Some times of a morning

Greenbelt, MD, 1982: I am making potato salad in my grandmother's mixing bowl. It is white pottery, rimmed with gold, and has a garland of green leaves with a blue ribbon and pink roses entwined around it. Momma Joney gave me the bowl just before she died. The bowl reminds me of my childhood. What memories I have of my mother's parents, their house and gardens! We lived next door to my grandparents in Marion, Illinois, and I was at their house most of the time. So when I was small, I didn't know who my grandmother and grandfather Jones were. I called them Mama Joney and Papa Joney. Uncle Clarence's kids called them Ma and Pa Jones, and Aunt Clara's kids called them Grandma Jones and Grandpa Jones. I loved staying at Mama Joney's. She had rugs on the floor. She had a living room connected to a dining room by two fireplaces, two bedrooms, and a large kitchen across the back of the house. The large front porch had a porch swing on it. The porch was covered with vines, and I would take my nap in the swing.

Leona Jane "Momma Joanie" Jones

"Poppa Joanie", James Monroe Jones

Papa Joney was a landscape gardener. He went all over Southern Illinois selling fruit trees and shrubbery. [We have his sample book full of beautiful pictures of fruit and vegetables.] He was known as "Peach Tree Jones". He planted many peach orchards in Southern Illinois. Of course, they had fruit trees of their own. I remember climbing the cherry tree and peach tree, and eating in the trees. There were no pesticides in those days, so it was safe. I would pick strewberries, dewberries and black berries, and eat them as I went. All but the gooseberries -- they were too sour, but were good in pies. Papa Joney had a grape arbor a block long (or so it seemed to me then). They raised all of their food on two blocks of land, except for sugar, flour, coffee and cornmeal. They had a barn and raised chickens, pigeons, and sometimes a pig or two. Sometimes they bought beef. Papa Joney's father owned the house and grounds, which was about an acre. I think Great Grandpa Jones built several houses for his children. There was a yard separating the house and store building. Papa Joney made a croquet yard there and put electric lights there so they could play after dark. Across the back walk was the coal house used for storage for stoves in summer, and an old well that was polluted and never used. At the side by the street was a coal house with a window for coal deliveries. The back was screened so they could put food out to cool -- fudge, peach and apple pies, chocolate cakes, and many other things that I can't remember. Mama Joney had 2 or 3 outdoor cats. They did keep the mice away. They had no dogs, though.

Medora Ann Jones Hemphill, the first female SIU graduate.

Grandma was a wonderful, courageous, Christian woman, and worked hard all her life. She taught me to love good books. She supported the family by cleaning houses, but I also remember her doing laundry for people. [Cousin Jeri Lyn found out she might have descended from a character in the novel "Alice of Old Vincinnes". Her foster parents disowned her, but kept her after she followed their wagon on foot for many days. They then "farmed her out" to someone else. She once said "You have to sleep with a knife under your pillow to keep from having more children"!] Her husband, my grandfather Paton Riddle Hemphill, was a former policeman and a drunkard. Grandpa Hemphill was in a wheelchair by the time I was old enough to know him. We stayed out of his reach, for he had a terrible temper. He would use his cane on us!

Peyton Riddle Hemphill

I remember all the wonderful meals at holidays. Aunts, uncles and cousins would gather around the dining room table, except that the kids ate after the grownups. We met at Marion for Thanksgiving, and West Frankfort for Christmas one year, then switched the next year.

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[Mom once said that she went to the Methodist Church with one set of relatives in the summer, and the Presbyterian Church in the winter, with other relatives, because when the creeks froze over, the Presbyterian Church was closer. This is strange, as many of her mother's relatives were Baptist preachers!]

Our house [was the store building on Papa Joney's lot. It] had 2 rooms with a shack on the back, which was the dining room in the summer. We had bare dirt floors, newspapers for wallpaper, and very little furniture: 2 beds, a table and chairs, and a cook stove which also warmed the place. When I was older I found out that Papa Joney built it for a grocery store, but he didn't like being inside all the time. We lived there off and on. When Dad was out of work we always moved back to "the store building". I was ashamed to live there. I told friends I lived at Mama Joney's. I didn't really have any friends, but played with my cousins.

[Mom's dad was a coal miner until the tornado of 1925] knocked the roofs off of all the houses in Marion. After that he became a roofer. He and his son were in the roofing business the rest of their lives, and all of my uncle's sons were professional roofers at one time. I tried it for a few hours once or twice. Too hot for me, even at Christmas!]

Damage to the Murphysboro Illinois Highschool,    Illinois Historical Commission, via NOAA

The house, gardens and trees in Marion are gone now. The tornado that hit Marion, Ill. In 1985 blew it all away. Grandma Hemphill's house is still there [in West Frankfort], and my Aunt Margaret [Gavin's wife] was still living there when we last visited her in the summer of 2001.

Jane Love eating Jello from her Grandmother's Mixing Bowl, in Greenbelt, MD., 2005		When I moved to Maryland to share a home with my son Douglas Love, I had to give up many things of mine for lack of space. So I gave my grandmother's mixing bowl set to cousin Sabrina Shea; all but the small one. I keep it for the memories.
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