The Gross National Debt

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Damn yankee to redneck

Lori said I need to write more about who my mother was, what she was like and so forth,

Ma was a damned yankee. A yankee is a person from above the Mason-Dixon line. A damned yankee is a yankee who comes to the South and stays here. Mom was born in Milwaukee, a first-generation American on her mother's side. Alma C. was born in Austria.

I have no idea why, when or how Alma and Ralph (Ma's dad) moved to Atlanta. I just know they did. That's where Mom met Dad, more specifically at a frat party hosted by Pi Kappa, Dad's chosen fraternity.

Their first meeting was less than stellar.

Dad walked up in overalls, probably no shirt, and barefoot. He said Mom was "a pretty gal."

Mom looked this deep fried redneck up and down and turned away.

"Fine. There's other girls with phone numbers," Dad said and walked away.

If I ever knew much about their courtship, it's gone now, faded away from my increasingly unreliable memory. They got married in Ringgold, then the marriage capital of Georgia. Jerry Sumner, Dad's best friend, attended the wedding. Later that day Dad got so drunk all he could do, according to Sumner, was lay on the floor and point a finger at Jerry and say "you son of a bitch."

She did tell me of one of their dates. Dad challenged her to a drinking contest. Back then, and I have independent witnesses to this, Mom simply could not get intoxicated in beer. In later years, a half glass of wine had her wobbly.

"I drank him under the table," she said.

Prior to getting married, Mom was a stewardess with Delta Airlines. She got married and that ended that. Delta would not employ married women back then as "flight attendants" as they are called now.

Prior to my arrival, Mom and Dad bowled. Mom had several bowling trophies I remember playing with as I  grew up.

They lived in Atlanta, where I was born. Or so I'm told. I was just a baby at the time and do not remember.

After Delta, she worked as a secretary. Somewhere there's a picture of her in a PhD (Pentecostal Hair Do - I can say that 'cause I am pentecostal; Mom was Catholic) or a beehive 'do and pregnant, sitting at a desk. That was me in there.

The office gave her a party as she exited the official workforce. It was many years before she stepped back into a place where she earned direct pay for her work. She worked plenty, on the farm I grew up on. She could cut & bag cabbage, cut greens, drive a two-stage transmission cattle truck, grade watermelons, turn watermelon vines and more. She also spent some time as a substitute teacher.

When I entered middle school, she went back to school on a minority scholarship. Yes. At Albany College, back then, she was definitely a minority and as such was given a scholarship. The Historically Black College was under orders to diversify the student body or else.

She got a degree in Criminal Justice and wanted to work as a probation officer, something she regularly threatened our field hands with. "No warrant. I can just walk right in," she said to 'em. As a lot of the crew back then smoked marijuana (and everyone knew it) that was not an entirely hollow promise.

Enough for today. I'm tired in more ways than one.

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