My latest adventure was this past weekend.

Gay and I drove up to the mountains where I lived for over thirty years. We made reservations at the Holiday Inn Express where we have received the utmost care from housekeeping each time we stay there.

We had planned to stay three nights, but the prices had gone sky-high. We had paid less that 100 dollars a night or a little over one hundred dollars, but for this weekend, the rooms were two hundred dollars plus tax, etc. We were told that although we are good customers the local hotel could not give us a discount. The prices are set by the big company.

I was disappointed and still don't understand why good customers are not given a little bit of favor. To stay three nights, Thursday - Saturday would cost over 600 dollars. Needless to say, we canceled Saturday night. During this time of year many things are happening in that area. Friday and Saturday nights in Hayesville, two concerts were planned. 

In Hiawassee, we first thought there was a vintage car show. The old cars spruced up to look like new, filled the parking lot at the hotel which we were told was completely booked.

But, we later learned that those cars were going to be a part of a grand parade down the main street of Hiawassee. The occassion was the birthday of the major event-setting for concerts and festivals, the Fairgrounds, on the lake where Barry and I often spent time listening to music and enjoying the wares spread before us during Fall Festival. 

At ten o'clock on Saturday morning, I needed to be across the main street for a workshop led by my friend, Scott Owens. We heard conflicting times as to when the parade would be blocking Main Street, but decided to make sure I was across the street by 9:30. 
My sister dropped me off and was to come back to pick me up at noon.

All was fine. Gay checked out of the hotel at 11:00 AM and found she could not get on the street because it was filled with old cars, a few floats, open convertibles, tractors, and horses. She simply parked in a lot overlooking Main Street and watched the parade go by. She said it went on for over an hour. 

At 12:30 she was able to cross the street and pick me up. But traffic was horrible. A group of us were going to meet at a restaurant down the way on Main street and we made it just in time before a mule drawn wagon approached. A long stream of cars crept behind the wagon. One of our group missed lunch because she didn't see the restaurant and drove past it. When she realized she needed to turn around she said the traffic was almost at a stand still, so she sent a message she would not be there.

I constantly gripe about the traffic in Roswell, GA, especially after three o'clock, but I had never had traffic interfere with my plans in the mountains. I had never been in Hiawassee when they held a parade on the main street that runs through the little town. 

In spite of the parade, and outrageous hotel prices, I had a very enjoyable time while there. 

It was good seeing many of my dear friends, and I am so blessed that Gay is happy to be there with me. These trips take a toll on me, but when I can come home and rest a couple of days, I am fine. 

No more trips now for awhile. As fall is approaching, I have plans for myself at home. So many things I want to do and soon will be able to do, I hope.

Hugs to my virtual friends out there. And hugs to my family and friends close by. What would I do without you?

Stu and Gay, my best friends and family 

CRAVINGS FROM MY YOUTH ON THE FARM

I got an urge to go back to South Georgia this past week. 

I can't drive down there at this time, so I did the next best thing. I went online and found Mark's Melon Patch where I have shopped in years past.  They carry fresh produce grown in the area and they carry jellies and syrup, with no additives like corn syrup, that I cannot find in my area of North Carolina or in the area of Atlanta where my sister lives.

When I was a girl at home, Mother and I would go to a farm where sugar cane was processed. A horse or mule hitched to a pole, walked around and around while activating a machine that squeezed the juice out of the cane stalk. The juice ran into a large kettle set over a fire. This was called a cane grinding. It was a fall harvesting of the sweet cane grown on the farms. 

Mother liked the juice and we drank a few cupfuls while there. The juice was cooked down and became cane syrup. Mother took home a large bottle of juice and several jars of syrup. Although we didn't think about it then, we were able to buy for a small price, something that was pure. Nothing was added to it - no high fructose corn syrup - as is found in all the syrups on the grocery store shelves today. 

Sugar cane syrup purchased at Mark's Melon Patch online

Although I doubt many farms grow cane now and don't hold cane grindings, someone makes pure sugar cane syrup and Mark's Melon Patch sells it. 

This time of year is when the Mayhaws are gathered. The little red, tart, berries were gathered on our farm by spreading white sheets under the limbs of the low-growing bush-like trees. The limbs of the tree were then shaken and all the ripe berries fell onto the sheets. It took many of the little berries to make even one pint of jelly.

We took the berries home to Mother who had the wizardry to turn them into the most delicious jelly one could ever taste. 

As I craved some of these delicacies I decided to see if Mark's Melon Patch would ship them to me. They did. Right away I had to taste the syrup on pancakes. Soooo good. 

This morning, I opened one of the jars of Mayhaw jelly and it was as good as my mother made it. 

Two jars of Mayhaw jelly and one of pepper jelly

Do you have special foods you enjoyed in your youth and can't find where you live now?

You say you like my family stories. Here is one for you.

Recently I found myself talking to a friend about my brother, Coy Ray Council. He was the second to the oldest child in our family. My sister, June, firstborn, entered the world in Pelham, Georgia. Ray is the only one of us to be born in another state. June 29, 1926, Ray was born in Rubonia, an unincorporated community in Manatee County, Florida. 

My father, Coy Lee Council, had moved his little family from South Georgia to Florida to work on a farm for his older brother, Charlie Council, also in Manatee County. In the early 1920s, Florida experienced a real estate boom. Huge immigration took place with people pouring there from the north and other southern states. Prices were soaring. People were moving to Florida in droves. Life was good. Many members of my Council and Robison families moved there and raised families that still live there.

Rubonia was a community of working-class people, mostly black, who worked in the fruit packing industry and in the orchards and fields. 

My father and mother lived in that settlement in the northwest corner of the county in a rented house. Daddy had to take a second job working nights at the ice plant to make enough to pay the rent and feed his small family. My mother said she was afraid, alone at night because she could hear strangers walking right outside her window. 

Rubonia is in the upper left-hand corner of the county.

When Ray was born in June 1926, two major hurricanes in Florida had caused millions in property damage and hundreds of lost lives. The boom was busting. The Depression was looming.

Moving Back to Georgia

My mother, Lois, wanted to move back to Pelham Georgia where her family still lived in the house where she grew up on the grounds of the Textile Mill where Coy had worked most of his life.

Soon after Ray was born, Coy and Lois left Florida and moved their little family back to Pelham. Coy did not go back to the mill. Instead, he bought a filling station on Railroad street from his brother-in-law, Jimmy Tinsley. That is the story I heard, but I think he might have rented the store from a landlord after Jimmy and Aunt Judy gave it up. I can't imagine he had money to buy a store.

Ray was a toddler by that time and June remembered Daddy standing little Ray on the counter in the store and letting him sing for the customers. That first son was the apple of my father's eye. June said he never gave her that kind of attention and I am not surprised. 

My father had a plan. He wanted a family filled with boys who could work on the farm with him, the farm he would one day own.

Little did he know how important Ray would become to the entire family. It is likely that he was the person who saved the land, the company, C. L. Council and Sons, and became the pseudo head of the family when he was a teenage boy. 

In 1943, Ray was seventeen years old. He missed the last three months of high school because he had to stay home and do the spring plowing and planting. The family depended on it. Daddy was too sick to do that work. 

Ray was not a big strapping boy. He was about 5 ft 8 inches tall and was not built like his younger brothers. He told Max later in life that on those days when he had to plow all day long, he became exhausted and had to stop at the end of each long row, lie down on the ground, and rest. 

What is beyond me is that he did not quit. He never said to Mother or Daddy that it was too much and he couldn't go on.

He plowed mules and horses because there was no money at that time to purchase a tractor. The heat and humidity in south Georgia are unbearable even in the spring months. But that young man felt such responsibility for his family and he knew his father was depending on him to get the crops planted. They say what doesn't kill you makes you strong, and perhaps that is what happened to my brother. 

Max said, "Ray missed the last three months of school, but went in to take his final exams. He aced them all." Max, who wasn't a good student, was in awe of Ray who never took books home with him. Ray finished his homework before he left school and then passed his tests with top grades. 

His teachers knew Ray was a diligent student who was not afraid to take on challenges. When given an opportunity, Ray entered contests at school. He entered and won an essay contest. As the winner, he had to read the essay to a group of adults, probably from the club that sponsored the contest. 

Evidently, Mother and Daddy went to hear him read because an influential man came to my father afterward. "Where is Ray going to college?" he asked Daddy. My family had no money to send any of us to college. 

I don't know what my father said to the man, but the wealthy man told my father, "When he gets ready to go, let me know. I will pay his way. This boy deserves and should get a college education." 

I am impressed that Ray was elected class president and even though he missed so much of his senior year, Max said he was Valedictorian at his graduation. What I am most sorry about is there is no school annual the year of Ray's graduation. Because of the war, it was not published.

Ray, at age 18, joined the military during the last year of WWII. He joined rather than wait to be drafted because he was told he would have a chance to serve in the Navy instead of being a soldier in the Army. I will never forget the sight of and my feeling of fear when I saw my father and mother embracing, both crying on the morning Ray left.

I can imagine Mother's fears for her son. She adored him and leaned on him after Daddy was hurt in an accident on the farm. I remember how my father suffered from chills and fever and pain. I can still hear his moans as my mother piles quilts on him. I don't know if there was ever a diagnosis for his illness, but I do know that he was treated for kidney disease at one time. 

I was five years old when Ray served in the Navy. It seems to me he came home almost every weekend, hitch-hiking in the dark on long south Georgia roads. He told us the story of when a long black car stopped and picked him up one night. It was dark in the car. He threw his duffle bag in the back seat and climbed in. Suddenly he realized there was someone else there. A man sat on the other side of the back seat. In the front was a driver.

He knew the men in the car had seen him on the side of the road in his white navy uniform. But who was this man in the car with him now? In the dark, he heard a voice ask him, "Where are you stationed, young man?" Ray answered and the man in the dark continued asking him questions about himself, his family, and what he thought about the Navy.

Ray politely answered everything he was asked. The man told Ray how much he appreciated his sacrifice for his country.

Ray asked to get out when the car reached Acree, a little settlement about three miles from our house. He would walk home from there. Ray, having been taught good manners, and being respectful of his elders, felt he had impressed the man in the dark car and was happy to have the chance to talk to someone of such importance. 

Somehow in that dark car, Ray came to understand he was riding with and talking to Georgia Governor E. D Rivers, a Democrat who accomplished many improvements in the state government. 

In today's world, one might be scared to get into a big black car in the dark with someone you can't see. But during that war, a man in uniform was treated as a very special person. Military men had no problem catching rides home on weekends. Civilians wanted to help in any way they could. In school, we donated our pennies to help the war effort. 

Ray would get to the farm Friday night in his uniform that made him so handsome and change into his farm clothes the next day to work with his brothers. One of them would drive him, now in uniform, over to Acree late Sunday afternoon where he would step out beside Hwy 82, hold up his thumb, and the first or second car that passed would stop and pick him up.

I will stop my tale for now. If you want to know more about my brother, Ray, and what he overcame to be the awesome man I miss so much today, let me know. I will tell the rest of the story.

Let me hear what you think. 

Vacation in the City

I had a delightful week celebrating my birthday with my family in Roswell, Georgia. 

We didn’t cook except at breakfast and a couple of times we skipped that and went to J. Christopher's. I was taken out for dinner at Stoney River steak house where I had the most delicious prime rib. The waitress brought me a piece of chocolate birthday cake with chocolate icing. So good. I don’t eat like that often because I have diabetes and must watch my diet. But, we were celebrating!

One day my niece, Lee, and my sister, Gay and I spent a few hours at Chicken Salad Chick eating lunch and then just talking and having fun being together. Lee made a selfie of us.

Left to right: Glenda, Gay and Lee

Stu Moring at J. Christopher's restaurant on the patio

The apartment that will be mine to enjoy one day is slowly coming along. We tried to shop for overhead fans at Home Depot but were told we would do better going online and ordering what we wanted. Shopping is very different these days. No need to go to the store because the employees send you to their computer to find what you need.

As much as I enjoy being in the city with my sister, I am amazed at the traffic especially around three in the afternoon. She knows the times to be out and when to stay home, and I will need to learn when I am there for long periods of time.

Living in a rural area as I do, life is slower, and I am happy with it. However, it is great to have many restaurants to choose from. One of my favorites in Roswell is Slopes Bar-B-Que. They have great smoked pork sandwiches with a tasty sauce, but I also enjoy their vegetables cooked like most of us southerners like them. They also make delicious mac and cheese. (Barry said that was his favorite vegetable.)

When I order the black-eyed peas and collard greens, I also ask for corn muffins. This meal is almost as good as sitting at my mother’s table when I was growing up.

If one is lucky to be there at the right time, the owner of Slopes makes cheese biscuits that he passes around to everyone in the restaurant. They melt in your mouth.

Now my little vacation is over, and I must return to real life.

I will get my booster shot as soon as possible. I plan to meet with friends who are vaccinated and have them over to my house.

That will happen after the doctor visits that have to be made. A wellness check, eye exam, and injections for my bad knee are on the calendar. We must keep up with our routine medical appointments so we can continue doing the things we want to do.

I am grateful for the ability to drive my car, for friends who help me with things that I cannot do for myself. I am grateful that I can learn new things and that my curiosity keeps me interested in all that is going on in this big wide world. I am thankful that I have come to accept the changes in my life brought on by the pandemic and have resolved to listen to my body and take care of myself both physically and mentally.

My dear readers, I hope your week is full of fun and that your health is good.

Are you enjoying the fall colors if you have that season now? How about the cooler weather? I know some of you have had snow already. I hope we don’t have any for a while. I just want to enjoy autumn and get ready for the holidays.

 

 

 

 

John Lewis was refused a library card when he was a child. So was a little white girl.

Today I found myself shedding tears, watching a horse drawn wagon carry the body of a special man, a leader who was willing to give his life for freedom for all in this country. A man who was spat on, beaten and threatened, never gave up.

 His story is touching and shows that determination and doing the right thing can raise a man, the son of a tenant farmer in Alabama, the deep south, to the halls where major decisions are made in the United States of America. I doubt that he ever thought he would reach such heights when he was a young man in his twenties, a follower of Martin Luther King, the pacifist black man who changed our country.

The story told about John Lewis that brings tears to my eyes is not the horrible beating he took on the bridge in Selma Alabama in 1965 when I was a young married woman. It is the story of him going to the library in Selma when he was a little boy and being refused because "the library is for white people only." This child had a hunger for learning, but he was poor and black, and was denied the only place where he thought he might find books so he could read and learn. 

I was a reader from the time I was small and loved to see the Book Mobile come to my house on the farm where I loaded my arms with books to last me until that book mobile came again. I wonder now, did that book mobile go to the homes of the black farmers whose farms were adjacent to our place?

John Lewis' story is a sad reminder of a little white girl who lived on the wrong side of the tracks in Pelham, GA. She, too, loved to read but the only books available to her were at school. In the summer she told her mother she would like to read. She was told to walk downtown a few blocks away and go to the library. 

PELHAM CARNEGIE PUBLIC LIBRARY, 133 Hand Street

The little girl, excited that she would be able to find a book to bring home, made her way down the road and across the dividing line of the Haves and Have Nots, the railroad tracks. She approached the large library doors, already feeling intimidated, and entered. Amazed to find so many books on all the tall walls, she didn't know what she should do, where she should go. Behind a large desk an older woman sat oblivious to the little girl who had just entered. 

"Can I get a book to take home to read?" The shy little girl asked the woman behind the desk. 
That little girl never forgot the look the woman gave her or the words she said. "No. There are no books for you here."

The little girl turned and walked through the big doors. Tears ran down her cheeks as she made her way back across the tracks. 

Eventually the little girl and her family moved to another town and another school. The little girl excelled in school, was a favorite of one of her teachers, and was given a college scholarship. She always loved books, fine literature, best sellers, and even in her last days she found reading a great comfort.

Today, one of her great nephews is head of the libraries in the region of Pelham, GA. I would like to tell him this story and ask what librarians today would say or do if that little girl came there. I hope they would help her.

Visit this site today to read more about John Lewis and my brother-in-law, Stu Moring.
https://www.glendacouncilbeall.com/2020/07/congressman-john-lewis-servant-leader.html#.Xx3azlVKj3g

Home for a wedding and visit with family

The holidays are over and I am back home. I had a great time with family at Christmas and down in south Georgia where I attended the wedding of one of my great nephews, Colby, the grandson of my brother, Max. The wedding was held at the First Baptist Church in Camilla, Georgia, the hometown  of Kathryn Stripling Byer, my friend, and the first woman poet laureate of North Carolina. My parents grew up in Pelham, Georgia which is in the same county.

The wedding was touching as the bride and groom had written their vows and spoke them to each other instead of the pastor saying the typical words spoken at most weddings. 

It was fun to see all my nephews dressed so nicely in their formal clothes. I usually see them in jeans or shorts. Saturday, the day of the event, was beautiful, but that evening turned cold. The reception, held at the old Shackleford house, a landmark, in Albany was overflowing with guests and many of the younger ones were outside dancing. Not liking crowds, I went outside in the cold, had someone bring me a chair and enjoyed talking with the handsome men in my family. I truly enjoyed the evening.

I had not been back to my hometown for a while and it is always surprising to see what has changed there. We had a good dinner on Friday night at a new restaurant, The Flint, in old downtown. We all hope this is the beginning of the city rising from the ashes.The owners came over, welcomed us and invited us to tour the large facility. With my hip and knee problems, I stayed in my seat and visited with another nephew's lovely girlfriend. She told me about Terry HoYum Yum sauce made there in Albany. She is CFO of the company. I'm sorry I didn't get some sauce to bring home.

But I did pick up some May Haw Jelly, one of my favorite foods when I was a child. Mother made the jelly every year from the tiny red berries that only grow in that area. I even found some syrup made from sugar cane which I can't get up here in the mountains. When I was a kid, I went with Mother to the cane grindings in our community each fall. We drank cane juice and always came home with lots of cane syrup. But here in the super market, I can only find maple syrup, and many brands made with corn syrup and artificial flavors. The popular syrup made in this area is sorghum syrup, but it is too strong for me.

I will share a few photos I made at the wedding. I am not the greatest photographer, but these are OK.

Groom, Colby Council,  with his lovely bride outdoors at the reception

Gay and Stu, having fun. Gay held my wine and my purse so I could take photo.
 She was very cold all evening, wore her coat, so you didn't see the beautiful dress she wore.

Glenda and Gay, great aunts of the groom

Three of my generation were present. My brother, Max, Gay and me. I missed my brothers and sister who are no longer with us. It was particularly sad when Max came in and walked down the aisle alone because his wife is ill and could not be there with him for their grandson's wedding. 

My brother and nephew, entertainers and comedians

A concert and dinner with my brother Max, his son Gabe, and my sister and her husband Stu, made my weekend so much fun.

Gay Moring, Max Council, Glenda Beall

In my family Max is  known for his humor and his son Gabe is following in his father's footsteps. We all met in Cartersville, GA for dinner at Table 20 just off Main Street. We had an hour and thirty minutes before the concert began at the Grant theater just a few steps down the street. A train runs through the town and we were all stuck waiting for the longest one I've seen in years but we arrived at about the same time. Max and Gabe drove up from south Georgia. Gay, Stu and I from Roswell, GA where I was spending a few days.

We laughed like school kids at the hilarious stories Max told us about his sons working at the family business, Hercules Bumpers, in Pelham, GA. Gabe told us that being the boss's son was no picnic. He was handed the dirtiest and toughest job in the plant when he was a young man working in summer before going to college. I had not heard these stories and fell in love with my nephew's knack for holding forth like his father and having his listeners practically rolling on the floor. 

Glenda, Max, Gabe and Gay

I don't see Gabe and Max as often as I'd like. Max is eighty-eight years old. His devoted son enjoys his father, and they spend every Sunday afternoon driving to small towns and through the countryside, visiting sites they have heard about but have not taken in before.

Recently they visited the home of Gene Talmadge, former governor of Georgia back in the forties. Gabe said Max enthralled the staff with his memories of Mr. Talmadge's reign. The controversial politician was known as the red-suspendered man because he always wore them. Max, who has an unbelievable memory, sang the jingle used in Talmadge's campaign. The staff was so delighted with my brother, they said they might call him to tell his stories to visitors at the old Talmadge home. My father did not like Gene Talmadge and after reading about him, I understand.


Hearing Max speak tonight reminded me that the oral history of our families often disappear when our loved ones are gone. We should take advantage of folks like my brother and record his  memories.

I talk with  Max often on the phone and Gabe and I email, but that doesn't take the place of a good visit like we had the night of the concert. The love between sisters and brothers is a special thing that overcomes all the anger or frustration created in a lifetime of family. No matter how upset we become at times, we never forget that we have a tie that lasts and heals those difficult times. Max is the brother I have had the most fights with and loved the best when I was a  child.

He has many faults as do I, but he was a wonderful brother to two little girls. He has always been the one in our family that made us all laugh. He is also an artist, a singer, a songwriter, and a poet. His song lyrics are touching and beautiful, as were songs back in the forties and fifties.



He loved our mother deeply and wrote a sweet and clever poem for her one Mother's Day. It was framed and hung on the wall until her death. He is a good sport and is not afraid to make fun of himself.  Max is the last one of my four brothers still with us. He misses the three that are gone like I would miss Gay if she were not here. The four of them were inseparable. They talked every day. I know he has days when he  wishes he could call on of them.

When he is no longer here to  tell his tales, he will have left them in the good hands of his  son, Gabe. So generations to come will hear the family stories even if they aren't written down.

More family history from my brother

Every time I talk with my brother Max, I learn more of our family history. 

Recently he told me that he, my sister June, and my brother Ray had malaria when Max was only four years old. Malaria is a serious and sometimes fatal disease caused by a parasite that infects a certain type of mosquito which feeds on humans. People who get malaria are typically very sick with high fevers, shaking chills, and flu-like illness. 

My family lived west of downtown Albany, GA, in the southwest corner of the state. At that time that area was mostly undeveloped wetlands, and small sinkholes filled with water each summer. These holes or little ponds became stagnant water, a perfect breeding place for mosquitoes. This was typical all over the south where swampy land existed.

Some of our relatives, who saw Max as he was recovering, thought he would not live. I imagine many children died from that dread disease in the late thirties and early forties. My aunt Lillian once asked my parents why in the world they lived in Albany, the “Malaria Capital of the World.” 

The most effective antimalarial drug was quinine, a very bitter substance, made from the bark of a certain kind of tree. Max said Mother gave them a green, grainy tonic called Grove’s Chill Tonic. One of the ingredients was quinine. The original name was Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic and was created not as a cure, but as a preventative and relief for the chills and fever accompanying the illness. Quinine has been used for more than three centuries and until the 1930s it was the only effective malaria treatment.

Mother had great faith in Grove’s Chill Tonic. She continued to use it as her first method of treatment for everything. I came along six years later. I can still remember how I dreaded a dose of chill tonic which she gave for whatever ailed us.

“I had a little drug business in Paris, Tennessee, just barely making a living, when I got up a real invention, tasteless quinine. As a poor man and a poor boy, I conceived the idea that whoever could produce a tasteless chill tonic, his fortune was made.”—E.W. Grove

Mr. E.W. Grove built the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC in 1913. By this time his medicinal products had become so popular his little drug business had grown into his Paris Medicine Company. He moved to Asheville for his health and constructed a number of places besides the Grove Park Inn. The Grove name is widely known in the mountain city. A popular place  for shopping is the Grove Arcade. Wise  people invested in his products and his company. I know our family contributed to his fortune with all the bottles Mother purchased. 

Barry and I spent a weekend in Asheville at that beautiful Inn about twenty years ago, and I almost asked for a discount claiming I helped build that place.

By the 1950s malaria had been eradicated. The Communicable Disease Center was founded in 1946 and with state, local and federal cooperation, DDT, an effective insecticide discovered in 1939, was sprayed everywhere mosquitoes could breed. Now only a few pockets of malaria are found in the United States each year.

Today the CDC warns about another mosquito-borne illness, the Zika Virus.

I wonder if I should suggest they try Grove’s Chill Tonic.

Note: The chill tonic was so popular the British army made it standard issue for every soldier going off to mosquito infested lands and, by 1890, more bottles of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic were sold than bottles of Coca-Cola.

Did you ever take Grove’s Chill Tonic or did your mother rely on another tonic?

Today, June 14, is the anniversary of my wedding to Hugh Barry Beall from Rockmart, Georgia. We met on July 4 and married on Flag Day, June 14 at the First Methodist Church in Albany, GA.

Barry at 28 when we married. 

While I've been laid up with first one malady and then another the past month, I've used my time to go through old photos, slides, and albums. How young we were that summer day we met. We had no idea where life would take us but we only cared about one thing. We wanted to be together. Boy, did we have fun! He had the greatest sense of humor and could always make me laugh any time he wanted. When he sang to me and played his guitar, I could not believe that I, shy and self-conscious, was the one he had chosen. He was charming. He lit up a room when he entered and he had that quality right up until his death.

I was a brand new fourth grade teacher and he, recently discharged from the U.S. Army, worked as manager of the Luggage and Gift Store. I couldn't cook when we married but he never complained. When I ruined a meal, he said, “Let’s just have peanut butter sandwiches.”

He loved the mountains and so did I. He loved dogs and so did I. We both loved convertibles and each had new ones when we married. He taught me to ride motorcycles, and I taught him to ride horses.

Barry Beall

Looking back over the 45 years we shared, I realize what held us together through good and tough times was our commitment to our marriage and the fact that I didn't think I could live without him in my life. I never allowed the word divorce to enter our conversations, no matter how angry or upset we were with each other. I tried to support him in everything he did, and he was my biggest cheerleader.

At Halloween, Barry became Lonzo Carpe, the old man you see here. At parties no one recognized him. He stayed in character all evening. 

Our ambitions were not to make tons of money, but to enjoy our relationship, to take care of each other and to glean all of life’s greatest joy out of every day.  

When I make my gratitude list, I always find something about Barry to put on that list, and I don’t think I will ever run out of items.

Our first Christmas at our mountain house in 1995 with Kodi, our beloved Samoyd.

Family Photos from annual Christmas Party

If you are a regular reader, you know I like to use pictures as prompts for stories and essays. I am sharing some photos from our recent family Christmas party down in Albany, Georgia.

Stu and Gay, Me, and my only brother still living, Max and his wife, Salita.
No one would believe that in May his cardiologist had given up on him.

 Max has been the subject of a number of essays I've written and is in a few poems. His life is rich and has the makings of a good book.

One of my handsome nephews. He is a Star Teacher and loves his work.

"The Kids" - my nieces and nephews and some cousins

As Scott Owens has said, as long as we have family we never run out of subject matter for our writing. The tall handsome guy in the very back has a darling grandson, Elliott. This grandfather and I were neighbors on the family farm in south Georgia. He created a Haunted Forest that brings hundreds out to be frightened every October. 

The men in the above photo are all Councils. The three women on the left are children of Councils. The two women right in the middle are descendants of the Robison family, my mother's maiden name.

I learned yesterday that Mary Mike Keller will once again teach her genealogy class with writing about our ancestors for Writers Circle studio in Hayesville in 2014. My study of my family history began many years ago and I have tons of research printed and in my computer. I published a family history, "Profiles and Pedigrees, Thomas C. Council and his Descendants" in 1998. 

I believe that we should document our family history, stories and details that others will never know unless we take the time to write it down. Although "The Kids" might not be interested in collecting the history at the time, there will come a time when they will wish they had asked more questions and saved more things relating to their ancestors. 

Do you need a prompt to get you started with writing today?

Choose a family member and write what you remember from childhood about this person. Include details.

Saturday - for celebrating milestones and me

After a long and busy week, Saturday was special for me. I joined my sister and friends to celebrate a birthday at the Oar House in Dahlonega, GA. A festival was going on in town, so the quiet restaurant a few miles from the square was perfect for us. We see each other every few months or on special occasions and, while it used to be the six of us, now I make five. For three years after Barry died, I suffered through those days when the six minus one gathered to laugh and share old memories. But today was good. 

I left home around ten o'clock a.m. and returned after nine at night because on the way home I decided to treat myself to a movie. I had been wanting to see the Jackie Robinson Story, 42, and was happy to see it was still up at the Fieldstone Cinema. 

The show didn't begin until seven and I had time to stop in at a Mexican restaurant nearby and order myself a frozen margarita. I seldom drink alcohol, but today it was so good with cheese dip and chips. 

Although it wasn't my birthday, I felt celebratory. I'd had good news about my brother's health, and also I had made another milestone on this journey called grief. After four years one might thing that trip had been completed, but, until you face it, you don't realize it is never finished. It just gets easier as you pass those checkpoints you meet on the way. 

The Movie 42 - I finally saw it.

Growing up near where Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, GA, I heard some horrific stories from my father about treatment of black people in the rural areas. Those stories have stayed with me all my life. I write about them in my memoir.

I'm glad the movie, 42, was uplifting. What a brave young man Robinson was to take on the entire world of baseball, to take on the verbal abuse from the players and the fans.

I was happy the movie portrayed a southern team mate, Pee Wee Reese, as one who put his arm around Jackie and faced the fans to let them know where he stood. That was also a brave man. 

In my book, I'll tell about my sister and how she had to defend herself while in college, from racist remarks of hometown students who had read in a newspaper that she was on the welcoming committee for Charlene Hunter, first of two black students at UGA. The article was untrue, but the meanness and accusations were not.

The movie, 42, made me feel good about how far this country has come although we have so much further to go. I think racism has just gone underground, at least in the south, because people tell me that a heavy racist population prospers right here in our mountains. I am fortunate to know and be able to socialize with open-minded intelligent and informed people. Most of them I have met through writing. 

We have more good people than bad, I believe, and I'm glad good people, after a long time of blindness, saw the wrong being done by ignorant people, and changed our laws. Sadly laws can't change the prejudiced hearts and minds of others. They have to obey law, but still, inside they hate.

A Hidden Council Family Cemetery

Today I talked with my brother Rex. Within a few weeks the farm where I grew up, the farm my father bought in 1942 with a loan from the government, the farm where I played or rode my horse in every field or clump of woods, where I walked through early dew and smiled at morning glories swinging from a fence, that farm will no longer be mine in any way. It will belong to the sons of my brother Max Council. And so things change. But at least the farm will stay within the family -- at least for a generation we hope.
The Council Family Cemetery is located on that farm on Fleming Road in Albany, Georgia. Coy Lee Council and Lois Robison Council are buried together there. Stanley Hunter is buried there and my brother Coy Ray Council is buried there.
Few people even know this cemetery exists. You won't find it listed on graveyard.com or even on Ancestry.
Coy Lee Council, my father loved that land so much, he never wanted to leave it. He wanted to be buried there. He prepared himself years ahead to be in that place for eternity. On Sunday mornings he walked or drove his pickup over to the area where some years before a large swimming pool was built by our family. He sat there for a couple of hours on Sunday and communed with his God. Now, just past the swimming pool, on the other side of a fence, these four graves announce to visitors that they have entered a cemetery.
Depending on how well it is cared for in the coming years, my other brothers and my sister June will be buried there.