My Hill Country Assurances: First Words and Advertising Signs

by Terry Thornton
email: hillcountrymonroecounty@gmail.com

My first word was probably "Esso" but I said it like my father, Garfus Thornton, who never pronounced it "S.O.", the initials fo Standard Oil. Garfus always spelled out the word "E - S - S - O." He would say when traveling, "I see an E - S - S - O sign up ahead. I'm going to stop and get some gas."

So I'd bet my first words were "E - S - S - O." I think I was in college before I brought myself to saying the simple "S O" for this widely recognized advertising sign.

Thornton Store at Parham sold Standard Oil products. Hal Moore was the distributor for Standard Oil Projects in Amory; his delivery trucks made regular runs to Parham suppling the store with gasoline in two grades, bulk oil, kerosene, and cans of oil. Other products such as aviation fuel were also available.

The only time we bought aviation fuel from Mr. Moore was when the bi-plane that was flying cross country landed in a nearby hayfield when it ran out of gas. The pilot walked to the store and Garfus carried him to town and Mr. Moore supplied the aviation fuel.

But back to the ESSO signs that once were everywhere. Little kids learned to recognize signs and "read" them because there were colorful and, in many cases, the signs were illuminated making them stand out at night. Before the time of sensory overload of billboards and outdoor advertising, the simple gasoline signs such as ESSO were those I learned to read.

My grandchildren, however, learned to "read" McDonalds!

While driving yesterday through Kemper County, Mississippi, on Highway 45, I stopped and photographed the building below because of the service station advertising sign still attached. It is not that old a sign --- but the oil company it advertised is --- Texaco Oil. Of course I remember the jingle to the Texaco songs on radio and early TV --- and was a regular viewer of Milton Berle whose show opened with the singing men of Texaco. The "Star of the American Road" was a slogan of a more recent advertising from the Texaco company --- and about all that is left of this old service station is "Star of the American Road."

Wonder how many children learned to read "Star of the American Road" as their first words?

Do you remember the first sign you learned to "read?"

Esso logo photograph captured from Wikipedia; click to access.

Star of the American Road photograph, Kemper County, Mississippi, by Terry Thornton, Fulton, Mississippi, January 10, 2010.

Texaco and Star of the Open Road, Wikipedia; click to access.

My Hill Country Assurances from Working --- Jobs I've Done

by Terry Thornton
email: hillcountrymonroecounty@gmail.com

Labor shapes the mind --- or so I've been told. Perhaps the variety of jobs I've had in Hill Country explains me more than I care to admit.

Aristotle is credited as having stated, "We are what we repeatedly do." If that is the case, then I don't know about having such a variety of work experiences as those I had during my earlier years living in the Hill Country. But collectively, the experiences from this variety of work shaped me into the person I am.

I grew up in my father's [Garfus Sherman Thornton] general store at Parham, Monroe County, Mississippi. As soon as I was old enough to help wait on customers I was put to working in the store. Eventually I was large enough to run the gasoline pumps --- and soon I was able to run the cash register and ring up sales.

But my work at Thornton Store was not paying job --- it was sorta along the lines of "them that work, eat" --- it came with my heritage. Work was expected

But the experiences in that store and the non-paying work I did there probably influences me more than any paying job I've ever had.

As soon as I got old enough to pick cotton, I worked most falls helping to gather cotton in the Hill Country --- paid by the pounds picked, working in the cotton fields for an assortment of different farmers taught me that although the cotton all looked the same, the individuals growing it were totally different. Because my friends also picked cotton to earn spending money, the fields would often be full of youngsters my age having fun while accomplishing the back-breaking chore of getting the cotton out of the fields in those days prior to mechanical cotton-pickers.

Once, a call for cotton pickers was issued by a farmer who shall remain anonymous; he even offered a higher pay-rate than all the surrounding farmers. All I knew about him was that every year he seemed to have difficulty rounding up enough workers to get his cotton crop in on a timely basis. He stopped by Thornton Store late Friday afternoon and asked a gang of us kids loitering there after school if we would pick cotton for him the next day, Saturday. Of the twelve kids in the group, all, including me, told him in front of my father that we would work for him all day Saturday at the price he said he was paying.

Saturday morning early I told my father that I had decided not to pick cotton for Mr. Anon that day --- and Garfus told me that yes I was --- that he heard me tell Mr. Anon that I'd work for him and by golly I was going to do so. At the appointed hour Mr. Anon arrived at the store to pick up the gang of workers that had promised to help him --- and I was the only one there with pick sack and hat ready to go.

I worked for Mr. Anon all morning. He and I were the only ones picking cotton on his farm that day --- he was grumpy, grouchy, and complaining the entire time I picked cotton for him. He complained about my work; he complained about how much it was costing him to hire cotton pickers; he complained about how his sons refused to work for him; and he complained when I would take a break for a call of nature or to get a drink of water. About 1 PM, he decided that it was time to "break" for lunch --- and he drove us to Thornton's Store for something to eat. I went to the house and refused to return to the field with Mr. Anon as it had been the most unenjoyable morning of work I'd ever done listening to him complain about everything. And I never worked for him again.

One of the next paying jobs I had was to pick strawberries on the Bourland Farm. One year, the manager of that large flat farm (now site of the club and residential section of Amory known as River Birch Country Club and Estates) planted acres of strawberries. When time to harvest those berries arrived, a call for strawberry pickers went out. Mr. Terry Hathcock even ran his bus from Adley and Parham ferrying workers back and forth. I can't remember how many days I picked strawberries. I was paid for the flats of berries picked; I got to eat all of the strawberries I wished to eat [and to this day strawberries are still among my least favorite of fresh foods]. The main thing I learned was that strawberries grow closer to the ground than does cotton --- and that the picking of them is harder than picking cotton. Another thing I learned is that in those large flat fields were Indian Mounds --- and that one of the mounds had tombstones on it marking more recent burials.

When I was in the seventh grade, my father decided to put my brother and me to work farming the Thornton Farm in Weaver's Creek Bottom. Many of those fields had been fallow for years --- so a bulldozer was hired and to clear off the hedge-rows and to put in drainage ditches. One stand of mature pine trees was felled and the trees given to my brother and me to sell if we could trim them up and cut them into log lengths. It sounded easy --- the tall trees were all laying on the ground --- and the two of us with axes and a cross-cut saw should be able to make logs of them in short order.

It proved to be a major job --- and on the second day of our working we looked up to see one of my father's friends, Mr. Kenneth Stafford, a timber-cutter, watching us. He had his axe with him and he joined us and showed us how make easier the work that lay ahead. Mr. Stafford worked with us until we got the logs ready to be loaded and sold. I never knew if Mr. Stafford was sent by my father to assist us --- or if he just took pity on two lads who knew little about using axes and saws. And I remember how glad I was to see the money that came from those logs.

A few years later, when gasoline-powered chain saws were available, my father loaned my brother and me his saw and gave us permission to cut hardwood for fireplaces from Thornton Farm. We put out the word that we were selling firewood three ways --- a cord of wood delivered and stacked for one price, a cord of word delivered and unstacked; or a cord of wood cut only --- you load and haul. That was some of the hardest work for the money I'd ever done --- and once we filled all the orders we had so foolishly accepted, we went out of the firewood business.

When I was in the ninth grade, my father "furnished" my brother and me in our efforts to be "share croppers." The work we did on Thornton Farm with the corn, hay, cotton, melons, molasses, etc was unpaid work --- it was expected of us. Garfus explained that he would give us free use of his tractor, plows, tools, and that he would advance us the money to put in a cotton crop on our neighbor's [John Sharp Parham] field which adjoined the back of our property at Parham. Garfus even said he would help us work our field for free since we helped him with his. I can't remember the exact number of acres of cotton we planted each year (not many) but with Garfus fronting the money, with Mr. Parham share-crop leasing the land, my brother and I grew cotton for three years. We agonized over the weather; we agonized over the boll weevils; we chopped and we hoed; we sprayed again and again; and then we had to pick all that cotton hiring additional hands to get the cotton in before the winter rains set in. At the end of each growing season, the cost of the crop was subtracted and Garfus reimbursed for his furnish; Mr. Parham received his set percentage of the sale of cotton; and my brother Sherman and I split the remainder.

We did not get rich --- but we had spending money and a vastly expanded sense of what all is involved with tilling the land. It was perhaps my second-most important learning experience outside of my work at Thornton Store.

During my junior and senior years in high school, I also worked in Amory for Faulk Department Store and for Faulk Grocery Store. A Mr. Faulk had bought the old Webb Store on Main Street and started a most successful business --- I sold men's clothes for him on the weekends. When he expanded into the grocery business, I clerked at one of this grocery stores stocking on Friday afternoon and evening and running a cash register all day Saturday.

After a short stint in the U.S. Army's (six months of active duty) I returned to Mississippi and enrolled in Itawamba Junior College at Fulton. During my time there I worked, not for cash but for room and board, as a janitor cleaning half of the Fine Arts Building each afternoon.

When I transferred to Ole Miss, I worked as a Periodical's Clerk in the Library for the princely sum of fifty cents per hour.

And then I graduated into the real world and took a job teaching.

Much of what I am is a direct result of those numerous jobs in the Hill Country, paying and non-paying, which over the years helped to sort me out into the person I am now. But now that I am seventy and looking back at my lifetime rather than looking forward to careers yet to come, I think I agree with fellow Mississippian William Faulkner who is credited with saying:

It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.

My Hill Country Assurances: My brother, Sherman Thornton

by Terry Thornton
email: hillcountrymonroecounty@gmail.com

No look at my life and of the "assurances" which makes me the person I am today would be complete without a consideration of my brother, my only sibling --- Sherman Thornton.

My earliest teacher, my constant childhood companion, and my protector during those early years was almost two years older than I --- and we were reared together in the small village of Parham, Monroe County, Mississippi. Growing to adulthood during those years when the way of life of the rural South was changing completely, we share a common heritage although most individuals who know us both say we are totally different as individuals.

Sherman will be celebrating his 72nd birthday in a few days --- and rather than talk about our common background and shared experiences, I will attempt to summarize him in a photographic essay --- nine pictures of him (some with me) which gives insight into our mutual heritage.

Here is Sherman Thornton, my brother. (Click images for a larger view)

Sherman Thornton and dog --- before I was born he had pets. This picture taken on the east lawn of Thornton house at Parham looks across the pasture and the Bannie Parham land on the hill. The pine tree on the distant ridge is at today's Guy Parham Road.


Sherman and pet on the newly finished porch and addition to Thornton house at Parham --- the walls nor the floor had yet been painted. The porch continued around the corner beyond the twig chair.

Sherman and cat --- and the family dog was just behind him. And I was sitting beside him in the uncropped version of this picture mad because the cat had just scratched me.

"General" Sherman of the army and lowly sailor Terry of the tricycle brigade at Parham.

One of the few studio photographs of the two of us together --- and I (on the left) didn't like getting my picture made.


In 1957 Sherman and I left Parham for the Army --- basic training at Fort Jackson South Carolina. This is the last photograph made of my father, mother, brother and me before I left Parham. From left to right: Sherman, Terry, Garfus, and Letha Thornton.


Sherman standing on the front lawn of the house we grew up in --- probably made mid- to late-1960s.


My favorite photograph of Sherman --- 2000 at Mulate's in New Orleans.


The most recent photograph of Sherman (right) and me was made in 2008.

For other essays in this look at my hill country assurances, click
Terry Thornton and Parham
Garfus Sherman Thornton
Letha Hollingsworth Thornton
Class of 1957

My Hill Country Assurances: Class of 1957, Hatley High School

by Terry Thornton
email: hillcountrymonroecounty@gmail.com

Class of 1957, Hatley School, Monroe County, Mississippi

From left standing: Paul Ray Parham, Boyd Bryan, Billy Pounders, Terrance Thornton,

Miriam Springfield sponsor, Shelby Carter, Dale Swan, John Powell, Stanley Farrar, Jimmy Sanderson

From left sitting: Milton Hamilton, Hershel Christian, Gail Newton,

Barbara Nash, Barbara Vaughan, J.W. Christian, Tommy Sanderson

Of the individuals who had greatest influence on my thinking after family comes friends and classmates. I was fortunate to have lived in the same village, in the same house, and to go to school with an interesting set of friends. Of my twelve years of public schooling, eleven of them were at Hatley School six miles from Parham. The other year, my sixth grade, I attended Smithville School which was also about six miles from Parham.

Many of the students I started to school with at Hatley never graduated from high school. We had between thirty and forty to start first grade --- and after twelve years, there were sixteen of us who graduated. Most of them, like me, had attended Hatley School for the majority of those twelve years.

Of the ones starting in first grade who were not there to graduate, a goodly number had moved with their parents to other school districts. During the years I was a public school student, 1945 - 1957, the methods of earning a living and the methods of farming which had employed so many for so long in Hill Country changed. Several families left and moved north taking advantage of employment opportunities there. Several other families moved only short distances away into Amory or Aberdeen or Tupelo or Columbus for employment.

Others students who started to first grade with the Class of 1957 simply dropped out, entered the job market, or started a family. In a class that was almost evenly divided between girls and boys in the first grade, by twelve years later the numbers had shifted to 13-3. My graduating class had thirteen male students and three female students.

In the class of 1957, Hatley High School, were Milton Hamilton, J.W. Christian, Barbara Nell Nash, Paul Ray Parham, Barbara Lee Vaughan, Billy Clayton Pounders, Stanley Joe Farrar, Thomas Ray Sanderson, Boyd Bryan, John D. Powell, Hershel Christian, Dale Swan, Sonja Gail Newton, Jimmy Sanderson, Shelby Dell Carter, and me.

The class sponsor was Miriam Springfield, English teacher. The Superintendent of Hatley School was Herbert Nix.

Mr. Nix refused to allow the Class of 1957 to sponsor a yearbook or annual --- so my class of 1957 does not have such a memory book of pictures. But the Class of 1957 has a host of memories of friendship and fun and learning and of going to class and going places.

We suffered together through a few really terrible teachers and we learned together with some outstanding ones. Whether it was standing up and reciting a different poem a week for the teacher who kept a small dog in a box under her desk to teachers who tried their best to teach us both subject matter and manners, we endured together.

Our class went on its Junior-Senior Trip to Florida (we were such a small school that two classes combined each year for an annual outing). Below is a picture of the group just prior to leaving on that trip.

Almost everyone ate grits for the first time on that trip --- at Fort Benning, Georgia (the military put us up for an overnight). No one was lost --- no one fell out of the boat at either Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia or at Silver Springs in Florida --- but several got splashed by the porpoises at Marine World. In St. Augustine all I remember of the tour through the old city was the horse pulling our carriage had a bad case of gas much to the delight of all aboard who tried not to laugh.

The Class of 1957 decided to all cut classes one day at Hatley --- and at a pre-planned time all headed to the parking lot to get into the one car that was to take us away. Everyone made it, I think, except Paul Ray Parham and me (Paul Ray was detained briefly in the gym and I was detained briefly in the school office where I worked). By the time he and I made it to the parking lot, the loaded car was already headed toward town.

Yes, the entire class except the two of us left unauthorized --- and the only reason we didn't was Paul Ray didn't have his car --- and we decided that since we had been "bus left" to just return to class. Everyone in the class except the two of us were expelled or suspended --- and their parents had to come readmit them to school the next day.

Had there been vans back then, the entire junior and senior classes could have skipped out together.

Of the sixteen members of the Class of 1957, five of us (Milton, J.W., Paul Ray, Boyd, and me) and two members of the Class of 1956 (Jack Williams and my brother Sherman Thornton) and a former classmate no longer attending school (Bob Bridges), left for Fort Jackson South Carolina on the same set of orders to start our basic training in the U.S. Army.

Most of us stayed together throughout our short active military duty --- and five of us returned to Hatley together six months later. Of the other three, one was discharged on a medical disability upon arrival at Fort Jackson, one was hospitalized at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri where we were sent for Combat Engineer training and not released until a few weeks later, and one was sent to Fort Dix for training but got home about the same time we did.

I've known these classmates since early childhood --- and although some of the members of the Class of 1957 have graduated to the Big Unknown, all of these fifteen friends continue to influence my thinking because of the memories we forged together over the years 1945 - 1957.

Photograph Credits:

Graduating Class of 1957 on stage at Hatley School Auditorium: Unknown photographer, May 1957.

Hatley High School Senior Class, 1957: Miller Studio, Aberdeen, Mississippi.

Hatley Junior-Senior Class Trip, 1957: Unknown photographer using my camera.

All three photographs in the collection of Terry Thornton, Fulton, Mississippi.

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My Hill Country Assurances: Part 3 -- LETHA DORIS HOLLINGSWORTH THORNTON

by Terry Thornton
email: hillcountrymonroecounty@gmail.com

Today continues the two-part use of the "pistols" approach to writing biography begun last week. After reading the book Pistols for Two, I decided to try the approach presented there to write about the two pistols in my life, my father and mother. Click here to read about my father, Garfus Sherman Thornton, and continue reading below to read about the dangerous pistol in my life, my mother. At the end of the article are nine pictures of Letha Doris Hollingsworth Thornton.

I say dangerous because her behavior was sometimes so erratic I never knew when she might come charging in on the scene blazing away with all barrels!

No guns, however, figure in this discussion of my mother. Although I'm sure she could handle a firearm if the need arose (she had fired my father's shotgun on one occasion and the recoil nearly knocked her down she said), her bullets were words --- and some of the words she "fired" were silver ones straight through the heart.

Here then is the second pistol in my life, my mother, the person who influenced me most during my first seventeen years.

LETHA DORIS HOLLINGSWORTH THORNTON

She was born in Calhoun County, Mississippi, in 1904.

She celebrated her ninth birthday the year after I was born.

She was not eight calendar years old at my birth; she was in her early thirties. She had celebrated only a few birthdays because she was born on Leap Day, February 29.

She was the daughter of William Alfred Hollingsworth (1869 - 1951) and Ophelia Elizabeth Nix Hollingsworth (1871 - 1935). Letha was the eighth of their eleven children.

She was extraordinarily fond of her siblings (listed from oldest) --- Herbert Hollingsworth, Valeria Elizabeth H. Smith, Clara Mae H. Norman, Lela Pearl H. Spratlin, Fannie Lou H. Parker, Clifton Otis Hollingsworth, Thomas Lee Hollingsworth, William Aaron Hollingsworth, Mary Edna H. Holland, and Lorette Alice H. Martin Webb.

She looked after her father for about five weeks each year and then he went to stay with another of his children. I have few memories of my Grandfather Hollingsworth as he was in poor health by the time I knew him.

She talked frequently of her mother who died before either my brother or I were born. The only picture of my Grandmother Hollingsworth I have (below) shows her to be an attractive woman whose attractive features were passed on to her children. Letha was an attractive woman also.

She lost a premature set of twin boys early in her marriage --- and often acted as if my brother and I were twins frequently dressing us identically when we were toddlers.

She named me William after her father.

She spent her childhood in the family home in the Lloyd Community of Calhoun County and attended school at Lloyd.

She, according to her sister Clara who was ten years older, won some sort of prize as a student at Lloyd. Aunt Clara told me that it was an prize for the "best" or most outstanding student --- and that "Letha was never the same afterwards."

She did not graduate from high school --- for that matter I don't know if Lloyd School went through the twelfth grade but I think it did. Instead, after she completed her eleventh year of public school, she took the Mississippi state examination for a teacher's license and passed. Certified as an elementary school teacher, Letha left home as a teenager and started a teaching career that brought her to Monroe County where she had many relatives.

She did, however, attend some summer sessions for teachers at a Normal College in Pontotoc. [I think Pontotoc --- but I'm not 100% sure of the location. Letha had some photographs of the school at one time but I don't know what happened to those pictures.]

She taught at several schools --- from Gattman to Faulkner (at Parham) to Bartahatchie to Splunge and eventually to Oak Hill. She told me that during part of her teaching in the Depression years she was paid in vouchers and how difficult it was to get those vouchers converted into cash.

She was my first teacher and she was my first critic. I remember reading to her short attempts at creative writing as an elementary school pupil and how kind she was with her constructive criticism and how much she encouraged me to write more.

She was, in my earliest memories, a plump woman who detested the notion of being referred to as "stout." Her hair was black and naturally wavy --- and in her later years her hair was white.

She usually cut her own hair but I have a trace memory of my father, Garfus Thornton who was a trained barber, cutting her hair.

She had an electric churn she used to make butter. The house we lived in had been electrified about two years before I was born and one of her first electrical devices was a small motorized churning device. She still used the large heavy pottery churn in which she had always made butter; the electric device fit onto the churn and made the butter come without use of the old-fashioned dasher.

She processed the freshly churned butter squeezing out the excess water and salting it slightly. It was then pressed in a wooden butter mold and refrigerated.

Letha had a refrigerator in her kitchen and we rarely got to buy ice from the iceman who ran a route through Parham supplying ice to customers without electricity. The only time we bought ice for for ice-cream parties or when going on outings and needed to ice down a tub of drinks or a tub of fish.

She made cottage cheese which was delicious. Other than remembering how much I enjoyed eating it, I don't recall much about the process except that the curds of cottage cheese were drained through cheesecloth. She hung the bags of draining cottage cheese from one of the kitchen cabinets and caught the dripping whey in bowls.

She and Garfus grew most of what we ate. During my early childhood, she canned constantly during the summer preserving the garden's bounty for eating during the winter months. She grew her own chickens and would chase down the hen she wanted for the pot and would wring off its head.

She laughed at me when one of the headless chickens ran erratically towards me and scared me silly when I was just a toddler, an event I remember vividly.

She played the piano "by ear" and was a fairly accomplished pianist. Once she heard a song she could usually repeat it without use of printed music. She could read "shaped" notes of printed music but more modern "round" notes were a complete befuddlement.

She bought, on the installment plan from earnings as a teacher prior to her marriage, an upright piano which was her pride and joy. It was on that piano that I learned to play and to read music when I was five years old. Her piano survives; it is in the home of my brother.

She enjoyed singing and I remember her solos at church on an occasion or two. The last solo she sang in public I remember was the song Some Times I Feel Like a Motherless Child. It was not well received but she gave it her best Mahalia Jackson-inspired attempt.

She attempted to donate the Thornton Farm tractor to the war effort during World War Two. She wrote to the war department offering to give Garfus' farm tractor to the military. She received a gracious letter back from them declining her offer. I have a copy of the reply she received but don't know the circumstances of her attempts to present the U.S.Government with a used farm tractor.

She was fond of going to all-day singings, family reunions, and Home-Comings/Memorial Day Services.

She was the first person I knew to have a family genealogy book --- the book by Paul B. Murff, The Descendants of Randolph S. Murff 1784 - 1955. She introduced me to Paul and several of my Murff "cousins" at Murff Family Reunions in Monroe County where some of the materials for the book was collected.

She was proud of her family connection to the Murff family and was delighted when her Hollingsworth family was listed within the pages of that book.

She did not drink other than to occasionally have some of Garfus' homemade wine. Her standard reply when asked if she would like some of the wine was, "Yes, please. But a small amount --- just enough for the Sacrament" or "just enough for the Sabbath." She would not accept a normal serving of wine --- and would only allow a glass with a very small amount to be set in front of her.

She sometimes celebrated four or five "Sabbaths" at one sitting.

She was a member of the Methodist Church.

She wrote to Barbara Walters when Miss Walters first started on the Today Show on NBC complaining that her lovely outfits were not fully appreciated because viewers never saw her standing. Miss Walters wrote back a gracious letter thanking her for her compliments explaining how during a television show there were few opportunities for her to stand and walk about. Letha was proud of that letter --- and I don't know what eventually happened to it.

She was never a careful driver but that didn't deter her from driving fast and far. Of all her driving exploits which scared me the most was the day she got caught up in her first clover interchange at the intersection of two major highways just south of Jackson Mississippi. I was seated in the back seat of the 1950 Packard she was driving along with assorted cousins and aunts (we were all headed to south Mississippi to visit relatives). Anyway, when Letha missed her turn on the third or fourth try of going around that cloverleaf, she slammed on the brakes, put it in reverse, and backwards we went around the cloverleaf until she found the correct turn.

She had only two driving accidents of which I am aware. Both were in the Packard. On the way to teach class one wet morning, she was late and lost control of the car. It left the roadway and she ended up in Jim Miller's cotton patch doing a figure eight. No damage to the car except all four wheels were warped and tires flat but much of Mr. Jim's cotton was "plowed up."

She lost control of that car another time and ran into a deep ditch at the intersection of Thornton Road and Hatley-Detroit Road and stated that the problem was that "all four wheels of her car started going in different directions."

She once stopped the car she was driving and left me and my brother inside and went running up to the nearest house to borrow a hoe. Returning with the hoe she killed a huge rattlesnake that didn't have the sense to get out of her way.

She was the loser in a law suit once about a car. When she and my father bought the store and house at Parham, the previous owner left an automobile parked, she claimed, right up against the side of the house and in the way. The owner of the vehicle said that he would return and get the car --- and some time passed and the car was still in her way. So she sold it. Yes, you can figure out where this is going. The owner sued her and won. Letha never talked about this --- but on occasion Garfus enjoyed ribbing her about being sued and losing.

She had a fur coat but rarely wore it. I remember when she and Garfus went to Birmingham during the early-1940s and returned with the coat, a dark fur street-length coat. It hung in her cedar lined wardrobe for the next several decades.

She had boxes full of hats back when women were expected to wear hats whenever they went anywhere. Some of my earliest memories of her were of in hats trimmed in multicolored feathers. I never figured out what hat veils were all about --- but many of her hats had veils.

She had numerous pairs of dress gloves to wear with her hats --- fabric gloves for summer and leather ones for winter.

She believed that thick ankles were somehow related to social standing and breeding --- and was forever disappointed that hers were thick rather than thin.

She believed that hair could be cut in such a way as to make it appear curly --- and one of my embarrassments was the day she dropped me and my brother off at a barber shop in Amory and announced loudly from the door (ladies didn't go into barber shops back then according to her), "Cut their hair so it looks curly" to the disbelieving barbers. The barbers began to bet with each other as to who could cut our hair so we would look curly-headed. I begged to let Garfus continue to cut my hair from that point on rather than be subjected to her impossible requests to barbers.

She did not have a copy of Dr. Spock and all his advice about child-rearing. I have no doubt that she could have given him pointers as she considered herself to be the authority on the nurturing a child after all the practice she had with my older brother. Fortunately by the time I came along she had about gotten being a "perfect" mother out of her system.

She cooked on a wood-burning stove until about 1950 when the house was equipped with a butane gas system and a new gas stove was installed in the kitchen. The large wood-burning stove was a Home Comfort brand (I think) range. It had a large water tank beside the firebox. On the top back part of the stove was a warming safe --- and the foods there were wonderful to eat. Left over biscuits, fried chicken, and baked sweet potatoes were my favorites.

She refused to let me have butter-sugar biscuits in my lunch pail for first grade. All my friends got to eat sugar biscuits and I had to eat something called "healthy" stuff. I sometimes traded my "healthy" stuff for a sugar biscuit.

She was not a good cook. And the older she became, she forgot what little cooking skills she once had. That is, she forgot how to cook except just a few items --- her fried chicken was perfect and her buttermilk biscuits were outstanding.

She did, however, enjoy the reputation for being a creative cook. When one is faced with problems such as bad jello making skills, one must be creative. She learned to use already prepared items and do just enough "fiddling" with them to make it appear that she was really a chef. Her cakes were made of bakery-baked layers --- and she enjoyed trying foods she read about in the many magazines to which she subscribed. Letha made many trips to Kroger in Amory (back when it was on main street across from the bank) to buy special ingredients to fuse together into foods never before seen or served in Parham.

She, at one point, decided that the secret to good and creative cooking was to switch to the use of sea salt and make sure to include rose hips in all her dishes.

She enjoyed serving unexpected friends of mine a quick lunch of soup (prepared from a can), bologna sliced thick and blackened in a skillet, and pork-and-beans (heated straight from the can), slices of bread, and ice cream (hand dipped from Thornton Store) and cookies (straight out of the container and onto a serving platter). Bologna, according to Letha, was a food only suitable to eat if cooked almost to the char --- blackened bologna is what I called it.

She was disappointed and stated her disappointment frequently to Garfus that they didn't go to Alaska in the 1930s when families were recruited to move there. Some of their friends moved and she wished they had gone also.

She was also disappointed that Garfus would not move from Parham several years prior to their retirement. According to her, he promised when they could leave Parham with a certain amount of money they would go. She reminded him constantly when their accounts exceeded that amount. Letha's disappointment in living in Parham was obvious to the members of her household.

She once wrote to a real estate agency specializing in rural business properties for the sale of Thornton Store and the property in Parham. An agent showed up surprising Garfus who wasn't aware her attempt to sell the property.

She was fond of selecting books for presents for me during my childhood. She obviously made her selections based upon the title than upon any other consideration which makes me wonder if she judged people by the cover rather than by what was inside.

She enjoy taking long walks. Her walks on Thornton Farm often let her combine another major interest --- edible wild plants. When the family was walking together, she would often lag behind as she darted here and there gathering edibles and pressing us to try them. Garfus always laughed and said, "Ok, Letha, you just keep grazing. We'll keep walking."

She continued to enjoy going for long solitary walks even after she lost her ability to remember who she was. She was proud of the medical alert necklace I gave to her which had her name, address, and telephone number on it. She wore it constantly and would look at it most frequently.

She publicly humiliated me so thoroughly during the last semester of my senior year in high school that I vowed she would never get under my skin again --- and she didn't.

She was, by the time I graduated from college, displaying many symptoms of mental disease. Eventually she sank into Alzheimer's Disease and I had the sad task of watching her lose most traces of her personality and forget almost all of her history.

She asked me a few months before she died, "Where was I when you were growing up?"

She sold Luzier products when I was a child. She would make arrangements to give a customer a complete facial and complete makeup with hope that the customer would buy some of the products. They often did --- and she traveled over the county selling cosmetics.

She worked for a time helping the electric cooperative sign up customers along the new power lines as all of the side-roads in the hill country of Monroe County received electricity.

She worked during the war selling War Bonds. At the conclusion of that effort she received a silver plaque of appreciation for her work --- a small token of which she was very proud.

She was, for many years, the local newspaper columnist for news from Parham for the Amory Advertiser (now the Monroe Journal). During those years, local news reporters were paid by the column inch and she often wrote and wrote and wrote about our family's doings to our constant embarrassment.

She married my father while seated in the front of his automobile in the yard of a justice of peace at Bartahatchie on November 28, 1928. For some reason this fact has always created a great deal of mirth on my part remembering all of Letha's attempts to put on airs and to always be "socially correct."

She lost her wedding band. It was replaced and several years later when she and Garfus were working in the garden, the ring was found. That wedding band was still in her possession when she died but the replacement band and the original diamond engagement ring was lost. The white gold set was engraved with their initials and date.

She lost lots of items as she sank deeper into Alzheimer's Disease. Besides robbing her of her memories, the disease also robbed her of her ability to make proper judgments and destroyed her ability to make wise decisions or to form associations that were in her best interests.

She was a planner rather than a doer in my childhood. Letha often would announce great and grand plans for some future event but planning was as far as she got with many of her efforts. Some of her plans, however, were put into action with mixed results. Letha planned some "progressive dinners" for a group of teenagers in an age, place, and time when progressive dinners were not of the slightest interest to those who were invited. Letha, with help from some of the other ladies of the community, planned a community-wide Halloween party in Parham in the late 1940s which was a success. Dozens of kids, many I didn't know, came to the Halloween party.

She was not fond of my wife nor of my children. Her mis-treatment of them was one of the saddest chapters in my life.

She was a sad lonely elderly lady when I removed her from the May House in Amory and transferred her to a sheltered apartment complex which was part of a nursing home in the town in Alabama where my family and I lived. She managed only a few months living independently in a sheltered situation. She was then managed by round-the-clock sitters in her apartment and was eventually placed in a nursing home where she died on March 11, 1983.

She, at the time of her death, owned no property, had no outstanding debts other than final medical bills, had no will as all of her assets had been transferred to others.

She is buried at New Hope Cemetery, Parham, Monroe County, besides Garfus Thornton.

She was my mother.

I close this brief biography of my time with Letha Doris Hollingsworth Thornton with the words of Crescent Dragonwagon who wrote in 2008 in Nothing Is Wasted On the Writer an article, Me & My Semi-Famous Aging Mother: Navigating Love With Fierce Persistence ---

No matter what else she was or is, your mother was the imperfect portal through which you entered your own imperfect life, and took temporary residence on this imperfect earth.

Below are nine pictures of Letha Hollingsworth Thornton. Images may be clicked for a larger view.

The earliest photograph I have of Letha Hollingsworth is in this family group. Made at Lloyd, Calhoun County, Mississippi at the home of her father, William Alfred Hollingsworth, the group shows several of her family members. Letha is circled. She was about ten years old.

Letha Hollingsworth, about 1924. She was about 20 years old.

Letha and Garfus Thornton and one of the Red Irish Setters, Parham, Monroe County, Mississippi, late 1940s. Letha would have been about 45 years old.

Letha Hollingsworth Thornton, in the 1950s. She was in her late forties.

Letha Hollingsworth Thornton, late 1960s.

Letha Hollingsworth Thornton, late1970s.

Letha Hollingsworth Thornton, 1970s.

Letha Hollingsworth Thornton, Christmas 1977.

And finally, my favorite picture of Garfus and Letha Thornton and me. The photo was made in the early 1950s at Panama City Florida on the city pier at Captain Anderson's as we prepared to board the Queen Mary for a day of deep-sea fishing. I was almost 12 years old, Garfus was about 49 and Letha was about 47. Note her fishing costume --- a sun-dress of white and green polka-dots with a matching cape-like shoulder covering that attached to the straps of the sun-dress, a matching white and green cap, and white open-toed shoes. Note the ever-present King Edward cigar in Garfus' mouth. I was, however, just perfect in my long-billed cap and little else.