“I’ll be 90 on August 3. My first memory is of a woman standing in a doorway. Her skin color was beautiful. It was like coffee with cream in it. She wore a long dress that was muted in color. It had probably been washed a lot. My mother called her and she said, ‘Ma’am?” I thought my mother’s name was ma’am, so that’s what I called her too. We lived in Slaughter at that time.

My daddy was a farmer and my mother drove a school bus. I wore cowboy pistols, chaps and a little vest when I rode the bus with her. We moved to Phillip. My father was an alcoholic. When it rained, the farmers played cards and drank. When the sun came out, they went back to work. I don’t think dad ever got the idea of going back to work. We moved around a lot because his daddy kept buying him another farm.

I remember starting school and sitting on the dunce stool with the dunce cap. But I don’t remember what I did. That year a girl told me my mother looked like a witch. I hit her and ran home. My mother said, ‘She doesn’t know me. How does she know what I look like?’ That was my first lesson in logic, and it served me well. What are you talking about if you don’t know what you’re talking about?

My parents divorced and threw us away like kittens. I was in first grade and my brother was three years younger. We moved in with my grandparents. They lived on the Bogue Phalia River in Pace. My mother showed up every once in a while. It was like a beautiful big sister coming to visit. None of this ever bothered me. It’s just as well I didn’t know what my mother was doing.

Since I lived with my grandparents, I was brought up a generation back from people my age. My grandfather farmed with mules. He had 40 mules, a mule lot and a barn. He rode the fields every day on a Tennessee Walker. He wouldn’t let us ride that horse because you have to be careful about the gait. We snuck off and rode him anyway. We weren’t supposed to play up in the loft at the top of the barn. We climbed the ladder and played in the loft. When we heard someone come in the front of the barn, we jumped out the second-story window in the back and landed in the mule lot. That took a lot of courage.

When we moved to my grandparents’ farmhouse, there was no electricity. My grandmother cooked on a wood stove. We ground our own meal and had a big garden that my grandfather plowed with a mule. In the summer you eat all you can, then canned all you can’t. We were always canning.

I got pneumonia in first grade. That was before penicillin. They took me to the hospital close by where the doctor mixed up dry mustard, put it on flannel and put it on my chest. They forgot to take it off. It got hot, and I must have been delirious. They took me by ambulance to the hospital in Greenwood.

The Puckett twins were in my second-grade class. They were big rawbone boys who wore Big Smith overalls. At Christmas, we drew names and everybody gave little gifts. They weren’t much because nobody had any money. We had a Christmas tree with cotton under it and paper chains wrapped around it. Somebody gave the Puckett twins a box of sparklers. One of those twins lit the sparkler. I was at Miss Virginia’s desk and said, ‘Oh, Miss Virginia, look how pretty it is.’ That Puckett twin stuck the sparkler in the tree. Guess what we had? One real fire drill
at the Pace School.

I was 10 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. We sat on the floor in the gym and listened to the big loudspeaker as President Roosevelt declared war. My blood ran red, white and blue. I always liked Roosevelt.

My grandmother decided we needed some culture. She loaded her ’39 Chevrolet with milk, butter, eggs, meat from the smokehouse and things she canned and drove us to Cleveland. She rented an apartment and sent us to the demonstration school run by student teachers at Delta State. I was in the sixth grade. We rode our bikes, played outside at night and went to the movies any time. I’m not sure the education or culture worked, but we had a great time living in town.

We were playing jacks on the sidewalk in Cleveland. One of the kids said, ‘That boy likes you.’ I ran away as fast as I could. That boy was Kell Lyon. A few years later, I was paired with Kell on a blind date for a get-acquainted party. I didn’t like him and left with another boy. My grandmother would have been horrified. Kell and I started dating at Delta State. He’s been dead for two years. If he had lived for two more months, we would have been married for 69 years. That’s too long. A perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other. I still live in the house that Kell was birn in. Everything in this house has a story.

All of the schools and places I lived shaped me into who I am. I learned how to adapt to any situation. I survived colon cancer and outlived many of my family and friends. I worked at the employment office for years helping people get jobs. I was also a child advocate trying to get kids out of bad situations. I was agitated about something one day and a man who worked for me said, ‘Mrs. Lyon, you don’t put out a fire with a gas rag.’ That’s the truth.

My family calls me Bama. I wish I could put a hole in the heads of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren and pass down everything I’ve learned. I have a relationship with each of them and don’t have to preach at them. They can’t do anything that makes me not love them. But I can’t support things that aren’t good for them.

I’m no longer the hub of the family. But when trouble comes, I quickly become the hub again. They divorce, move, or change jobs, but this house and I are always here. We’re a safe harbor. I didn’t get that from my parents, but I provide it to the people I love.

With each old person who dies, a library burns down. Their stories need to be saved.“