CrockPot 2014

A Remembrance of Grandma Wallingford by Lora Holt, 1998:

Grandma was really cute and petite - about 4' 11" - size 3 shoes - tiny little hands. She smoked a clay pipe (an occasional cigar with the preachers on Sunday) and did embroidery and pieced quilts. Grandpa called her "Ladi" - his little "Lady." How she bore seven children at home is beyond my comprehension!

After a meal, they always went in the living room to smoke or out on the porch. Others did the dishes or they waited.

Grandma moved up the road to a small house close to Aunt Blanche after Grandpa died. When Grandpa had the stroke she walked tothe neighbors up the road by herself at night to get help. She was terrified at the dogs that barked.

Grandma had rather a sharp tongue and not much patience with ill behaved children so we had to be quiet. She would say, "Whip that child" if the behavior was bad. In my day children were to be seen and not heard.

Preachers in training from Australia used tobe kept at Grandpa's home when they were at Lexington in school. I have a picture they took of me (Bro. Phillips) when I was about 5 yrs. old that they sent to Moma.

When Grandpa & Grandma moved to Mt. Carmel to run a store with Uncle Earl I remember an Easter Egg Hunt in the back yard with Clarence. Some of the eggs were goose eggs. I've been told I bit Clarence because he wouldn't kiss me when I hugged him. Uncle Earl would give us ice cream and cheese and crackers at the store. I rembmer seeing them take his casket out the window shen he died as the door was too narrow. I remember how the store looked - but that is all. I was not quite four when he died.

I thought their big white house was [a] palace in contrast to ours - Big rooms upstairs and down - a beautiful stairway, tiled grates in the living room and parlor with pretty mirrors above them. The walls were plastered. Moma santed to see the place a few years ago. The house was unlocked and Martha and I went through the house with her. She never said a word - just looked at the fallen plaster and debris. She wanted to see it one more time. I've heard her say the old log house that they lived in formerly was so open in places that the snow would blow through the cracks on their bedding.

The parlor was used for company, preachers, and courting - had a rather musty smell. The room for the preacher upstairs had a bowl and pitcher for bathing and shaving and of course the "slop jar!" Preachers got good treatment and best they had of food. They both loved to have family and friends come to their home.