VISITS TO GRANDMAMA'S

My Grandmama Stainton lived in Laurel, Mississippi, about 60 miles from our home in Meridian. Mary Hasseltine Salter Stainton became a widow before I was born. She was the only one of my grandparents whom I had the privilege to know. How fortunate I was to have such a loving Grandmother to visit several times a year! My youngest aunt, Alda Virginia, who was a school-teacher and never married, lived with Grandmama. 


Laurel and Meridian were a long way apart in those days. By the time I came along, the road between was mostly graveled (with a washboard finish) and wound through a number of towns: Enterprise, Pachuta, Vossburg, Heidelberg, Sandersville, and a number of other named stations on the railroad. Occasionally we drove down to Laurel as a family. It was a long, dusty or muddy trip. If the weather was cold, we would sometimes heat bricks in the coal stove and take them along to keep our feet warm. Of course, there were no heaters in cars. We children entertained ourselves along the way playing counting games with cows and horses (burying them all when we came to a cemetery!) We made jokes about Pachuta, saying it sounded like “scat” (a sneeze). I got acquainted with the farm houses along the way and pretended that one of them belonged to me. In good weather we saw people sitting out on the porches shelling peas or just visiting (a lost art!). With the windows down in the car, I liked to let the breeze catch my hand as I “rode the waves.” As we neared Laurel, we all looked for the Laurel smoke and became quite excited when we finally saw it. Laurel was a sawmill town, and the sawmills sent black smoke into the sky from the burning sawdust.

In those days of cheap labor, Grandmama usually had a black woman in to help her with the housework. We got to know Molly, the cook, as one of the family. When I was young, Grandmama still kept a cow, which she milked herself, and boiled the laundry in a big black iron pot in the backyard. She and Aunt Alda enjoyed spoiling us when we came down to stay a week or two in the summer. Sometimes my sister, Ginny, and I went down on the train. The train was pulled by a big steam locomotive with a cab painted green.

One of those locomotives of the Southern Railroad can be seen at the Smithsonian in Washington. I am quite sure I have ridden behind that very engine. It was a fearsome monster as it came into the station as we waited along the track. In those days the conductors were very friendly and used to seeing to the needs of children traveling alone. When we were settled in our seats the conductor would holler, “all aboard,” the whistle would blow and with a big jerk of the train, we were on our way. The coach in which we road had screens on the windows, but little grains of soot came in from the engine and settled on everything. It had a special smell that is remembered with nostalgia. Two or three times on our trip the “butcher boy” would come through selling fruit one time, candy another, and sandwiches another. We didn’t have money to spend in this way, so if we ate, it was something that Mama had given us to take with us.

In Laurel, Aunt Alda tried to keep us occupied by getting us with neighborhood children, taking us to the library or city swimming pool, and giving us good things to eat. Grandmama’s house was located between two railroads that went through Laurel. A couple of blocks in front of the house was the Southern Railroad, which we rode coming from Meridian, and in the back was the Gulf, Mobile and Northern Railroad (G.M.&N.) freight yard. I spent hours on the back fence watching the trains switch cars around.

Among the fruit that we enjoyed were smutty scuppernongs (grapes) from the arbor in the back yard which caught the smut from the trains. There were also pears and muscadines in the front yard. Aunt Alda always went out and bought us kids something special to eat. One of my favorites was “Tasty” brand peanut butter which I always associated with Laurel since I never saw any in Meridian. To me it was the best in the world.

Grandmama’s house was located on the end of Church Street on Pine Street. In fact, the home at one time had been a Methodist Church. The original home was a big, two-story house with lots of room and a big front porch. It suffered a number of fires, one of which was devastating. All of the upper floor was destroyed, but a new home was built on the base of the old house. Over the fireplace in the old home hung an oil painting by my mother depicting the race of the paddle-ships , the “Natchez and the Robert E. Lee” on the Mississippi River. That picture was lost in the fire and was considered a great loss. As I said before, I never knew my other grandparents, but Grandpapa Stainton was Postmaster in Laurel and served a term in the State Legislature from Neshoba County before moving to Laurel and then another from Jones County (the county of Laurel).

Grandmama and Aunt Alda raised the two daughters of Uncle Edwin (Margery and Caroline) after his first wife died, so they were as part of the family in Laurel. From time to time we would meet them along with Aunt Ruby’s family (Weems) who also lived in Laurel at Bound’s Mill Pond for a picnic and swim. Bound’s was located between Meridian and Laurel, a good meeting place. There was a water-operated mill there which produced stone-ground corn meal and fascinated us kids. The spring water in the pond was great for swimming on a hot day. The water was always icy cold.

From time to time Grandmama and Aunt Alda would drive to Meridian in Aunt Alda’s “A” Model Ford. This was an exciting time for me, but it seemed that their arrival usually coincided with milking time and I had to go milk. I was always afraid I would miss the best part of their visit, seeing them driving up the road and running out to meet them. 


We always had Christmas at home, but sometimes we had Thanksgiving dinner in Laurel, with the other relatives who came in from far-off places. I especially remember watching the preparation of a big pan of ambrosia from oranges brought from Florida by Uncle Fred and Uncle Hubert.