The cover is just about as worn smooth as the place setting spot on the old farmhouse tablecloth...not so as you can see it, directly, but you can feel it
and it's green is a little faded
leaves in late August summer
or curtains on the sunny side.
Grandma Pearl's Hymnal
smells like...clean and tidy
faintly like powder or perfume and
ink and crayons and
hands
"Church in the Wildwood" was one of Grandma Pearl's most favorite hymns. Sherry Lynn underlined it in crayon in the index of Grandma's Hymnal.
Inside the hymnal it still says property of Skidway Lake.
Mama explains that Skidway Lake is where Grandma Pearl moved to when she moved away from West Virginia.
But why she moved away from her Mammy and Pappy is a little "complicated."
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| Pearl at the Skidway Lake Cottage |
In addition to Grandma Pearl's Hymnal, Mama's letting me look through her scrapbook. This is a collection of photographs which she's collected throughout her life.
She's really been the primary historian in the family so far as saving stuff and compiling it into a place--the scrapbook--in which the names have faces and the faces tell the stories of our family.
It's been my offering to digitalize this work and do some additional research. This seemed very akin to making a quilt, to me, and that tradition seemed to go well with computerizing the scrapbook. That's how we came up with calling this project A QUILT FOR MAMA.
That's their cottage at Skidway Lake, Mama Sherry explains of Pearl's picture. Charlie did hunting and fishing to get the dinner and Pearl worked at a Butcher Shop.
Charlie? We thought Pearl married Chud!
She did, they did get married I have the certificate. But before Pearl married Jess, she'd gotten married to Charlie McVicker.
Betty's father.
Well Charlie McVicker adopted Betty officially, but Mom never knew who her real father was. All her life Pearl wouldn't be clear about the information. So Mom never really knew since she moved from West Virginia when she was just little.
With her sister Louise?
Louise stayed with Mammy. That was Ida Mae, Mammy.
And Ida Mae was married to Elias?!?
Pappy. Elias was Pappy. And they lived in West Virginia. That's where Grandma Pearl grew up. West Virginia.
