As you can tell, I have abandoned blogging for several years. I am returning to this blog for 2021 in response to a challenge to tell some family stories. The pieces will be written as responses to a set of questions.
What were your grandparents like?
My paternal grandparents were Albert and Irene Johns. Albert’s first wife died and left him with two small children. They had seven more. My father was their fifth. My maternal grandparents were Tyler and Maggie O’Quinn. They had twelve children. My mother was their eighth child.
Albert “Ab” Johns
(January 26, 1878 - March 11, 1945)
Of all the men I never knew, I knew Ab Johns best. Albert Lewis Johns was my father’s father. Born on January 26, 1878, he died on March 11, 1945, a couple of years before my parents married and eight years before I was born. Yet, I knew him well; at least I knew that part of him that lived inside my father’s stories. I must correct myself; Dad never took time enough away from work to sit and tell us stories. He gave us vignettes of his memories as we worked, or ate, or drove from place to place.
Before getting into some of Dad’s memories, let me digress with some background information. My father was the fifth child of my grandfather’s second family. His first wife, Martha Lee Johns, died (Sept 11, 1911) whiles still a young mother with a daughter and a son to care for. He then married (1913) my grandmother who was considerably younger and happened to be Martha’s cousin. Martha’s father was my great-grandmother’s brother.
Dad was not one to offer direct instruction. His methods were to guide us through the process of learning-by-doing and to proffer maxims he attributed to others, the plurality of which originated with his father and had to do with work. “Pa always said, “Do it right the first time and you won’t have to come back to it so soon.”” “Pa always said, “Two men working together can do more work than three working by themselves.”” ”Pa always said, “A place for every tool and every tool in its place.”” ”Pa always said, “If a man ever lies to you, son, you had better watch him; if he’ll lie to you, he’ll steal from you.””
There were a few anecdotes as well. Dad found it funny that when he and his brother, Woodrow, were preschoolers playing in the dirt in the front yard of their house, his father called out to my grandmother who was in the kitchen, “Irene, you had better come get your boys before they make a real mess of themselves.” It seems my grandfather often referred to the two brothers as Irene’s boys. Childcare apparently was not in his resume.
From others I learned that my grandfather was a strong man who was known on occasion to get into fistfights and coming out the winner. Once I heard a outlandish but detailed story of one of his conflicts. When I saw my father later that day I recounted the story and asked him if it was true. His response was a simple “They say it is.”
I continued to question, “Dad, how can I have grow up in this family and not ever have heard this story about my grandfather?” The tone of his voice when he responded ended the conversation for ever, “Son, if it was me, would you want them telling that story?”
Dad didn’t mind telling me a story about an incident in which his father went to a dance and got into a fight. The other man pulled a knife and cut my grandfather from hip to hip. If he had not been wearing his thick belt the cut would have killed him. Dad said he came home holding his intestines inside his body. Grandma wanted to take him to Dr. Moody a few miles away in Nahunta. Grandpa said no to that, “Irene you know how to sew just fine; sow me up.” And she did.
He had two strokes that were years apart. The first was when my father was very young. My grandfather never regained full use of one side of his body, but he would still work some around the farm. When Dad was about twelve years old he and Woodrow were in the fields working with their father when he stood up straight and said “one of you boys had better get to the house and hitch the mule to the wagon and come get me.” He hobbled to a shade tree where he collapsed. Dad stayed with him while Woodrow got the wagon.
After that second stroke he recovered enough to shuffle around the house, but he was never able to work again. Shortly before or after that second stroke he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. About the cancer, Grandma asked Doc Moody if there was anything that could be done. He told her she could take him to Atlanta and they might operate on him, but it wouldn’t make any difference. He would be dead within 6 months to a year. He lived for another ten years.
There is more I could tell, but I think you have a glimpse into who my Grandfather Johns was.
Irene Nettles Johns
(Sept 8, 1894 – April 10, 1965)
Ms. Irene is what everyone in the community called her, all with a sense of respect. Her children called her Ma, with a tone of reverence. I knew her but I didn’t know her. She married my grandfather on January 9, 1913. My Dad was 5th of her 7 children, 4 boys and 3 girls. Aunt Mabel and Uncle Willie were her stepchildren who respectfully called her Irene when speaking about her, or sometimes when speaking to my dad, “your Ma.”
I was eleven years old when she died and I remember well one of the funeral sermons; I seem to recall there were three that day. The one I remember used Proverbs 31 as a text: “Who can find a virtuous woman…?” It was the younger preacher’s sermon; I believe he was a distant relative. He went through the proverb point by point telling stories of how she fulfilled that challenging description.
In his youth, the preacher had been at her home when she rose up before sunrise to cook breakfast for her family. He spoke of her hospitality in having a house full of week-long guests who had come for the “early meeting” at the Bethlehem Primitive Baptist Church (and she wasn’t even a member there). He pointed out how she was industrious having to oversee the farm after my grandfather’s illness. And the preacher made a point that rang so very true to me; “her children rise up and call her blessed.” I can verify all of the points of his sermon to be true.
In my memories of her she is almost always standing, cooking, supervising. I only remember her sitting during meals and in the evenings before bed. Her hands were always in the thick of things that needed to be done. I can see her now washing out the intestines of the cow we had just butchered. She didn’t waste anything and she was more than frugal. She had to be, raising a family on a subsistence farm of less than seventy acres and with a husband that was infirmed.
When I was very young we went to visit her almost every weekend. The holidays were family gatherings there with aunts and uncles and cousins and lots of games. They were fun times even if, as one of the youngest, I almost always went home with whelps and bruises.
I also remember farm work at her place. We tasseled tobacco, helped with the picking, stringing and hanging of it in the old tobacco barn. Once, my Dad stayed up all night with some other men to keep the fire going to heat the barn to cure the tobacco.
One time Granny, as I referred to her, sent some of us youngest children out to catch some chickens for her to butcher. I can see them now, running, jumping, and flying away, but I don’t remember that we ever caught one.
We were there one Friday in the spring of the year and she sent us all out in the cool of the morning to plant her spring garden. When I say all, I mean all the adults and all the children. The adults swung hoes to dig holes for the seed and we children walked beside dropping in the seeds. It was a very, very large garden out behind the old tobacco barn and the sheds around the cattle lot.
We planted every kind of seed you could think of. We were finished before lunch and Granny and my Aunt Gladys had prepared one of their heavenly meals. After lunch the adults settled down on the front porch to relax and talk and we children began to play. But it wasn’t long before Granny came to the porch with a disturbing announcement. She had thought it was Good Friday; she always planted her spring garden on Good Friday because it was a holy day and the garden would do better if it was planted on Good Friday.
But, having looked at the calendar she realized she was a week early. And so the children were sent back to the garden to dig up all of the bean, pea, and corn seeds to be re-planted a week later on the real Good Friday.
Having said all of this about her about her, I still must admit that I have never felt like I knew well my Granny Johns. I don’t recall her ever speaking to me personally or calling my name or giving me a pat on the head. I am not saying she never did any of those things; I am just saying I don’t remember them.
Two of my cousins lived with her and she would talk to me through them. “Albert, ask him if he wants a drink.” “Gloria, see if he needs another quilt tonight.” Don’t get me wrong, I never felt she disliked me. I just felt a little intimidated to speak to her and that she seemed to have no interest in what I might have to say. In no sense was she mean. She never raise her voice or even corrected me for anything.
I also have a hard time remembering her having a good time. It seemed her smile was permanently up side down. Just look at her picture. A possible exception was when her mother and sisters and/or my aunt Mabel came to visit. About the time the kids were sent off to bed the adults would gather in the living room and tell stories. I would sneak in behind the couch and listen to them.
There were stories about my ancestors and about things they had done in their youth. Their laughter was more of a smile with a chuckle than an out loud cackle. Mom would hear me breathing through my deviated septum and send me to bed with a warning that she didn’t want to see me again before breakfast.
I loved those gatherings. Aunt Mabel had a loud raspy voice and she more than the others spoke with a strong accent that retained something of the old English enunciations. She would talk about my great-grandfather, George Washington Johns, and his father “Jerry Myers” Johns. Dad would sometimes mention Jerry Myers Johns as well. It wasn’t until I was grown that I discovered my great-great-grandfather’s name was actually Jeremiah Johns (as was his father’s).
I was somewhat mesmerized by my grandmother’s sisters, Bessie and Trudy. They seemed so different from her. The two sisters had a strong family resemblance, wore their hair alike and dressed much the same. They always looked like they were on their way to church, an old country church that is. They talked very softly and they would talk with me, the way one might talk to an older child.
Twenty years after my grandmother died I met Aunt Trudy in a hospital hallway. She was somewhere in her eighties by that time. When I asked her if she recognized me she responded, “Why yes you are one of Ellis’s boys. Are you Jimmy or Jackie?” We had a wonderful conversation that I shall cherish forever.
I imagine my grandmother favored her mother in appearance, temperament and fortitude. Except, her mother was a foot-washing Primitive Baptist. Granny was not. Her sisters may have taken more after their father who had died decades before I was born.
I conclude by saying that I am very proud to be the grandson of Irene Nettles Johns. I admire her greatly. She was strong, disciplined, enduring and industrious. She loved her family and treated neighbors like family. I have stories of how she was untainted by racism in the age of the KKK and Jim Crow laws, but I’ll save those for another time. My father loved and revered her and that is more than enough for me.
Tyler Jackson O’Quinn
(January 15, 1892-April 7, 1976)
It might have been confusing except I always knew to whom they were referring; most called him Mr. Tyler, others “The Old Man,” and some a more formal Mr. T. J. His children called him Pa of Daddy, all except my Aunt Eula Mae, Mama’s oldest sister. She called him “Papa” with a lilt in her voice that made the word sound a little sacred. I called him Grandpa, Grandpa O’Quinn. Until I was fifteen years old and we moved to Alabama, I spent more time with him that any other man, except my father.
He was average height, less than six feet. He was bald but seldom took his felt fedora off except to scratch his head. He always wore blue overalls and a long sleeve cotton shirt, even to his own funeral. About a third of one of his fingers had been cut off many years before I came along.
Grandpa was a subsistence farmer. Most of what they ate was grown on their farm. His only cash crop (things grown and sold) was a small tobacco allotment. He had cows and hogs and sold a few of those every year, too. He trapped wild hogs that came up to his corn fields to eat. He would feed them until they got good and fat and take them to the market. When he was younger with children still living at home he cut and hauled pulpwood (pine trees harvested to make paper).
During World War One the country needed more railroads and so he worked in the Okefenokee Swamp cutting Cyprus trees for railroad crossties for the war effort. I once asked him if he ever was afraid of getting lost in the swamp. He said, “No, boy; I never went far enough from the train that brought us in that I couldn’t see it.”
There are a few things everybody knew about my Grandpa. He was the best hunter and fisherman in two counties and he was a hard worker. His age was to my benefit. My mother and aunts didn’t want him fishing alone, so, if at all possible they sent one of his grandsons with him. I went fishing with him a lot, most often my older cousin Punkin went with us.
Usually we walked through Grandpa’s woods and then through Rufus and Minnie Ruth Crews’ woods to get to the seven lakes of the Little Satilla River Swamp. They weren’t really lakes; if it wasn’t for all the undergrowth around them I could almost running jump across some of them. What they were was a brim and catfish manufacturing plant. You could always catch a mess of fish there.
I loved every minute of fishing with Grandpa, well except for my fear of rattlesnakes, water moccasins, and alligators, and my struggle to keep up with a seventy-five year old man who didn’t know how to slow down.
On special occasions we would paddle an old flat-bottom boat down stream to the Lost River where we would camp and fish. On these excursions there was usually a small group of men and boys sleeping under the stars, checking trot lines and set hooks through the night. We might stay a few nights, but when the coffee and/or the Angel Food Cake ran out Grandpa was ready to go home.
I didn’t hunt with him very much, but everybody knew that every year he downed several deer above the legal limit. When I questioned him about it he responded: “Limit, what limit. You’ve got to have a hunting license to have a limit.”
The second thing every body knew about him was that he was a hard worker. I got to know this well when Mom and Dad bought some land directly across the road from Grandpa and Grandma, eighteen acres from my Uncle J. D. and then thirty acres from Grandpa. Dad was determined to farm the land himself even though we lived an hour away in Jacksonville.
It seems like we were on the farm working almost every Saturday. During spring and summer there were extra trips after school during the week to tend to the garden or to the tobacco patch. Grandpa frequently helped us and we helped him in kind. We slaughtered hogs and cows together. Dad castrated bull calves and male hogs for both households. (My job was to help hold them down and keep them still.) And we worked together in the two tobacco fields. Picking alone took up five or six Saturdays a year.
Cows had to be moved from one field/pasture to another. Every fall corn had to be harvested, by hand of course. We built two huge chicken houses that had to have fresh sawdust spread out inside them every time a new batch of 20,000 bitties arrived — about every twenty weeks. Then when the chickens were removed the fertilizer from the sawdust and their droppings had to be removed and distributed in pastures and fields.
Grandpa usually helped and received some of the fertilizer. What you need to keep in mind is that my father didn’t believe in investing in unnecessary machinery; he had children. The sawdust and manure was all gathered and scattered one shovel at a time by emptying and filling the back of a pickup truck. He was an “old man” but Grandpa kept up with all of us.
I can still hear him say “hard work never killed anybody.” And he believed everyone present should be working. One day we were cleaning out a chicken house when a local politician came by to secure my grandfather’s vote in an upcoming election. He was wearing his good shoes, pants, and shirt and he was even wearing what was probably his best Sunday-go-to-meeting tie.
After shaking the man’s hand, Grandpa went back to shoveling manure. The dust was so thick we could hardly breath, but the politician kept talking. After a little while, Grandpa reached over and grabbed a spare shovel and stuck it in the man’s hand, “Here, I never did like to see one man stand around and talk while others were working.” With a shocked look on his face, the politician threw a couple of shovel-fulls of manure into the back of the truck and promptly begged our pardon as he left.
These are some of my best memories from childhood. Several of my cousins lived next to Grandma and Grandpa. They were with us when we all worked together and Grandpa kept us laughing. He made gentle fun of our mistakes and accidents. He would tell brief, humorous stories and anecdotes. “My uncle James was so stingy that when he went hunting he would run up beside the rabbit to feel it’s ribs just to make sure it was worth a bullet.” And he would brag on us one at a time when we did things right.
Grandpa was also a sly old dog, as people were apt to say back then. On one occasion we were helping him dig out his cattle gap; a cattle gap is a pit with a bridge across it. The bridge is made with metal or wood slats that are spaced apart. Being hooved animals, neither cows nor hogs will step on it because of the gaps. That way you can drive your car or walk in and out without having to open and close a gate.
The problem is that the Georgia sand would fill the pit up from time to time. We were about to remove the bridge in order to begin digging when a local politician came by to talk with Grandpa about the election for Superintendent of Roads that was coming up in a few days. He told Grandpa that if Grandpa voted for him when he won he would put in a brand new cattle gap for Grandpa. Well the wood in the old one was in bad shape so Grandpa told him he could “look for my vote.”
With the politician gone, Grandpa decided with the politician’s promise we only needed to dig out about half as much sand as he had planned. Wouldn’t you know that before we finished digging another candidate for Superintendent of Roads stopped by to get Grandpa’s vote. He didn’t bring up the cattle gap idea but he did promise to “take care of” Grandpa if Grandpa would promise to vote for him.
He proceeded to ask if there was anything Grandpa needed. Gandpa looked up and said, “as you can see, I need a new cattle gap.” The politician responded “Mr. Tyler, if I get your vote and I win, you’ve got a new cattle gap coming.” Grandpa responded, “well you can look for my vote then.”
As soon as the politician drove off my Dad spoke: “Mr. Tyler, didn’t I hear you not more than an hour ago promise Mr. Hendrix you would vote for him.” Grandpa countered, “Well Ellis I didn’t exactly say I was going to vote for either one of em. I just encouraged them to look for my vote. And that’s the beauty of the thing. Both are going to think I voted for them and they won’t know who I voted for. Either way, I’m getting a new cattle gap.”
Mr. Hendrix kept his promise and I never asked who Grandpa voted for. I don’t know who the Superintendent of Roads was when Grandpa died years later, but I believe it was that person who arranged with his Brantley County counterpart to have the long dirt road through the woods to the church and cemetery grated and smoothed out for the funeral procession. Grandpa never owned much in life, but his last ride was in a fancy car over a smooth road.
Maggie Nolie Harris O’Quinn
(April 9, 1898-May 8, 1983)
Grandma O’Quinn was a simple, praying saint with a bit of a temper. But her temper had long been sanctified out of her except when Grandpa did or didn’t do something contrary to what she had instructed. I saw it once or twice gifted to one of her misbehaving drunken sons as well. By temper I am just referring to a load, sharp tongue.
It was the “saint” part that was her truest nature, the part I knew the best. She was the oldest child of King David and Arilla Crews. I’m not kidding, his given name was King David. I remember Great-grandma Crews well. She lived less than a mile from my grandparents. She visited Grandma occasionally when I was there and a few times my family would visit her.
She was quiet and stoop-shouldered from osteoporosis although none of us knew to call it that. We just thought she was old, and she was. If you ever saw her outside of her house she was wearing an old fashion bonnet. Countless times we drove by her little house with her sitting on the front porch in her bonnet, shelling peas or stitching or something like that.
She was 93 when she died in September of 1974; I was two weeks shy of my 21st birthday and drove home from college to attend her funeral. King David had died almost 53 years earlier, but that is another story.
Grandma O’Quinn loved children. When one she hadn’t seen for a while entered her house she would bend over pat them on the head and talk with them on their eye level, which was no small feat at her age and shape. Almost always she would offer them something to eat or something sweet, usually “would you like a coke-a-cola?”
Truth-be-told, if anybody showed up at her door anytime day or night she would do her best to get them to let her fix them something to eat. The wise one’s refused – she was not a good cook.
When you entered their old “shotgun” style house one of the first things you would see, sitting on an end-table, right next to the party-line telephone was her thick, well-worn, old, thick Bible. I’d catch her sometimes sitting on the couch, using the light of the doorway to read the Scriptures or a Sunday school lesson or a Church of God Evangel magazine.
She loved her Lord, her family and her church. I’m not certain of the order of the last two but Jesus was clearly at the top of the list. She once told me about the time she became a Christian. It was under the influence of her oldest daughter, Eula Mae, who was twelve at the time and had started attending the Church of God during sleepovers at a friend’s house. The two of them would walk the six or seven miles to church through the woods at least once a week.
When Grandma and Grandpa first found out Eula Mae had attended a revival at that “holy roller” church and gotten “saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost” they forbade her to go back. She looked into her father’s eyes and told him “Papa, I guess you are just going to have to whip me, cause I can’t not go back.”
Grandpa first would walk her to church but it eventually fell upon Grandma. When Grandma’s mother heard she was going to the Church of God she told her, “Maggie, don’t you go down there. They’ll put powders on you, mesmerize you, take your snuff away from you and you won’t ever be the same.” In telling me the story, with a twinkle in her eyes, she looked me in the eyes and said “it weren’t powders they put on me; it was anointing oil. And they didn’t take my snuff away from me; I threw it away. But, son, she got one thing right, I ain’t never been the same.” In the same conversation she spoke of a difficult time at church saying about it, “I knew one thing. I loved my Jesus and I loved my church more than anything.”
Grandma was a Spirit-filled Pentecostal, through and through; she could “have church” any time and any where. When I was in high school we moved to Birmingham, Alabama. While living there my mother had major surgery, died on the operating table, and was brought back to life. Grandma wasn’t able to make the trip to check on her. When Mom was able we made the trip back home for her to see her mother and father.
As we drove down the dusty dirt lane to their house, Grandma saw us coming. By the time we had stopped the car she was at the door, hugging Mom through the window. Then the Holy Ghost came on her and she started shouting praises to God, speaking in tongues, and dancing wildly, sometimes spinning like a top. A cloud of dust surrounded her as she danced and celebrated the goodness of God. Momma was soon out of the car worshipping with praise and dance and tongues right there beside her mother.
As a young man I preached a one-week revival at Grandma’s church. One night my Dad’s baby brother, Vernon, who never attended church, came, in response to my urging, to hear me preach. As I was bringing my sermon to a climax the Holy Spirit fell on the congregation and several of the saints began to shout and dance. Grandma was right in the middle of it all. Never mind that the doctor had recently told her the valves of her heart were almost completely gone and she should’t be out of bed more than a few minutes ever hour.
As always she was wearing her never-cut hair up in a tight ball on the top-rear of her head. The hair was held in place with a bunch of bobby pins. As she jumped, spun, and danced, one-by-one the bobby pins began to fly through the air until they were all on the floor and her hair was flying through the air like a five-foot-long black and gray ribbon.
A few days later, I went to visit Uncle Vernon at Dad’s old home place where he lived. I encourage him to give his life to Christ but he politely resisted. At one point, however, with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye he said, “I’ll tell you one thing, anything that can make Ms. Maggie shout and dance like a teenager at her age has got to be real.” Before he died, Uncle Vernon did let me pray with him as he gave his life to Christ.
The last time I saw Grandma alive she was staying with my Mom and Dad for a little while. As she sat in the living room I knelt beside her and asked how she was doing. She said she wasn’t doing too well. She felt her time on earth would soon be up. Then she said, “Son, I just want to feel the power one more time before I die.”
We all got down on our knees around her to pray and I think you’ve got the picture. It wasn’t long before she was praising God, shouting, dancing, and speaking in tongues with bobby pins flying everywhere.
I should also say that she was a hard worker. She could pick a bushel of peas in no time flat and have them shelled before the flies had time to gather (that last part is what you call hyperbole — in south Georgia the flies are always gathered). And she could swing a hoe right alongside her grand children.
I must admit that it frustrated me a little bit when we were in the fields and she would say something like, “Jack, you’re a smart boy. You know how to work.” I’d think to myself, “If I was so smart I would have figured out a way to be fishing right now instead of sweating out here picking beans.” But I would just smile and tell her “thank you, Grandma.”
She slept in a feather bed that had to be turned often and the feathers replaced from time-to-time. One year she raised a hundred or more chickens for the purpose of replenishing her bed. Grandpa had built a chicken yard just big enough to keep the fowl all caged in.
On the day of the great slaughter, my sister Shirley, and several of my cousins and I were tasked to catch the chickens and bring them out of the big cage to Grandma, my Mom, and my Aunt Betty for them to wring their necks. Grandma was amazing. She was ringing necks as fast as we could bring the birds to her, one in each hand.
At one point I brought a hen to her left side and when she took the bird from me it was flailing and scratched her arm, drawing a streak of blood. In an instant, that old temper rose from the dead as she was twirling the poor critter around and around while whispering something inaudible. I couldn’t tell what she was saying but I could tell it wasn’t a heavenly language.
In the blink of an eye I saw the bird, headless, sailing through the air. From that experience forward I was more than willing to be a smart boy working by her side in the fields.
Finally, Grandma had twelve children and well over fifty grandchildren. She seemed to only remember well the names of the oldest grandson and oldest granddaughter for each family. Occasionally she got my name right, but most often I shared my older brother’s name with him, Jimmy. That never bothered me because I knew she loved me and I made it a form of entertainment to wait and see if she corrected herself.
All of that changed when I professed a call into the ministry. Overnight, I became one of her “preacher boys.” She never confused my name after that and every time I went to visit her she wanted to give me money. I always refused because I knew she had very little money. But on one trip home Cheryl and I stopped by to see her on our way back north.
As we were leaving she picked up her purse, reached in, and pulled out a five-dollar bill. Before I could refuse my Uncle Buddy, with whom she was living at the time, tugged on my arm and whispered forcefully in my ear, “Son, I want you to take her money. You don’t know how much it hurts her when you won’t take her money. She just wants to bless you.” I took it, thanked her and hugged more tightly than usual. Oh, how I wish I had kept that widow’s mite as a reminder of her love for me, and a challenge for me to be a more cheerful giver, and a better steward of God’s blessings.
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