My Mother

My mother, Sadie Ruth Palmer White, was born Nov. 23, 1905, the last of five children. Her parents were well to do for the times. Back then, young ladies didn't cruse around looking for action. They had parties at each other's houses. There would be a center piece and the paper would report on who was there and the decorations, etc. That's what is in her Girl's Book. Maybe I should get it out, read it, and then write about it. Maybe that's what I should do with my time, huh? Anyway, mom had lots of friends and was popular with everyone. She graduated from high school at 16 so she spent the first year of college at Branoue (I don't know how to spell it, it sounds like brenow) somewhere in Georgia. She finished up at the University of Alabama in 1925, the same year as my father did. They didn't know each other then. She majored in English and wrote poetry. She had one poem printed in the literary journal at school. After college, she taught one year of school in New York City. Her oldest brother, Bob and his wife lived there, so I imagine she stayed with them in a big brownstone house. After she came back to Jasper, AL, she met dad. He was a civil engineer and was working in a small town called Gorgus. He and the other boys would go to Jasper (a larger town than Gorgus) to date. They got married in Dec. 27, 1934. Dad worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) surveying the land that was going to be covered by the water the dams would dam up. The TVA was created to tame the Tennessee river and make it navigable. River traffic stopped at Sheffield because of the shoals in the river. It was called Muscle Shoals (should have been mussel) and TVA dredged the river and made it passable to the MO river, which flows into the Ohio river,which flows into the Mississippi river. Anyway, got a little distracted there, my parents moved around as the job demanded. My brother was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1937 and I was born in Knoxville, Tenn. in 1943. When the job was finished, my mother, brother and I moved to Jasper, AL to live with my grandmother while dad found a house for us in Tuscumbia, where he was born. It was after the War (11) and he couldn't find a house in Tuscumbia so he got the home in Sheffield that you know. Mother was a stay at home mom. It was unusual for a woman to work outside the home back then. After I left for the U of A, mom got together with her friends to play bridge and she worked at the hospital as a Pink Lady.
(i wasn't even little den -- and couldn't even spell masssachewsetts; i had no cluu what one was; if you had told me then, in the spirit world, that I would one day use an apple to type a letter -- right, get out of here; oh, oh, car coming -- got to go; oh, yeh, close your blog when you're finished... bye; the phantom.) Dad's been on the blog, can you tell? to be continued: