Chapter 8

The Death of Mamaw.  It was the Whiskey that did it, and the Life and Times of Lilly Abagail Idelliagh Shows Emmons (1875 – 1954)

My Mamaw broke up housekeeping in 1954.  They sold the old place and she moved in with us until her death later that year.

I remember her as a tall, gaunt, gray old woman with her hair in a bun, who wore polka-dot dresses and had a fondness for chicken wings.

She made molasses taffy for me.  She would cook molasses and the other ingredients, spoon it out on wax paper to cool and we would grease our hands with Snowdrift shortening and pull and twist it into ropes. I ate it, and she, with false teeth, just sucked the sticks.  I would not dare eat in now-days, for fear it would pull every filling from my teeth!

Now, being a staunch Baptist, I am sure she would never drink beverage alcohol – but there was always a bottle of whiskey around – not moonshine, but the store-bought stuff --  Bourbon --  like Jim Beam, Old Crow, etc. Whiskey, kerosene, turpentine, Vicks Salve and sugar were the basis for her home remedies.  And she used Whiskey for curing her fruit cakes.

Now, let me (as usual) digress and talk about fruit cakes and other things. I love fruit cakes – not those wannabe “lemon-nut” kind.  I mean the real deal, with candied fruits, nuts, raisins, etc.  When I was in the Lions Club at DeKalb, we sold Benson’s Old Home Fruit cakes as a fund raiser – and I was good at it because I believed in my product.  People would hide when they saw me coming.  I always bought a few extra and put them in the freezer.  A slice of Benson’s Old Home Fruit Cake slathered in butter and toasted and eaten with a cup of coffee makes a mighty fine breakfast. But some smart-Alec comedian made a joke about them being re-gifted from year to year and eventually ending up being used as doorstops, and other comedians joined in and the public stepped in right in line like a bunch of cliff-bound lemmings and pushed all the fruit cakes into the sea. 

Same thing for mini-vans.  They were very popular in the mid-80’s and early 90’s.  I had a Chevy Astro.  It was the best, most convenient vehicle I ever had.  I loved it. The only drawback was the lack of an air-conditioning vent in the back, so it got mighty hot in the “way back,” but that would be an easy fix.  Then the comedians started in on them and said any woman driving a mini-van must be a soccer mom.  All the soccer moms did not want to be called soccer moms, so they ditched their comfortable, sensible mini-vans, bought sports cars, crowded three children, an Old English sheep dog and a bag of soccer balls in the back seat and drove to soccer practice. Does not anyone think for themselves anymore?

Whew, it sure was good to get that out.  Now I am through rambling and ranting, and ready to get back to my story.

Mamaw loved fruit cakes and that was the one place where she splurged.  Remember me telling you how they would sit around the fire and pick out walnut and hickory nuts at night?  That was for making fruit cakes.  In addition to the nuts, there were candied red and green cherries, raisins, dates and citron rinds, with just enough flour to bind it all together. She would bake them around Thanksgiving, wrap them in cheese cloth and pour on whiskey until it ran off.  She would wait a few days for it to soak in, then add some more, etc. until the cake was completely saturated with whiskey.  Friends, that was some kind of good fruit cake.  My mother would only let me has one little-bitty piece, but the adults ate it with relish!  Wait a minute.  That did not come out right.  What I mean is they ate it eagerly, not that they piled on chopped pickles.  Such are the pitfalls of the writer’s craft.

At her last Thanksgiving, Mamaw reached into the cabinet for the whiskey, lost her balance, fell and broke her hip.  She died in the hospital a few weeks later.  It was the whiskey that did it.

My mother was so cheap she would, as the old folks used to say, “skin a flea for its hide and tallow,” but she always bought good furniture.  Mamaw was laid out in a beautiful coffin of polished cherry wood.  It was probably the nicest thing she ever owned.

She was born to adversity, during reconstruction: the granddaughter of pioneers and the daughter of a Confederate veteran, taken prisoner at Vicksburg, released to stagger home so gaunt and broken as to be unrecognizable to his own family, and to daily relive the horrors of war until he died insane.

During her life Custer made his last stand, The “Wizard of Menlo Park” turned night into day, made machines talk with the voices of men, and electronic ghosts dance across silver screens in theaters across the world. A generation later, a fourteen-year-old boy, named Philo T. Farnsworth, showed us how to put people in a box and bring them into our living rooms.  We abandoned our porches, moved inside, air conditioned our homes, forgot our neighbors and made new friends with names like Lucy and Ricky, Fred and Ethel, and Ben, Adam, Hoss and Little Joe.

Alexander Graham Bell spoke into the mouthpiece of his new invention, “Mr. Watson, come here; I need you,” and Mr. Watson, in another room and well out of natural earshot, did.

Marconi broadcasted  a radio carrier wave into the troposphere and broke it into the dits and dahs of a Morse message.  Other engineers modulated the amplitude and Dallie could sit by her fireside and listen to the music in the air and have a chat with a President.            

Two brothers got their clumsy craft airborne on a windy North Carolina sand dune, broke the surly bonds that bound mankind to the dirt, and set into motion events that would fulfill Tennyson’s vision of “the heavens filled with commerce and mighty navies in the air.

She lived through droughts, floods, “September gales,”  three declared wars, numerous military conflicts, economic panics, the great depression, and sent her only son off to war and welcomed his return – whole.  Other mothers were not so lucky:  Their sons returned maimed in body or, like her own father, in spirit -- or in a box.  Some did not come home.  They remain in the forgotten corners of foreign fields that are forever America.

She saw tyrants run rampant over the Earth, only to be finally deposed when man unleased the primordial forces of nature upon their fellow man and ushered in the Nuclear Age.

At the time of her death, President Eisenhower was planning the greatest construction project in the history of the world:  The American Interstate Highway System. Just as it was completed, a new young president would challenge America to send men to the moon and return them safely home.  We did on July 20, 1969 when U.S. Navy Commander Neil Armstrong jumped from the final step of his Lunar Lander, declared “That is one small step for a man and a giant leap forward for mankind” – and left his footprints in the dust of this strange and foreboding world – perhaps forever.  Humankind had stepped out of his playpen and was headed for the big time.

Mostly, Dalie’s life was one of grinding poverty and hard work.  She had her season in the sun when she was married to Wiley and his blacksmith shop was a hub of community activity and she welcomed strangers and friends to her dinner table. But most of her life, she just struggled to keep the wolf away from the door.

Her wake was held in our living room.  I guess that was cheaper than the funeral home chapel. The sofa was moved out and the coffin was moved in. Her few kinsmen and friends came in, paid their respects, stood on the porch to visit awhile and left.

I don’t know where the funeral was held.  I did not go:  I stayed with my Uncle Herman and Aunt Verl, but I assume Sheldon Creek Baptist Church, since she and Wiley were founding members.

She was buried in the sandy Jones County soil where she had struggled so mightily to bring forth enough food to feed her little family – and enough money to keep the tax man at bay.

Rest in peace, Lilly Abigale Idelliah Shows Emmons.  You earned it.