After the
excitement and flurry of activity of the marriage ceremony was over, we settled
down in our own little garage apartment.
We had a tiny kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom. We had new furniture we had purchased with weekly payments. We had a borrowed car.
Around October, it
became pretty obvious I was pregnant. I
was sick as a dog and wanted to throw up my toenails. A visit to Dr. Brown verified my suspicion, and
we proudly announced to everybody that would listen we were going to become
a family. Our friends the Lawson's were expecting as well. They had married just a couple of week before us so we had lots to talk about.
Since we had to
climb about 18 steep stairs, we decided it wasn’t very safe and found a cute
little bungalow off N. Main Street and moved in by Thanksgiving. It had the same amount of space but was a
walk in from outside, and we felt like we had our own little home.
Our social life
consisted of visiting with our friends, Martha Jane and Al, Jimmy and Shirley, and Buck
and Bunny and playing bridge at each other’s homes and fish fry's at somebody's house. None
of us had much money but we had a lot of laughs and enjoyed sharing
stories. Those who did have children would bring them
along and make pallets for them at their bedtime in one room and we would
gather in another for a game of cards.
I wasn’t much of a
cook then, but I was willing to tackle anything. Sollie, the great white hunter that he was,
brought home a couple of squirrels and wanted me to fry them up for supper with
some gravy. I was pretty naïve, but if he wanted squirrels, he would get them. He skinned them, and I floured and fried
those little things in a pan of hot grease, making gravy just like my Daddy had
taught me – flour and water. It looked
pretty good. I’m not even going to try
to explain what this stuff tasted like but, being pregnant and nauseous, I’m
not quite sure how I made it through the process.
Our heat, a little
gas heater, was cozy and warm. I scorched my
nylon slip many times as I backed up to warm my buns. During the day, I would get
in our borrowed car and drive over to my Momma’s house playing with Charly or sit in the beauty
shop while she worked, thereby getting all the latest local news and killing
time waiting for Sollie to get off from work.
Around Christmas,
or maybe a little later, my Daddy asked Sollie if he thought he would like to
work at the shipyard in Savannah where he had worked during the war. Daddy had a cousin who worked there and
said he thought sure he could get Sollie a job there if he wanted to. So, here we go off to Savannah leaving our
little bungalow.
Working in the
shipyard was a downright dirty job! All
I could see was the whites of Sollie’s eyes when he got home, but he was proud
of his job and was making pretty decent money for a couple of newly married young’un’s
like us. We found an apartment in
Garden City which had two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bath. Ours was on the second floor and the stairs
were not too bad in the front. The back
was a different story. Straight down to
the clothes line. We didn’t have a washing machine or dryer so every day I
would put Sollie’s dirty clothes in the bathtub with detergent, let them soak,
wash them, wring them out and put the pants on stretchers. Then, I hauled them down those wrought iron
stairs to the clothes line to hang to dry.
If the wind was blowing the wrong way, I would be in trouble. Anyway who has lived in that area in or near
Savannah knows all about the soot from the Union Bag’s smoke stacks, not to
mention the odor. Many is the time that I’d bring in those
clothes which had dried, but during the process accumulated enough black soot so
that sometimes I’d have to wash all over again. But when you’re young, in love,
and stupid, things like that don’t matter and you only know happiness and joy
that you’re going to have a baby and be a family living in a vine covered
cottage very soon. Yeah, right.
My days were spent
washing by hand the sweet little diaper shirts, long gowns, and bibs that had
been passed to me that Momma had made for baby Charly. Then I’d iron them, fold them, sprinkle with
baby power and place in the chest of drawers in anticipation of the birth of my
baby. We did have a small black and
white television and I watch soap operas while I ironed. We had no air conditioning, but a big box
fan. The floors were black asphalt tile
and I mopped and waxed them to shiny perfection. We had no friends locally. I was lonely, but happy.
Since I had
already started seeing Dr. Brown, I continued to see him after our move. Daddy helped us find a car and we would drive
back to Swainsboro for my doctor visits and Sollie’s National Guard
duties. When it was near my due date, I
went to Momma’s and Daddy’s to stay until the birth of the baby. Momma had made the most precious bassinet
decorating it with white tulle, satin, and little tine ribbons of pink and
blue. It looked like a mini casket! Bottles, nipples, rings, caps, pot for
boiling were on hand so all I needed was to
get the show on the road and have that baby.
And he was going to look exactly
like my sweet brother, Charly, who I thought to be the most beautiful little baby boy in the world. I waited and I waited. Two weeks, three weeks, and no baby.
It was the middle
of June and watermelons were ripe and I love watermelon! Daddy
brought home a huge watermelon one day, sliced it open and I ate
watermelon like I’d never had anything to eat in my life. About dark, I began to have the stomach
ache from hell. I thought to myself, now
you’ve done it. I huffed and puffed and
waddled around trying to get comfortable.
Then, we all decided maybe it wasn’t the watermelon after all. Duh. Maybe I was actually in labor. A call was made to Sollie who was in
Hinesville at summer National Guard Camp.
He jumps in our little red Ford and races to Swainsboro. Somehow after he gets to Swainsboro, the
pains just stopped. I mean, stopped! What the heck? Now what? Sollie had driven 90 miles home at 100 mph for
nothing. He went on back to
Hinesville.
Sollie probably
had not gotten out of town good before those pains came back with a vengeance. I’m talking serious, stick stack, no take
back, pains that left me knowing there was no doubt this was it. By the time Sollie drives up to his barracks
in the wee hours of the morning, they tell him I’ve gone to the hospital and he
needs to come back. OMG. Now, he’s got to turn around and drive the 90
miles back in time to get there for the delivery. God was surely with him because I’m sure the
needle circled the dial and he drove like a mad man to get back to Swainsboro
to see his baby be born!
As it turned out,
it was well after daylight, but sure enough, the beautiful baby we were looking
for came into this world sporting a whole head of hair, hairy legs and arms,
beautiful blue eyes, and all 8lbs 8 oz. of him looked nothing at all like
Charly, but he was the most beautiful blond haired, blue eyed baby we had ever seen.
As providence
would have it, after all those times I had driven back to Swainsboro to have
Dr. Brown deliver the baby, he had left for a fishing trip that week and Dr.
Moye, a local doctor, brought my baby boy into this world. Wouldn’t
you know it?
