Past memories gleaned from others

This week I am spending in Kentucky. It is odd though, because it is not the Kentucky I grew up in. Everything has aged, become run down, or else completely morphed. The friends who were my contemporaries are all but gone and I have been spending most of my time with people over 50.

I sat with my grandparents for hours. I have never really had a conversation with them, but I tried. I asked them about how they met (both of them worked in a Dime store). I asked my Grandpa about his war experiences and he told me a little about all of the neat places he had gone, including Manila, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Shanghai, and much more. Memories that I had never been able to glean from them before.


I visited Mary Ann Hack who used to babysit me and who I spent more time with than anyone else in this world. I would spend entire summers over at her house, picking berries, grapes, vegetables, figs, and catching frogs. She's just as fun as ever. She needed to type up some stories of her brother and I wrote about her childhood as she retold it to me in the car.

I looked through hundreds of pictures belonging to John Hack that reflected his time on board a Navy ship in World War II, recent pictures, and everything in between. For hours he told me about one thing or another until I thought my ears would fall off from listening.


Lea Adams, the Korean lady who lives in Metropolis, was a special treat to visit. She showed us her garden and told us about stories of her son and then when I took down her pictures she expounded on all of her siblings and herself. She even tried to teach me some Korean, but it was slow going as she has had trouble writing and reading and moving ever since her stroke and her head injury years ago.


Joy Lawrence, Mary Ann's best friend who is more like a sister than a friend, sat with me and told me about her children and grandchild. All this, of course, while we worked to make a baby quilt and she offered me water (at least seven times).





I also learned quite a bit about myself when I was younger, which is always a treat, as I don't remember most of it. My grandmother reminisced about how I would always steal people's purses and run behind the couch. Mary Ann told me the story about how she befriended our family.

"I saw you," she said, "and you were just about the shiest thing I'd ever seen. You'd cling to your Mama and hide between her skirts and under her coat. When I saw that Cecilia done got pregnant again, I said to myself 'Now Mary Ann, you gotta make sure that this next child isn't like that. This next baby is going to be so full of spunk and brightness and joy that she aint ever going to meet a stranger'. And she just about turned out that way, didn't she?"

Mary Ann then told me all about how she spoiled Anna right to death. Everything had to be perfect when Anna came over and Anna was even named after Mary Ann. Anna was her special child and when all of us grew up, she didn't much know how to take it. Last winter Mary Ann was in the mental hospital as she had a mental break down and her husband has never treated her very kindly. Since then she has recovered for the most part, but you can tell that she has to keep a bright outlook and stay busy making baby quilts or else she gets awful sober.