CHAPTER 2

Margaret Bridges went by her middle name, Anne. Born in 1957, Anne had lived in Linden, Alabama, her entire life. Linden is a small, rural town about halfway between Birmingham and Mobile. The subdivision Pecan Grove provided Anne with some of her fondest memories of childhood during the sixties. Back then, a community spirit existed, along with a true sense of caring. Both seem to be all but forgotten about today.

Our house was the first to be built in the subdivision. Dirt roads were all around us. It was a great place to raise a family. The neighborhood was full of children, so there was always someone to play cops-and-robbers with, football (I was a tomboy), make forts in an undeveloped lot, play follow-the-leader on a handmade trampoline, ride a tiny scooter around and around one friend’s house, swim in a cattle trough (a new one).

During summer, when school was out, we started playing every day right after breakfast and headed home at dusk. We were very fortunate also to have a Dairy Queen right down the road. I could see it from my bedroom window.

Anne grew up in a small, redbrick home in the quiet Southern town of Linden, Alabama, where she never imagined an ordeal like the one she later endured. (Photos courtesy of Anne Bridges Johnson)

As she got older, that bedroom window became important to Anne, almost a focal point of her life. All the neighborhood teens hung out at the DQ, and she could see who was out for the night from her bedroom.

I remember, I could purchase two small Cokes and five pieces of bubble gum for a quarter from the DQ. Everyone knew the DQ owner and he helped raise us all. You could cash a check and he would hold it for you. On Halloween we used his water to fill up balloons, and he would call our parents if he thought we were doing something wrong. He is a man I will always admire and be thankful for.

By most accounts, the Deep South consists of Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. Linden sits in the middle of what is sometimes called the Bible Belt, located roughly one hundred miles north of the Florida state line. Anne remembered her hometown as a place where neighbors helped one another, where residents took the time to stop and chat at the post office and general store. When one community member suffered, the whole town reached out with open arms and helping hands. The essence of community.

One of Anne’s most comforting feelings stemmed from recalling the summers she spent as a small child and teenager at the city swimming pool.

I took all kinds of lessons, including junior lifesaving. I loved the water—and still do, really. We had no pool, so the next best thing besides the city pool was the sprinkler for our grass, or even the bathtub on superhot days.

For an Alabama child, one of the most “loved” events was the snow. Any amount of snow in the South is such a rare “treat,” as she put it, to get two or three inches would close the schools, with everyone running out to clear the stores of bottled water, milk, and bread.

“I still love it and still get out in it, to catch snowflakes on my tongue.”

Anne was one of those kids who “absolutely loved elementary school.” Hers was a day and an age when most kids walked to and from school each day. Yet Anne’s concerned (and caring) mother still insisted on driving her.

Anne’s father was the Linden chief of police for thirty-five years. She looked up to him then as a larger-than-life figure, and the fact that everyone knew him made her feel “special and protected.”

“It was kind of cool leaving school in the chief of police’s car—I was the envy of first grade. I have fond memories of the Dick and Jane reading series, but a memory of fear of my first-grade teacher.” She laughed. “That woman would pop your hand in a minute with her ruler. I don’t think I ever moved a muscle in her class.”

Anne grew up in a spacious, redbrick, three-bedroom home, which she would ultimately own and live in for the rest of her life.

In 1999 my mother deeded the house over to me and my sister, who later deeded it just to me. It was, and is, a nice middle-class home, in a nice middle-class subdivision. Three bedrooms and one bath, it sits on 1½ lots (not acres) with a large fenced-in backyard. None of us would ever let the house get run-down or neglected. We always kept it up to date. I guess you could say I am emotionally attached to this home. This is where my favorite memories are from.

Her parents bought a few parcels of land in the neighborhood as an investment. Life seemed to be moving along rather perfectly, at a placid pace. Anne’s family had no real problems to speak of, and, for the most part, their lives had been mostly trouble-free.

Tragedy had struck the year before Anne was born, in 1956, when Anne’s sister passed away at the age of five after a long battle with a kidney disease.

My oldest sister was ten when our other sister died; eleven when I was born. She and Mom have both told me that our sister who passed away was an angel. She never complained the entire time she was sick. The only halfway complaint she gave them was when she asked my mom, “Why won’t God make me better?” Mom told her, “I don’t know.”

I cannot imagine the pain Mom felt trying to answer that question. My older sister and I had a difficult time getting along, and I believe my late sister would have been a mediator to help us along. I would have loved to have known her.

Anne has two living sisters. Her oldest, Joyce, “still thinks she is my mother—very aggravating, but it also shows her love for me, I guess. She has always been there for me. . . . At nineteen, Joyce had her first child, John, so I was an aunt at eight years old, and then again at ten, with the birth of Russell, her second child. I basically grew up with my nephew, and to this day my oldest nephew and I are very close,” she said.

Tragedy struck Joyce’s family when her son Russell perished in an automobile wreck at the age of twenty-six.

“He was an awesome man who left behind a two-year-old son. Obviously, it was heart-wrenching for the entire family, but his parents never got over it. Then, in November 2015, my brother-in-law passed away. This has made things even worse for my sister.”

Anne has nothing but accolades and love for her parents, noting, “God could have never given me two other people who would have been more perfect.”

Dad was the disciplinarian and Mom was the soft-spoken, loving mother. I was a “late-in-life” child for them. Mom was thirty-nine and Dad was forty-eight. So, of course, being the baby, and after their just losing a daughter, I was spoiled rotten.

Even though she was originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Mom was the epitome of a Southern belle. She never cursed, smoked, drank alcohol, or even wore pants (until she was in her eighties). She is still living (age ninety-nine in 2017) . . . and she still reads, which is her favorite pastime. Mom and I are tight. She gave up so many things in life so I could have whatever I wanted.

Anne’s father was in many ways the polar opposite.

But, boy, did I respect him! When my dad said “jump,” I said, “How high ?” Dad and I were never very close. He never hugged me, never bragged about me. He never had much to do with me, except when it came time to discipline. This might sound harsh, but I don’t mean it that way. I was the third, their last child, and I feel he had some resentment that I wasn’t a boy.

The only time I remember Dad telling me he loved me was the day before he died, while the ambulance was getting ready to take him to the hospital. I was twenty-six. My son was two. One thing I have to remember is that he was like this because that was the way all the Southern men I knew were raised: to be tough, don’t show emotion, and always be the boss of your home.