Mother & Daddy: The Early Years I

Mother & Daddy: The Early Years I

When Mother & Daddy were first married(October 26, 1934), he worked for TVA as a rodman for $98 a month. They spent time in Asheville, and Murphy, NC, before moving back to Chattanooga in February of 1936. What follows are some pictures and entries from Mother’s diaries (1936 - 1948), and memories which she mostly typed in the 1960s, often when she was staying at the house in LaFayette.

From Mother’s typed notes:

Max and I were married October 26, 1934 in Knoxville, Tn., First Baptist Church pastor’s study, at 5:30 p.m. It was a Friday and the homecoming game at UT. We left Villanow that morning about 9 or 10 and reached Knoxville about 4:00 p.m. When I asked for a room at the YWCA to dress, they had none because of the week-end football crowd. When I told the lady at the desk why I was in town she let me use her room to shower and dress. Max was held up in football traffic on his way to Baum’s Florist to get the gardenia corsage. The Y lady had called the church and asked Dr. O.E. Turner, assistant pastor, not to leave before we got there. Dr. Turner had such a sweet ceremony.

In Mother’s records she never fully explains why they were married away from their parents. She does say that Daddy didn’t want a wedding. She had always wanted to have her wedding in Macedonia Baptist Church in Villanow. Apparently at first they planned on being married at the Atlanta First Baptist where Daddy had his church letter while he attended Georgia Tech. His cousin, Warren McGill, even had several fraternity brothers lined up, but Daddy headed to Knoxville. She says that her parents didn’t even tell her good-bye, although she also hints that they were the ones who wanted her to marry him.

I had been sewing by hand for weeks on my trousseau lingerie, having bought yards of pastel crepes, satins, and laces. I even made bras and panties. Mother Shahan and Martha had me to lunch at Martha’s house a few days before the wedding, and they gave me a blue night gown with an apricot luxuriant satin negligee with beautiful deep scoops of alencon lace, and apricot satin mules to match. I had never seen anything like it, never dreamed of having anything so pretty.

Martha and Myr helped me select my wedding dress as Mama refused.It was a blue chiffon velvet with a deep bib shot with silver threads, 2 rhinestone buttons buttoned one side to the other. I slipped money out of Dady’s pockets after he went to bed, and managed to buy a green wool dress trimmed in fox fur, as well as I remember these were the only two dresses in my trousseau.

After the ceremony we drove to Newport, TN for our first night, and on to Asheville the next day, staying at the Wardmon Park Hotel until Monday. 

Our apartment was a furnished bedroom with kitchen over a store building right on the square in Murphy. We paid $20 a month.

When Myr came to visit us she and I drove around all the time because she paid for the gas. (In an earlier entry: The entire time in Murphy we were in walking distance of church, town and work. We stored the car in a garage for that year, using it only to go home. We couldn’t afford to run it.)

We looked for antiques; we bought raspberries from the farmer nearby and she made jam. We visited all the vegetable gardens where she bought food and eggs. We were constantly on the go.

Mother Shahan came to visit us for two weeks in June (1935). She and I drove all over the surrounding area, to Cherokee, NC, one day. We forded a river over which there was only a swinging bridge. A farmer told us just how to ford the river; then we drove on just cow paths as far as the car could go; then we got out and walked a long ways into the hills, where we knocked on the doors of the huts. They all ran and hid; they were more afraid of us than we were of them. As we walked through the woods we were a little frightened, and took off our rings. Myr took the money from her purse and put both it and the rings in her corset.

They purchased several baskets that day.

After a year in Murphy we were sent to Asheville, NC where we had a furnished efficiency, $37.50 a month. We spent our second Christmas there, a small tree on the living room table. It was blizzardly cold in Asheville. Max worked in the field, leaving before daylight every day. I had to get up early to cook his breakfast and pack his lunch. After he left I went back to bed and slept all morning. In the city there was nothing to do, no friends or activity as there had been in the small town of Murphy.