I was really worried about whether we'd have a Reunion this year. I had this dream about 3 men in a plane - and the plane crashed. The passengers in the plane were E.A., Irving and Alan.
These 3 men got to the Pearly Gates and Saint Peter greeted them. Saint Peter admitted Alan and directed him down a long hall to a special room. Alan opened the door, looked in at a beautiful marble room, and walked in. He sees right in the middle of this room a big, ugly, ugly orangutan. While he is looking at this big ugly orangutan, the door closes behind him and a voice from Heaven comes down and says "Alan, you have grievously sinned, and you will spend eternity in this room with this big, ugly orangutan.
The same thing happens to E.A. He is admitted, directed to a special room and when he looks in, there is a big, ugly gorilla. The door closes behind him and the voice from Heaven says "E.A., you have grievously sinned and you will spend eternity in this room with this gorilla."
About this time Irving asks "What about me?" St. Peter admits him and sends him down the hall to the last door on the left. Irving opens the door, looks in and sees, there in the middle of the room, Bo Derek! Wow! The door closes behind him and the voice from Heaven comes down and says-------"Bo Derek, you have grievously sinned------!"
The next story is a true one. At the time this happened, about 1932, my mother and father, Louise and Buford, were living on the farm with Grandma and Grandpa Reedy. Times were very hard then, and Mom and Grandma were sitting on the back porch wishing for things out of the Sears-Roebuck catalog, and they saw a little notice that said "We buy old gold". Grandma had some old teeth with gold fillings and they decided they would try to sell those fillings. They were trying to pry this gold out when it flipped out and fell on the ground and one of the chickens running around runs up and grabs it. Grandma says "Louise, you watch that chicken and I'll get the hatchet." She comes back with the hatchet, Louise points out the chicken, they kill it and go through the craw, but found no gold there. "Well, maybe it was that other chicken." Same thing - no gold. They try again, no gold. They try again, no gold. They wind up killing a lot of chickens, but don't find gold. However, they did eat a lot of chicken and rice, and chicken and dumplings for the next several days.
This one is also true. My Dad, Buford Reedy, and Pat and Adrian Keel were down on an old road which was low and had deep wet places in it. A big, fancy touring car came along with some gentlemen in it and the driver stopped to ask the boys if they could get through the water OK. The boys assured him they could, if they were careful to stay in the road, and added that they would hop on the running board and go along to help in case there was trouble. They got through just fine, and as the boys were starting to leave, a gentleman who hadn't said anything up to this time, leaned out of the back seat and said "Boys when you get home you can tell your Dad that you rode on the car with Herbert Hoover". Buford Jr. yelled "Oh my, no. If I told my Daddy that he'd beat me to death!"
In 1941, Buford and I went to Detroit to stay with Ed and Ruth Reedy, and to seek our fortune in the big city. There was not any work in Central Florida, and Buford had a family to support. I had never seen anything like that city in all my life. We were just awestruck! Buford and I got out and headed out from Ruth's house on Beniteau . We were on Jefferson Avenue one day and we hadn't learned about traffic lights. Jefferson Avenue is about 10 lanes of traffic each way. We came up to this intersection and all the cars were stopped very nicely, so Buford and I headed across. The traffic light changed, and in Detroit when the traffic light changes, rubber is burned. Buford looked like a deer, running and jumping between cars and brakes were screeching and people were cussing---so we learned the hard way about traffic lights. You look at that little green light up there, and that's when you walk.
Another little thing about shortness - you couldn't see Shirley when she was standing the podium. I was in basic training in Greenville, Mississippi, flying a BT-13 - a basic trainer. I was taxiing out one day and I called the tower for take-off taxiing instructions. I was talking to him when he finally said - "BT-118 - I see an empty BT taxiing down field. Stand up and wave your arms if you are the one that did it." I
have another little story on Louise Reedy. Lou had a brand new International Harvester Scout of which she was very proud. One day she was out on 42 going to town, and being a Southern Lady in a time when someone was in trouble, you helped them. You stopped to change a tire or whatever they needed done. Lou stopped and here was this big, 20-year-old Cadillac -- Tom calls them land barges - and there was a very much over-fed lady in this Cadillac. Lou asked if she needed help. She said yes, that her engine had died. Lou was going to tow her into Altoona to the garage so she hooked her brand new International Harvester Scout onto this Cadillac with a chain and they headed down the road about 35 or 40 miles an hour. Nobody had thought about the fact that there was no steering or brakes on this car with the engine not running. They were tooteling along and Lou came to a place where she had to make a quick stop. She put on the brakes, and this lady managed to swing around her, then swung past her, and hit the end of the chain and flipped her car over. Lou didn't help her any more.
Jim's story was about his Grandfather, James Roland Reedy and his grandfather's identical twin, Edward Napoleon (known as Roly and Poly to their family):
He described these two men as being so alike that even their grandchildren couldn't tell them apart. One time, Jim's sister, Joanne, ran up to her "Grampa", and gave him a big hug, as she always did.
As she was hugging him, she looked around and there was Grampa - across the room. She was totally confused as to how there were two Grampas. Then she was scared - how did 2 Grampas get into the same room?
As I was growing up, I used to try and convince my parents, when I did something bad that it wasn't really me - it was the other "Jim" who did it.
I never was able to sell that story.
Hello, my name is Shirley Reedy Reich. My mother's name was Mabel Ruth Reedy (daughter of James Roland Reedy), my father's name was Mars Edmons (son of George Monroe Reedy). If you were at the last Reunion, you may remember my brother Jim telling the story about how he interviewed for a job AND DIDN'T GET IT. The interviewer either thought he was ignorant because he didn't know his mother's maiden name, or crazy because he DID know it and the parents were related to each other. Yes, they were cousins.
I was born and grew up in Detroit - I was a City kid. If you needed bread or eggs, you went to the store and bought them. If you needed to go to the bathroom, or take a bath, you went to the room in the house that had the appropriate porcelain fixtures in it.
If it was too quiet in the house, you turned on the radio - listened to the soaps like "Portia Faces Life", or in the evening "Amos and Andy" or "Inner Sanctum".
If you were bored or lonely, you could go next door and visit your neighbor - or you could pick up the phone and call a friend or relative. Or you could get in your car and go to Sears or Penneys and shop til you dropped.
I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade when my parents decided that Mother, brother Jim and I would come to Granny's farm right after Easter and spend the summer. We came down on a Greyhound bus - they always had lots of little paper bags to hand out to those who couldn't take the sway. My brother and I used them a lot. Daddy would come and get us before school started.
So I finished my school year in the 2-room school in Paisley where my Aunt Georgia taught grades 1 through 4. Keep in mind that my idea of a school was a red brick building - a BIG building - that had doors and windows, long hallways, indoor bathrooms with the usual equipment. And then I went to school with Aunt Georgia - the Paisley school had 2 rooms and NO BATHROOMS.
If Aunt Georgia was teaching first graders to read, for example, they went to the front of the room and sat on a bench. The rest of us were supposed to be studying. Each grade would be called to the front of the room for whatever subject they were studying. I've never understood how you were supposed to study with all the conversation going on up front.
Aunt Georgia told me I must call her Miss Georgia Mae, just like the other students. . Like - these kids didn't know who I was? But they pronounced it MIZGEORMAE = and I never did learn to say that right..
I was envious that the other kids got to go home in a big yellow bus - I rode home in the car with Aunt Georgia.- not much fun there! .
And "home" was Granny's farm. If school was strange to me, getting used to life on the farm was even stranger--
"Grocery store?" Most of the food we ate was right there. Granny had cows for milk (cream and butter also provided by the cows, I learned). Chickens for eggs and fried chicken; an occasional pig; a vegetable garden.
What more could you want? Well, an ice cream cone or Oreo cookie would have been nice. No "pop" either - that's what we Yankees called cold drinks.
But you sure didn't go hungry at Granny's.
We've all heard the stories of Granny's outhouse on the creek - how the boys would catch catfish no one would ever fry. I was always afraid I'd fall through one of those holes and be eaten by an alligator.
Granny would fill a big metal tub with water in the morning, out in the yard, so the water would be warmed by the sun. Mid-afternoon was bath time - outside! Well, the boys bathed outside - the tub of water was moved in to the side porch for girls to bathe. Modesty at all costs!
I grew up thinking that our radio was always on - that's what everybody did. To this day, the first thing I do in the morning is turn the radio on.
But at Granny's, the only time the radio was on was to listen to the 6 o'clock news and maybe "Amos and Andy". Why? The radio was battery-operated and Granny was frugal with the time it was on. There was no electricity on Granny's farm.
That was a difficult concept for me to understand - no radio? Where were the light switches to turn on in every room? And why didn't the phone ring? Oops - no electricity!
And Granny didn't have a car - to my knowledge Granny didn't drive. So there weren't any shopping trips to Sears or Penneys, which I imagine were as far away as Orlando.
But you know what? Of all the memories I have of Granny's farm, I don't have any of being bored. There was always something happening - from chasing a snake out of the "cool" room where Granny kept the milk from the cows, to grabbing eggs out from under a chicken before she pecked your hands. I don't remember much about the schools I went to in Detroit, or the houses we lived in. But I do remember Granny's farm.
© Larry Reedy