It seemed to me that Momma set the tone for our family in many ways when she was with us. This short, chunky lady, her gray hair knotted on the back of her head, lived with us off and on for years, occupying the right bedroom in the back of the house. For a while I slept in the big double bed with her, and that always gave me a good, secure feeling. She never read me stories, but she told me about her early life in Carbon Hill and how her newly built home was destroyed in 1926 by a cyclone. Her husband, Samuel Hobert Wood, had run the commissary at the Carbon Hill mine and afterwards opened his own general store. But after the cyclone, he made the difficult decision to leave Carbon Hill and move to West End, in Birmingham, and start all over again. He opened a neighborhood grocery store that he operated until his death, which happened shortly before I was born. One of my regrets in life is that I never got to know this grandfather.
Though Momma never raised her voice and was always gracious, she wielded great power, the power of example. And she was always diplomatic, never siding with either Mother or Dad when they disagreed over something. Because Mother worked, the running of the house, when she was there, was left up to Momma, who had very high standards of housekeeping.
When I think of Momma, I always see the beautiful dining table she set. The main meal of the day, which we called dinner, was served around noon, and it was a formal affair. Even on weekdays, when the silver and fine china were not used, there was a starched white tablecloth and the table was formally laid. Momma thought the cloth had to be white, and I remember a bit of disagreement between her and Mother, who had bought a red tablecloth. She suggested that they use it one day at lunch, but Momma demurred, finally agreeing that it might be all right for breakfast or even supper, but never for the main meal of the day.
With Momma, my grandmother, the class act of my early life on Shelby Street.
On Sunday everything really had to be perfect. Emily Post herself would have been envious of the table Momma set. When we sat down to Sunday dinner, we always found linen napkins at each place as well as Momma’s fine sterling—a salad fork, a dinner fork, a spoon, and a knife. Also on the table was Mother’s fine white china with pink roses around the edges. Later, Tootsie thought Mother needed a better set of dishes, and she presented her with an eight-place setting of more modern design.
If we had soup, there would be a silver soup spoon. Everybody also had their own bread plate, with a little knife for spreading on butter, honey, or jelly. Butter, fresh-churned at Mr. J. K. Cunningham’s dairy, was on its crystal plate, and each person had his own salt dish. Sterling pickle forks were provided, and stemmed goblets for water and iced tea. China cups and saucers were also on the table, but I didn’t drink coffee because I was told that it would turn me black. To this day, I don’t drink coffee.
Daddy always sat at the head of the table, a stack of china plates before him. Before any food was served, he always said the grace. During the week, he always quickly said his standard blessing: “Father, make us thankful for this day and for this food we are about to partake. Bless it to our use and us to thy service.” But on Sunday he would ask a special blessing covering every sphere of our lives. This was a bit hard to take, far too long with all the fine smells giving rise to pangs of hunger. Once he had thanked God for everything, asked for forgiveness for all wrongs we did last week, and asked for guidance in the following one, he began to carve and serve the meat. With a routine that might have been choreographed by Sister’s dance teacher at Alabama College, he would pick up a large silver fork with a yellowed pearl handle and put a piece of meat on each plate. He handed the plate to the left, and it was passed all the way around the table to the person on his right. Then the bowls of vegetables were passed to the left, everyone serving himself.
The food itself was not particularly fancy, just basic home cooking—a pot roast surrounded by carrots, onions, and potatoes, clove-spiked pink hams, or a large platter piled high with golden fried chicken. If forced to make a choice, I would say that the fried chicken was my favorite. It resulted from a ritual that had begun the day before.
The killing and dressing of the Sunday chicken was an event both terrifying and exciting to me. Our maid, Maggie Hale, Momma, or sometimes Dad would wring the chicken’s neck, after which the bird would flop around on the ground in its death throes. Once still, it was put into boiling water and plucked of its feathers until the skin was white and clean. Then a sharp knife was stuck in its rear end and a large gash cut, from which the intestines and other organs were pulled. Only then could the chicken be cut up for frying. This process of cleaning the chicken, I was told, was called dressing the chicken, but I thought it was far more like undressing a chicken.
The liver and gizzard were saved to make gravy to serve over rice, mashed potatoes, or dressing. But I was far more interested in the pulley-bone, which everyone knew was my designated piece. At Sunday dinner, after I had cleaned the bone thoroughly, I would hold it up to one of my sisters, and we would make a wish and pull the bone apart. The one getting the small end was supposed to have his wish come true, though I never remember it working out that way.
After the main part of the meal was over, Momma and Mother cleared the table of all used dishes and then brought out dessert and poured coffee for the grownups. Sometimes Dad wanted his coffee with his meal, and the ladies would not object to this breach of proper etiquette.
Dad was addicted to his coffee. Every weekday he had a ritual before leaving for work. After finishing his eggs and bacon and grits, he took his coffee cup and saucer and put it on his plate, pouring some of the coffee into the saucer and raising the saucer to his lips and drinking it with a loud slurping sound. Then he would reach for any remaining biscuit and crumble it into the remaining coffee, picking up his spoon and eating the mixture with great relish. We called this “eating cuddly-muddly.” Unfortunately, I was never allowed to make cuddly-muddly, which is one way I think I might have learned to like coffee.
Food was most important to me, I guess, in the afternoon when I came home famished from school. I would immediately rush to the kitchen stove to find the leftovers from dinner. I didn’t mind one bit that the food was at room temperature. I would grab a baked sweet potato from the oven, break the top off and cover it in butter, then wolf it down. Candied sweet potatoes would go between two pieces of cornbread or in a cold biscuit, and sometimes I would put black-eyed peas or turnip greens and their pot liquors over cornbread. I never bothered to sit down to eat these feasts, just stood by the stove and ate off the oven top or counter by the sink. But usually I did sit down to cap off this culinary experience with a dessert—“nanner pudding,” rice pudding, or, my favorite, tapioca pudding. I think I liked the tapioca best because of the beady little eyes that stared out at you from the bowl. These afternoon feasts were superior even to Sunday dinners.
When Momma left Montevallo in 1942 to live with her youngest daughter Lorene—or “Ween,” as I called her, I wondered if the Sunday dinners would continue in the style we had grown accustomed to. After all, she took her sterling silver with her (and when she died she left it to Ween). Buying new sterling when haircuts were fifty cents might have seemed out of the question, but for Christmas in 1946 Dad presented Mother with her own sterling service for eight, and the formal Sunday dinner routine could continue. Mother maintained a love of silver throughout her lifetime. When asked what she wanted for Christmas or her birthday, she would always answer that a piece of silver would be nice. She achieved her ambition of having service for twelve as well as a full array of serving pieces.
My grandfather, Henry Cary “Doc” Mahan holding his blind daughter Lucille. The photograph probably was taken during one of Lucille’s visits home from the Talladega School for the Deaf and Blind.
Studio portrait of Lucille Mahan taken during her Philadelphia days.
Late summer 1933 family outing. Back row, Ted Hubbard, a son of my aunt, Lois Mahan Hubbard, and my father. The women, left to right, Cornelia Baird, Adelaide Mahan, my mother, and Lucille Mahan.
Besides Mother and Momma, there was one other great feminine influence in my household. Although she only visited us in the summer, my Aunt Lucille—Daddy’s sister—was a great presence. “Aunt Cille,” who had lost her sight when she was two, came over from the Talladega School for the Deaf and Blind, which we called TSDB. When she was nine, a representative from the school came to Calera to meet Aunt Cille and her father, my Grandfather Doc, whom I never knew. To get to Calera they caught the train in Randolph, rode to Wilton, and then to Calera—a trip of about twenty miles. Lucille was interviewed and accepted into TSDB and plans were made for her to attend. A short while later, she was carried to Randolph and put on a train bound for Talladega. I’m sure that the station manager in Randolph telegraphed the station manager in Talladega about her arrival time, but this must have been a pretty stressful time for a nine-year-old blind girl. Luckily she was met at the station by a school representative and taken to the campus.
Aunt Cille flourished in her new surroundings. At TSDB, she completed both grammar school and high school, graduating in 1912 with high awards in piano and voice. She was so proficient in music that she was sent to study piano, voice, organ, harmony, and composition at the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia. While there, she became a soloist at Patterson Memorial Presbyterian Church and also distinguished herself by being the first blind woman ever to sing with the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra. After graduation in 1916, she went for further study to Hyperion School of Music in Philadelphia, returning after two years to Overbrook, where she was on the faculty from 1917 through 1925. Then she was offered a job at Talladega, and she taught there until her retirement in 1957.
Aunt Cille was a happy soul. She never acted as if she had been cheated by her blindness, and she always said that she would rather be blind than deaf. That made sense to me, as it was clear that music was the center of her life. She was a great admirer of Helen Keller, and she would quote her to me: “The only thing that is worse than being unable to see is to be able to see and to have no vision.” She drilled into me the idea that insight was more important than eyesight, and I paid attention.
Aunt Cille demanded attention. Not that we had to wait on her hand and foot, but she expected to be listened to. Every day and especially every night she would play the piano. The kids from the neighborhood—Martha Ann Cox, Gene Baldwin, Bill Hartley, Ed Bridges, and others—would file in and listen to her play Beethoven and Chopin. But most of all we loved it when she played the “William Tell Overture”—which we were familiar with from listening to the Lone Ranger on the radio. She could also play “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” which we had learned from Mrs. Farrah while attending Miss Charlotte Peterson’s elementary school. Musical appreciation was an important part of progressive education, which was practiced at Miss Peterson’s school.
No one appreciated Aunt Cille’s playing more than Mother. After all, she too was a pianist and had taught piano while living in Carbon Hill. Dad loved music too, and, though not very advanced in his musicianship, he never seemed uncomfortable playing with such an accomplished musician as Aunt Cille.
Occasionally when Aunt Cille played sing-along music, he would accompany her on his Martin guitar and they would sing songs like “I’ll Fly Away” and my favorite, “She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain.” Everybody would clap and yell when we finished a number, and Aunt Cille would wheel around on the piano stool, smile broadly, and, for some reason, raise herself up and down on the stool.
After I started playing violin, one of the joys of my life was when Aunt Cille would do duets with me. Mrs. Claire Ordway, my teacher, gave me sheet music, and I would begin to play the melody of a song. Aunt Cille did not need music, but began by ear to accompany me on the piano, smiling at me as she added obligatos that improved the performance considerably. What other kid could be so fortunate, I thought.
But Aunt Cille’s interests were not only in music— she was a great storyteller, too. Sitting on the piano stool, she would look in my direction, her eyes floating rather over my head, and begin telling me about Brer Rabbit in the briar patch or the three little pigs or Alice in Wonderland. Sometimes she made up her own stories, which she delivered in a very melodic way, and I thought them just as good as the others.
Often Aunt Cille would read to me—not from printed books like we read, but from huge books with raised dots on coarse brown paper. She would touch her fingers to them and read, and I was fascinated to watch her. She brought lots of books with her, and when the Braille Reader’s Digest came to the post office, a friend and I would go down and load my red wagon with large packages wrapped in brown paper and tied with white string. Then we’d pull our heavy load back to our house, marveling at how such a small magazine as the Reader’s Digest took so many books and how each volume of four or more books would fill my wagon.
After supper, Aunt Cille would read to us from what she called the classics, books like The House of Seven Gables, Little Men, Little Women, Gulliver’s Travels, and King Solomon’s Mines. And from her Braille Bible Aunt Cille read stories of Samson and Ruth, stories that made a great impression on me because of the expressive way she read. She loved the sound of words as perhaps only a blind person could, and she taught me to value sound, both in music and in language.
When Aunt Cille packed up her books in late summer, I would feel bereft. I knew that the rich evenings of the summer would be gone for many months, and throughout the winter I would long for her return.
My older half-sisters, Sue “Tootsie” Peters Hargrove, left, and Mary Hilda “Sister” Peters Baker, in their Alabama College senior and junior year portraits, respectively. Tootsie wanted everything in her life to be first-class, organized, and beautiful. Sister, the younger of the two, was a hard worker, creative, talented, considerate, and loved by all. I thought she was the perfect sister, daughter, mother, and wife.