Mom has been gone 10 years this August. She would have been 90 this month. She and George H W Bush had birthdays only a few days apart and George W and I share the same birthday. That's where the comparisons stop although there are a few more that are rather interesting.
Mom was also a Rosie Riveter at Willow Run Airport 's bomber assembly plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a community west of Detroit and former home to the Flying Tiger's Airline who flew freight for many years after the war. The theme of Rosie Riveter was a young woman with a red and white bandanna wrapped around her head, blue shirt and a arm in a 90-degree pump action proclaiming, "We Can Do It!" Mom put two bolts into the underside of the plane's wing.
Some fifteen years ago while visiting some friends outside of Columbus, Ohio, one of the bombers were on display at a nearby county airport that is west of Columbus. Mom said to me later when asking her about why she went to see the plane, " I wanted to see if I could remember those bolts after 50 years." she said. She continued to say that," instantly, I recognized those bolts just as soon as I walked under the wing and looked up. My eyes fell on those bolts. There they were after all those years in the air!"
Mom was really ahead of her time in many ways. She thought ahead that way too! She knew how to cut down on risk even if it was from a thunderstorm. She only had one accident driving here entire driving lifetime. It wasn't her fault, but the lady that caused the accident did pass. The lady came across 6 lanes of traffic, hitting mom then crossing two more lanes into a ditch.
As a young girl, of 17, she avoided a boating accident on a popular lake by having that sense of danger and backing out as one of the passengers at the last minute. That day, three of the four girls died when the boat capsized. Two years late, she was in Detroit putting rivets in bombers used in Europe during World War II.
Mom was an interesting person,too. Few people were ever able to enter into her inter circle. Mom was a very modest person. She got that from my grandfather. She was the youngest of four, growing up in the depression years of the south. But her father (my grandfather) was a very successful business man in Arkansas. As I have mentioned in post before, he was a grocer and had also served with the US Marshall's Office for several years. At the time of his death, he and my grandmother were running their largest grocery to date. The Spear Lake Grocery was at the edge of a large cotton field where John Grisham based one of his novels growing up in Arkansas, publishing, "The Painted House". At my grandfather's funeral, in a still segregated south, white and black came together filling the Methodist Church and the grounds outside the church in Lepanto. Previous post displays a picture of him with my mom and one of her older sisters sitting on the counter in the restaurant portion of his boarding house with the start of his grocery business in 1928 already beginning to appear on the wall. My grandfather had many friends. Word of mouth networking sent many interesting people to my grandfather's store who later would befriend him. One of those to do so was none other than Brooklyn Dodger pitcher, Elwin Charles (Preacher ) Roe. Roe went quail hunting with my grandfather and uncle who was a Methodist preacher. Mom would say later about Preacher Roe that," he's from Ash Flat and played for the Cardinals (St.Louis) but he was meant to be a Dodger (Brooklyn)". Mom remained a Dodger fan all her life. Preacher ran a family grocery business just over the Missouri line in West Plains after he retired.
Mom was bright, intelligent and learned how to spin a story listening to the boarders talking at dinner or customers coming into the store talking to my grandfather after getting off the train. The boarding house was across the street from the train station and a block from the entry to the Singer Sewing Machine Cabinet Plant. The workers at the Singer Plant were boarders and they were customers for grocery items but they could get breakfast and dinner in the restaurant also. Mom had a business sense from her earliest recollections. My grandfather was a very good teacher to mom but he also inspired me from a very early age. My father was a prince, but my grandfather was king.
Mom would also sing on the radio on Saturday nights. My great uncle, William (Willie) Beard owned and operated KBTM-AM radio for many years. There was a local Saturday night show much like the Grand Ole Opery on WMC. KBTM signal would sometimes overlap and skip sometimes with the Grand Ole Opery and the Louisiana Hayride shows. So to sing on KBTM you had to have a good voice and have some good material. Mom had both. KBTM is now outside the family but still operating today.
Mom was also a surprise more often than not. Just when you thought that you knew who she was, she would spring a surprise on you that generally would blow you away more than knock you off your feet! She really did learn from guys like Preacher Roe and my uncle (the Methodist preacher) and
others that pampered her growing up. She would use that later to pull rabbits out of the hat at any time.
My last big surprise before she passed was a bed-side talk in the rehab facility after her first stroke. When we talked before her stroke, sometime we would both be laughing so hard the tears were dropping on the floor and my side would hurt for days afterwards. She had a rather dry sense of humor at times and it would just draw you in even when you were prepared for her to stare you down.
She would tell me things about the days in Detroit during the war. Things, I would ask her about many times but only got answers when she was ready to release them. But when she did, it was usually like the blast from a jet engine. I was helping her clean out her closets a few years before she passed. I came across a picture of her in her late teens or very early 20s. Later, I ask her about that picture. She would not admit that it existed. When I ask her about it again, she became a bit irritated with me and that was not her normal self. I looked for that picture until she passed and afterwards, I closely watched everything. To this day, I do not know what happened to that picture. That picture was as good as any young movie star glossy. I think it came about from her days singing on KBTM. That picture was a talent scout image.
During the picture hunt, I came across a court document that she had tucked away in a file in her closet. This time, I brought it out and ask her what was going on. She ask me if I had read it? When I said that," I have glanced at it," and that," no, I have not read it yet," she replied, "Read it."
I said,"Mother, this makes you an officer of the court and that you have been appointed to serve as juvenile probation officer." She said, "I know." She never discussed it further.
But for me, since I have been a Detroit Red Wings hockey fan for eons, maybe longer, we were talking about sports one afternoon. She had long talked about baseball but having discovered earlier the bifurcated whys of her lifetime Dodger fan hood, I had ask her about other sports. She didn't like basketball. She liked football. When I ask her about Hockey, she said, " the Red Wings have been my inspiration in life". That blew me away but I ask if she had any favorite player, thinking she would say Gordie Howe, because she was but a couple years older. Once again, she blew my socks off with, "You know, the Great Gretzky once said, ' I skate to where the puck will be, not where it is.' " That was all I needed to hear. My Mom and the Great Gretzky thought alike!
We all miss you mom. Happy Birthday.
edited for clarity
