The Crab Chronicles

Stories from The Past

My dad grew up in a tiny town near Augusta Georgia, Hephzibah. As a child, the word "Hephzibah" was always associated with my uncles and funny stories. The stories were simply part of my Thompson life, and I never realized how lucky I was to be related to three very smart, very funny, Southern men. My father Tony Thompson and my uncles Lewis and Bobby were what might be called "old school" today. 

I shared some memories of our family in a story published in Salvation South today, Cordelia's Giggle.

My uncles both served in World War II. Bobby was in the Navy. Lewis was in the Army and fought in the South Pacific. I was born years later. Both of the men I knew were tall, easygoing, affable, guys. It's hard to imagine them in a war, getting shot at or possibly shooting at someone else. Now my dad was a very different guy, a dynamo of energy. It wasn't hard to imagine him in a war because he loved all thing military and pushed my brother to go in the Army.

However, unlike his two brothers Dad was never in a war. I always assumed he was in the Korean War but when I was cleaning out my house to move a couple of years ago I found letters he wrote to his parents while in the Army and they were dated 1954, after Korea had ended.

Dad spent most of his mandatory military service running around Europe every time he got leave. He was stationed in Germany. The photo at left shows him and two friends on the French Riviera. The letters are hilarious, because he was so young [24] and from a tiny town, and he missed his parents a lot.

When I was a kid, I noticed that whenever Dad was with one or both of his brothers, the Hephzibah stories would often get told. Whiskey was often consumed during the telling.

The most memorable storytelling occasion happened in 1974, just after Christmas. My cousin Chris was visiting his father's family and Lewis and his family had been to Rome, Georgia to see his wife's family, and we all converged for an afternoon at an Atlanta hotel, for lunch. Below is one of the black & white photos made by my uncle Lewis that day.

I was 12 years old. All my cousins and my brother were older. It was the only time we were all together, unfortunately, because Chris lived in California and his visits were sporadic. At the time, Chris was working as a plumber or carpenter or something, but he later went on to an illustrious career as a TV and movie writer and producer. I don't know if he realized that he got a lot of his humor from the Thompson side. 

In the article I wrote about my grandmother Cordelia, I got a kick out of talking about the funny Hephzibah stories, but I wanted to also carefully explain that she raised three fine men.

Cordelia Henderson Thompson didn't have an easy life. She was an "old maid schoolteacher" about 31 years old when she met and married Grandaddy. In those days, if a woman wasn't married by age 25 she was an "old maid" and unlikely to ever marry, according to the social rules of that time. She was very smart, loved to read, and loved to make photos. Dad said she always carried her little "Brownie" camera everywhere, and because of that I have some wonderful old family photos like the one below, of Cordelia and her youngest son Tony, my dad.

She married my grandfather in 1923. He was not educated and he didn't have any money, but it was a true love match. They raised three sons during the Great Depression, watched two of them go to war, and died in the late 1950's. Thompson had been a professional soldier for many years and although he was a small man [about 5'7, 135 lbs.] he was fierce and he had a temper.

Cordelia was gentle. She was very ladylike, and proper. Although she married her opposite, she loved him very much. Mom said she used to talk about him all the time after he died, and her heartbreak was evident. They were married for 34 years, until his death from emphysema complications in 1957, a few months after my parents' marriage. 

Most of what I know about Cordelia I learned from my mother. She only knew her about 2 1/2 years but she grew to love Cordelia and happily named me after her, three years after Cordelia's death. My name, Dee, is a shortened version of her name.

Some people -- including my own cousins -- think I am really weird for finding my family so fascinating. I feel like I am lucky to be a product of two old Southern families, and stories of my ancestors fascinate me. I got that from Dad. He was always organizing family reunions, always on the hunt for old photos and memorabilia, and very reverent about family history and lore. There's nothing wrong with that.

I feel like all of us are products of the DNA of all our ancestors stretching back for generations. We may look back at them and think they lived such different lives  than we did but that's not entirely true. My grandparents lived through two World Wars and The Great Depression. Life was a lot harder in 1923 when all four of my grandparents got married, but they wanted the same things we want. Home and children were important. Faith was important. Good manners were very important. Stories were important. I am proud to be a product of all of my grandparents, the ones I knew (Bob Hasty and Wilma Butler Hasty) and the ones I didn't know, Thompson and Cordelia. I carry their genes in my body, but more importantly, I try to carry on family traditions and tell the stories, so the next generations will never forget them.

The Beauty of Vegetables

My son goes to the store for me most Fridays because he is off work and I am working. He has become a terrific shopper. The other day I asked him to pick up some tomatoes for us at Publix. I prefer the produce from a farm stand but when in a hurry we settle for Publix.

He brought home tomatoes that are deep red, all connected to a stem, and I found myself saying "Those tomatoes are beautiful!"

That phrase just popped out.

As soon as I said it I thought, that was Mom's expression. My mother regarded vegetables in a state of what she considered perfection with deep awe and reverence. She would exclaim over them the same way an art collector might get excited by seeing a painting he coveted, or the way a dancer might view another dancer's perfect pas de deux, or the way a mother might feel seeing her newborn baby for the first time.

Why?

I think it's in our blood, the love of the land and how it feeds us.

Mom's generation was only the second one off the farm. She was a teacher, then a SAHM. Her brothers were a college administrator and an automotive manager. My grandfather Hasty was raised on a farm, and his father expected him to farm, but Papa was given an opportunity to play professional baseball and he took it. However, when World War II came, Papa sought out a job where he managed farms in South Carolina, and some of Mom's earliest memories involve farm life. (Papa felt like his family would be safer on a farm way out in the country if America were to be invaded.)

In the memoir I compiled after Mom died, Singing to the Cows, there are many reminiscences about farm life:

The farm meant we lived in a pretty white frame house, with grass in the yard, and I think it was on a dirt road. We had a pretty front porch and a big screened porch out back. There were several other buildings, a huge barn, and a long tractor shed among them. There was a fence out back and sometimes an animal was brought in to eat the grass.

We had a huge barn with a fenced in lot. In fact, almost all the farm was fenced for the animals. We had three cows, two horses, and several mules. Sometimes we had little calves - I loved them. Daddy, Bobby, and Don each had a cow to milk. Don pretty much made a pet of any animal he dealt with.

In every home where we ever lived [we lived in 5 different houses when I was growing up] Mom and Dad got outside and planted flowers and vegetables, and spent a lot of time tending to everything. The yards were always barren and disappointing but by the time we left they would be transformed into lush and beautiful places. Dad would come home from working as a bank VP, put on old stained clothes, and go work in the yard, which was how he relaxed. Mom read a little magazine called Organic Gardening for years. As long as my grandmother was alive, I often heard Mom asking her advice about gardening. She always said Memaw could "winter" her outside plants and keep them going in cold weather, a skill she didn't teach Mom, for unknown reasons.

In her 50's and 60's Mom had stopped working in the yard due to arthritis but she was active in her garden club in Augusta, and kept getting re-elected to the presidency year after year because she was so excellent in that role. She always found great speakers.

My father grew up just down the road from a farm owned by his grandparents and run by his uncle Claude after his grandfather's death. As a teenager, he worked on the farm in the summers. He loved to grow tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, etc. He spent many hours hauling soil from the bank of the lake to make raised garden beds for Mom when they lived on the lake near Knoxville in the 1980's. That rich soil was fantastic for growing flowers and vegetables. Dad came from many generations of farmers too, although he and his brothers were all professional men. Each one married women who were terrific gardeners, which I think was not a coincidence!

I never had any interest in gardening until I became a mom. In fact, I was always puzzled by my parents' near obsession with growing things. When Mom and I bought our house together in 2005, though, I wanted my children to know the love of growing food and flowers. I felt compelled to garden. It was inexplicable to me at the time but now I think I understand it.

I adopted children with a deep love of fresh veggies and fruits. They spent their early years in Russia and Kazakhstan, where it was not possible to get fresh fruits and veggies in the winter. I never had to fuss at them about eating fruits and vegetables. In fact, I sometimes found them in the garden eating tomatoes, onions, and strawberries right there, and of course I didn't scold them.

For countless generations, my ancestors farmed. I think a love of gardening, the miracle of seeing a seed become a beautiful flower or a delicious vegetable or fruit, is part of my DNA. I live in an apartment now, and I miss growing things. I miss it so much I try not to even think about it. There is something magical about it. Creating your own nourishment feeds the soul as well as the body.

Below, me and Mom around 1985; my kids in the garden right after I adopted my son, and the painting was done by my uncle Lewis Thompson, of the Henderson farmhouse where his mother grew up.

 

My Musical Tastes

I asked my father once what it was like to be a young man when Elvis Presley broke into the music business and his records started getting played on the radio. (I have been a big Elvis fan since I first saw Viva Las Vegas on the 4:00 movie when I was in fourth grade in Knoxville Tennessee. His song "Merry Christmas Baby" is my fave Christmas song.)

Dad got a look on his face like he was eating some bad turnip greens. 

"I didn't listen to him. I listened to Frank Sinatra. Didn't like Elvis," Dad said dismissively. [Years later Mom told me they took a record player and one Frank Sinatra album on their honeymoon and they wore that one Frank Sinatra record slap out.]

I was disappointed. I wanted to hear some fun story about the first time Dad heard "Heartbreak Hotel" and he couldn't stop dancing, or something. Fun fact: my parents were known to sometimes do the jitterbug after they'd had a few drinks.

Heck, even my memaw loved Elvis -- she listened to his gospel album until it was worn out. If you've never heard Elvis sing "Peace in the Valley" check it out. My voice teacher said if Elvis had chosen to sing classical music he would have had a big career. (Too bad he settled for a small career.)

Elvis changed the world. He bridged the gap between country, soul, and what would become rock & roll. He imitated "race records" as records by black artists were known in the early 1950's. I love most of Elvis' music. [I must confess, however, that once I heard Big Mama Thornton's version of "Hound Dog" I much preferred Big Mama's rendition. When she sang "you can wag yo tail but I ain't gon' feed you no more" I believed her.]

Dad skipped Elvis. He went right from liking Frank Sinatra to liking Willie Nelson, after we moved from Augusta, Georgia to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1971. Dad had a 20-30 minute drive from our home in the Knoxville suburbs to the Valley Fidelity Bank in downtown Knoxville every day, and he listened to WIVK, a country station that came in loud and clear. One summer I worked at the bank and rode to work with him every day since I didn't have a car. Eventually I grew to appreciate some country songs, like Willie's version of Stardust. Even though I was not a big country fan. I did appreciate the simple but poignant sentiments Conway Twitty sang about in "I'd Love to Lay You Down" a song with the immortal lyrics "you've got a way of doing little things that turn me on like standing in the kitchen in your faded cotton gown." [Just imagine how excited he got when she wore a nice dress and high heels! She must have had to fight him off so she could cook some fried chicken...]

Now, my musical tastes are all over the place.

I make no apologies for that.

In the mid 1970's my brother bought a cassette tape of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and we listened to it until we could sing all the words to classics like Disco Inferno. I liked disco. Don't judge.

When I was a kid my mother bought a series of expensive record sets that she forced me to listen to so I would become familiar with Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, and her favorite, Rachmaninoff. I was forced top listen to that music and some of it I actually liked. Mom is why this song -- O mio babbino caro is -- in my opinion -- literally the most beautiful music ever created.

My older brother listened to WIMZ, which played a lot of music with few commercials in the 1970's. So I listened to that too, and I learned to appreciate rock. Funny story. Brother used to leave the radio on a lot and he would fall asleep listening to it. One night he was awakened by a very disturbing sound, the bridge to "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter, which sounds like the background music to an alien invasion. Bro was joplted awake hearing that and was afraid a spaceship had landed and little green men were going to commence the anal probes, until he woke completely up and turned off the boombox.

I also listened to WNOX, which played pop music and featured Casey Casem's Top 40 countdown every Saturday. I can sing every single word to every pop hit from 1971-80. I remember being able to sing all the words to "Me and Mrs. Jones" when I was about 11 years old. Some might argue I shouldn't have been singing about an extramarital affair but my parents paid no attention to music lyrics and let me listen to (and read) whatever I liked. Compared to today's rap lyrics that song is very tame.

I am lucky now that I work at home and most of the time I can listen to music while I work. I listen to a lot of soundtracks to movies because instrumentals are less distracting. My current faves are the soundtracks to Interstellar and The Cinematic Orchestra's version of Arrival of the Birds & Transformation.

I realized the other day I can sing every word to all the Beatles greatest hits [red album and some of the blue album] while simultaneously analyzing documents.

No matter what your musical taste, music makes life so much richer. I still listen to CD's of my favorite artists like Paul Simon and James Taylor and Mary Chapin Carpenter. I also love going on YouTube and putting in the title of some obscure old pop song and being able to listen to it again. My current re-discovered oldie fave is "Strawberry Letter 23" by The Brothers Johnson.

I will never be as badass as George Jones but I can live with that.