Granny, Piano Music, Floyd Cramer and Bonnie Tyler

I come from a long line of musicians. The heritage of being a mountain girl is one of life played out to the pickin' of a guitar, banjo or fiddle. Attending the Biddix family reunions meant two things... there would be great food and there would be music! Great uncles Graham, Ralph and Carter would pull out the instruments and the music would commence.... country, gospel, bluegrass, folk songs... they could play anything.

The Forbes/Burleson family was another story. The long-standing joke of my Daddy's has been that the only thing they played was the radio and even it had static! In the midst of that was my grandmother, Elsie Marie Burleson Forbes and her love for piano music... particularly that of Floyd Cramer.

Granny Elsie died when she was 48 and I was three. I do not remember her and yet her dream lives on in me. You see, she wanted her grandaughter to play piano! My dad talked about her love for beautiful piano music and how she would sit and listen to Floyd Cramer playing in her living room on 33 1/3 vinyl record albums on a console stereo. Years after her death, those records would become some of my most cherished memories.

Our living room was a "formal" room with 1970's gold shag carpet, real lined gold drapes, orange and gold floral furniture, a console stereo and tall piano like you might find in a honky tonk! If you were "company" you could go in the living room. I could also go in there to practice piano but it was not a place to just play or hang out. The rare, fun and cherished memories are when we would go in there to sit, as a family, and dad would take the flower arrangement, what-nots, and lace linens off that big console. He would slide the two doors on the front, revealing the speakers and he would play those big dusty records for us. It was there that I too, fell in love with Floyd Cramer as the melody of "Last Date" or "San Antonio Rose" would play through the white noise, scratches and pops of the old record!

It was on that big old piano that I would sit and practice... sometimes voluntarily and sometimes forced, as I would work on my lesson practice for the week. For years, my grandmothers dream seemed it would never come true as I stayed in Book One year after year after long, laborious, and boring year.

With Floyd Cramer in the back of my head, my desire to play... I mean REALLY play... took flight.

For months, I played "Bill Grogan's Goat (wump wump wump wump) was feeling fine (bong bong bong bong) ate three red shirts (wank wank wank wank) right off the line (wump bong wank plunk)" and with each passing note I grew to detest - no HATE - Bill Grogan and his stupid goat. I did not want to play Bill Grogan's Goat and knew the piano held more than those boring notes!

It was then that the voice of Bonnie Tyler entered my little world. The year was 1978 and I was seven years old. "It's a Heartache" hit the radio and I HAD to learn to play! Bill Grogan would have to wait on verse two to find out what happened to his goat because I had to master the piano part of "It's a Heartache" and needed to figure out how to make my seven year old voice sound like Bonnie Tyler and that raspy pack-a-day sound that she had. I practiced and I sang and I played and I listened to her song over and over and over again. Finally, I got it right.

My piano teacher shook her head as week after week, I just could not master the Bill Grogan piece. Finally, I shared, with splendor and excitement, Bonnie Tyler. To my dismay, she was not impressed and informed me that my only heartache was the waste of time and money because I would not play what was on the page. Sigh..... It comes as no surprise that I was eventually kicked out of piano lessons and never made it out of Book Two. I have no idea how much money was spent on those futile lessons.

A wonderful lady came into my life in ninth grade. She had a Bonnie Tyler voice and her studio was filled with smoke as she taught lessons. She was a fiery older woman and had taught at Julliard in her younger years. An amazing talent who asked me to play for her as she stuck a piece of music in front of me. I fumbled my way through some obscure classical piece and just knew that she would not take on a student like me. Then she pulled the music away and said, "now play what you want to play" and so I did... the music in my head rather than the stuffy sheet music on the piano. When I stopped playing, she took a long drag on her cigarette and said, "to play by ear is a gift from God. I can work with that. Yes, I will teach your girl." Sooo.... week after week, mom took me to her little studio in Simpsonville, SC and paid her and week after week, she worked on a little musical interpretation, notes, fundamentals and theory and a LOT on ear, chords, progressions, keys and hearing. She agreed to forego the stuffy recitals if I would play in church and so I began playing for our services.

After some time, she said she had taught me enough for a while and that I needed to work on what I had learned. She said that at some point, I would want to learn more and that as I progressed more, I would know what it was that I wanted to learn. Many years later I went back to her studio and it was there no more.... another little shop had taken its place. I cannot remember her name but am forever indebted to her for affirming that I would not be a colossal loser because Bill Grogan's Goat was problematic but that God has given me a gift that needed to be nurtured.

Today, I still play in church and love to sit down and play something I just heard on the radio. The old piano still looks like it could be in a honky tonk somewhere, but instead, my childhood piano sits in my formal living room where my little girl plunks out notes. I think Granny Elsie would be proud and even though I don't sound like Floyd Cramer, I think she would like what I play. I also think she would be happy that I have some Floyd Cramer on my iPod... with a little Bonnie Tyler mixed in!

Sisters

Mee Maw had 12 brothers and sisters but the funniest relationship was the one between her and sisters Dee and Geneva.

Mee Maw was quiet and reserved. She didn't talk a lot at church or around people that she didn't really know. She was a minimalist.... loved the look of crisp white curtains against a white uncluttered wall... sparse furnishings and not much in the way of clutter. Dee and Gen were polar opposites.

Dee was chatty and the matriarch of our family. When Dee spoke, you listened and if you knew what was best for you, you did what she told you to! Her house was always full of people and children to the point that she lost track of who she was talking to. If she looked in your general direction and hollered, you had best come running... even if she had no idea who you were and went through the list: "Diane, Venita, Joan, Sharon, Carolyn, Sylvia".... "uh, Dee, my name is Melanie" to which she would respond, "you know who you are, now come here!" I think there were so many people in her house that she probably forgot which kids were her own and which ones had been there so long or so often that they just took up residence!

Dee always wore an apron and I don't know that I ever saw her without one. I suppose that is because she was usually in the kitchen and was famous for her strawberry-rhubarb pies and the BEST peanut butter pies ever! Campmeeting rolled around every summer and Jack would drive her to the dining hall where she would start handing pie after pie to be taken to the kitchen for the evening meal. If there was a piece left when you got through the line, you were in for a real treat! The one non-treat in her kitchen was pickled beans and corn! YUCK!!! And quite a surprise if you were expecting regular beans and corn!!! I was a child when I bit into that concoction. There was a traveling evangelist at her table for dinner that day and I KNEW better than to spit it out! I chose my veggies very carefully after that in the off chance that something might be pickled!

Where Mee Maw was quiet in church, Aunt Dee was a shouter! When the Holy Spirit moved her, she would begin to cry and then she would start to testify! That would lead to walking and I can remember her walking the floors and shouting... giving thanks to the God who had carried her through. She had a faith that was real and a joy in the Lord that was electric. I can imagine her shouting in heaven now... and probably calling the angels by the wrong name as she goes through the list until she gets it right!

Geneva was also a collector. Gen kept stuff that she might need someday.... 100 green plastic containers that strawberries came in "just in case".... snuff cans that might be useful someday...funny stuff that made her little eclectic home a neat place to be!

Mee Maw never fueled my interest in genealogy because she just wasn't that interested. She wasn't big on dates and didn't have many pictures in her house. Family history was just never a passion of hers. My great aunt Geneva, however, was a different story! Aunt Gen forgot more in her life than I will ever know about my family. Where Mee Maw didn't care and Dee would forget the names, Geneva could tell you who you were, what date you were born on and what day of the week that was.... "Little Mel, you were born on Saint Patricks Day 1971, the 17th of March, that was a Wednesday... Wednesday's child is full of woe"... she just knew the details about all of us... and there were a LOT! She could tell you who you were related to for generations, stories about the past, who we looked or acted like, and details that everyone else forgot! Walking through the cemetery at "decoration" was an education if Geneva were with you because she brought life back to the ancestors and she kept their stories alive. I think that is why I write the stories down. Geneva never did and the stories and people are too precious to not leave that legacy for the generations that follow. We come from good people... hard workers... honest people with character... and our children need to know that... it gives them something to work toward.

What Gen failed to write down, she made up for in the treasured photos she left us with. Gen's first camera was a little Kodak Brownie and many of our precious and priceless family photos of the past were taken with that little camera. She spent a fortune making copies of other peoples pictures and amassed quite a collection of photographs from the past. Many of those we were able to scan and they live on today. Gen would have loved what we could do with scanners, digital cameras and computers! She loved pictures and she and Dee were quite a contrast to my Mee Maw. At Mee Maw's house, the living room was white walls with a framed piece of wall art over the couch. One wall had five pictures in stair step formation of her five daughters in descending age. For many many years, that was it! Dee's house was quite the contrast... there were so many pictures of family on her wall that I could not tell you what the living room walls were made of or even what color they were!

With the many differences, they were sisters at the heart of it. They argued, laughed, remembered, lived, grew up, and shared. They were different enough to be unique but alike enough to have a bond that lasted until they began to, one by one, make their journey home. I like to think that their eternity is filled with laughter and remembering! I'm glad I was a part of that inner circle that got to watch their relationship!

Mee Maw with her sister Gen and daughters Rita, Elizabeth, and Joan

A Place Called Home

My maternal grandmother, Marion Ardella Biddix Hall, was born in a railroad house in the little community of Altapass, North Carolina. Altapass was a place where her family had lived for generations before and it is where she would spend most of her life. My grandfather, Cecil Guy Hall also lived in a railroad house. His mother and father ran "The Boarding House" which was a place for the railroad executives to spend the night when they came through. Mee Maw's father was a section foreman for the railroad. Mee Maw's childhood was spent with the chug-chug chug-chug of a train on the tracks humming as the eerie whoooo-whoooo of a train whistle became the background music for life, play, work, and death.

Mee Maw and Papa left the little community of Altapass for Eglin Air Force base as young newlyweds. They would come back to Altapass as a little family of three after my mother was born. They would leave again to move to Donaldson Air Force base and would come back as a family of four after my aunt was born. Mee Maw would never again live in any town other than Spruce Pine and for most of her life, lived in the little community of Altapass. It is where she would have three more daughters, where she raised children, where she would attend church, and where she would be laid to rest.

As her funeral ended, the hearse carrying her body began the processional and a shiver ran down my spine as we left the church where her daughters had said their vows... where children and grandchildren had knelt at an altar to pray... where her body would lay as family and friends paid their respects to her. The journey from the church passed the little piece of land that she was raised on and passed by one of Wise Hall's rental houses that she had raised a family in. As the cars came to a stop at the cemetary, we were within shouting distance of the little duplex apartment that she had spent her last 30 plus years in. Our journey was just a few miles and we never left Altapass Highway yet somehow, we had traveled most of Mee Maw's life in those few short miles.

As that stark reality hit me like a brick wall,

I began to wonder what really makes a place close enough to your heart that you can call it "home"...

and I came to a realization that "home" can be anywhere.

Home is where you can always come back to and it is as though you had never left.

Mee Maw kept coming back because she could.

Home is like that.

It is the place that you can leave from and explore the world.

It is the place you can come back to when you feel like life is about to fall apart.

It is the people who love you and will support you.

It is the land where you can sit under a tree and cry and think

just like you have done a thousand times before.

Home is the place you want to keep coming back to

and it is the place you want to raise your children.

It is the place where you find peace.

For Mee Maw, home had been Altapass and tonight it is where her body rests. There is a peace in that... in the knowing that even in death and even when her soul left her body, that her earthly flesh was laid to rest in a place called "home" for so many years and so many generations. I can stand at her grave and still hear the cadence of a chug-chug chug-chug as a train travels down the tracks and close my eyes to the eerie whooooo whoooo of a train whistle as it winds through my mountain town.

Two of the railroad houses near Mee Maw's railroad childhood home

The children, son-in-laws, grandchildren and spouses, and great-grandchildren of Cecil and Ardella Biddix Hall in front of the little church called "home" in Altapass

The House Mee Maw Grew Up In

Home Sweet Home! For my grandmother, Marion Ardella Biddix Hall, her childhood home was owned by the railroad. Her daddy worked for the railroad and they lived in one of the many homes owned by the Clinchfield Company. She told many stories that came out of that little house... where children were born... where children died... where memories were made. On one occasion, I asked her about the actual house and for her to describe it and here is what she said:

The house was close to where Hoilman Hill Road is now. It had three bedrooms upstairs and three rooms downstairs.

Downstairs:

Dining Room - table and chairs, buffet, china cabinet, and bed

Living Room - couch, stand up cabinet model radio, organ (Jessie played), Singer sewing machine, rocking chair, straight wooden bottom or split bottom chairs, fireplace, and calendars on the wall

Kitchen - built in cabinet, little white dish cabinet, tables for the water buckets, stove, washing machine

Papa (Marion Robert Biddix) slept in the living room or dining room because he was afraid of fire and he didn't want to sleep upstairs.

The upstairs had three bedrooms.

They had an outhouse.

This is a picture of Mee Maw's brother, Graham, standing at the steps to the house. Mee Maw said Ressie did all of the flowers for many of the railroad buildings and probably did these


This is a picture of Mee Maw's sister, Geneva in front of the railroad home

Jessie Viola Biddix

Jessie Viola Biddix

June 26, 1915 - December 5, 1936

Daughter of Marion Robert and Melissa Ardella Lowery Biddix

From an interview with my grandmother, Marion Ardella Biddix Hall:

"Me and Jessie used to share a pallet in one of the upstairs rooms of the railroad house. Jessie had a cough from the time she was about two years old and she was always sickly. She took pneumonia and took one of her coughing spells. She would almost lose her breath when she would cough and she died like that. She was about 20 when she died and I was about 9. She died in December.

"Jessie had big blue eyes like Papa's. She was sort of frail looking because she was sick a lot. She was living at home when she died and was buried up at McKinney Gap. I don't think there were ever any pictures of her."

Jessie was the third child that Papa and Ma would lose in 1936. They buried three of their daughters... one in April, one in May and then Jessie in December. I cannot fathom that kind of loss. The hurt, the grief, or the kind of toll that it takes on a marriage.

Edith Estelle Biddix

Edith Estelle Biddix
October 14, 1921 - April 12, 1936

From an interview with my grandmother, Marion Ardella Biddix Hall:

"Estelle was about 15 when the 1936 flu epidemic came through the mountains and about the whole family got it. Estelle had just gotten over appendicitis and I don't know if it ruptured and killed her or if the flu killed her. She died the day before Easter. They buried her at McKinney Gap.

"Estelle had a little sewing bag that had a drawstring. She had different pictures of state birds that she had gotten from school and she kept them in that little bag.

"When Graham was little, she would carry him on her hip a lot. I think she wrote Geneva a letter one time. Mama had a picture of her and a woman borrowed it from her and never returned it."

To my knowledge, no other picture exists of Estelle. She would be the first of three children that Papa and Ma would lose in 1936.

Ressie Roxana Biddix

Ressie Roxana was born May 30, 1913 and was the oldest child of Marion Robert and Melissa Ardella Biddix. My grandmother thought she went to the one room school house in Altapass. It went to 7th grade. She kept the flowers maintained for some of the railroad owned buildings in exchange for railroad passes. Ressie was engaged to Earl Robinson and they were to be married when he returned from California. In April of 1936, a flu epidemic swept through the community and one of Ressie's sisters, Edith Estelle, died from the epidemic. According to my grandmother:

"We got through Easter and then in May, Ressie died of the same epidemic. Ressie was real tall and slender. She had a real good figure. She was older and was a big help to Mama. Ressie had a room of her own in the upstairs. She was engaged to Earl Robinson. I remember she had a long library table in her bedroom that Earl had bought for her. He had gone out to California and got sick out there. He was coming home to marry her when he got appendicitis. Ressie got real sick and Mama took care of her.

Pictures of Earl and Ressie

"When she died, they dressed her and laid her on top of her bed. She had a gray swagger suit that she was going to wear for her wedding. They buried her in that dress and best I can remember, they buried her on the day she was supposed to get married. They sent a message to Earl. He was too sick and had just had surgery and didn't get to come home to bury her."

Earl later wrote this poem about Ressie:

There is another poem that he wrote entitled, "Ressie the Queen of my Heart" that I need to locate. My grandmother did not think that he ever married and she is not sure where he ended up after that. I remember hearing Ressie's story when I was younger and thought it was the saddest and most heartbreaking story that I had ever heard.

Ressie died April 23, 1936 and is buried at McKinney Gap Cemetary off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Melissa Ardella Lowery Biddix

I am the great-granddaughter of Melissa Ardella Lowery Biddix.

That one line says a mouthful because she embodies who I am.

She was orphaned at a very young age when her Mama died and was raised by anyone who would take her in. Not a small feat when people had many children, times were tough, and it wasn’t easy to find people who could afford one more mouth to feed.

Ma married Marion Robert Biddix and gave birth to 13 children:
Ressie Roxana
Edith Estelle
Dora Elizabeth
Robert Carter
Sam
Jessie Viola
Geneva Frances
Alaska Mita
Mary
Martha
Marion Ardella
Graham Crite
Ralph Charlie

She would bury nearly half of them in her lifetime…

three who died shortly after birth and a flu epidemic in the 1930’s took two.

I cannot even fathom.

She worked hard… kept a large garden… cooked meals for her family… taught her children to love God… she was the quintessential Proverbs 31 woman.

My grandmother told stories of mornings with big breakfasts before everyone went off to work. Ma would pack the two of them a biscuit and some milk and they would head off to the garden. Ma would work while Mee Maw would play.

At lunch time, they would pull their lunch out from the edge of the water and drink cold milk, slice a tomato and have a tomato biscuit before getting back to work.

Then there was the infidelity. How do you survive when you find that your husband is having an affair? How do you live in a house with a man who broke the vows to love, honor and cherish you until death parts? I cannot understand the depth of hurt she must have felt nor can I fathom the level of forgiveness she bestowed on him. She never spoke ill of the other children that he had with this other woman. My grandmother told of one occasion when this woman became very ill. Ma gathered some soup and bread and went to her house. When Mee Maw asked her why, she responded that those children didn’t ask to be born into that and no good Christian would let them starve because of it. I cannot imagine that kind of love.

Later life was no easier for Ma. She became very ill and the cancer took its’ toll on her body. She spent her life struggling and spent her last days in a struggle as well and yet, my Mee Maw said that there was a peace about her.

Enough peace to speak to her children and assure them that life would be OK.

Enough peace to extend forgiveness for hurts that had been inflicted on her.

A simple tombstone reads
Melissa A Lowery Biddix
May 10, 1890 – April 8, 1963

Those few words etched in stone cannot begin to describe her.

She was a Godly woman, a devoted wife, a loving mother, a sincere Christian, and an example to those around her and to those who would come after her.

How do I know these things when I never knew her?
Because I breathe the very life that she struggled to make possible.
She taught my grandmother lessons that would carry on to my mother and then on to me.
She is a part of who I am as a woman.

She is the voice in the back of my head that says, “You have something to measure up to, young lady. Do not mess this up. Live with character and integrity. Leave this life with a name. If I can do that, surely you can too”

So I do and I wonder…
Would she see the children that we have adopted and would she be happy because she knows what it was to have no place to call home?

Would she watch me in the garden and smile because I do for enjoyment what she did out of necessity to feed her family?

Would she be thankful that my husband loves and respects and cares for me?

Would she be delighted that someday we shall meet face to face because I have put my faith and trust in the same Jesus that she did?

I would hope that she would see something in me that would make her proud.

I hope she would know that her investment in life made a difference and that the generations after call her blessed.