|
a.
|
Note: Tennie's motto was "Either I will find a way, or I will make one."
Her nickname was Terrapin. She was pretty much of a tomboy as a child. She liked to swing over the creek on a rope swing. She was in her Sunday clothes one time and decided to swing with her brother. Climbed onto his back and they swung out over the water. He called her Terrapin and it tickled her so much that she let go and fell into the water. Her mother was furious.
The Social Security Administration records shows her with a middle name "Augusta". According to uncle Bob, she never had a middle name. The SSA required some kind of second name and the counsellor made this one up becuase Tennie was born in August.
Tennie attended school at Pattonfield, near Gilmer during 1910-1913. Tennie said she first met A.A. when he came to the house to see one of her brothers. Tennie was barefoot and was so embarrassed to be caught like that. A proper lady did not let strangers see her in such a condition. She hid her feet up under her dress the whole time he was in the parlor.
The day she and A.A. married, her brother Pat and his girlfriend, Bernice Smart, went with them. They took a train to Tyler, Tx and found a preacher to marry the two couples.
She was a strict woman when it came to church. She did not believe in drinking, smoking, cursing, or dancing. She went to a church that had a pastor who liked to preach fire and brimstone. The hotter the sermon, the better she like it.
When she couldn't get out to church, she listened to a local station on Sunday and took notes on the sermon. She would go back over it during the week and write comments and thoughts in the margins of her little notebook. On one of the pages, she wrote that she had heard her pastor planned to have a meeting down on 2nd street in Lawton and was horrifed at the news. This street was several blocks long and one block from the center of town. One end had restaurants and nice stores but the other end had several bars where the soldiers from Ft. Sill would gather on weekends. She called the pastor up and chewed him out royally. Told him it was horrible that he would even think to take good Christian people into such a den of sinfulness. When he heard about it, my father just laughed and said, "That's Mom."
I loved going to Grandmother's house on the weekend. She made wonderful fried chicken and the smoothest mashed potatoes I had ever seen. When I was little, she made wash rag dolls for me to play with. She rolled up clean wash rags, wrapped them with rubber bands, then drew eyes and a mouth on each one. I had a whole little family to play with while I was there and they were such pretty colors.
In the winter, I would get to sleep in the bed with her. That was the best time because we would talk in the dark for a long time. She kept her bedroom closed off so the rest of the house would be warmer and it felt like a freezer in there when I opened the door. To get the bed warm, she would heat bricks in the oven, wrap them with towels, and tuck them at the foot of the bed. We put on long socks and flannel nightgowns and hopped into that cozy bed. The wind would be howling around the eaves of the house but I was toasty warm.
Grandmother was an alteration lady and worked out of her home in later years. She had a lot of repeat customers who came to her because they liked the way she made their clothes fit. I learned how to sew on her old treadle sewing machine.
|
|
b.
|
Note: HI378
Note: (Research): Tennie almost died of pneumonia in May 1918. Her physicians were Dr. J. C. Wood and Dr. Buck Childress. She said Dr. Wood's wife and baby were killed one night when they went with him to see a sick person. The horse frightened and ran away with them in the buggy. It sounds like the buggy may have turned over and they were killed instantly.
From Sammie Nelson Beane, March 2, 2003 at Wichita Falls, TX. Sammie is a friend of my aunt Betty Vanlandingham Callahan
Sammie was a little girl in Comanche Co., Oklahoma and remembered seeing Tennie singing in the church choir on the weeks that A. A. did his preaching. Tennie was tall and thin and she always stood next to her best friend, Mrs. Job. Mrs. Job was short and round and the sight of those two together always tickled Sammie. Tennie had a nice voice and loved to sing. Sammie said that A. A. was a fundamentalist preacher who was very forceful and talked about fire and brimstone. All the church members loved him and Tennie.
|
