The Crab Chronicles

The Christmas That Started It All

In my family we really don't give expensive Christmas presents but ironically, I am here today because of an expensive Christmas present. A diamond. My dad was really bad at selecting Christmas presents unless you told him exactly what you wanted. Mom figured that out right off the bat.

St. Patrick's Day, 1956, Atlanta Georgia

Elva Hasty was a young college graduate in her first year of teaching, living with her parents. Her friend Babs was home from college and she decided to throw a party for St. Patrick's Day, at her parents' home in Atlanta. Babs invited her good friend Elva, who politely declined because she didn't have anyone to go with, but Babs was persistent.

"There will be a guy there with no date, a friend of the family, Tony Thompson. He's a little older than we are but he's nice. Come on to the party and he can be your date," she encouraged young Elva.

Elva thought about it and decided since she had nothing better to do, she would go to Babs' party. She arrived at the house and was greeted by Babs. "Go on back to the kitchen. Tony's in there talking to my dad," Babs told her.

Elva went into the kitchen and Tony was deep in conversation with Babs' father and barely looked at her. Babs' father introduced Elva and Tony. Tony said hello and kept talking to the older man. Elva stood there for a few minutes and then went into the living room and chatted with some of the other party guests, but she felt awkward since she had no date.

Finally, Elva decided it was a boring party and she preferred to just go back to her parents' house where she could read in private. She was a voracious reader.

She found Babs and said "I'm going to call my dad to come pick me up." Suddenly, Tony was there. "I'll be glad to drive you home, Miss Hasty."

Tony was working as an accountant for a chain of grocery stores, the Big Apple Stores. His mother was a retired schoolteacher.

They dated for a few months, then broke up during the summer of 1956. They got back together in September.

In late November, Tony arrived at Elva's parents' home late on a Sunday afternoon, and Elva was furious. He had promised to be there hours earlier, and Elva had carefully dressed and fixed her hair and makeup, then then just sat, waiting on Tony. She didn't have a way to call him. He had moved back to Augusta and was just in Atlanta for a weekend visit. She didn't know the name of the aunt he was staying with, or the phone number. She figured he had probably forgotten he was going to see her, so she re-dressed, not caring how she looked.

Tony finally arrived, late in the afternoon. He found Elva wearing old dungarees and a tee shirt of her brothers, her face scrubbed clean of makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail. He was surprised because she had never looked so sloppy before. He quickly realized she was furious.

"OK so listen up," she said curtly.  "I'm almost 23 years old and I'm not getting any younger. [Her aunt Miriam actually had her Sunday School class praying every Sunday that Elva would find a husband before it was too late!] I'm ready to get married and settle down. I want four kids and a dog, and I plan to stay home. If you aren't interested in getting married, that's fine, I won't waste any more time on you. If you are interested in getting married and starting a family, tell me now. I'm tired of waiting."

She basically gave him an ultimatum.

There was no dramatic proposal with him on one knee. No ardent declarations of love. Elva was ready to get married and he could either fish or cut bait. [Keep in mind that in those days, nice girls didn't sleep with anyone unless they were married and Elva was a nice girl.]

Tony agreed, but Elva wasn't done.

"I've been seeing another guy all summer and he says he's in love with me. I told him if he wants to marry me he needs to bring me a diamond. Same goes for you. The first guy who gives me a proposal AND a diamond, I'll marry."

[Many years later, I asked Tony if he had loved her at first sight and he said YES! Elva told me she didn't feel the same; he was really skinny and not very good at communicating. Eventually, they became great friends. One of my best childhood memories is hearing them talking and laughing together at night, when I was supposed to be in bed asleep.]

On Christmas Day, 1956, Tony Thompson showed up at Elva's parents' house with a diamond ring and a proposal. She agreed to marry him. He casually said "I want to get married right away, and I want a BIG wedding!" Six weeks later, they were married at First Baptist Church in Atlanta.

That proposal and that lovely diamond ring are why my father's name was Tony Thompson, not Tom Bell.

 

left, Tony and Elva's engagement photo

right, a few years later, Elva with her children Bruce and Dee [me]

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you like interesting and/or funny stories, check out my latest book, Talking Back, Stories from the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years, available on Amazon

Riding the Waves

When I was a child, I was easily frustrated and upset. My memaw told me once I was "high strung." That made me frown. When God was handing out personalities I got a bad deal, it seemed. I am still high strung. I own that. It isn't easy being this way. Sometimes my mind races ahead and I get impatient with those who can't mentally keep up with me. Other times, I realize that I overlook details and make assumptions that I shouldn't, and it would be better to go slower.

I probably wasn't wise to become a Litigation Paralegal because litigation is small-scale war, and there are always plenty of occasions when it's easy to get upset while waging war, even if the weapons are made of paper or whatever emails are made of. I made a work mistake recently that upset me a great deal. I don't think it was entirely my fault, but nonetheless, since I've been a paralegal since 1985, I shouldn't be making mistakes, right?!? Unfortunately, I'm not perfect. When you have a lot of gray in your hair, folks expect you to be either All-Knowing and Perfect, or Senile. I am neither one of those things.

This Christmas has turned out to be one in which there are a lot of challenges.

I have one sibling and he lives about 3.5 hours away. I haven't seen him in two years. We had a lovely phone visit on Thanksgiving, but then last week he sent me an email that made me cry. That was all he gave me for Christmas -- not a card, not a call, not a visit, not a present of any kind, for me or for my son. Being mad at me is one thing -- we are opposites in personality and we've had many disputes, all our lives -- but ignoring my son really hurts. My brother is his only close male relative, and he grew up with no father.

Second, my sweet dog Lola had to be put down last Friday. She had endured two major surgeries in recent years, and had lost most of her hearing. She was suffering from a very painful degenerative eye disease and rapidly going blind. Add in severe allergies that made her itch uncontrollably without medication, arthritis, and some signs of doggy dementia, and I felt like it was time. When a dog has to be heavily medicated, and cannot see or hear, there's no quality of life.

My mother always said bad things come in threes and she was right. My son is having major issues with his car. So for us: Bruce acts like a Grinch, the furbaby crosses the Rainbow Bridge and we miss her terribly, we are facing big bucks for car repairs [probably a new transmission].

I'm not giving up, though.

One of the few gifts of getting older is being able to look back on the years I've spent living and to realize that worrying about stuff accomplishes nothing. A great aphorism: Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but you don't get anywhere.

As I told my son yesterday [and it made him smile, thankfully] this is how life is: one day everything's rosy and you're riding a wave [here I made a hand gesture of surfing] and the next day things just suck. You're not on top of the wave. The wave has washed over you and you feel like you're drowning.There are always going to be ups and downs. It's just LIFE. It's just how it is. Everyone goes through good times and bad times, but here's the big revelation:

It doesn't matter how often you get knocked down. It matters that you always GET BACK UP.

I haven't always been a shining example of grace under fire, but I've shown my son that even when things in my life were awful, I never "took to the bed." I never gave up or gave in. Right now I might burst into tears and sob for a while occasionally, missing my dog, missing my big brother, wondering how I am going to pay a bill, or missing my mom. I might eat pie or cookies. I might shuffle around in my bathrobe and leave wadded up kleenex everywhere. I admit to all those unhealthy coping mechanisms, sure.

I don't give up, though. That's what's most important.

Check out my latest book, Talking Back, Stories from the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years.

 

Chicago in the 1970's

I am a packrat when it comes to scanning in and saving photos. I have literally thousands of photos on my computer and I particularly cherish photos that bring to mind memorable events in my life. I love how I feel when looking at an old photo -- especially one I remember posing for, because it's like time traveling to that time and place. In the photo below, I remember the sense of triumph that we had finally reached our destination and I was so happy to see my cousins. It was a very hot day, and yet the wind made it seem not that hot. I instantly understood why Chicago is called The Windy City.

The trip to Chicago commemorated in the photos here was quite memorable.

Left, me and my grandmother Memaw Hasty and two of my Hasty cousins in Chicago, 1974. We drove from Knoxville to Chicago in a 1968 Impala with Memaw sitting between me and my brother on the back seat. Memaw wanted to visit her son Don and his family and stay for a while. She flew home a few weeks after we carried her up there.

I was 12 years old and I had never been to a city as enormous as Chicago. My uncle was an administrator at McCormick Theological Seminary. As part of his compensation, his family was able to live in a row house near the school.

For me it was a huge adventure. There were a lot of firsts.

I had never been in a car that long, for one. In those days it was about 9 or 10 hours. We played a lot of car games, sang songs, and told stories. My grandmother pulled out her crossword puzzle books and gave us all Chiclets.

Our family played a car game where we tried to guess the identity of a famous person based on asking yes or no questions. Memaw stumped us all. She said her Famous Person was a military man, last name started with S. We asked a lot of questions, for miles and miles, and finally gave up.

The answer? Colonel Sanders. Mom and Dad laughed about that for years.

From the houses to the train to the stores, Chicago was a fascinating place.

I had never been inside a brownstone -- I'd only seen them in TV shows and movies. The idea of building such a vertical home just fascinated me, and of course scampering up and down the stairs was fun. [Now, almost 50 years later, my knees hurt just contemplating all those stairs!]

My cousins and brother and I were able to get out and run around by ourselves, in a big city! That was major league fun, in my book. I had never been on a train. I had never been in anything like the Field Museum. I was used to museums that were enclosed in old houses, easily viewed in an hour or so. I could have spent a week in the Field Museum and not seen it all.

My cousins had the enviable life of freedom, and although to me the city was scary it was also fascinating.

We wandered into a little junky "antiques" store, the kind of dusty little shop one finds everywhere, and I found a blue bottle that I loved, the blue a rich dark purple-blue that reminded me of my mother's eyes. When we got back to the house and I showed my mother she burst out laughing. My Dad laughed. My aunt and uncle laughed. I was upset because I felt like I had messed up and I didn't know why. Finally, Mom explained that the writing on the bottle, "Strychnine," was a type of poison. I had never seen that word. None of us kids knew the word. From feeling proud at finding a cool present for Mom, I felt like an idiot.

We left Chicago and drove to Springfield Illinois, to see where Abraham Lincoln had lived for years, and visit his law office and his in-law's house, all of those places having been well preserved. I think we also spent a night in St. Louis, and my brother and I wanted to go up inside the famous arch, and my parents said NO. My mother was deathly afraid of heights.

I came home happy to see the mountains of East Tennessee, happy to not take any more long car trips for a while, but missing my cousins. It would be years before we would see them again.

 

If you are looking for the perfect Christmas gift, check out my newest book! Talking Back

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