The Real Skeeter

Sara's first newspaper article in the Jackson Daily News.

“In 1952 I decided I wanted to make some money so I wrote to the Jackson Daily News and asked them if I could be a correspondent for them and send in local news items. They agreed, and my first feature was about the Golden Age Nursing Home, which was new then. I made $15 that first month after not working for a couple of years I felt rich. My checks from them varied but were usually not more than $30, but at least I had some money of my own, and I got a big kick out of seeing my stories in the paper.

“The Doyles [who lived across the street at 500 East Adams] had had a little boy in July of 1951, and Marge and I compared notes daily and visited with each other while they played together. When Cathy was two we invited Jimmy Doyle over to have ice cream and cake on Cathy’s little table which she had gotten from Santa Claus (she had requested a cheese sandwich and a table with two little chairs, which she got). Just as they began to partake of the refreshments, Jimmy messed up his diapers, and Marge had to grab him and take him home, so that was the end of the party.

“The Doyles decided to move back to Ohio the following year, and I really grieved when they left. I remember sitting in the front room looking out the window at them loading up with tears running down my face. We have remained friends through the years but have only seen each other a few times.”

Sara in her early days on East Adams

If you’ve seen the movie, The Help, or read the book, you may recall that Skeeter, the main character, is thrilled to land a job at The Jackson Journal, writing a homemaker’s tip column. She couldn’t have been any more beside herself than Sara must have been when the real Jackson newspaper accepted her offer to write local stories, or “stringing” as it’s known in journalism. And it must have taken a world of courage to type up that letter, altogether unsolicited, stamp it and mail it and then wait for the postman to bring the reply. What in the world did Sara tell the Hedermans to make them think this young mother would have anything to offer? And why didn’t she try for a job with the Greenwood Commonwealth or The Morning Star first? Maybe she did, and just never told any of us that they turned her down.

What we do know is that this tentative beginning with a short story about a new nursing home would lead to much, much bigger things. Sara saved every story she ever wrote, and looking through her scrapbooks, you can surmise that some days in the 1950s there was absolutely not one iota of news in Greenwood, Mississippi. So she’d wander up to Sumner to do a piece on its progressive city administration or line up some children along Lewis Lake with fishing poles or pull together a little puff piece on an outstanding student. She could never imagine that within ten years her byline would be front and center in a much more prestigious newspaper and the eyes of the world would be on her hometown. Sara had a lot of Skeeter in her, or maybe it was the other way around. Kathryn Stockett, please take note.

The Doyle family was legendary in our house, reminders of those hot, happy days of early parenthood and struggle. Sara never stopped missing them, and would reminisce about those years every time that small house at 500 East Adams changed hands. I knew it through playmates like Ann Lawrence and Becky Toomey, and there have been many owners since then. It’s for sale yet again, and I wonder if there is such a thing as envy among houses. On that southeast corner of Adams and Liddell, dozens of families have come and gone and the Doyles are just a dim memory, a note in a dusty chancery clerk ledger from six decades ago. Catty-corner is Russell and Sara’s home, now the Warren house, its walls having sheltered only two families in more than sixty years. If I were a house, that’s the house I’d want to be.

An unmailed letter found with Sara's papers

Living Life on Her Own Terms

Britling's Cafeteria, downtown Memphis

“On that trip [to Memphis] Mama and Cathy and I walked down to Britling’s Cafeteria. Poor Mama was so starved by that time that she went wild. She ate everything she had not been allowed to have, and even ate two desserts. Of course, it was not too long before she started putting the weight back on. But before she did she agreed to fly with Tricia to see Mary and Howard in Ohio, which was a real shock to all of us. She had a wonderful time, but I don’t think she ever took another trip.

“Looking back, she really had almost no social life. She did not go to church after Daddy died. She said she could not go to funerals and that ‘they would understand.’ We tried to tell her that people did not understand, but nevertheless she didn’t go. She never joined clubs and always said a bunch of women just bored her. We were her whole life, and she devoted most of her time to us.

Jessie before her marriage, about 1915

“When she did go back to work it was good for her because she was at least being with people other than family, and she made some good friends at work. She liked to go to the picture show but didn’t go often. She loved musicals and would try to go to them. She never went out to eat, and I never remember her going to a party. She had a wonderful sense of humor and could find something funny in almost any story. Any spare time she had was spent reading, and she read everything she could get her hands on as long as she was able, which was almost her whole life. She was still subscribing to all the popular magazines when she died.”

Sara was a total extrovert and could not understand the choices which Jessie made about her own life. She wasn’t a recluse but neither was she one who felt the need to “see and be seen,” a common and not endearing trait in the Delta. She kept her business to herself and focused on raising the five children whose well-being fell on her shoulders, and that didn’t require that she haunt the country club or the local restaurants or even the Baptist church. More power to her.

I like to think that my grandmother was happy. That’s how I remember her, and I don’t think my memories are filtered through unrealistic mists of time. She laughed a lot and, as Sara said, could light up a room with her funny stories. Her little living room on West Claiborne was almost always full of her children and grandchildren and the only folks I ever remember her being blatantly rude to were the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who seemed to have put her at the top of their list of lost souls in need of salvation. She would rattle the whole house slamming that front door as they tried to slip a “Watchtower” through the screen. To everyone else, she was cordial and polite and a good friend to many people through the years. She just lived life totally on her own terms, a rare feat.

Jessie on her way to the Red Cross office

Memphis and Monica

Sara hanging clothes behind the East Adams house. No shade in sight.

“The summers of 1951 and 1952 were two of the hottest on record. We had no shade and no air conditioning, and we would go sit on the Gwin’s screen porch with a ceiling fan to try to get cool. Marge Doyle had a porch too, so some days we would take advantage of it and looked forward to the day when we could build our own. There was no grass in the yard yet, but we would put a quilt down near the three trees on the front of the lot and try to get some shade.

“Tricia only went the one year to MSCW and then took a job with the telephone company here in Greenwood. I was glad she was home because she helped transport us too.

Patricia Evans, Greenwood's Ambassador to the World, 1952

She was chosen to be the Community Ambassador from Greenwood, which was quite an honor, and went to England in the summer of 1952 to live with a family in Plymouth. Her letters were published every week in the local paper, and when she returned she spoke to all the civic clubs.

“In the late summer of 1952 Mama was in the hospital very ill with bleeding diverticula. She had to get on a very strict diet and lost a lot of weight, getting down to about 155, which was less than she had weighed since right after she married. She was still working at the Red Cross. After she lost the weight she was a different person and went to Memphis with us to spend the night. She had not been anywhere in years and had a ball with me and Cathy while Russell was attending a sales meeting.

Jessie in the 1950s. She really wasn't this serious.

“It was on this trip that we spotted Monica Doll in Gerbers. Actually, I had seen her in Gerber’s window on a previous trip, and we went in to see if they still had her. She had been reduced and Mama decided to buy her.

Gerber's Department Store, Memphis, 1950s

We walked down Main Street carrying the big box containing Monica, and when we got back to the Gayoso Hotel she and Cathy proceeded to clean her up a little since she was slightly shopworn. We still have Monica and I have never seen another one like her. Mama always told Cathy that Monica was to be hers.”

Cathy with Monica

Early East Adams

“You didn’t leave the hospital a few days after delivery at that time, and I was there for eleven days with a special nurse during the day at something like nine or ten dollars a day, but which Mama and Big insisted was necessary. When I did bring Cathy home, dressed up in a little blue sacque and cap made by Wilma Ray, who worked with Mama, I had Paralee, a wonderful black practical nurse, to stay with me for two weeks and help take care of Cathy.

“She weighed six pounds and seemed so tiny I was scared to death something would happen to her, that I would drop her or she would choke on her bottle, and even though she was sleeping in her crib right beside us, I am sure we kept her awake checking on her.

“While I was in the hospital Elmer and Nancy Gwin moved in next door with seven-year-old Nan and four-year-old Martha. We immediately became good friends and were glad to have neighbors. The Doyles, Marge and Jim, who lived across from the Wynns, were good friends by this time, and Marge was expecting in July. They had one child, Nancy, who was eight. The Stiglers had moved across the street.

“We could not afford to have any help so I stayed home most of the time with Cathy. Russell was out of town most of the time so I did not have a car. We would take a cab and go over to Mama’s to visit. Nancy Gwin chauffeured us around a lot and took us to the grocery store and other places. I pushed Cathy in the stroller for miles around the neighborhood. We found someone who would come in about once a week to iron and clean a little, but I did not leave Cathy with her, and I don’t remember us having a baby sitter other than on rare occasions having Mama come over while we went out, maybe once a year.”

Because the east end of East Adams had filled in, so to speak, by the time I was aware of neighbors, I just can’t imagine that friendly stretch of blocks without the families who populated mine and Cathy’s childhoods. The Gwins, right next door, were a mainstay. I thought Nan was Miss America and Martha was just too cool for words. Hite McLean, just the other side of the Gwins, allowed me to play with his Brownie before we got our own, and I simply couldn’t understand when he grew up and went off to college. How could he leave his best girlfriend (me) behind? The Doyles, the Spencers, the Stiglers, the Eidmans, the Kantors, the Peteets, the Lawrences and the Toomeys and the Shorts and the Leflores and the Youngs and the Rymers and the Rays and the Beamans…….We knew them all and were in and out of their back doors and through their yards and over their fences like we owned the whole neighborhood. We were so lucky and didn’t even know it. If it takes a village, we certainly had one.

Baby Boomer #1

“Cathy was due the first of February. Russell was still gone most of the time during the week. The Gwin house had not been finished so I had no one next door.  He had gone to Cleveland on Monday, January 29th. Ada and Willie Haynes came over and picked me up and took me to the Stotts to stay in case I should go into labor.

“The snow continued to fall, the temperatures dropped, and then we had more ice on top of the snow, making it one of the worst winter storms on record in this area. The lines were all down, and I could not even get a call through to Russell nor could he call me. So on Wednesday he managed to get home with no trouble until he hit the alley behind our house and got stuck in the snow. We were afraid to stay in the house since we did not have chains on the car, so both of us moved in at the Stotts.

“The day she was due the temperature went below zero. Russell was so nervous he started craving a Mounds candy bar (and he was not a big candy eater) so he walked to town that night to get a Mounds bar. It wasn’t a good time to be expecting a baby. There was still snow on the ground on Sunday, February 4th, but we came back home to spend the day. We rode around on the streets, which were still very rough, hoping it would rush Cathy up.

“Back over at the Stotts’ house at about eleven p.m., the pains started. We got Big, who was still nursing, up and she went with us to the hospital. Cathy was born at 4:05 on February 5th in the morning. Dr. Lucas delivered her, and Mary Ross Smith, my nurse, was on hand too. Things went smoothly even though she backed into the world. Russell got on the phone at daylight to let everyone know he had a girl named Cathy Olivia.”

Cathy Olivia Criss

Can you imagine? Sara, who can barely drive and doesn’t have a car anyhow, is alone on a snowed-in dirt street, with no neighbors, two miles and one wide frozen river away from her mother and family, nine months pregnant. And Russell is trapped an hour away in Cleveland, with all the phone lines down. This is either an episode of Little House on the Prairie or I Love Lucy, depending on the outcome. I suspect Russell utilized every curse word he knew on that slippery, white-knuckle drive across the Delta (and he was very proud of the fact that he could curse in English, Italian and Chinese….go figure). But he came through, as he always did, and saved the day. Cathy arrived safely, if breach, never taking the easy path and giving all involved a run for their money.

For Russell and Sara, life was complete. Or so they thought. The roller coaster motor is just warming up.

Leaving Washington and Walthall Behind

The Stott House at Washington and Walthall. Sara and Russell's apartment was in the house just behind it, visible on the right.

“Son and Betty Jane married that fall [1950] and moved into an apartment in the Billups Apartment Building down the street from Mama. He had met her while she was working here as a dental hygienist temporarily. They married in her hometown of Macon, Georgia.

Tricia and Son, mid-1940s.

“Tricia had gone to Mississippi State College for Women. Rawa, who had worked in Nebraska, had met and married Jack Roach there, and they moved to Oregon. Buddy had brought Dottie Hire home, and they were married at the First Methodist Church, with Russell and I standing with them.”

“We did not have much furniture to move into the house and gladly accepted anything anyone would give us with Tiny and Mama helping out. Big, who had always loved  yard work, helped greatly with our meager landscaping of a yard filled with weeds, no grass and no trees. She brought over altheas, crepe myrtles, spirea, flowering quince and other shrubs, most of which are still with us. Russell had rented a tractor and leveled the yard and shoulders and started from scratch trying to get some grass to grow.”

Three of the Evans children wound up in North Greenwood, leaving the old Stott house at Washington and Walthall behind in presence if not in spirit. Sara and Russell were part of the post-World War II wave of young married couples who bought parcels of former cotton fields and made lawns along the unpaved streets named for presidents and trees. Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Walnut, Myrtle, Poplar……all the streets of our lives, and fields of dreams for them.

Jessie would stay on at the Stott home, even as her children grew up, fell in love, married and moved on with their lives. Her years there in that sanctuary totalled 28, which I’m sure neither she or Big or Uncle Roy ever envisioned when tragedy struck in 1932. It was a happy home, described that way by everyone who ever lived there. And it still stands on that downtown corner, well-maintained, with some of Big’s old vines still climbing up the glassed-in porch. We are fortunate in many ways in this extended Evans/Stott family, in that our brick-and-mortar anchor remains, a daily reminder of what’s important and what endures.

Becoming a Family

"I'm going to be a WHAT?"

“In addition to the start of the Korean War, another thing that influenced us to go on and start building was the fact that we had found out in early June that Cathy was on the way.

Dr. John Lucas' office, where Sara and Russell got some life-changing good news. Photo courtesy of Mary Rose Carter.

We had decided early that year to start trying to start a family and were delighted when I went to Dr. John Lucas and got the news that I was pregnant. We went back to the Chamber of Commerce office and broke the news to Botts, who replied, ‘I knew when you went to the doctor and I heard both of you coming up the stairs that you were going to tell me that.’ He said I could work as long as I wanted to, but I told him I would like to quit the middle of September. At that time not too many people kept working until time for the baby to be born, and then, too, I wanted some time to check on the house building and make curtains, etc.

“When I did leave the Chamber of Commerce I had a real let-down feeling because those years meant a lot to me. Dorothy Hayes, who was librarian and a friend of mine, called and asked me if I would fill in at the library for a few weeks, so I accepted and worked down there about three weeks, which helped pass the time away and gave me a little spending money.”

Greenwood Leflore Library, where Sara's brief career as a librarian ran its course in 1950.The east wing of the building would not have been there then.

Hang on, folks…….The Criss train is jumping the tracks and headed off on a wild ride. Babies change everything. Forever. Remember those faded photos from the Strong Avenue bungalow, where tiny Sara always has a doll clutched in her hands? Her whole life was leading up to this point, and she never looked back. She thought her days as a “working girl” were over, left behind with the mimeograph machine and pressure of the Chamber of Commerce. Little did she know that her greatest adventures were around the corner, both as a mother and a writer.

Granny

Jessie West Evans, 1895-1983.

We’ll pause here briefly, leaving Russell and Sara to move into their new East Adams home, and pay a Happy Birthday tribute to the woman who impacted all of our lives in more ways than she ever knew. Jessie Mae West Evans would be 116 years old today. She was born into a simple, rural world near Durant in the fall of 1895 and followed her older sister, Olive (“Big”) Stott, to Greenwood after their father died in 1911. She took some business courses, got a job as a secretary in a Greenwood insurance agency and met her future husband, Howard Evans, in the same little Walthall Street house where Sara and Russell would have their first apartment. Their marriage in 1916 was quick and simple and followed by 16 years in Greenwood and Jackson and five wonderful children. Jessie struggled through early, sudden widowhood, losing Howard when she was barely 37. She managed to raise those children with the help of Big and Uncle Roy and something more intangible: All of those children seemed determined to never, never disappoint Jessie or bring any hint of disgrace into their “borrowed” home on East Washington. They worked hard, made the sacrifices that must be made when 12 people are crowded into a home meant for 5, filled that house with wonderful memories, and one by one found mates who shared their values and fit right into our family. Jessie was always saying that some friend or another had “raised those children right,” and I hope she occasionally looked in the mirror and said those same words.

Jessie loved puppies and kittens and even welcomed a family of possums that moved in by her back stoop on West Claiborne. She loved sweets and bottled Cokes and onion burgers and “Gunsmoke” and “As the World Turns” and Lawrence Welk and Ladies Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post and Pond’s Cold Cream and dark blue Keds and fancy dolls and her grandchildren, especially me. (Sorry, you other 7, but it’s my blog). I never heard her raise her voice, not once. And her voice was rarely heard after a stroke left her nearly mute and frustrated in her final year. But when I went in to see her for the last time, in the summer of 1983, and told her I was expecting my first child, her eyes lit up and she very clearly said, “Oh, a little girl.” I thought she was talking about me, until Emily was born, just three months after she died. She wasn’t talking about me; she was blessing the next baby coming along. I cherish that.

I only knew one of my grandparents. My maternal grandfather died in 1932, my paternal grandmother in 1922 and my paternal grandfather in 1945. But Jessie, my Granny, was such a warm, loving paragon of everything a grandmother should be that I never felt shorted in any way. In the great game of life, I not only won the parent lottery, I also won the aunts, uncles and grandparent lottery. So Happy Birthday, Granny. You were the best.

Tiny and Jessie at Sara's house, likely on a Christmas Eve in the 1960s.

Mrs. Criss Builds Her Dream House

Russell on the back porch

“We had saved a little money with which we paid for the lot and put $1000 down on the house. I had $500 which I planned to use for carpeting but changed my mind when we decided to go on and put in a permanent stairway so that we could finish the upstairs later on, a decision we were always glad we made. We did not have the money for carpeting or draperies or any other extras. We knew when we built the house that we wanted to eventually add a back porch, so two years after we built we added the screened porch on the back of the house, taking out a home improvment loan for three years.

“During the 60s we finished the upstairs. Russell had gotten some cypress lumber from houses his brother, Rudy, had torn down on a place he and their brother Bailey were farming, cleaned it up and used it and some beaded ceiling from the same houses to finish the upstairs. Mr. S.G. Beaman, our neighbor and contractor, along with Griff, a Negro carpenter who had worked on our house, did the upstairs work with Russell giving instructions from the sidelines. Again we could not afford to put any carpeting down at first and just had plywood floors until I won $400 in a drawing a Liberty Cash Grocery, which was used for carpet for the upstairs big room and a vinyl floor in the back hall.”

I thought it was the biggest house in Greenwood, but it really wasn’t very large at all. Just ingenious. After Sara died, I found the magazine with the house plan that she based 409 East Adams on, along with the alterations that she made so it would be just what she wanted. She should have been an architect. That house is so quaint and so functional and so solid that it could have been replicated over and over again, but so far as I know, there’s only one. I have always been rather uneasy in neighborhoods where every house has the same floor plans and you have to plant bushes or use an odd paint color to find your way home.

So many of the details in Sara and Russell’s house were reflections of her years living in the Stott home on East Washington. There is a huge living room, because she loved parties and family and wanted her home to be the center of every holiday. And that’s just what happened. There are no rooms which can only be accessed through another room, so there’s lots of privacy. After you’ve shared a bedroom with your mother and three siblings, that’s a must. And the “permanent stairway.” She was always inordinately proud of that staircase for some reason. I guess for her, that sturdy set of steps represented success and stability and all that a house should be, and she utilized them for overflow Christmas and Halloween decorations and lined them with family photographs.

Russell, I suspect, bowed to her every wish in 1950, staying out of the way and letting her call the shots. But the back porch was his domain, and he did much of his paperwork out there when the weather was nice. He would sit at the far end with a transistor radio to listen to Ole Miss football games, and I well remember the night games, when you could see the red glow of his cigarette as the second half stretched into the evening. You could go crawl up in his lap but you couldn’t talk during the ballgames. I inherited that quirk: If you want to really get on my nerves, try talking to me during an Ole Miss game. I’ll be rude. Learned it from my daddy.

Sara all but lived on the porch, as well, doing her sewing and writing and watching through the hedges to see who was walking by. She had been raised with the Stott’s famous front porch, and this screened-in room was our version of that ringside perch on the world. It was the very best part of the house.

The upstairs’ project is dim in my memory, although it must have been around 1964, because I remember Russell banning me and my Beatles’ records to the unfinished rooms on the second floor.  Sylvester Beaman was my surrogate grandfather (along with Roy Stott), a gruff old gentleman with tremendous building talent and a heart of gold. He always smelled vaguely like sawdust and he could create the most wondrous things in his garage. He and Griff created two magical bedrooms and a tiny bathroom upstairs, leaving oddly shaped attics and hiding places that were a child’s delight. Cathy immediately moved up to her new bedroom but I never left the safety of our downstairs bedroom. My Aunt Mamie had convinced me that there was a German ghost named Clyde on the loose up there, and until the day I turned the house keys over to new owners, I was a bit uneasy being in the attic by myself.

Home

409 East Adams, 1951

“There were very few houses in the neighborhood at the time. We had three trees across the front of the lot, the same ones that are still here, but other than that it was just a field. The street had not even been paved yet. This had all been cotton fields just a few years prior to our purchase of a lot.

“We had the lot but no immediate plans for a house. We were still holding out, or rather Russell was, that better times were just around the corner and that prices would be coming down. In 1950 the Korean War came along and prices immediately started rising. I could just visualize us staying in the apartment until another war ended, which might be years away. I’m not sure he would have ever dared to borrow the money to build a house if the war had not come along.

“I had studied so many house plans and drawn off plans and tried to decide what we could afford that I was about ready to present one when he finally decided to go ahead. We asked Wilson Dillard, who worked at Gwin Lumber Company, to draw up some plans similar to one I had found in a book and changed it around to suit our needs. We talked to various contractors and got bids and finally decided on Ben Allen and Marlin Aldridge, who were already building the Elmer Gwin house next door. They were able to offer us a better bid since they were already on the job next door. The contract price was $12,286, and we got a loan from Prudential Insurance Company for twenty-five years. We borrowed $11,000 at four per cent interest, having obtained a GI loan. Our payments, including taxes and insurance, started out at $72 a month but went up as taxes and insurance increased. They were never more than about $78 a month, but some months it wasn’t easy to pay that. We started the house October 12, 1950 and moved in December 18 [1950].”

Russell and Sara in their kitchen, 409 East Adams.

Look at those figures. $2100 for the lot. $12,286, 4% loan, 25 years. $72 a month payments. Hard to believe, isn’t it? And I do remember those months when that white envelope with the Prudential Rock in the upper left hand corner sat on Russell’s big desk for a few days, and I knew he was trying to figure out where the $72 was going to come from. Probably because I had to go to the orthodontist or Cathy had to have shoes or Brownie had an emergency run to the vet. It didn’t take much to tighten the screws on the Criss budget. But that wasn’t because both Sara and Russell didn’t work like serfs to make ends meet and give us all we could possibly need. They just never had jobs that paid a huge amount, and that never bothered either one of them.

Sara carefully recounted the cost of the house at 409 East Adams in her memoir. But there is no way that she or anyone else could ever put a price on the real value of that home. She had lived in someone else’s house since she was eleven years old. Russell’s family had moved all over the Delta as the Depression deepened, crowding into a room or a shack or any shelter they could find, and he went to 10 different high schools, never finding a place he could claim as a home town. For these two young people, survivors of war and family tragedies that could have destroyed lesser souls, to have their own house on their own street, was nothing shy of a miracle. And over the next half-century, they filled it with so much love and joy and laughter that made it, in my eyes, the grandest house on the grandest street in the grandest town of all. It will always, in some sense, be Russell and Sara’s House, even though it is in other, very kind and capable hands now. It still makes me smile, and it’s still home.