Twenty-five Things About Me
Twelve years ago, in late February 2009, there was a Facebook thing about writing 25 things about you that others might not know. I took a surprising amount of time to write it. My friend Tina asked me if these things still exist on Facebook, and I think they are gone. At least I could not find notes from 12 years ago.
I found the word file with the words I wrote and thought I would repost them as a series of blogs.
Here are the first four of the 25.
1. I had a car named Emily. She was a 1963 VW Beatle. I murdered her... actually it was manslaughter because I didn't mean to. I was late for a wedding rehearsal in Columbia SC, driving 85 on the interstate from Athens. Poor little Emily had 100K+ miles on her and it was too much. She threw a rod. A toothless man in a chicken truck gave me a ride to the motel where the wedding party was staying. What an entrance..my dress was tied to the top, and feathers were flying, chickens clucking (he was smuggling gamecocks and the hens were excited). I was one of my best entrances ever. I don't know why, but when I got there, one of the other bridesmaids mothers said "You must be Mary".
2. I tried to save my nearly dead Emily. I borrowed Julie's car, rented a tow bar, and was taking her to Warner Robbins where a friend of Tina's mother was going to rebuild the engine. In Montezuma, as I was going around the courthouse square, the bumper popped off of my pore little car. An insurance man and a guy from the dime store borrowed a welding torch and put the bumper back on for me. Since I only had $3.75, it’s a good thing they did it for a smile. You get what you pay for, cause just as I got to Warner Robbins, the bumper came off again. I called Mrs. Waller, and Tina and her boyfriend came over, and tied a short rope to my Emily and pulled while I drove. That’s how I met Bobby Luttrell. My Emily recovered and my brother Tommy and then my sister Boo drove her for thousands of miles, but they never loved her like I did.
3. My brother Tommy saved my life once. Other people may have saved my life, but he's the only one I know about. I was around 9, and he was around 5. Our family was in the Smokies at a place called Craggie Gardens. Back then there were no guard rails, and my parents had so many kids that they never worried about losing one or two. I went to the edge of a cliff and looked down, then lost my balance. I suddenly knew that I couldn't recover. My arms were flailing, and I realized I was going to fall. Then a hand grabbed me and pulled me back. I turned. It was my little brother Tommy. I was surprised on so many levels. I was surprised he noticed. I was surprised he pulled instead of pushing. I was suddenly given a glimpse of him as someone other than a pesky nuisance. We exchanged a look, an unusual look. I nodded and so did he. It was probably the first time I ever gave him a look of respect. Then we never spoke of it again for over 40 years. He doesn't remember it, but I will never forget. Don't worry, I still teased him and picked on him every chance I got, and we fought over every imaginable thing like normal kids in my family, but it was the first time I really knew that no matter what, with family, they really have your back.
4. Our family took a last vacation together, in the Summer of 1967. Francis had just graduated from High School and the "babies" were 3 and 4 years old. We had 9 people in a sedan and drove from Dublin to Cape Cod and back in mid July with no AC. We camped on the way and spent the 4th in DC. It was great, we saw the museums and the monuments. On the 4th we were in Mt. Vernon and saw fife and drum corp. I personally felt like a sophisticated world traveler. My dad had looked at the map and thought that the distance from Washington to Cape Cod was about a days drive. It is possible that for some it might have been. But not for us. Picture this..nine people in a 5 passenger car. Francis sat in the front with my parents, Boo had to lie on the shelf behind the back seat (she liked to sleep there and seemed to enjoy car narcolepsy) and the babies were passed from lap to lap. We had this roof rack on top of the car with camping gear and stuff hanging off, the crowning touch was my mother’s pressure cooker, flapping in the wind. We got stopped on the Jersey turnpike for going too slow. My dad didn't realize that 40 was the minimum speed. You can guess what all those Yankees thought of this family from Georgia. It was getting late and we stopped for gas in Newark. My dad asked the man if there was a place to camp nearby. I bet that man still talks about us. He asked my dad: Howse come yus guys talk so funny. When my dad said we were from Georgia, he told us we have better get out of Newark, that Georgia plates were not safe there. We kept going and got to Jersey City. My dad found a trailer park where they let us pitch our tent in the asphalt lot. That night we could see the lights of New York and it was beautiful. But that was July, 1967, the summer that Newark burned. My first trip north of the Mason Dixon Line. We were glad to get out of New Jersey the next morning and we drove all the way to our cousin's in Hyannis Port. I'm glad we had that trip together, we saw a lot and learned a lot. On the return we kept going through Newark. It was burning.
