REMEMBERING GRANNY CRAIG

The death of my last remaining brother this past winter got me to thinking. I no longer have anyone to share early family memories with. It also got me to thinking about an old saying I heard somewhere: "When an old person dies, a library dies with them."

I'm sure I share an experience many of you have had in the past. You begin to wonder about some circumstance or event in your earlier life, and Mama, or grandma, or some other long-gone family member is no longer around to talk about it or to enlighten you on details.

The first feeling you have is, "Why didn't I ask her? Why didn't I learn more while she was still alive?"

Recently, in the wee hours of the morning, Granny Craig came to mind, and she wandered through the linkage in my memory for an hour or more. Few, if any, synapses other than mine still have any links to Granny Craig.

I'd like to preserve a bit of that, especially for my kids and grandkids, who never knew her. If it bores the rest of you, so be it. But you might want to stick around awhile. Granny Craig was one of a kind.

Samantha Byrd was born in 1873 and died in 1958. She married William Craig, a carpenter, in 1895. Subsequently she birthed eleven children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. The first, Fred, fought in France during the first big war of the 20th century. The last, Paul, fought in Germany some twenty-five years later in the next one.

Granny went to the second grade, but I'm not sure that she finished. The few letters I got from her when I was overseas left doubt. They were delightful, but hardly decipherable, not for her handwriting so much as for her spelling and colloquialisms.

Granny spelled phonetically, in phonetics that were unique to Granny.

Some of her words and phrases were equally unique. For example, "loose" women, or those even hinting of "looseness", were "strumpets." Women who smoked were especially suspect, despite the fact that Granny and all her sisters dipped snuff. I think Granny started when she was twelve.

When Granny was bored, she wasn't just "bored", she was "bored to the simples." And a person who was mentally challenged didn't have "sense enough to tote guts to a bear." This may not have made much sense to us, but it made perfect sense to Granny.

Granny Craig's vocabulary was colloquial and puzzling. There was an incident one Sunday afternoon when a stranger pulled off the highway and asked for directions to the Higgins place. Granny told him it was up the hill "fernint" the dairy. I'm not sure if the questioner understood "fernint", but he headed in the direction Granny pointed, and if he found the dairy he no doubt found the Higgins place.

I was taking a course in history of the English language at the time and the professor was doing research for a book on early American words and colloquialisms. I questioned him about "fernint."

"Of course," he said, matter-of-factly. "It means 'across from'." Granny knew what she was talking about, whether anybody else did or not.

Granny was married to Grandpa Craig for more than fifty years. Their temperaments were at opposite poles. She was as calm as he was irascible.

My brother related the time that he stayed with Grandpa Craig while Granny went to visit her sisters in old Washington, Tennessee, about forty miles to the north. After three days of enduring my brother's cooking (Grandpa Craig never cooked, although he did put on the morning coffee), Grandpa was ready for Granny's return.

The old man sat on the front porch, anxiously rocking and waiting for the Cherokee bus that passed every afternoon on the trip from Dayton to Chattanooga. When Granny got off and slowly moved toward the steps with her small bag (Granny had only one speed...slow), Grandpa groused, "Well, Mammy, why didn't you just stay."

Granny paused, looked up at him, and, without raising her voice, calmly replied, "Well, Pappy, if you want me to, I can go back." Hearing no response, she quietly went in the house, unpacked, and started fixing supper.

The epitaph on Granny Craig's mother's tombstone was, no doubt, fitting for both ladies. It reads:

JANE BYRD

1849-1916

She Done What She Could

Granny Craig "done what she could", with little fuss or fanfare. She is a memory that deserves to live.

(ed. note: There will be more about snuff-dipping Granny Craig later)

Ó2006        Dave Nelson