With a flip of a
coin between two bachelors, she came into our family.
And I don’t remember a time when
Aunt Edith wasn’t in my life.
I was 6 years old in 1954, when
Edith Usry married my mother’s younger brother, Billy Vines. He and his older
brother, Joe, were my heroes. They didn’t have sons, so they introduced me to
the outdoors—hunting, fishing, dogs, Jeeps, boats and campfire yarns, along
with love and respect of nature. Joe died in 1963. That’s a story for another
day.
But what did a coin toss have to
do with all this?
Back in March, I called Uncle
Billy’s widow to hear her voice and reminisce.
Edith Usry was a brand-new 1952
graduate of Berry College when she accepted a third-grade teaching job in Newton,
south of Albany. The roots of my mother’s people run deep along Baker County’s
Highway 91 and the Flint River. But Edith knew no one, except her roommate
Margeurite and their widowed landlord, Mrs. Maude McCloud.
Margeurite shopped at the Suwanee
Store on the courthouse square. The grocery was owned by Billy’s buddy H.C.
McClain. In between 93-year-old giggles, Aunt Edith told how H.C. asked Billy,
“Why don’t you and I take those new teachers on a double date?”
And to decide who would escort
whom to the Baker County High School basketball game, the bachelors flipped a
coin. (Joe was the coach and school principal.) Billy “won” Edith for the
night, but she soon won his heart, too. They were married in 1954. H.C. and
Margeurite married, too.
Billy and Edith’s honeymoon was
in his mother’s farmhouse on the Colquitt Highway. From Newton, you could get
there before Hank Williams finished wailing “Kaw-Liga” on Camilla’s WCLB-AM. And
that’s where we met, Nanny’s house. My granddaddy had died. Billy helped save
the family farm, while his young bride taught in town.
Before long, the newlyweds moved to Newton. When I look at my right hand’s palm, I see the scar, and I’m sitting on the backsteps of their red clapboard house. Aunt Edith was cleaning corn. I volunteered to help and asked her to give me a knife. I might have been 8.
“You
sure you know how to do this?”
“Yes,
ma’am.”
When
we talked in March, Aunt Edith was still apologizing for my gashing a half-moon
slit in the pad of my palm. In retrospect, it was a good-parenting experience
for when their daughters, Vicky and Beverly, were born. And for me, the scar is
a reminder of how much I loved being in the home of my hero and his bride.
Around
1960, Riverview Plantation—across the Flint in Mitchell County—hired Uncle
Billy as a dog-handler and quail-hunting guide. I spent two glorious summers
there, working in the tobacco patches for $3 per day. Aunt Edith kept my
tobacco-tar-stained clothes washed and country cooking on the table. I was a
happy city boy turned farmhand.
In
an ironic twist, my wife, Pam, grew up in the Hopeful community with Cader Cox,
the second-generation owner of Riverview. Cader and I bonded in his daddy’s
“bakker” patches, and we’re best of friends today. After I notified my family
of Aunt Edith’s death, Cader was the next person I contacted.
Uncle
Billy died in 2003.
Mother
died 11 years later.
That
left Aunt Edith as my living link to the past.
After
Uncle Billy’s death, she eventually moved to Bainbridge to live with Beverly.
Without fail, Aunt Edith called
on my birthday.
She
always brought up that corn-cleaning mishap. I think it was so that she could
apologize again. And then, we’d laugh. I will carry Aunt Edith’s loving, distinctive
voice to my grave.
Yes,
sir.
Uncle
Billy won the coin toss.
And
that meant our family did, too.
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
