Estelle Magee, my grandmother on my father's side, was the ad hoc historian of our family. She had absolutely no equal in that regard.
Grandma was married at the age of fourteen, and I don't recall if she ever had the time to finish high school, but it didn't really matter, because Grandma had the unique ability to remember events in vivid detail, no matter how far in the past they may have been. As she often told me, "I always made A's in history". No kidding, Grandma.
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During the 1960's, Estelle's husband Leslie, my paternal grandfather, was the victim of a series of strokes which left him progressively more incapacitated. His first stroke occurred while he was working at his country store on Highway 64, just a few miles outside Memphis. In an instant, Grandaddy went from a sharp, numbers-savvy grocer with a quick wit to a person who required almost constant care. Grandma had no choice but to fill in the gaps as best as possible -- there was, of course, no way that they could keep the store, so Grandma and Grandaddy moved into the city, fairly close to our Highland Heights neighborhood. They had a nice little house on Biltmore Street, just off Macon Avenue.
For a while, Estelle had no trouble taking care of Leslie. I remember being at their house that momentous night in February, 1964, that The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Grandaddy didn't want to watch "those mopheads", but I convinced him not to change the channel, and I think I even saw the faintest gleam in his eye once "I Want to Hold Your Hand" kicked in. But, of course, he would never admit it.
Then in 1966, Grandaddy suffered a second, more severe stroke one afternoon after Sunday dinner at my Aunt Mary's house. (Mary was Estelle's younger sister.) We waited tenuously in Aunt Mary's front guest bedroom for an ambulance to arrive, and from that day forward, things were never the same for Estelle and Leslie.
Leslie had to be confined to a Veteran's hospital for a couple of years, and Estelle went to the hospital every day to stay with him. My Aunt Alma, Leslie's sister and a retired nurse who was already in her late sixties, would often go over to make sure that Leslie was being cared for to her satisfaction. But always, Estelle was there.
After a time, Grandma moved out of the house on Biltmore to a smaller house on Hollywood Street in north Memphis, and Leslie was able to return home. But by this time, he was totally confined to a wheelchair, and his days were spent in one long string of Pall Mall cigarettes and 6-1/2 ounce Coca-Colas, which he drank by the case. Since my dad was a grocer, he arranged for the Coke man to deliver cases to Grandaddy at a good price. Over time, Grandaddy's condition deteriorated to the point where he could no longer be cared for at home, and he passed away in 1969, after a final protracted stay in Veterans' Hospital.
During the period when Estelle made daily visits to the hospital, my mom and dad would take me to stay with her while they went out for dinner and a movie, or in some cases, for a weekend. During these visits, Grandma would treat me to Southern storytelling the likes of which I had never witnessed. She could relate stories about people who had lived during the Civil War, about former Presidents long departed from this earth, and the more colorful family members. She seemed to know a little bit about almost everything and was full of the most wonderful anecdotes I had ever heard. I came to realize that in this lady existed a vast repository of family history which no other single person could even begin to match.
Grandma had a stock set of phrases which she would often call upon in certain situations, and one of my favorites was "Little Baby Jesus wouldn't like that." This was reserved for those times when I had acted out of turn. Grandma could never get too mad at me, but she tried. On one occasion when I was about three or four years old, my parents decided to leave me with Grandma while they went out of town for a weekend trip. Miffed in a childlike way that I was being left alone, I incited a heated exchange between us:
"Grandma, I don't like you!"
"Now, Ricky...little Baby Jesus wouldn't like that."
"Well...I don't like him either!"
In her life, Estelle went from being a traditional Southern woman with fairly conservative views to a more progressive citizen of the New West. Shortly before Leslie's death in 1969, my Uncle Richard moved Grandma out to Camarillo, California to live with him, his wife Ruth, and their wonderful collection of family dogs, not to mention the 800+ pigeons that my uncle kept. During one of our last visits together, I sat out by the open fire pit on a crisp California evening playing some of Grandma's favorite songs on the guitar and singing to her. She told me that night that she could never really move back home to Tennessee, that California was her new home, and that she felt very lucky to have a family there who would take time to care for her and make her a part of their daily lives. But I think it was one of those situations where she simply got back the love and care that she had provided Leslie in his final years.
Every time I try to recount something in history, whether it is national, international or just familial in scale, I think about Grandma. She passed away in 1985, but she left behind some wonderful, colorful memories and more than a few great stories.
