I’ve been traveling almost every weekend this fall for football games and other fun events, but one of my favorite trips was earlier this month to St. Simon’s for my aunt’s birthday. My mother is 93 and my Aunt Emily is 90, so I feel destined to have a long life. It’s in the genes. I only hope I’m as hip as my aunt when I turn 90. She’s lives in a lovely house by the beach, has a boyfriend, and is on Facebook.
We were instructed to bring memories to the party, so I wrote of my memories as a child visiting my grandparents’ farm in Shady Dale, where Mama and Aunt Emily grew up. I thought some other family members, or maybe friends who would like a glimpse into the magic of a child’s visit to a farm, might enjoy reading it, so I’m posting it here. Enjoy!
A watercolor of the house in Shady Dale by Betsy Garbade
My mother, Martha Thomason Mallory; Granny, Ethel Fears Whitten; and Emily Thomason Ingram
Memories of Shady Dale
By Nell Mallory Boggs
Enveloped in the soft feathers of the mattress on the old oak poster bed, hearing melancholy notes of the fiddle from the front porch of the shack down the road, seeing stars in a black sky through the window where the curtains don’t quite meet. This is Shady Dale at night.
Awakening to the smell of bacon and eggs and coffee, my feet pattering through the cold house into the warm kitchen to find Granny and Grandpa busy with the start of a new day. This is Shady Dale in the morning.
I was lucky to have grandparents who lived in the country. It was an hour and forty-five minute drive from Thomaston to little-girl heaven.
We would pass through Forsyth and the city of Monticello and continue through Jasper County to the town of Shady Dale, a crossroads, really, with a gas station where men sat out front and played checkers. We passed the few buildings, most abandoned now, and Calvary Methodist Church where my parents married in 1947, and the quaint post office, and across the railroad tracks and by the old house where some great-aunt or the other lived at one time, on to Whitten Road, a mile long and gravel, with a pasture on either side, one pasture serving as a landing strip for an airplane.
We honked as we drove up, and as soon as I hopped out of the car, I would pet the two lazy dogs who dutifully stood up on the back porch and barked our arrival. The next stop was the smoke house. If I was lucky, there was a litter of kittens. If I was extra lucky, the kittens would be so young that only the mama cat ran off upon seeing me, leaving the still-blind kittens for me to cuddle. I can close my eyes now and smell the weathered wood, machine oil, cats, and the aroma of long ago hams that hung in that space. It was the smell of adventure and possibility and history.
Next, I would stick my finger in the holes of the metal domes that served as stepping stones from the smoke house to the back porch. As I pulled up each metal dome, I hoped to find a frog and entertained myself by watching the huge frog blink his big eyes at the sudden burst of sunlight and jump off into the bushes. I’m pretty sure the cats and frogs hated my visits.
The cows didn’t like me either. After an early breakfast, I followed Grandpa to the truck where he loaded a few bales of hay. I jumped in the back and sat on the hump of the wheel and off we went through the pasture in the bracing, early morning spring air. Grandpa called “Heree, heree, heree!,” in a language only his cows knew, and they came running. Until they saw me. Then they stopped and eyed me suspiciously from a distance as Grandpa unloaded the hay.
On a good day, Grandpa would take me fishing. Off we’d go in the same white truck, me on the wheel hump, down the road, through the pasture, past the shack where the colored family lived and made beautiful, haunting music with the fiddle on the porch at night. Sometimes we’d stop and the Mama would come out, wipe her hands on her apron, and exclaim how big and pretty I’d gotten. I loved her.
Too much time is spent waiting while fishing, and I was not a patient girl. More than once I walked away from my cane pole to scoop up some tadpoles when a fish would strike and swim off with the pole. If my brother Bill was with us, he would have to strip down and swim to retrieve my pole.
One time Grandpa reeled in a turtle. He was quite upset and claimed that the turtles were eating all his fish. I didn’t see a problem with this, but Grandpa quickly pulled out his pocket knife and cut the turtle’s head off. I remember the turtle lifting its hands to where its head had been. I didn’t speak to my Grandpa for a couple of days after that.
Granny and Grandpa had two horses, Dolly and her son, Zero. Zero got his name because of the temperature when he was born on a cold winter night. He was quite spirited and only my cousin Libby was enough of an equestrian to ride him. But Dolly was gentle and would let me trot her around the pasture and down the road a ways. When we took Dolly out, we had to lock Zero in the barn where he would raise holy hell until we brought his mother back.
Maybe Zero and Dolly sparked the dream Granny had one time when visiting our home in Thomaston. She always slept in the extra twin bed in my room and talked in her sleep all night and wore a pair of silk panties over her hair to keep her coiffure neat and tidy. One night she sat straight up in bed with the panties on her head and started screaming that the horse was in the kitchen. I was terrified. Mama made her sleep in the guest bedroom after that. And I think I learned why Granny and Grandpa did not sleep in the same room.
Granny and Grandpa always had a huge garden. In the summer we would have to pick butter beans. And pole beans. And okra. And squash. The list goes on and on. I tried to make myself scarce when I saw my mother getting the buckets ready. I did not like to pick vegetables. It was hot and there were too many bugs, and I still don’t like gardening. I didn’t mind sitting on the porch with my mother and Aunt Emily and Granny and shelling the butter beans and peas. We were in the shade and I loved hearing their conversations. What I really liked was eating the fresh vegetables and my Granny’s fried chicken and biscuits. She always saved the pulley bone for me.
Although I didn’t like picking vegetables, I did like the big oak tree on the edge of the garden. It was perfect for climbing and reclining and even reading a book. It was even more delightful when my friend Stacie was with me. Another favorite spot in the yard was under a large shrub that was shaped like a waterfall and offered a fairy-like world hidden from the grownups. Much pretending went on under that shrub.
I remember hot baths in the cold bathroom that was added to the house when indoor plumbing became possible, before I was born, thankfully. The bathroom smelled like Campho-Phenique, which came in a green bottle and cured all scrapes, cuts, bug bites, or whatever else might ail you. I still keep Campho-Phenique in my medicine cabinet, and when I open the bottle I’m transported back to that bathroom in Shady Dale.
Every once in a while I would get lucky and accompany Grandpa to Charlie’s store to pick up a few things. The little old concrete building had a smell all its own and I loved it. I had lots of time to play with the cats in the store while Grandpa chatted with all the old men sitting around. Yes, there were cats in the store and sometimes they would lie on the same shelf as the loaf bread. I thought it was grand. Now that I’m a grownup I realize that maybe the cats were there to keep the rats under control. But I really don’t want to think about the sanitary conditions of the store. I prefer my 10-year-old innocence, and I loved cats.
When I was 13 Grandpa thought it would be perfectly fine for me to drive a little on the farm. With no instruction and my mother and Aunt Emily and Granny and Grandpa and maybe a cousin or two piled into his white Ford LTD and all talking non-stop, I put my foot on the gas and started down the driveway. When we came down the hill to the road I pushed extra hard on the gas hoping it was the brake and plowed right into the old dairy house. I knocked it off its foundation and scratched up the car a little but no one seemed very concerned. We continued our trip with me in the back seat and I didn’t take up driving again until I got my learner’s license at 15.
My grandparents are long gone but the memories live on. I’m happy I have some tangible things from their home in Shady Dale – an oak dresser and wash stand in my daughter’s bedroom, a clover-shaped oak end table in my family room, a square oak end table in my living room, and a settee and chair and cherry buffet in my dining room. And I have pictures I took of the farm and Shady Dale for a photography class at the University of Georgia. Aside from my husband, I think the photographs I took for that class project are the most valuable things I have from my four years in Athens.
I was lucky to have a safe place in the country to visit when I was growing up with grandparents who offered volumes of patience and unconditional love. I wish for a Shady Dale for all children, with kittens in the smoke house, frogs under the stepping stones, and fried chicken on the table.
Calvary Methodist Church in Shady Dale
Remember to make memories with your family!
With love from the Happy Empty Nester!
The Happy Empty Nester 