Grits and Roses: A Memoir of 60 Years of Southern Love and Devotion

By Elizabeth Love

This devoted and heartfelt memoir tells of Elizabeth and Paul Ravencraft's 60-year love story, from teenage to golden age. It is a story of love, courtship, and holding on during difficult times, including times of rags to riches and to rags. There were glass ceilings broken, and pieces picked up along the way. Their encouraging story of love an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jul 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638374107

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Coming up Roses

As surely as the pine trees sway in the hills of Mississippi, two souls were born there, searching for each other—each on their own path but each the same destination…

PELAHATCHIE, MS

Pelahatchie was a small, one-stoplight town in Mississippi about twenty-five miles east of Jackson—my birthplace and home of my Stegall family. Folks in Pelahatchie were either related or neighbors for generations.

Most lived on farms just out of town, where they grew cotton and corn. They also had vegetable gardens in their backyards, where the chickens pecked around and rewarded them with dozens of beautiful eggs. There was plenty to share and plenty to sell if need be. The chicks also provided Southern-fried dinner, if unexpected company came.

The old saying Mad as an ole wet setting hen is a true picture of what can happen. I don’t know if she was wet or not, but she was ole and mad. I was about three when that ole hen chased me all around the backyard and finally pecked me! I am still afraid of chickens and anything that has feathers and flies.

The local auto repair shop was owned and operated by my dad and some of his brothers. There Dad's career began; soon he was recognized as one of Mississippi's best mechanics. He was great in math; he could give a cost estimate on repairing a car faster than anyone. Guess that's where I got my love of numbers.

The Stegalls attended Line Creek Baptist Church, which was down a country road from town. It was extremely hot in the summer with only ceiling fans and wide-open windows. All the women used paper fans advertising the local pharmacy or the feed store.

My favorite Sundays were when we had all day singing and dinner on the ground. Oh my, what great food—fried chicken (of course), potato salad, cream corn, butter beans, fried okra, fresh sliced tomatoes, fruit cobblers, cakes, and pies galore—and lots of sweet tea! Sometimes we had watermelon or homemade ice cream.

The best buffet tables ever! The men nailed wooden planks between the pine trees to hold all this delicious bounty. The kids were impatient after eating to start playing games like dodgeball and red rover.

Years ago I visited my home places in Mississippi; of course I had to go to Line Creek Baptist Church. The cemetery out back holds the graves of so many of my family. I took pictures of their tombstones to record the dates of their lives in my family album.

As I visited each of my sweet family's graves, I stopped and thought of our many times together. Remembering Aunt Eleanor's huge round Lazy Susan table brought back memories of all the fights we had whirling the table just as someone reached for food. The table had been in the family since the 1800s. My aunt handed it down to her son to keep in the family. If only that table could talk!

Speaking of food again, Aunt Eleanor made a delicious plum cake using baby food as the flavoring. She also made wonderful peach jams and jellies. Not wasting anything, she cooked the peelings and seeds from the peaches to make more jelly. The peach tree in her backyard produced an abundant crop every year, maybe because she put a big rag doll in the tree to keep birds out.

I especially thought of the glorious gospel music we sang as we gathered around Aunt Eleanor's piano on special occasions. She taught herself to play, so she could really pound out those gospel songs. Two of her sons, Ralph and Bob, sang professionally in a men's quartet on the radio and in church on Sundays.

The Stegalls had large family reunions every year at Roosevelt State Park (formerly known as Morton Lake). We reserved the cabins years in advance. Back in the olden days, there weren’t that many facilities, so it was just a one-day event. Now there are lots of cabins and even a motel. I attended several times and was delighted with the food and fellowship.

Friday nights were always fish fry nights; each family had their assignments on what to bring. We also had Bible readings and inspirational messages. On Sundays we had church service with one of my uncles preaching. We had more fun than you can imagine, playing games, singing, laughing, and joking around. Such a wonderful family; I was so lucky.

MORTON-PULASKI, MS

Grandma and Grandpa Duncan raised their seven children (four girls and three boys) on their 350-acre farm in the rich bottomland of Pulaski. They grew cotton, sugarcane, watermelons, and cantaloupes with the help of their kids. They usually hired extra hands during cotton pickin’ time in Mississippi. Grandpa also sold timber from their many acres of pine trees.

He had a mill for grinding sugarcane and making syrup. I loved watching the mules pulling the arm of the grinder round and round in a circle, making muddy tracks as they went. As the juice was extracted from the cane, it flowed down a trough into a vat. The wooden fire underneath the vat cooked and produced the best cane syrup you have ever tasted. This amazing process was centuries old.

One thing that really made Grandpa mad was if we picked a watermelon, ate the heart out of it, and then left the rind in the field. He didn’t care how many watermelons we ate as long as we carried the rinds back to the pigpens. We had to share with the pigs; they were an important part of our food supply.

The farm had many outbuildings; there was a smokehouse, henhouse, milk barn, hay barn for horses and mules, washhouse, and of course the outhouse. They didn’t have running water but a cistern to furnish their water. The planks leading to it were rotten and unstable. I used to think the wood would give way, and I would fall into the black hole and never be heard of again. It seems like I had a lot of fears growing up.

The kitchen was a separate room in the back of the house. This was so the heat from the stove wouldn’t heat up the rest of the house. I guess it didn’t matter how hot it was for Grandma. I can remember the wooden plank walkway out to the kitchen, where I would go to get cookies from the pie safe (cabinet with a screen door.) When it rained, the boards were muddy and slippery, making it hard to get to the kitchen, but somehow Grandma made it.

It was such a hard life for both my grandparents; no wonder they never smiled or took time to love on the grandkids. The smell and feel of Grandpa's sweaty denim shirt and overalls still remain in my mind. He was always so tired.

Just before Grandma died from cancer, Grandpa added a kitchen on the inside of the house. She still didn’t have gas or water and had to cook on a woodstove. Our table in the kitchen would seat eight to ten people. The rule was the men ate first, then the children, and then the women ate last. (They had to serve everyone else before they could eat.) Grandpa always asked the blessing at every meal and on special occasions. Children were taught to be seen and not heard.

The Duncans attended the Methodist church in Pulaski. I have pictures of my mom and her sisters in their fancy dresses and hats on their way to church. Years after my parents wed, Mom joined the First Baptist Church in Forest. I was five and had never witnessed a baptism. When the preacher dunked Mom's head under the water in the baptistery, it scared me to death! I thought he was drowning her.

In the summer the grandkids stayed on the farm for several weeks. There were eight boys and one girl (me). I thought I was one of the boys—such a tomboy. Usually the boys hid from me in the hayloft in the barn. When I tried to find them, I got bombarded with corncobs. Crying to Grandma did absolutely no good as it seemed like she always took their side. She would scold me and tell me to leave those boys alone.

I played tackle football with the boys until I was thirteen and started my period. I discovered I wasn’t a boy after all! Our family was blessed with another girl (my cousin Diane) when I was seventeen, too late to help tackle those boys.

We all loved the river or the lake—it didn’t matter. We spent countless hours swimming and riding logs. There were ropes in the trees for us to swing out over the water and jump in. Once at Morton Lake, the boys swam ahead of me to a platform in the middle of the lake. I couldn’t keep up, so when I finally reached the platform, the guys pushed it under water. They swam back to shore laughing at me. I was gasping for breath and just knew I would drown with nothing to hold on to. I rolled over on my back and floated awhile until I could catch my breath and safely swim to shore. Frightening moment!

One of my uncles was a plantation manager for over thirty-five years in the Mississippi Delta. The plantation included hundreds of acres of rich farmland where share croppers lived and raised cotton. My aunt drove the local school bus, but mostly she worked in the school cafeteria. Their five boys learned early how to pick cotton, when my aunt wasn’t busy spoiling them. They also learned all kinds of mischief, which they shared with the rest of the cousins.

One thing we learned to do was ride pine trees. One of us would pull a tall skinny tree down to the ground, someone would straddle it, and then another one would let go of the tree, throwing the rider into the air. Usually you landed in a pile of pine needles. However, one of my cousins broke his arm on one of his rides.

Aunt Teal had a chinaberry tree in her yard. We would hollow out cane stalks and use them for guns to shoot the berries through. Boy, did they sting when they hit their target!

I was full of curiosity. We were at Grandpa's house one Father's Day when I noticed my dad going back and forth to the car a lot. He would get a bottle from under the front seat and take a nip. I just had to see what was so good. I went out to the car and found the bottle of evil our preacher was always talking about. Needless to say, I took a sip. Immediately I was on fire down my throat and all the way to my stomach. I ran to the porch, where Grandma always kept a pitcher of water to drink from and a bucket of water for the washbasin. Well, of course, everything was bone-dry. This was another time I thought I would surely die. Lesson learned: no more bootleg whiskey for me!

FOREST, MS

God had an angel guarding me throughout my childhood years as I had many accidents like most other kids. When I first started walking, I pulled a pot of boiling water off the stove and on to my head. Mother rushed me to the hospital, where the doctors treated my burns and shaved my curly hair; it came back straight. However, Mom had my hair fixed in Shirley Temple curls and dressed me in her clothes from the Emporium.

Another incident happened when I was around four years old. I was sitting on the fireplace hearth when my coattail caught on fire from a spark. Thank goodness my mom was sitting right there to put out the flames.

My parents liked to go dancing on Saturday nights. I didn’t like the babysitter, so they just took me with them. They provided me with lots of snacks and a Coke. I slept in the back seat of the car while they were partying. They parked the car close to the front and checked on me once in a while. Jokingly Mother would say if anyone kidnapped me, they would turn me loose in the morning when they saw my face. Not much danger in the small town of Forest in those days.

When Aunt Teal and Uncle Felix took me with them dancing, I was allowed inside since it was usually a family affair with square dancing and round dancing. Sometimes my uncle would let me dance with him. They were like my second parents since I spent so much time with them during summers and holidays. (In the 2000s before they died, I was at their house in Clinton, MS for a visit. We pushed back the furniture, turned the stereo on, and danced like we did when I was young. All it took was a little champagne and strawberries to get our feet moving.)

September 1940 rolled around, and I decided I was old enough to go to school. We didn’t have kindergarten then, so I’m talking first grade. I rode the school bus along with the other kids. The problem was you had to provide a birth certificate to start school. What could I do? My sixth birthday wasn’t until April 1941, but I rationalized in my young mind, that it was still the same school year. I thought if I just kept putting my teacher off and got some class time in, maybe she wouldn’t kick me out.

The last of September came, and the birth certificate arrived. The principal sent me home on the next school bus, telling me to try again next year! I was so hurt and embarrassed; I sobbed all the way home. As I walked into our house, my mother was listening to Ma Perkins on the radio.

It just happened I was redeemed since I skipped my junior year in high school and still graduated the same year as this class. Little good that did then—I was so devastated.

One thing I had established at school, however, was my name. The first day when the teacher asked my name, I said, Elizabeth. One of the neighborhood kids said, No, your name is Love. Immediately the boys started chanting, I love Love. I love Love. I denied that Love was my name, so I was called Elizabeth until college, when I changed it to Liz. My kinfolks still call me Love. My mom said she named me that because she loved me so much. She also said that if she’d known they would all turn out like me, she would have had a dozen!

My birth certificate suggestions on the occupation line for Father were lawyer, bookkeeper, silk miller, saw miller, and banker. Mother suggestions were housekeeper, typist, nurse, and clerk. I had not read this on my certificate until recently. Glad they no longer make those assumptions.

They say the whole world is a stage; for me it was the pedestal my parents put me on the day I was born. I thought my purpose in life was to entertain. My goal was to make Mom and Dad laugh when I danced and twirled around the house. It never stopped; I danced for my mother until she died.

Our house in Forest didn’t have indoor plumbing. Mom disguised our outhouse with a running rosebush! The only problem was you had to watch out for the bees. You might get stung in the wrong place. You were always listening for the buzzing.

My mother was also a great cook, as were so many women back in those days. Maybe it was because everything was fresh, right out of the garden. In the summer she canned pears from our tree on the side yard. She made the prettiest pear halves for salads; she dyed the pears as she canned them. The display on our hutch of the jars of pears in shades of green, red, and yellow was beautiful. She also made pear preserves—one of my favorites until this day.

MCCOMB, MS

We moved to McComb when I was in second grade. It was the middle of WWII. My dad was in the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) working on jeeps for the army at Camp Van Dorn. The air raids and