Granny and Papa Wham on their wedding day, December 22, 1945.

I won’t get to the end of this post with dry eyes.

Had they both lived, today would be my Granny and Papa Wham’s 64th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately for the world in general and me in particular, they have both gone to their reward — I hope the reward which Granny taught about many times in 51 years to the women of the Martha Wham Bible Class at Dials Methodist Church and then at Beulah Baptist Church.

To say they were an incredible couple would be like saying Hurricane Andrew was a strong breeze. Papa returned from The War in Europe in September of 1945 and they were married in December. Papa was 26 and Granny was 24. Papa worked and Granny made a home. In the 45 years they were together they weathered, among many other things, the tragic death of a newborn daughter, a handsome son who was at once the apple of their eye and the bane of their existence, that son’s 13 month tour of duty in the bowels of the Central Highlands of Vietnam, a beautiful and beloved daughter with somewhat expensive tastes, building a house, grandchildren, the son’s divorce, a few hospitalizations, the deaths of many, many family members, sickness, health, riches, poverty, Granny’s stroke, and Papa’s emphysema . Their secret? A deep and abiding love the likes of which I have never, NEVER seen in any other couple I’ve ever watched.

It may be a cliche’ but they never fought. Papa was the undisputed king of the household and Granny was his seneschal. In thirty years, I heard Papa’s voice raised in anger twice. Both times, I was terrified because I had no experience with anything other than his kindness. He watched the Braves play ball while she baked pound cake. He napped on the couch while she read her Sunday School lesson. I wish I could describe their love for each other in proper terms, but I cannot because adjectives don’t exist on this lowly plane to adequately capture their feelings for each other. You couldn’t describe it, but my God how you could feel it!

I remember the last time they parted. Papa was in failing health and the effects of nursing him had begun to tell on Granny. She had a stroke in July of 1995. Papa died two days later. Daddy, Aunt Cathy, and I all believe Papa died of a broken heart. Cathy saw his face as he watched the EMTs place his blushing bride into the ambulance and she said it looked to her like he died right then. He simply could not live without knowing she would be at his side watching his back anymore. He could face German bullets and shells at Anzio and on Omaha Beach, but he couldn’t face life without Granny.

I was with Daddy when we told Granny in her hospital room that Papa was gone. One tear rolled down each cheek and she lowered her head. She never broke down and sobbed like some thought she would. She was too strong for that, but she was never the same. Granny entered a steady decline after Papa died even though she soldiered on in her role as matriarch for our sake. I always told everyone that Granny took care of the family and Papa took care of Granny. I also said that the day would come when she missed Papa and wanted to go find him more than she wanted to stay here and take care of us. That day came in February of 2008. With Aunt Cathy holding her hand and telling her we loved her and to tell Papa we all said hello, Granny left us to rejoin him.

Granny was famous for making Papa wait on her to get ready and check over the house. Despite his unbelievably good nature about everything else, Papa didn’t wait on anything or anyone patiently. In my mind’s eye, I could just see him the moment she arrived at the Pearly Gates, rising from the seat where he’d been waiting with Aunt Judy to say, “Mama, I’ve been waiting. What took you so long?” and her replying as she reached out to take his hand, “Daddy, I had to watch the children a while longer; I came as soon as I could.” Finally, after more than ten years, harmony returned to the Universe; Mot and Frank were together again.

Love y’all. Don’t forget to wash your feet.

Self awareness is a valuable thing, or so I’m told. According to The-Reason-I-Get-Up-In-The-Morning, I am prone to lack such awareness. She often accuses me of “not having a filter.” Actually, I get that a lot. After much pondering and debate, I’ve finally realized the confusion stems from my transmission. I am an automatic shift in a five speed manual world.

The vast majority of people in the world have manual transmission in their heads. Now, anyone who knows anything about stick shifts knows that the car won’t go into gear unless you depress the clutch. This requires some input from the driver, or in this case, speaker. Most people have a thought that hits them wrong and they want to say something, but they work those gears and once they let out the clutch, the situation drives on smoothly.

For good or ill, I’m not like that. I have a Turbo Hydromatic 400 auto tranny between my brain and mouth. That means when I push the gas or someone else pushes my buttons, the car JUST GOES. Burning rubber and burning bridges all at the same time! Now don’t get me wrong. I in no way advocate my way of communicating to anyone who wants to get in a sandbox with others. It’s a lonely existence when you can go from zero to redneck in 5.2 seconds.

Of course, I’ve been that way a long time. By now, those who like me are pretty much willing to take me as I am and those that don’t like me; well, they tend to stay away. I keep telling myself that someday I’m going to swap out this auto slushbox for a nice Muncie 4 Speed with a Hurst shifter . . . but as CCR puts it so very well, “sometimes someday never comes.”

Hope everything’s going well for all y’all. Don’t forget to wash your feet, or at least knock them off, before you get in the car! Love y’all muches.

Mason Benjamin Wham, here at age 27 hours

Ladies and gentlemen, may I be permitted to introduce the first new addition to the Frank B. Wham, Sr. branch of Whams in about 22 years! Meet Mason Benjamin Wham, the absolutely beautiful fruit of my younger brother, Nick’s loins and the result of the hard work of Kerry, my sister-in-law.

He is, of course, flawless in every way and has already scored perfect marks on all his newborn tests. Depending on who one asks, he arrived a week early (by Sissy’s account) or two weeks early (by Dr. Keller’s account). It’s actually a good thing he decided to come on and make his debut because as it was, he was 8 lbs. 7 oz and 20 inches long. A week or two more of floating around and growing and he would have been a hoss sure enough. As it is, he fits perfectly into the crook of an arm and weighs about the same as a large bag of sugar and is just as sweet.

Nick and Sissy brought him home today and I’ll need to be going over there before long to help get him settled in. In all likelihood, he’ll never see the inside of a day care since Nick’s mother, Teresa, is “conveniently” unemployed due to cutbacks at her former office. Daddy is absolutely about to explode with pride over his first (and if Sissy is to be believed, his last) grandchild. I think Teresa may have to sew new buttons on all of his shirts to replace the ones he burst upon Mason’s arrival.

One funny story about his birth. No one told my brother that babies don’t automatically start breathing as soon as they clear the birth canal; so, there he was coaching and waiting like a good new father when Mason pretty much popped into the doctor’s hands. According to Nick, “He was as blue as my blue jeans and he wasn’t breathing. I sank to my knees certain that my son was still born.” Luckily for all of us, a little suction at the nose and mouth and Mason announced his arrival into the world with a set of lungs that would have made his Granny Wham very proud. He also has no problems nursing and has shown a definite appreciation for George Jones songs.

I think he’s perfect.

We fell back last night and took back our hour of sleep that was so rudely stolen from us back in the late spring. Now, for a large majority of the people in the places where this biannual clock changing is enforced, the event passed largely unnoticed. For a select few, however, last night was a PITAS of the highest degree. Anyone working in a manufacturing plant last night had a bad time.

See at one time, we had more textile plants (factories, if you must) here in the South than a feral dog has fleas and ticks. For over a hundred years, textiles fueled this region and new cotton mills seemed to pop up like so many toadstools after a hard rain. All that wouldn’t matter as much to me except that much of my family went through a spell at one or the other local mills. In my own time, I spent a few dreary summers in one of the many textile plants owned by the richest man in South Carolina. He has always been known as a bit of a miser, so everyone in his plants worked “swing shifts”.

To the uninitiated, most factories run on three eight hour shifts: First is 8 AM to 4 PM, Second is 4 PM to 12 Midnight, and Third (or Graveyard) lasts from 12 Midnight to 8 AM. If you worked a swing shift, you would spend a week on First, then a week on Second, then a week on Third and the next week back to First. It was brutal to say the least, but in a factory running swing shifts, the owners don’t have to pay a shift premium because everyone works all the shifts. Again, for those not accustomed to the lint-head lifestyle, a shift premium is the extra pay you draw for working an “off” shift — Second or Third. Most of the time, you’d get so much more for Second and then double that for working Third. It was a way of rewarding bleary-eyed drives home in early morning and basically shooting any of one’s body’s natural circadian rhythms in the head.

Now, I gave y’all that  quasi-history lesson to tell you this — under no circumstances did you want to be working Third when the time “fell back”. See, if you don’t know, the time actually changes at 2:00 AM. Most people just set the clocks back and go to bed. Not in a cotton mill. Oh no. The one time I was unfortunate enough to get caught on fall back night, I joined a group at the time clock and watched at 2:00 as the clock wound back to 1:00 AM. A whole miserable hour of hot, lint-filled, and sweaty work was just erased like so much chaff on the wind. It was heart breaking and the worst thing was, you didn’t get paid extra even though you worked 9 hours instead of 8 because your time card would show 8 hours and not 9. The Man got an extra pound of flesh for nothing.

It’s been many a year since I walked the machine aisles picking up lint waste, but I haven’t forgotten that cruel irony. Sadly, what few manufacturing plants that still run today around here have continued that barbaric practice. Unfortunately, most of them run 12 hour shifts so the late shift works 13 hours!

Of course, “jump forward” night in the spring was different, but who wants to talk about that 🙂 !

Sleep good and enjoy waking to daylight and not dark, y’all, and as always, don’t forget to scrub your necks and wash your feet. Love y’all!