Momma gone from the Earth 33 years now

  Momma died on March 17, 1988. My sister texted me and my brother this morning to say she has been gone now longer than she was with us.

    But  Momma made her mark. I have blogged about her often most colorfully when she made a display of the state of Alabama to some good church women in Gaffney, to the time she outwitted me in 85 in the Atlanta Constitution before I did.

      When My dad left his first church outside Newport Tn in 55, Bethel Baptist, Mose Freshour told him we liked you Billy, but we can always find another preacher. The woods are full of em, but we're gonna have to get six people to take Louise's place.

   After Momma Died Daddy told me about six sermons into Bethel Momma told him Billy, if that's the best you can do, we're gonna have a rough go of it. She started helping with his sermons, giving it some construction, beginning middle and a conclusion, and building his anecdotes and gifts as a storyteller around a basic framework.

     She typed his papers in seminary as she typed my six short story reviews for Miss Chadwick so I could graduate Gaffney High School in 71.

    Her father ran for school superintendent in Dekalb County Alabama in the second decade of the 20th Century and her Mother had three brothers, all medical doctors.....Momma kept the family afloat as her Dad was stricken with Arthritis during WWII, her brothers were in the war, and her sister had tuberculosis. All that drama played out in the house Noah Hall is living in now.

   She went to Celanese in Rome Ga to get a job; met my Dad and here we are. In a better world more of the manor born I'm convinced she coulda taught English at the college level or ran the SS Department for the Baptist Sunday School board in Nashville though the Heifner boys would say they are proud of the work their Dad and Forrest Jackson did there.

    She played ragtime piano on Saturday and the hymns of the Christian Faith for the Sunday Morning worship service. She gave an inebriated Doc Holliday the support to lead the singing one Sunday morning after he partied too much at a Furman homecoming and came to church on two hours sleep the next morning. She talked a neighbor into puttin his gun down one spring day in Gaffney when he was threatening suicide. When he put the gun down, his wife said what are we gonna do now, Louise. She said go pick it up and hand it to me.

    One time, the white boys and the colored boys were about to brawl in the back yard over a rebound dispute. Momma came out. The Black boys said we going home cause Mrs. Fox is a lady and we're not gonna fight you honkies in front of her.

     A Statue oughta go up somewhere.