My father’s ancestors were the mountain people of the Great
Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, having migrated there via Virginia
after living on the East Coast , some since the 1600s. They were English,
escaping religious persecution; they were Scottish and Irish, escaping
countries of hardship and unjust rule. They were all looking for a better life
and came with the determination born of desperation. Work was life and life
meant work. My father told me heart wrenching stories about my grandfather’s
efforts to provide for his family of eleven children – sharecropping, logging,
carpentry, farming, mill work. Hard physical labor that sometimes paid off, and
sometimes, did not. He decided one time to grow a large crop of watermelons,
believing that they would sell easily. Who doesn’t love a good melon when it’s
hot outside? Depression Era shoppers might have wanted to enjoy one, but could
not. He couldn’t sell them. He eventually backed his wagon up to a steep
hillside and threw them over. All of them. He used a mule to farm the land he
rented as a tenant farmer. His axe was a precious tool to him and it was well
cared for. (His Irish temper flared if that blade ever touched the ground.) The
family picked cotton, even the younger children. I try to imagine my father as
a young boy, dragging the cotton sack behind his slim frame, pulling the bolls
off the plants. It makes me want to weep for what he and his siblings had to do
just to live. Just to have food.
The Plemons Boys: Tom, Gene and Wally
It was in 1937 when Grandpa packed up the
family and joined the long lines of cars driving West. They settled in the very
northeast corner of California where there was logging and road building work
for him, and it was a good place to settle the children who were still in the
home.
My mother’s family lived in southern Missouri, also having
migrated from the Carolinas: Scottish, Irish and German. My great grandfather
farmed, surveyed, and went back to school to become a teacher, inspiring
several of his children to do the same. His wife, my great grandmother, had
lost her mother at age 12 and had been ‘farmed out’ to other relatives and
neighbors until she married and then had twelve children of her own.
Matilda Condray Sutherlin, my Great Grandmother
My
grandmother, their oldest child, believed in education and stressed the
importance of it to her children, although her own education was limited
because of the losses in her life. She wed at 18 to a handsome widower with three
children. She then had five children of her own, three girls and two little
redheaded boys. One little boy died as an infant and the other died at age
four, due to the influenza. My grandfather was working in Oklahoma at the time
and was so ill, he could not travel quickly enough to be there even for the
funeral of his little son. Grandpa had tuberculosis, and he passed away when my
mother was about 16 months old. They had moved to St. Louis, so Grandma was not
near her parents for support and had to fend for her little family by herself.
She worked in a laundry; she ironed clothes all day long. The family received
assistance because she simply could not make ends meet; my mother remembered
beans and beans and more beans for supper. My grandmother remarried in a short
time and had another daughter and another redheaded son. Georgie, her last little
boy, was born with Down’s syndrome and passed away when he was seven or eight. Years
later when my brother was born with a head of curly red hair, she wept.
I can’t help but be humbled when I reflect on the lives of
those from whom I descend. Our home is a mansion. We flip a switch for heat; we
turn a faucet for hot water - we have indoor plumbing! We only split wood to
build a fire for ambiance and cozy atmosphere, and I think of my grandfather’s
axe… If I’m not too good at splitting a piece of wood, I wonder what he would
think of me. We have electricity and an iron that just needs to be turned on to
heat; not set upon a hot stove fueled by coal. Every single time I iron
clothes, I remember Grandma’s instructions – “Don’t run the iron backwards, it
will make wrinkles. Iron the collar first and then the sleeves and then the
body of the garment. Don’t melt the buttons.” If anyone knew how to do it
right, it was she who spent hours and hours at it.
I can recall Thanksgiving celebrations at my Uncle Wally’s
place in Ravendale, California, with many of my father’s family members there.
We ate a wonderful meal and after dinner, pushed back the furniture to dance,
and we laughed. As an innocent child, I thought it was just a fun holiday spent
with cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. I thought it was about the
Pilgrims and turkeys and pumpkin pies that Mama made so well. I thought it was
about the long car ride and playing games with my brothers and singing ‘Over
the River and Through the Woods.’
The Plemons Family: Steve, Viola, Tom, Janet and Doug
1977
I was right. And I was wrong. The deeper meaning of the day
is about giving thanks for those who walked before us, clearing the path by
swinging an axe. For those who spent each day with sacrifice etched into their
souls, pushing through heartbreak and never ever giving in to it. For the woman
who taught me that the right way to do a task sometimes has only one way.
We will honor Thanksgiving with turkey and pie and cranberry
sauce, and the family will gather to share in a day of feasting and
celebration. I am immensely grateful that my own children and grandchildren
will be there, and in each of their faces, there are glimpses of those others
who have given us the better life for which they worked. Quietly, I will search
for a moment when I can remember all of them who came before, and I will give thanks.
I am proud of them, so very proud. This year, and every day, there is much to
be thankful for.
Blessings to all.
