What’s For Supper?

NOTE: My niece, Pam Stith, wrote this post:

Aunt Jane and her husband, Uncle John, and their daughters, Alice and Carolyn, had a happy home and a well ordered life. But that doesn’t mean that everything went according to plan every day.

Jane, Carolyn, John and Alice Greer in 1964.
Jane, Carolyn, John and Alice Greer in 1964.

Uncle John worked for Gadsden [AL] Hardware and had regular office hours, 8 to 5. He came straight home after work, arriving at 5:15. Every day, 5:15, exactly. Aunt Jane usually had supper ready to put on the table for him and the girls when he got home.

But some days didn’t go as planned. Sometimes a sewing project took longer than expected because the sewing machine fouled up. Sometimes she had an idea for a dress that combined a collar from one pattern, the sleeves from another and the skirt she couldn’t find in her patterns so she had to create her own. The process of thinking through how to create the dress she had in her mind, or one that someone had asked her to make, was one of her favorite things to do. Sometimes she lost track of time.

But time didn’t stop.

5:05 — Time to stop sewing and clean the table.

5:07 – Really must stop sewing and start supper.

5:12 – Out of time! Get in the kitchen and get busy. Get out the iron frying pan, turn on the burner, splash in a little bit of oil.

5:13 – Find an onion and start chopping.

5:14 – Throw the onion in the oil to sauté.

5:15 – The front door opens: “Hey, Babe. Something smells good!”

It’ll be good, too. Just sit down in your chair and rest. It’ll be ready shortly.”

5:16 – Decide what to cook for supper.

Hannah's veil
Hannah’s veil

Postscript: Jane’s husband, John Morris Greer, died almost 35 years ago, on Nov. 28, 1984, when he was 63.
Sister Jane, who is 91 years old, still sews three to four hours a day for the public, resting, she told me,  whenever she feels the need.

Hannah Stith Pennington
Hannah Stith Pennington

Here is a sample of Jane’s  work, the wedding veil she made for our great niece, Hannah Rachel Stith, worn at her marriage to Caleb Brett Pennington on Oct. 28, 2017, in Canaan Baptist Church, Bessemer, AL.

Jane was younger then, only 89.

 

Coming Monday: Popeye The Sailor Man

Baptists By Chance

My father and mother’s descendants, now numbering more than 60, are almost all Baptists and not members of some other Protestant denomination purely by chance. This is how it happened, according to my oldest sister, Marge.

Alice May Cameron Stith
Alice May Cameron Stith

“I grew up in a home with a non-church attending father and a Catholic mother who believed church was important for the well-being of her children, even though she was not attending her own church.”

In 1929 mother returned from California with their three children and the family moved to a house Dad built at 1023 Hoke Street in East Gadsden, AL. They would have four more children by 1942.

“An early recollection of our new home in Alabama was our first Sunday when my mother insisted that my father take us to church,”  Marge said.

East Gadsden Baptist Church
East Gadsden Baptist Church

“My brother [John] and sister [Jane] and I climbed into the back of the panel truck. My father stopped at a drug store for the Philadelphia Inquirer (which had a thousand funny papers, as I remember) and then parked at the first church he came to, East Gadsden Baptist Church. My father sat outside and read while we were in Sunday School.”

Our father had been raised a Methodist so why didn’t he take the children to a Methodist Church?  Because East Gadsden Baptist was closer, only about two miles from their home.

Our Mother had been raised a Catholic so why didn’t she take the children to Mass?   Because the Catholic Church had kicked her out for marrying my father, a divorced man.

In the late 1930’s or early 1940’s, Jane said, mother was baptized and joined East Gadsden Baptist Church. She was active in Women’s Missionary Union and other aspects of church life and, according to her obituary, church deacons were honorary pall bearers at her funeral in June, 1947.

Coming Friday: What’s For Supper