Their backyard was full of flowers, as you can see, with a bird bath in the middle. My grandfather is holding an apple off of the apple tree just off camera to the right. My grandmother made wonderful applesauce with those apples and lots of cinnamon. The vegetable garden was behind the flowers. They were married on June 11, 1919 in Montgomery Alabama and came directly to Detroit. Both were 70 years old in this photo and had been married for 39 years.
This is one of my favorite photographs of the two of them together. I like the peeling and the white out and even the scotch tape. This one was taken on the side of their house. If we could look in the basement window on the left, we would see my grandfather’s shop which smelled of machine oil and wood and basement and faintly of the pine-sol he sprinkled around. “Lizzie”, the model T Ford is behind them. It was taken 2 February 1941. I bet it was Sunday.
To read my grandfather’s proposal letter to my grandmother, click here. For other Sepia Saturday photographs of older couples and who knows what else this week, click here.
For Sepia Saturday #200, I am re-sharing a piece written by my mother, Doris Graham Cleage, which I first shared in February 2011. I am going to let her tell you about her home life and early years in this piece compiled from some of her writings when she was in her 50s. This is my entry for Jasia’s 103rd Carnival of Genealogy, Women’s History and for Sepia Saturday #63.
My mother in the cherry tree in the yard.
In Her Own Words
My parents married in Montgomery, went to Detroit and roomed with good friends from home, Aunt Jean and Uncle Mose Walker (not really related) A favorite way to pay for your house was to take in roomers from home and it was a good way for them to accumulate a down payment on their own house.
Mary Vee was born in this house. It was a very difficult delivery, labor was several days long. The doctor, whose name was Ames, was a big time black society doctor, who poured too much ether on the gauze over Mother’s face when the time for delivery came. Mother’s face was so badly burned that everyone, including the doctor, thought she would be terribly scared over at least half of it. But she worked with it and prayed over it and all traces of it went away. Mary Vee’s foot was turned inward. I don’t know if this was the fault of the doctor or not, but she wore a brace for years.
Finally that year ended and they bought a flat together with Uncle Cliff and Aunt Gwen (not really related). Mother got pregnant again very soon. Mershell Jr. was born the next year, 1921. I can imagine how she must have felt. She had never kept house, never cooked and never really had someone who told her what to do since she had worked at eighteen. She had never taken care of little children or babies.
Meanwhile I guess Daddy was enjoying being the man of the house, treasurer and trustee at Plymouth, with a good job, a good wife and money accumulating in the bank for a home of his own someday.
Their house. Survey photo.
Mershell Jr. was born in1921 at Dunbar Hospital, with a different doctor. When he was a year old, I was on the way. The flat was too small. Grandmother Jennie T. was consulted, sold the house in Montgomery and moved to Detroit with daughters Daisy and Alice. She and Daddy and Mother bought the Theodore house together in 1923. I was born in Women’s hospital and came home to that house where I lived for twenty years, until I married. Mother and Daddy lived in it for 45 years.
Grandmother, Daisy and Alice got good jobs, sewing fur coats, clean work and good pay, at Annis Furs (remember it back of Hudson’s?) and soon had money to buy their own house, much farther east, on a “nice” street in a “better ” neighborhood (no factories) on Harding Ave. While they lived with us I remember violent arguments between Alice and I don’t know who – either Grandmother or Daisy or Mother. Certainly not Daddy because when he spoke it was like who (?) in the Bible who said, “When I say go, they goeth. When I say come, they cometh.” Most of the time I remember him in the basement, the backyard or presiding at table. Daisy and Grandmother were what we’d call, talkers.
1923, backyard, Detroit – Mary V., Mershell holding my mother Doris.
About four blocks around the corner and down the street from Theodore was a vacant lot where, for some years ,they had a small carnival every year. I don’t remember the carnival at all. I never liked rides anyway. Not even the merry-go-round. But I remember it being evening, dark outside and we were on the way home. I don’t remember who was there except Daddy and I. He was carrying me because I was sleepy so I must have been very small. I remember my head on his shoulder and how it felt. The best pillow in the world. I remember how high up from the sidewalk I seemed to be. I could hardly see the familiar cracks and printings even when the lights from passing cars lighted things, which was fairly often because we were on Warren Ave. I remember feeling that that’s the way things were supposed to be. I hadn’t a worry in the world. I was tired, so I was carried. I was sleepy, so I slept. I must have felt like that most of my childhood because it’s still a surprise to me that life is hard. Seems that should be a temporary condition.
Mershell holding Doris. Fannie. Mershell Jr and Mary V in front of Plymouth Congregational Church. Detroit.
Boy children are very important to some people and my parents were both pleased to have a son. When Mershell Jr. was killed, run over by a truck on his way to school in 1927, it was a great unhappiness for them. I remember standing beside Mother at the front door. A big policeman stood on the front porch and told her about her child. She did not scream, cry or faint. Daddy was at work. She could not reach him. She put on her hat and coat and went to the hospital. I never saw her helpless. She always did what had to be done.
Mershell Jr, Mary V., my mother Doris in front. On front porch steps. Detroit, Theodore Street.
Howard was born the next year. They both rejoiced for here God had sent a son to replace the one they had lost. He died of scarlet fever at three. When you read carefully the things she wrote, you’ll know what this meant to her. But she never took refuge in guilt feelings or hysterics or depressions. She lived everyday as best she could and I never heard her complain.
Ours was a quiet, orderly house. Everything happened on schedule. Everything was planned. There were very few big ups and downs. When Daddy lost his job during the depression and when my brothers died, it was Mother who stayed steady and encouraging and took each day as it came. Daddy would be very depressed and Mother must have been too, but she never let on. I do remember one day when I was about seven and Howard had just died. I came into the kitchen to get a drink of water. She was at the sink peeling potatoes for dinner and tears were running down her cheeks. I don’t remember what I said or did but she said, “I will be alright, but you go and keep your father company.” I did, and I’m sure her saying that and my constant companionship with my father influenced my life profoundly. She was thinking of him in the midst of what was, I think the most unhappy time in her life. How could God send them a second son and then take him, too?
I remember…when I was very young seven or eight – if I got very angry I would go upstairs by myself-take an old school notebook and write, “I will not be angry” over and over until I wasn’t angry anymore. Anger was rarely expressed in our house. I only remember my father and mother arguing twice as long as I lived at home – and I was twenty before I left. But my sister and I fought often. Antagonism was the strongest feeling we had for each other.
Back: Aunt Daisy, Grandmother Turner, my grandmother Fannie. Front: Mary V. Mershell Jr and my mother Doris. 1927, backyard Theodore, Detroit.
Aunt Daisy took us downtown to the show every summer and to Saunders for ice cream afterward. And I always ended up with a splitting headache. Too much high living I guess. She and Alice would buy us dainty, expensive little dresses from Siegel’s or Himelhoch’s. They all went to church every Sunday at Plymouth (Congregational). Daisy always gave us beautiful tins of gorgeous Christmas candy, that white kind filled with gooey black walnut stuff, those gooey raspberry kind and those hard, pink kind with a nut inside, also chocolates, of course!
From top: my grandmother Fannie, my mother Doris picking something off of baby Howard who is held by my grandfather Mershell. Backyard of Theodore house, Detroit.
I lived at home until I finished college and married. Everyday when I got home from school the minute I opened the door I knew what we were having for dinner. The house would be full of the good smell of spaghetti or meat loaf or greens or salmon croquettes or pork chops and gravy or steak and onions. We had hot biscuits or muffins every day. My father did not like “store bought” bread. I hardly knew what it tasted like until I married. Our friends were welcome. The house was clean. Our clothes were clean and mended.
Mary V, Howard, my mother Doris. 1930. Detroit, MI.
Mother often spoke of friends in Montgomery but I never knew her to have a close friend. She was friendly with everyone, especially the Deaconesses with whom she worked at church. She was basically very reserved and what people call today a “very private person”. I don’t remember ever hearing her say “I want” for herself. Oh, she often said, “I want the best for my girls” or “I want you to be good girls” but I never heard her say “I want a new dress… or a day off… or a chocolate bar…” and I never heard her say “I feel this way or that” except sometimes she said, “Oh, I feel so unnecessary.” She was a great one for duty, for doing what was called for and not complaining. You could tell when she was displeased by the expression on her face. Whenever she corrected us, she always explained why, so we came pretty early to know what was expected of us and when we erred the displeased expression was all we needed. She didn’t nag either. No second and third warning. Yet I don’t remember ever being spanked by either parent. If either one said, “Did you hear what I said?”, that did it.
We never talked back to them. We did things we knew we weren’t supposed to do like all children, but we were careful not to get caught. When we did get caught, we were horrified. I never felt confined and resentful, but Mary Vee did.
Mother had some of the same reserve with us that she had with strangers. We rarely talked about feelings, good or bad. She and Daddy tried to keep things as even and calm as possible all the time. So everybody cried alone although you always knew they would do anything for you because they did. You didn’t bring your problems home and share them. You came home and found the strength to deal with those problems. At least I did. If you needed help, you asked for it, but first you did everything you could. I don’t think they ever said no to either of us when we asked for help and that extended to grandchildren too.
Last night I posted an undated photograph of my grandparents. I assumed it was taken soon after they were married in 1910. Then one of my daughter’s asked me when it was taken and where it was taken. I went back to my box of Cleage photos to see if I could find some others taken on the same day. After going through quite a few pictures, I noticed that there were numbers on the back of the photographs.
Here is the back of the photo in question. That is my handwriting. I started looking for other photos with the number 573. Voila! I found two. One says ‘Toddy and Theodore Page”, not in my handwriting. Toddy is my father and Theodore Page was the nephew of Gertrude, my great uncle Jacob’s wife. He was living with them in Detroit, according to the 1930 census.
Taking a side trip, I began to look for information about Theodore (Roosevelt) Page. I found him at age 6 living with his parents, Jacob and Anna Eliza Page, and siblings William and Ophelia living on a farm in Mississippi in 1910. By 1920 he was 16 years old. He and his mother were living with sister his Ophelia and her husband, Henry Red, in Arkansas. He worked on the family farm and had attended school in the last year. I’ve been trying to find Uncle Jacob’s wife’s maiden name for years. Maybe finding her sister will help.
The other photo with the number 573 on it is a very blurry group photo. I see my grandmother Pearl on the far left with little Barbara in front of her. Hugh is next to Barbara, My father is in the front row center, next to him is my great grandmother, Celia Rice Cleage Sherman, a little kid, probably my uncle Henry is next. Behind Henry we see Theodore Page. My grandfather is on the end. Is he still holding the mystery object from the other photo?
Now I’ll make another attempt to date the photo. My father was born in 1911. He could be 10 or 11. Barbara was born in 1920. She could be 2. Gladys was born the end of September in 1922. Does my grandmother look pregnant? My estimate is summer of 1922.
With this new information I will begin sorting, and scanning the box of photos in the near future.
Christmas 1968. L to R My sister Pearl, me, Nanny in the window.
I can’t find a picture from Christmas 1967 but I think we looked pretty much the same. I bought that pea jacket at the army surplus in Santa Barbara when I was there for a student conference, summer of 1967. I cut my hair that summer too, right after the Detroit riot. Not sure if Pearl had cut hers yet in 1967. I have looked at this photo many times but this was the first time I noticed my grandmother looking out of the window at us. We had moved to the flat with my grandparents that fall, so it’s a different house, but it’s Christmas time and I look the same. I had just graduated from Wayne State University with a major in Drawing and Printmaking and a minor in English. On January 2, I caught the Greyhound to San Fransisco. But that’s not today’s memory. Here is something I wrote in 1967.
Christmas 1967
It was Christmas and cold. Snow blew wet, sticking to my coat and hair. We went to the shortest corner, down Northfield, past three Junior High girls laughing and cars sliding slow on the ice. The sky was gray behind bare branches. Snow fell quiet, without any wind. My sister and I talked some about…I can’t even remember. We crossed to Pattengill Elementary, went down past the school and stopped outside the empty play field.
I got out my new movie camera and told her to walk away, down toward Colfax, and not to act silly. She started and I turned on the camera, feeling silly myself, taking pictures like a country bumpkin in the city. She started lunging to one side, sort of a half skip with some serious drag to it. I told her to be serious. She did, then walked back. I tried to keep the camera from moving. It stuck and I turned it off twice with a heavy click, jarring, blurring the picture.
We went inside the playground. I shot some more of her walking up and away. A little boy was sledging down a driveway into the street. She said, come on take some behind the trash cans. It’ll be good. I shot some more. Discovered while she was behind the garbage cans I was out of film.
Both of us bent over the camera and tried to shut it off, but we couldn’t. My hands were cold. Red, wet and cold. I put on my gloves and we unscrewed the battery door with her suitcase key to shut it off.
We walked back toward the far corner. I wrote BLACK POWER in the snow, and then PATRIA O MUERTE and VENCEREMOS. Pearl asked what else can we write but I didn’t know. We went on out of the playground and down Epworth talking about how bad somebody can be to you and you still love them. We went on down Allendale. There was a dog sleeping on a porch. Pearl said, loud, keep on sleeping! And he did.
It was getting dark and still snowing. Cold, wet, quiet snow. Grey like the inside of a shell and quiet like when your ears are stuffed up from a cold. Some girls went by across the street, talking loud. We turned back down Ironwood and went home.
I have never participated in a carnival of genealogy before. I thought about it but never took the plunge. After reading Jasia’s contribution about her tinkering father I started thinking about the handy men in my family. On my father’s side his brother Hugh Cleage was called on when things needed to be fixed. My husband’s father was famous for building things and taking them apart. He could build and he could fix, he just didn’t seem to have enough time to finish. Sometimes he would get ideas for how he could do it better and change up in the middle of a big project multiple times.
Poppy outside the family flat.
The one I’m going to write about is my mother’s father, Poppy. I’ve written about him before, about his notebook with projects started and completed. See that here. Poppy had a workshop in his basement. It was in the old coal room. He had a workbench, a tool chest, and a bin full of small pieces of wood. He had filled up an old treadle sewing machine with a stone to sharpen knives and tools. Outside of the workshop in the main basement was a long workbench. There were short pieces of wood stored underneath. Against the wall were longer pieces. The workshop had a special smell of machine oil and wood and basement.
Poppy made furniture sometimes. Not fine pieces but basic, useful pieces. A rocking chair that sat in the upstairs hall when my mother was growing up where it was used to rock fussy babies and sick children. I remember it next his bedroom window where you could sit and rock and look out over the backyard. He made a small table that sat on the landing for the telephone. The phone had a long cord so it reached upstairs at night and downstairs during the day. He built me a wonderful two-sided dollhouse when I was about 8 and described one I had seen at a friend’s house. I was the envy of my cousin and sister. I still have it.
During the summer he set up a homemade slide when we came over. The wood was planed and sanded smooth and then waxed regularly with the ends of candles. I don’t remember any splinters. It wasn’t a very long slide and eventually it served more as a support for our tents.
Poppy built flower boxes for his back porch and the back yard as well as for his daughter’s porch. He could be seen coming up the walk to repair things with his toolbox, like a doctor coming to see a patient. I remember Saturday afternoon spent at Plymouth Congregational Church while he fixed something; often it was the temperamental furnace. Both of my grandparent’s sons died as young children so my mother spent a lot of time with her father fixing things.
My grandfather was in his eighties when things in his neighborhood became very dangerous. It was around 1968. Someone shot into the house. A man walked in to the open side door, went upstairs and went through my great, great Aunt Abbie’s things and stole some. She thought it was odd but didn’t try to stop him. Luckily he came in and out of the house without running into my grandfather. Eventually someone came to the door with a gun. Poppy slammed the door shut and fell to the floor. After this he and my parents decided to sell their houses and buy a two family flat together. They bought one out by the University of Detroit. Poppy set up his basement workshop again. He and my mother planted corn and green beans and tomatoes in every spare space in the small yard. Some days he would take a wagon and collect useful or interesting items people had thrown out around the neighborhood. It was my last year of college and I was ready to leave home. I wish now I had taken the time to sit and talk to my grandparents. Maybe they were ready to tell some of those stories I wonder about if I had just asked.
On most Saturdays and all holidays my mother, my sister and I would drive the two blocks down Calvert on Detroit’s west side to pick up my aunt and her three daughters for the ride over to my grandparent’s house on the East side. We four oldest would sit in the back while the youngest sat up front between the adults.
Poppy, my mother’s father set up a table in the yard for holiday meals. He made it from boards set up on saw horses. There were chairs at each end of the table.. On each side of the table were benches made by setting planks on wooden boxes.
A wooden fence ran around three sides of the yard and separated us from the alley. The block was laid out with two long sides with a lot houses and two short sides with only two houses. Poppy and Nanny’s house was on a short side. The alley cut behind the houses and makes an “H”. If it hadn’t been for the wooden fence, we would have been sitting in the alley, as it was we had complete privacy. That’s how it seemed to me at the time anyway. Above the fence we could see the backs of the houses and tenements and garages that ran along one long side.
Looking at the photographs the only thing I can make out on the table is the white enamel pitcher which would have held the Hawaiian punch, our picnic drink, which was usually served in red, green and gold metal “glasses’.
After the meal it was time to clean up. The grownups would do it while we played in the yard. This was in contrast to real life during the week when we did the clean up and the dishes. I think this gave them time to talk while they worked and as I now know, doing the dishes is no big deal.
Then we’d have the long drive back home to the west side through all those interesting neighborhoods where I’d imagine what life would be like if I lived … there. And we’d sing songs and play car games. I wonder how long it really took. An hour? We didn’t take the expressway, all through neighborhoods. No urban renewal yet, or not on our route, and the neighborhoods were always full of people on porches and kids in the street.
My grandfather, Mershell Cunningham Graham was born in Coosada Station, Alabama about 1888. He didn’t know his exact birthday and chose to celebrate Christmas day. His parents were William and Mary Graham and he had a brother named Bill and a sister named Annie. Aside from that and a few stories about digging sweet potatoes in the rain and sleeping outside the bedroom door of a little girl he was servant to, I don’t know anything about his childhood. He taught himself to read. Eventually worked in the dining car on the railroad. He moved to Montgomery where he met my grandmother, Fannie. He lost an eye in a hunting accident. During WWI he moved to Detroit where there was already a contingent from Montgomery, and got a job at Fords Motor Company. He proposed to Fannie by mail and I still have the letter she wrote back accepting his offer of marriage. He could fix anything and make most things. He always had a wonderful vegetable garden and flowers in the yard.
I can’t find him until the 1910 census when he is single and living in Waycross Georgia with Irwin and Mary Warren’s family as a boarder. He was working as a car repairman in a railroad shop. June 4, 1917 according to his WW 1 draft registration card he was single, responsible for his father, living in Detroit and working as a steward for the D & CAN Co. on the Lakes. Jun 11, 1919 he and Fannie Mae Turner were married in Montgomery, AL. In the 1920 census he and his wife Fannie are boarders in the house of Moses and Jennette Walker in Detroit. He worked as an inspector at an auto factory. By 1930 he owns his home and lives with his wife Fannie and three children, Mary, Doris and Howard on Theodore St. in Detroit. He was a stock keeper in an auto factory. Mershell Graham died peacefully in his sleep at home, September 6, 1973 in Detroit, Michigan.
Today I am posting some entries from his little notebook. Although everything isn’t dated, it begins in 1934. He writes the person’s name first on jobs. Completed jobs are marked through with an X
Daisy – 1 set of shelves for attic stairway – 5 ft tall 12 “ wide
Gwen – 1 table for basement 5 ft long 3 ft wide folding legs
Lottie Brandon – 1 porch flower box
Mother – 1 bookcase for house – use any size
1 Bulletin Board for Church – 1934 2 1/2 ft x 2 ft 10 “ Glass Front Brown Board in Back clear glass 26 1/2 x 30 7/8
Car struck by M.C. (note: Michigan Central) engine Mar. 10th 1935 At 2:15 P.M. Doris in car with me. No one hurt very bad. Doris received small cut on left hand M.C. RR settled for $25.00 part cost on fixing car.
B.T. Washington Died Nov. 15, 1915 At Tuskegee Ala.
Social Security Act Account number 374-20-3906 12-21-1936
Mother must have been about 18 or so when she graduated and went to work as a clerk in her Uncle Victor’s store. She eventually became manager and worked there until she married in 1919 at 31. From all she ever said she loved working in the store. She enjoyed working with the clerks and the “drummers”, (salesmen). She and Uncle Victor got along just fine. He was involved in many things and was happy to have someone to manage the store. She loved ordering the right things in the right amounts and having the books come out right to the penny. One of her favorite stories was about some of the drummers who came to get orders.
“They would call me Fannie,” she would say, “and when they did, if they were looking north, I looked north, too. if they were looking south, I looked south and I never answered them. They usually caught on pretty quickly. When they called me MISS Fannie, I suddenly saw them and heard them and we could do business.”
She always held her head up very straight when she told this story. She really enjoyed business and could do arithmetic a mile a minute. I remember her suggesting to Daddy that she could serve or make and sell lunches to the men at the factory across the street. But he said no wife of his would ever work, that he could provide for his family. He thought it would be a reflection on him if his wife worked. I’m sure he didn’t realize what it would have/might have meant to her. I think she found housework a bore, although she never said so.
Victor Tulane’s store with apartment above in 2009.
When I first said I was going to get married she looked rather sad and thoughtful and said, “Why don’t you wait a year or two. You’re just finishing college and could have a life of your own for awhile.” That’s all she said and of course being in the firm, grip of Mother Nature I didn’t even consider it. But I’ve often thought about it since. You know she never had a “life of her own”. She lived with her family and helped to support them until she married. She married in June of 1919. M. Vee was born in April of 1920. She had a taste being on her own because at least she had the experience at Uncle Victor’s of making it in the outside world, so she had no fears on that score. She must have thought many times of leaving home, especially after Jennie T. married Alice’s father. But I guess she stayed because he was a weak reed for Jennie T. to lean on. By this time Daisy must have been teaching and she always (all her life) lived at home, so I don’t know why Mother didn’t leave.
Mershell & Fannie Graham about 1919
Anyway, when she decided to leave, she left for love, judging by the letters she wrote Daddy and the ones he wrote her. There is a playful, relaxed, familiar quality to her letters to him that I don’t remember seeing in her any other time. She told me once that she loved only one other man and he wanted to marry her, but she felt he would not be a good husband and father so she turned him down. I think he is one of the rakish looking handsome dudes in the album, but I don’t really know. She said she was right about him, that he made the girl he married most unhappy. I think she and Daddy loved each other dearly for all the 54 years they lived together. Did I ever tell you the following story?
You know Daddy had very mild diabetes. Medication was not necessary. He controlled it by eating no more than three slices of bread a day and sweets no more than once a day. Sometimes he didn’t get enough carbohydrates and would get ‘high’ on a lack of sugar. One day in 1972 Alice called upstairs to say Daddy was “sitting on the floor and wouldn’t get up”. I went down and sure enough there he was, sitting on the floor in the bedroom singing and waving his arms and having a good time. I had never encountered a lack of sugar “high” and he really seemed to be drunk, which I knew was impossible. I called Louis who said give him some orange or pineapple juice with a spoon or two of sugar in it and he would be all right. Alice went to fix the juice while I persuaded Daddy to get up and into bed. He kept looking around, saying, “Where’s my girl” She is the sweetest girl in the world. Where is she?” The he would see Mother and cry loudly like he was making the happiest announcement in the world, “There she is! The sweetest girl in the world and she’s MY girl!” Then he would look around at us like am I not the luckiest man in the world? This when both were 84 and had been married 53 years. Well, anyway he drank the juice and in a few minutes was himself.
Henry was there with me and Daddy asked us to come into the breakfast with him away from the others. He looked all worried and asked us what he had said when he was “high”. He couldn’t remember it at all except that he felt dizzy and sat down.
“Did I say any bad words?” he asked. I have never heard him use a bad word in my life… not even a “darn”!! Mother used to say darn sometimes, like when we were especially worrisome, she’d say, “Darn your time!” She even said damn on occasion but never to us. But I didn’t know Daddy even knew any bad words. We told him what he had said and he was relieved. Such a testament to love I’ve never seen the like of.
Back to Mother. I think she thought marriage would be all the good things in the world like all the rest of us. Like me anyway. Her first year must have been Hell. They married in Montgomery, went to Detroit and roomed with good friends from home, Aunt Jean and Uncle Mose Walker (not really related). A favorite way to pay for your house was to take in roomers from home and it was a good way for them to accumulate a down payment on their own house.
You remember Uncle Cliff was Daddy’s adopted brother and I think at one time they both liked Aunt Gwen. She chose Cliff, the dashing devil and rued it the rest of her life. Both she and Mother became pregnant that year. She had a cute pregnancy, Mother was miserable. Aunt Jean was an arrogant, self-important person who was considered by all, including and especially herself, one of the great cooks of all time. Mother could not cook. M.Vee was born in this house. It was a very difficult delivery, labor was several days long. The doctor, whose name was Ames, was a big time black society doctor, who poured too much ether on the gauze over Mother’s face when the time for delivery came. Mother’s face was so badly burned that everyone, including the doctor, thought she would be terribly scared over at least half of it. But she worked with it and prayed over it and all traces of it went away. M. Vee’s foot was turned inward. I don’t know if this was the fault of the doctor or not, but she wore a brace for years.
The Grahams after church with Doris, Mary V. and Mershell jr.
Finally that year ended and the two couples bought a flat together. Mother never did like Aunt Gwen and I’m sure she didn’t want to, but it was undoubtedly better than living with both Jean and Gwen. Mother got pregnant again very soon. Mershell Jr. was born within a year, the next year anyway, 1921. Meanwhile Aunt Gwen and Daddy sashayed off to Plymouth every Sunday while Uncle Cliff baby-sat with little Clifton Jr. and Mother?? I can imagine how she must have felt. She had never kept house, never cooked and never really had someone who told her what to do since she had worked at eighteen. She had never taken care of little children (Jennie T. looked after Alice) or babies. On top of it all, Aunt Gwen would come home from church, all dressed up and laughing and no big stomach, to say
“Guess what, Fan, everyone thinks I’m Shell’s wife because we’re always together at church.” She was a hateful person… still is! Mother must have been ready to murder. Meanwhile I guess Daddy was enjoying being the man of the house, treasurer and trustee at Plymouth, with a good job, a good wife and money accumulating in the bank for a home of his own someday. Mother should have had a sign on the wall. Life is what’s happening while you’re making other plans. Mershell Jr. was born in 1921 at Dunbar Hospital with a different doctor.
When he was a year old, I was on the way. The flat was too small. Jennie T. was consulted, sold the house in Montgomery and moved to Detroit. She and Daddy and Mother bought the Theodore house together in 1923. I was born in Women’s hospital and came home to that house where I lived for twenty years until I married. Mother and Daddy lived in it for 45 years. It was a bit crowded with five adults and three children for three bedrooms. I’m sure Mother was happy when Grandmother, Daisy and Alice got enough money to buy a house of their own. Ours was a quiet, orderly house. Everything happened on schedule. Everything was planned. There were very few ups and downs. When Daddy lost his job during the depression and when my brothers died, it was Mother who stayed steady and encouraging and took each day as it came. Daddy would be very depressed and Mother must have been too but she never let on. I do remember one day when I was about seven and Howard had just died, I came into the kitchen to get a drink of water, She was at the sink peeling potatoes for dinner and tears were running down her cheeks. I don’t remember what I said or did but she said, “I will be alright, but you go and keep your father company.” I did, and I’m sure her saying that and my constant companionship with my father influenced my life profoundly. She was thinking of him in the midst of what was, I think the most unhappy time in her life. How could God send them a second son and then take him, too?”
Boy children are very important to some people and they were both pleased to have a son. When Mershell Jr. was killed, run over by a truck on his way to school in 1927, it was a great unhappiness for them. I remember standing beside Mother at the front door and a big white policeman stood on the front porch and told her about her child. She did not scream, cry or faint. Daddy was at work. She could not reach him. She put on her hat and coat and went to the hospital. I never saw her helpless. She always did what had to be done.
Howard was born the next year. They both rejoiced for here God had sent a son to replace the one they had lost. He died of scarlet fever at three. When you read carefully the things she wrote, you’ll know what this meant to her. (Do you remember the poem she wrote about Howard?) But she never took refuge in guilt feelings or hysterics or depressions. She lived everyday as best she could. I never heard her complain.
She used to play games with us… catch and keep-away and checkers. And when we had friends to the house she would ask them to dinner or it was evening make a pile of sandwiches and a pitcher of punch (fruit juice and Kool-Aid). She let us roll back the rug and dance to our phonograph records. And she carried on a running battle with Daddy so she could do all this. He remembered that she could not got anywhere, not even to young people’s meeting at church, or entertain at home without a chaperon present. I don’t know how old she was before this stopped. Besides he knew all those boys were up to no good. I think she saw what Jennie T. had done to Daisy and Alice and almost to her with this attitude and she didn’t think it was so good.
After we married and left home she developed arthritis and went to church or to visit friends less and less often. In 1967 (I remember because it was the year of the riot) she began to stop eating and gradually to stop cooking. Louis could find nothing wrong so she took iron and vitamins and cod liver oil to improve her appetite but nothing helped. Then Louis said she had to stay upstairs and not cook or do anything until she gained some weight. She had had the flu and lost more weight. (Incidentally this was the first time in her life she had penicillin… in fact, the only time.) She seemed to just give up. She hated to have Alice cooking and taking care of her house and I think she felt completely useless and helpless. She gradually acted more and more withdrawn and displaced. But I don’t believe she was senile. Read the letter she wrote to Daddy when he was in the hospital in 1973. She wrote it all by herself. I think she would have been different in old age if she could have been surrounded by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren like in the old days. She would always have had something to do then.
Fannie with great grandaughter Jilo 1971
She used to like to draw when we were small.. and to play the piano..and sing…and read. But she stopped them all except the singing. She used to sing to herself and with me even in the nursing home. She had a very sweet alto. I don’t know why she stopped drawing and playing the piano. But she stopped reading because some optometrist told her she had “hardening of the crystalline lenses” and should read as little as possible. I never could get her to go to an ophthalmologist and I think she wore those same glasses for thirty or forty years and could read with them until she died. I tried my best to get her interested in something after we lived together on Fairfield but I failed. It wasn’t interests she needed. I don’t know what she needed, except maybe all her people around her. Do you know that in the nursing home she started to eat? The food was very ordinary but there were lots of aides around all the time (all black) and they liked her. She liked them and they liked her. She would ask them about their children and their boyfriend. They would give her extra back rubs and brush her hair and tie it in pretty ribbons. She would give them candy and talk about how good they were to her… and they were. I have come in to visit and found three or four sitting and leaning on her bed talking to her and to each other and her face would be alive as she listened and talked. I don’t know why I couldn’t do that for her. I just wasn’t there. (All of this is very hard to write, you know, that’s why it has been so long coming. I stop here to cry and I think I’ll cook dinner and try again later.)
The day she had her first stroke, I came home from school to find Alice, Browning and Mother sitting at the card table in the living room playing bingo. Mother was not really playing. They were playing her card for her. She was acting like she didn’t know what was going on. I sat and talked awhile and somewhere (as a body will do!) mentioned white folks and how they mess over black children. She sat up, straightened her back and made the above speech with variations. She cussed them good and ended with her favorite story about the drummers in the store and how she forced them to address her as Miss Fannie or Miss Turner. I think she loved to repeat this story because it gave her a feeling of power. She demanded respect from our white neighbors, too, but in a less dramatic, less direct way. She kept them at their distance by never being familiar or warm or relaxed with them. Friendly, generous, kind, polite…she was all these. But she never had a cup of coffee with them and never went into their houses.
In the south when she was out in public she worried about being mistaken for white. She got on the bus once, sat in the ‘colored section’, and was told by the driver to move and sit in the right place. She told him she was in the right place and he told her not make trouble and go sit in the white section. She did, ashamed at what her friends would think of her (passing) and frightened at what white folks might do to her.
One day she and a friend who was equally light went for a day to shop in Wetumka. They were in a carriage and when it stopped for them to alight, a “courtly’ white elderly gentleman hastened to take one on each arm and escort them to the curb where he raised his hat to them and gave a deep bow. Mother was horrified. She knew they could be lynched or worse if someone who knew they were black told the man and he had to defend his “honor”. Her friend thought it was all very amusing.
Mother often spoke of friends in Montgomery but I never knew her to have a close friend. She was friendly with everyone, especially the Deaconesses with whom she worked at church. She was basically very reserved and what people call today a “very private Person”. I don’t remember ever hearing her say “I want” for herself. Oh, she often said, “I want the best for my girls” or “I want you to be good girls” but I never heard her say “I want a new dress.. or a day off… or a chocolate bar..” and I never heard her say “I feel this way or that” except Sometimes she said, “Oh, I feel so unnecessary.”
She was a great one for duty, for doing what was called for and not complaining. You could tell she was displeased by the expression on her face. Whenever she corrected us, she always explained why, so we came pretty early to know what was expected of us and when we erred the displeased expression was all we needed. She didn’t nag either. No second and third warnings. Yet I don’t remember ever being spanked by either parent. If either one said, “Did you hear what I said?”, that did it. We never talked back to them. We did things we knew we weren’t supposed to do like all children, but we were careful not to get caught. When we did get caught, we were horrified. I never felt confined and resentful, but M. Vee did.
Mother never took a day off, never went on a vacation, never had us cook dinner. Her days off came only when she had a “sick headache”, a terrible headache with upset stomach which kept her in bed usually for a day. I think she demanded a great deal of herself and could only let her “duty” slide if she were ill. The headaches only happened two or three times a year.
Mother had some of the same reserve with us that she had with strangers. We rarely talked about feelings, good or bad. She and Daddy tried to keep things as even and calm as possible all the time. So everybody cried alone although you always knew they would do anything for you because they did. You didn’t bring your problems home and share them. You came home and found the strength to deal with those problems. At least I did. If you needed help, you asked for it, but first you did everything you could. I don’t think they ever said no to either of us when we asked for help and that extended to grandchildren too.
Somehow after all these pages I don’t think I’ve really told about Mother. Maybe it’s because I am too involved in my feelings about her. Anyway, it’s the best I can do now. I’ll try again whenever I think of something.
“Shell and Fan under our apple tree
This is one of my favorite photographs of the two of them together. I like the peeling and the white out and even the scotch tape. This one was taken on the side of their house. If we could look in the basement window on the left, we would see my grandfather’s shop which smelled of machine oil and wood and basement and faintly of the pine-sol he sprinkled around. “Lizzie”, the model T Ford is behind them. It was taken 2 February 1941. I bet it was Sunday.
