Apple Granny

    

  I saw a sweet little lady outside of Gravette, she was in the yard at early morning using a hose to water her flowers. As it should be for such little ladies, most of her plants were in old tires painted white, though there was also the necessary donkey-and-cart planter. She was very old, yet her hair was almost all dark, tied up in two small braids that crossed her head like a coronet. She had on a day-dress with a full, pocketed apron over it and very sensible lace-up loafers like nurses wear. I wish I could have stopped right there on the road and taken a picture of her, because there aren't many grannies like that around anymore. My middle boy declared, You better be one when you get old, and I thoroughly intend to.
     The little lady looked like an apple doll to me and I thought she was beautiful. Have you ever made an apple doll? You simply peel an apple and carve it to suggest a head and facial features. Then you push a clothes-hanger through the center and hang it to dry. As it dries, it grows shriveled and wizened and the features become that of a very old person- sometimes quite scary! They used to make dolls like this by adding a  corncob body and then dressing them and topping with a bonnet.
     I had a real Apple Granny, though she died long before I was born. You say, then how do I know about her? Well, some families have pictures of their ancestors. Some are lucky enough to have mementos to go with the pictures. And some, like mine, are blessed to have both of these as well as the stories to go with them. These stories were passed down and passed down, and when they came to me as a wide-eyed child, they were as real to me as things that happened to the people I could see every day. My world was populated with the stories and lives of those that had gone on before me and I tried to not forget a word. I hung on the stories like they were very real threads, weaving through history like the blood of my family coursing through veins. The stories became the fabric of my being and helped make me who I am. So, yes, I know Apple Granny well.
     When my aunt was a small child she said  that "Apple Granny's" picture looked like a mean old witch. Appearances are deceiving, for her withered body encased the kindest soul.

Nancy Jane Jeffers Smith-- Nanny

     She was actually my great-great-great granny and her name was Nancy Jane Jeffers Smith, but everyone called her Nanny. Nanny grew up in Mississippi before the civil war. When she was small she contracted a wound on her knee that prevented her from walking. At that time a great flood came down the Mississippi and with it all kinds of wonders: houses, cows, fences, whole trees. Nanny would hit her hurt knee till it was inflamed just so that her favorite brother would carry her down to see the roaring waters. It turned out that she so abused the leg that it gave her a permanent limp.
     One brother died from appendicitis. He was struck low while working in the field and they carried him back to his bed, racked with pain. Not knowing what to do, they wrapped him in hot cloths to try to sweat the sickness out of him. Later that day a dove flew in the open window and perched atop his bed, even with the family in the room. Nanny said her mother whispered to her that it was sign that her brother would not last the night. He didn't.
     Nanny's other brothers went off to fight in the civil war, claiming they would whip those Yanks in no time and be back with all kinds of presents. They told their sister to pierce her ears and they would bring her back earbobs. All during the war Nanny knitted socks to send to the war effort and waited for her brothers to come home. Only one did, but he was gravely wounded and later died of it. He told them that he had the clothes on his back that he wore in the beginning and though they went to rags on his body he never got anymore. Nanny would remark her whole life that it pained her to think of all the socks she had knitted and never a pair got to her brother. (And she had pierced ears her whole life, but never received a gift of earbobs.)
     At sixteen Nanny married John Smith (who insisted he was a direct descendant of the famous colonist) and they set out for Texas with a wagon packed with supplies to build a sawmill. John drove the wagon and Nanny walked barefoot behind ever step of the way. At one point of their journey they traveled late into the evening until they came to a huge tree and decided to set up camp. They had just built a fire and begun to look about in the darkness when they realized they had stopped beneath a hanging tree and dangling from the branches were bodies. Weary as they were, they immediately repacked and moved on.

     When they reached Texas they settled on the Big Sandy and, with John's brother's help, they built their sawmill. Nanny would later recall that the swampy land had alligators and that they could sometimes hear them roaring in the night. Swampy land is mosquito heaven and no one then understood about malaria. Nanny lost four out of her first six children to yellow fever. Then her husband died of it, while she was pregnant with her last baby, my great-great grandmother. For a baby to be born of a postmortem father was supposed to be a sign that the child would be special. Then Anna May was born with her face covered with a "veil", a caul of afterbirth. Anyone born with a veil was also considered to be blessed with gifts, especially that of stopping blood. Anna May could remembering being gotten out of bed as just a small child to go to someone who had uncontrollable bleeding so she could lay her hands on them.
     With her husband dead, Nanny wanted to move nearer to her grown children, but her brother-in-law refused to give her money for her share of the sawmill. Nanny moved in with her daughter who was also her namesake. Little Nanny then died in childbirth. So then Nanny went to live with her son, Robert, who also ran a sawmill. There she worked as the camp cook for the loggers.  

This coffee pot was the one Nanny used to make coffee for all the men in camp.

     While there her son died of tuberculosis. Nanny had no where to go. By now you should have said "bless her heart" at least once. I can't imagine living through all that, but I know I'd be more wrinkled than a Shar Pei pup. Luckily, her baby, Anna May married my great-great grandfather and he agreed to take care of Nanny for as long as she lived. After a lifetime of hardship and sorrows, it seems Nanny Jane finally had peace. Her daughter's family grew, and Nanny was a dedicated granny.

Nanny Jane (Apple Granny) is the woman to the far right; her daughter Anna May is to her left. My great- great grandfather Owen Columbus Lightfoot Turner is second to the left beside his mother, Hannah. The little girl in the center, holding a tiny doll, is my dear Granny I often mention. So, in one picture I have both great-great-great grandmothers, my great-great grandparents, and my dear great Granny. And they all lived together,in the little house behind,  with more babies to come. Whew!

    My great-granny Alice used to tell me about how Nanny became so contorted with arthritis that she could not do chores, finally becoming bedridden, so she took it upon herself to read Shakespeare to the children. My Granny remembered that they didn't understand most of what was said, but they were mightily impressed by Macbeth's witches. She and her brother, Obie, went right out and made a witch's stew of all sorts of weeds and rotten vegetables and spooned it to their pet horny toads. Then they hitched them to their match-box carts to race. The poor lizards were so drunken all they could do was stagger!
     Below is Nanny Jane's bedside table, one of the few things she was able to take with her in all her movings. Her picture hangs over it in memory of an amazing woman.

     My great-granny Alice also told me that soon after Nanny became bedridden  it became her job to wash her face and hands before meals, and then to feed her, because Nanny's hands were too twisted to open. My granny said it was her greatest joy to help her, and she would sleep on a pallet by Nanny's bed. When  my Granny Alice had nightmares, Nanny would reach down and let her young granddaughter take her hand and hold it all the night through. Granny said she never thought till she was older how much it must have pained Nanny to hold her arm over the side of the bed all night long.
     Nanny died at age 100 in 1912. My great-granny was then twelve years old and it broke her heart. She said she only wished she could be a granny like her. Well, she was just that kind of Granny to me. Granny Alice died when I was twelve years old, and it broke my heart. I can only hope to be a granny like them one day.

"I still loved Granny. It flowed out of my chest. With Granny gone, where would my love go?" ~Jessica Maria Tuccelli