Gleaning Facebook: Found Objects

 Rummaging around in old boxes today I found a few merry nudges...

I'll bet there are others of these old bank bags scattered around town. My Daddy started banking at National City Bank in 1962 when we moved to Rome for him to begin his ministry at Trinity Methodist Church. Jim Formby, a banker at NCB was an active layman at Trinity and became my Dad's friend. That account was never closed until, after the bank had gone through MANY name changes during 59 years, we closed it, now my Mother's, just a few weeks before she died this year. National City always used the City Clock in their ads. When Sheila and I moved back to Rome eight days after our marriage in 1971, I naturally went to Mr. Formby to open our joint account at NCB.

A paper coaster from the Aloha Restaurant from, I think, the mid-sixties. I am a pack-rat-bordering-on-hoarder and I saved this coaster from a date or a banquet from that era. I remember at least two West Rome sports banquets at the Aloha; one was held at the original location in the little triangle formed by West Second Avenue, Martha Berry Blvd., and Turner McCall Blvd, and the second at the Martha Berry Blvd location near Robin Street.

More ancient history from rummaging around in boxes this morning: this is one of the many signs I created with “magic markers” as a college-volunteer at the RFK HQ in New Albany, Indiana, on the weekend before the 1968 Indiana primary. They were intended for supporters to hold at the Louisville airport when he arrived or in other of his appearances nearby.

A bit of history I stumbled upon this morning- Lillian’s note to Tooth Fairy. As I recall the fairy was forgiving concerning the lost lost tooth, and quite generous.

Mildred, gone dancing.

Mildred at Pine Tree Cottage with my beloveds.

I have mentioned our friend, mentor, inspiration, wonder Mildred many times in this blog. 

Sheila and I talked of driving to Helen to see Mildred again this fall, as we did for her 100th birthday last October. But that wasn't to be. Teressa called us this morning to let us know that Mildred died yesterday. Teressa said Mildred was having a pretty good day until thirty minutes before her death. She was only a few weeks from her 101st birthday still living there on the Greear place in Pine Tree Cottage that she and Phillip built after they retired and moved back to Helen from Rome

I treasure our copy of Mildred's poetry collection: Moving Gone Dancing, that she published in 2007. I'll post more about Mildred later, but for now here's the poem that is the "Gone Dancing" part of the title; I don't think Mildred would mind my quoting it.

Gone Dancing

Hey, 

watch out

when I dance.

When I dance

from the inside

my dance will begin

with an earth-on-axis whirling

everything centered

spinning like mad.

At first I may look like a kite

before my arms become blurred

and disappear out there

as I dance right through fingers

right through tight skin everywhere.

Up, up on toes, I will be taller

than I have ever been;

everything gone north and south.

Let me tell you,

it will be good

reaching that high

after touching so low.

You may look out and say

there's a whirlwind out yonder!

When already it was likely me

blowing your hat off

as I danced right by you.

Right by you!

and that's no whirlwind out yonder

kiddos, that's me,

your mama

gone dancing.

- Mildred White Greear

My life is poorer for her absence, but so much richer for the last half century as her friend.

When a breeze kicks up and I reach up to secure my hat, I'll think of Mildred, gone dancing.

 

PTSW: Daddies

I never wrist-wrestled my Daddy. 

But this poem struck home as it resurrected in my imagination a role-reversed experience with him one day about 1974. We both knew the world had changed that day. 

"Wrist Wrestling Father" ~ Orval Lund

for my father On the maple wood we placed our elbows and gripped hands, the object to bend the other's arm to the kitchen table. We flexed our arms and waited for the sign. I once shot a wild goose. I once stood not twenty feet from a buck deer unnoticed. I've seen a woods full of pink lady slippers. I once caught a 19-inch trout on a tiny fly. I've seen the Pacific, I've seen the Atlantic, I've watched whales in each. I once heard Lenny Bruce tell jokes. I've seen Sandy Koufax pitch a baseball. I've heard Paul Desmond play the saxophone. I've been to London to see the Queen. I've had dinner with a Nobel Prize poet. I wrote a poem once with every word but one just right. I've fathered two fine sons and loved the same woman for twenty-five years. But I've never been more amazed than when I snapped my father's arm down to the table.

United We Stand.

In the last half of the seventeen hundreds a large number of white landholding men in America were feeling that their natural rights were being trampled. They decided that they must unite or die under the tyranny of King George. E Pluribus Unum: Out of the many weak colonies they represented they united to create one federation. 

They were smart men, educated men, men, men who in their best moments were high-minded and principled. They spoke nobly of the rights of man, of equality, of liberty. But, like you and me, they were creatures of their time. Like you and me they were susceptible to greed, selfishness, prejudice, and short-sightedness. If they considered blacks or native Americans or even immigrants from other societies or the poor in general, or even their own mothers and daughters at all, it was mostly with the condescension of real men toward something less.

As the decades passed those noble writings filtered down to those "lessers" and they began to claim those natural rights to themselves. And as the agrarian society gave way to the industrial revolution the greed and unfairness of unrestrained capitalism became more and more obvious and its victims became more and more restive. They wanted their natural rights too. And they realized that they must unite or die, that they could be strong only if they could unite the many. The great American labor movement was born and the "all men" in the Declaration and the "general welfare" in the first sentence of the Constitution came, more and more, to refer to more than just white landholding men. 

Today we celebrate that great perfecting of America. Even in 2021 we are not finished. Lord knows we have taken some backwards steps in the last 30 years and especially in the last five, but we keep re-bending the arc of history toward justice and liberty.

I love America not because it's perfect; it's not. I love America because it is founded on the goal of ever-perfecting the balance of liberty and the common welfare. 

----

Here's a Labor Day post from 2007:

A Labor Day Acrostic

It seems to me there is less respect today than at anytime in my life for the labor of common folk. The air of entitlement among some folk only a generation or two removed from "linthead" and "clodbuster" ancestors is downright shocking. People who would still be tied to farm or mill had there been no union movement or New Deal or GI Bill are adamantly anti-union, anti-Democratic, anti-government programs period. There is very little awareness or appreciation for the incredible number of hands responsible for each little luxury and convenience we partially consume and largely consign to metastasizing landfills. There is great disdain for those whose labor is necessary to our wasteful lifestyles. And how dare our tax dollars be used to provide health insurance to common laborers who contribute less than us to the tax coffers.

On Labor Day this year I had the rare privilege of listening as several of my older relatives discussed the work their parents did in the cotton mills of Georgia and South Carolina. I am very proud of those folks. They sacrificed much to give their children better lives.

One interesting story was about how, when the small Methodist Church (the graveyard of which holds my grandparents) in Porterdale was used for a union organizing meeting it was burned down.

On the 1900 census of Spaulding County Georgia you will find my 10 year old Uncle Ervin listed as "elevator boy" and my fifteen year old grandmother as "mill worker". Think about that my young friends as you clip on your iPods and head to the gym to workout in your 75 dollar Nikes.

I interviewed Uncle Ervin when he was in his nineties back about 1981. He mentioned visiting Ashland, Alabama (from Griffin, Georgia) in his youth. I asked him how he got there. I thought perhaps he took a horse or wagon or maybe a train. No. "I got there the same way I got anywhere else," he said, "I walked."

I'm sure it was good exercise. I do not think he wore Nikes.

So here's my response to Tricia's Monday Poetry Stretch, an acrostic for Labor Day.

Little Uncle Irvin, ten-years-old,
A new employee, runs the mill's
Big elevator, up and down, hour after hour --
Our grandmother, fifteen and fatherless, an old hand upstairs --
Raising the bosses and the bossed,

Day after 1900 day,
And Will, and Fanny, and Molly, and Cora,
Year after non-union year.

by Terrell Shaw