Grandma Tolbert

I have no idea how old I was when I first meet her. It could have been the day I was born but I'm sure it wasn't long after that but my earliest memories of her began when I was in elementary school. She lived in the country in Burke County near Rhodhiss, North Carolina. Back then it seemed like a long drive from our house to Grandma's and once one passed the airport there just didn't seem to be life on earth until one reached her house. Actually there were a few houses along the way but they were few and far apart.

My Mom drove a '52 Ford, black of course, on our visits there and that is the route she took me on back when she taught me to drive. Narrow roads, one lane bridges and no traffic. Once I had managed to maneuver the car between the two trees in the driveway I had a great sense of accomplishment, although turning the car around presented its own challenges.

Grandma's house was small and was something she built along with Junior, her youngest son, right after her husband died. Junior was ten and I believe the other children had already moved out, married and were raising families by that time. The house had a living room, pot bellied stove, a couch, and a rocker. The kitchen was the largest room in the house and held a double sink, a wood cooking stove, and the kitchen table. The pendulum clock on the wall always seemed to keep perfect time and its tick-tock echoed through the house There were two bedrooms, a front porch at ground level and a back porch that required four or five steps to get into from outside; a wood shed, a storage building, a work shop,
and an outhouse outside.

Of course the house came with the requisite tin roof and had pale green tile for siding. The house was well built but had no insulation. Water was provided via a pump in the backyard and laundry was down in an old black pot which set near the old apple tree. When Junior would catch a opossum, Grandma Tolbert would skin it and drop it into boiling water. Once all the fat was boiled off the bones, lye was added to the water, stirred thoroughly, and allowed to cool then cut into bars, or cakes of lye soap. Bath time was done in a tin tub on the back porch until the late sixties when Junior and his wife Marie added onto the house and had running water and indoor plumbing installed.

Although Mrs Tolbert had little formal education she could read and write quite well and worked a regular job at Burlington Mills in Rhodiss. She and her family lived in the big white house at the bottom of the hill until her husband died. That is when she and her youngest son built the house she lived in for the rest of her life. she had a big garden, about an acre or so and raised a pig and some chickens. By then she was no longer holding a job so she earned money by doing work for others like picking blackberries. for which she earned a dollar for a tub full. She crocheted and made quilts and worked her garden, canning what she could to insure her family had food year around.

She grew strawberries, and beans, and potatoes, and corn, okra, squash, beets, tomatoes, peanuts, and about anything else that one can imagine. She worked that garden space, by hand, until she was around ninety. It was around that time that I discovered that she had never had her hair cut. Not even once, her entire life. She could stand on the end of it when she let it hang down. Mostly she wore it up in a tight bun.

In those long ago days, family and friends used to gather at her house on Sundays after church and they would be fed in shifts, men first, then the women and children. It was a good day for me when I was invited to eat with the men. I felt grown-up. Unfortunately, that was the last of the Sunday get-togethers that I ever had the pleasure to attend.

Ralph was the oldest boy and the biggest man that any of us ever saw back then. Mary was the oldest girl, then my Mom, then Nina, and finally Junior. He had an odd name, Oie, but he was always called either Junior or Tolbert.

Grandma Tolbert was a Keller at birth and the Keller clan was famous for having more digits than most people. I think I heard once that Grandma Tolbert had an extra finger but had it removed but I can't trust my memory on that. I do remember in my pre-teen days, I didn't like sitting around the pot bellied stove with the grown-ups because they just talked about the ones that were not there and I usually didn't know the people they were talking about. But when I got older, I began to appreciate the things Grandma had to endure in order to survive and make a life for her family.

Ralph was a truck driver, Nina was a seamstress and loved by people who thought they knew her but mean to the point of almost being evil to family, Margaret was a retail store clerk, Mary worked in a hosiery mill, and Junior worked as a parts manager for Ford where he celebrated his fiftieth wedding anniversary and his fiftieth year on the job at the same time. For the most part, they were good people, attending church faithfully and taking care of one another.

Grandma and I grew close and it was told that her desire to see me safe home from the war kept her alive when the doctors had almost given up hope. When I was in college, she wanted to give me a present so she bought a shirt for a dollar and wrapped it up for me. It was really special for Grandma never spent her money on presents for people--money was just to hard to come by.

The shirt was a short sleeve paisley print that was perhaps the ugliest piece of clothing I have ever owned and it shrank to the size for a two year old the first time I washed it. Even so, I kept that shirt for years because it came from her.

I knew something was wrong with her when I went to visit one Sunday after church and she was upset with Junior for leaving her at home for a whole week with nothing to eat. "He went to get some chicken and just never came back." she said. "I'm going to wop him upside the head with a broom when he gets back."

She did too. "What's the matter with you, old woman?" Junior scowled after she had hit him.

I explained to him what she had told me and he told me what really happened. One of the neighbor ladies told me she caught Grandma trying to chop down a climbing rose bush, thinking it was a honeysuckle vine climbing one of her trees.

It wasn't long after that when she was put into a nursing home where she quickly seemed to forget who people were. She stayed there for about two years before she passed at 94.

I visited relatives and made a video tape out of some pictures with the family telling stores about her in the background as a present for my Mom. I keep a picture of her close by for myself. Whenever I feel discouraged or tired, I can glance at her and think back on what she endured and hear her laugh and then I am encouraged to go on. I come from good people, the type of people we should all strive to be.