns that he spins in Sunday School after being egged on by his friends, his ability to captivate a group of people is truly a gift. We have always marveled at his recall. After hearing a story once or twice, he has it...down to the last inflection and tone..

Dads catalogue includes Jerry Clower favorites, fables, fish tales, an endless array of stories from his childhood and adolescence on the farm, colorful tales from adulthood, Monsanto, and his experience as a son, husband, and father.

I am going to endeavor to capture his stories as often as I can and share them on my blog... Though you won't get to hear the inflection and the masterful way that he tells his stories, I think that you will hopefully get a glimpse of one facet of the man that I most admire.