The Crab Chronicles

Fame and Its Price

The Augusta Chronicle published an interview with me about my new book Singing to the Cows and I emailed a link to a number of friends because I thought they would get a kick out of it. A lady I work with replied to my email and said "OMG - your mother was a celebrity in her own right."

I've been thinking about that a lot this afternoon.

When she was a young woman, my mother had a chance to become a celebrity. She started studying voice when she was about 12 and she had a beautiful voice with a huge range of several octaves. She sang in church choirs, school choirs, was a soloist with the Men's Glee Club at the University of Georgia, and sang all over Atlanta. She was actually offered a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, but had to turn it down because it wasn't enough to cover all her living expenses and travel expenses.

When she was a senior in college she met my dad and decided to get married instead of trying to do anything with her music professionally. In those days, women were always told "You can get married and be a wife and mother, OR you can have a career. You can't do both." It sounds archaic and ridiculous to our 21st century ears, but it was a reality back then.

My father wouldn't have been encouraging and supportive if Mom had said she wanted to pursue a singing career. He told her the day they got home from the honeymoon he expected a full breakfast on the table every morning -- sausage, eggs, grits, toast, coffee. It never even occurred to her to say fix your own damn breakfast. The next morning she got up before dawn to try and figure out how to make his breakfast. She couldn't cook. She had never cooked anything in her life except tuna salad, congealed salad, and fudge.

She didn't tell him that before they got married.

She was barely 23 years old.

He was 26 years old.

My mother and I talked once about why she chose marriage over career. For one thing, it was the 1950's. Women were expected to want only a home and husband. Women who tried to have careers often faced brick walls. A young attorney named Ruth Bader Ginsburg couldn't find a job when she finished law school in 1961. Female lawyers, even those had attended Harvard, were nonetheless routinely discriminated against.

Mom also had parents who were very Victorian. They were in their 30's when she was born. They wouldn't let her get her own apartment after college because they felt it was improper. She went right from her father's house to her husband. It may be hard for a young woman of today to understand, but that was very common back then.

The first inkling I ever had of Mom's celebrity as a young woman was when I was a sophomore in college, at UGA, and my roommate and I figured out that her dad had been at UGA the same time as my mom. I called Mom and asked her if she remembered Bill S and she said "Yes. We can talk about it later." I thought that's weird. Next time I went home for the weekend she told me she had dated Bill S and he had asked her to marry him! That spring I went home with my roommate one weekend and got to spend time around her father and he went on and on about how beautiful Mom was and what an incredible singer -- to the point it got rather awkward. Mom said she loved him but she couldn't marry him because he wanted her to drop out of school and she was determined to finish.

My mom knew something about the price of fame. Her father Bob Hasty was a major league baseball player for 5 years. Long after his big league career ended he was well-known, and going out in public could be frustrating. Elva: "Especially in the south, we were accustomed to people coming up to Dad asking for his autograph and wanting to talk about baseball. It could be annoying to us, but never to him and he never refused or lost patience. People brought baseballs to him to sign and even mailed them to him."

Mom would get very frustrated as a child, seeing her father get so much attention [out in public] when the family really wanted his full attention. It wasn't in his nature to ever be rude or inaccessible to a fan.

Fame pulls you away from your family. Even after he left big league and minor league baseball, Papaw was often hired to manage and play on company baseball teams, and Mom said he was gone a lot when she was small, on road trips with the teams.

I have no doubt if Mom had really pursued a career as a singer she would have been successful. Her talent and beauty were immense. The personal sacrifices were such, however, that she never wanted to pursue fame. She didn't want to travel all over and leave her family and friends behind. She felt like she had to choose marriage OR career. She told me that being a wife and mother was more satisfying to her than fame ever could have been.

Do not think she was a meek little housewife, though. She was strong, decisive, and assertive. She told me once it took her ten years to get Dad properly trained to do things like put his dirty clothes in the hamper and take out the trash.

Fame and riches were not important to her. I don't think she ever regretted her decision. What a blessing for all of us who loved her, because she knew how to love, beautifully.

An Easter Thought

When I was a little girl I was a tomboy and also a traditional little girl. I liked to play football and kickball with my brother, and I liked to play with my Barbie dolls. Nobody ever told me I had to choose. I always assumed I would grow up and have children the traditional way, of course. Adopting a child never entered my thought process. It never occurred to me that I could possibly love an adopted child as much as a child that I produced from my body. It just didn't seem possible.

God showed me how wrong I was.

After years of failed relationships, of desperately trying to make myself pretty enough, thin enough, agreeable enough, I finally just gave up and asked God for a miracle, on my 40th birthday. I wanted to be a mom. I had failed at becoming a wife, but Mom seemed vaguely possible. I had a friend who had a baby at age 37 and told me all about her trials and tribulations, mothering an infant, which take tremendous patience and stamina. I didn't think I was up for that, not by myself. I couldn't imagine adopting a non baby, however.

By the time I turned 42 I was in the process of adopting my daughter, then age 12. Two years later, I brought home my son.

When we as human beings give up, and think there's no way our dreams will EVER come true, that's when we allow blessings into our lives. I had no idea how I could become a mom. It seemed just impossible. All I could see were obstacles. By turning the problem over to God, though, and getting out of my own way, I was able to turn a huge corner in my life.

The path to motherhood wasn't easy.

The family I eventually got -- two older adopted children and my own mother as a co-parent -- was anything but conventional. Yet we were a happy family.

Skip ahead to today.

I have almost succeeded in selling my house. It's under contract. There will be an inspection soon. It has been a wonderful home. I will dearly miss my yard and my neighbors.

But it's time to move on. Time to downsize.

It's time for a new chapter in my life.

My son is back living at home and will help me with the move, but I'm sure he will be in a place of his own in the near future. That's as it should be.

My newest challenge -- and it's a big one -- is to find the right condo or townhome where I can move to in the next month or so. Right now, because interest rates have been really low for a while, there is very little inventory out there. Nice places are snatched up as soon as they come on the market -- at an alarming rate.

I will not despair, however.

If God could help me become a mom when I couldn't see any possibility of it myself, he can find me a nice place to live out the last years of my life. It's a matter of having faith. It's a matter of getting out of my own way.

This home will forever hold a cherished place in my heart. I have lived here nearly 16 years -- the longest I've ever lived anywhere in my life. My children experienced the love of a mama and a grandmama here for the first time. Cousins and friends came to visit. Kids played in the yard. My mom lived out her final years on earth here. We celebrated Christmases and birthdays here. I was able to write six books while living here.

This old home has served us well. I'm happy it will be a welcome refuge for another family to enjoy. 

Faith can be an elusive thing. It has not always been readily accessible to me. However, I have crystal clear memories of Mom reminding me to always trust in the Lord, always have faith. When we can only see closed doors, God can see how to open doors.

God = Love

Love can make miracles happen. It's the greatest energy source out there.

 

The Baseball Player and the Southern Belle

Exactly 98 years ago today my grandparents were married in the living room of her parents' home just off the square in Marietta, Georgia. It was an unlikely match, perhaps, to some. "Billie" was a petite, vivacious 23 year old girl, one of 12 children born to R.E. Butler and Beulah Phillips Butler. Bob Hasty was the son of a prominent Cherokee County farmer, William Hasty. Between them, they had 19 living siblings. Bob called Billie his "Doll" and delighted in her small stature. She could walk under his outstretched arm. He was 6'4. She was 4'11.

The wedding was not originally planned for April 3, 1923. It was put together at the last minute because the Philadelphia Athletics and were playing an exhibition game against the Atlanta Crackers in Atlanta, and Bob decided to move the date up, since he was in town. Billie had been sick with flu but she felt well enough to go through with the wedding, and afterwards they had a 3 days honeymoon on the train, paid for by Connie Mack. Afterwards, Bob rejoined the team on its road trip, and Billie learned to be a baseball wife.

The bride wore a brown dress. It was her best dress. She wore a hat secured by elaborately decorated hatpins, and I still have those, 98 years later.

The "Billie" I knew from my childhood was a very proper southern lady, who was always telling me to "be a little lady!" [obviously I ignored that]. She wasn't always so proper, though.

Mom:

"By the standards of those days, Billie was a bit wild. She was the first girl in Marietta, Georgia to bob her very long hair. She was a flapper and could dance a mean Charleston. She smoked cigarettes [only when young] but always said she didn’t drink, just enjoyed a highball occasionally. (I suppose that was instead of just drinking straight whiskey?!)

Her three oldest brothers all owned automobile dealerships, so there were plenty of cars around, and she started driving when her feet reached the pedals, about age 11. She enjoyed driving around town with her sister Hazel when they were just kids.

When asked how tall she was, she’d grin and say, oh, about 5’2”-- but I never believed it. She was maybe 5 feet, standing tall. [My dad was over 6’3]. She had dark brown hair with reddish highlights. Her eyes were kind of green. She always had a beautiful complexion. She washed her face twice a day with mild soap and rinsed it three times. She powdered her face, used a little rouge, and red lipstick, and that was all she did for years. Her skin was so lovely she didn’t need a lot of makeup.

When Mother got older, she did use a little foundation make up, I think. For years, she only used a little Coty’s L’Origan perfume. About the time I married, she changed to Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew."

[Excerpts from Singing to the Cows, by Elva Hasty Thompson]

My grandfather Bob Hasty was the exact opposite of his wife. Big, slow moving, slow talking, very precise and deliberate, he had the mind of an engineer but the body of an athlete, his whole life.

Mom:

"Bob Hasty was 6ft 4in tall. A good weight for him was about 220 lbs. and in later years when he deliberately dropped down to about 190, he appeared to be thin. He felt that less weight would be kinder to his old bones. He had very blue eyes and black hair, though it turned gray fairly early, and he looked very distinguished.

He did not drink or smoke or cuss or chew – and didn’t approve of other folks doing it. He had the notion that an athlete was a person young folks looked up to so it was important to set a good example. He almost never raised his voice and seldom lost his temper, maybe once every few years. However, he could be stern and he expected his children to obey him. Mostly, he was a very kind and affectionate person, a wonderful listener, extremely patient.

Dad played for Connie Mack for 5 seasons, as part of the Philadelphia Athletics ballclub. Connie Mack made Dad take lots of dancing lessons as well as boxing lessons, to help such a big man learn to move more easily. I don’t remember his ever talking about the boxing but he dearly loved to dance. As a tiny girl I mostly learned to dance by standing on his big 13 D feet while we “danced.” He really had a good time doing his version of tap dancing too!

Especially in the south, we were accustomed to people coming up to Dad asking for his autograph and wanting to talk about baseball. It could be annoying to us, but never to him and he never refused or lost patience. People brought baseballs to him to sign and even mailed them to him."

You can still find cards he signed, and his baseball cards, on e-bay [LINK].

[Excerpts from Singing to the Cows, by Elva Hasty Thompson]