I had two mothers.
One was my birth mother. I made a tribute to her year before last on Pinterest, and you can see it here.
The other is who we called affectionately Ranny, because her first grandbaby couldn’t say Granny.
Ranny was in the comical post about my first big haircut. You can read it here in case you missed it.
She was a tall woman compared to the rest of the women in my family. My other Grandmother said that when she first met her, she remembered thinking that Ranny was the tallest woman she had ever seen. Now I have a daughter who is taller than any of us other women in the family. We think Tracy got Ranny’s height.
Ranny, Mom, Grandmother Hamrick & Great Grandmother Wilkerson at a Wedding Shower held for my Mom (1952)
Ranny was born in the the late 1800s and was from Dalton, Georgia. She talked quite excitedly about when Sherman came through Georgia “burning and pillaging…”, even though she was born over thirty years after the War.
When I got older, I realized that she heard about the War first hand from her grandparents and great aunts and uncles. I was hearing their stories. I wish I had written them down.
Ranny with some of her family in Dalton, Georgia. She is on the far right.
She told me that when she was young one of their favorite ways to play was to pull over a specific type of willowy tree and then use the tree to vault over to the other side like a pole vault. I never could find one in North Florida that worked like she described, though I tried many times.
She taught me that a woman wasn’t completely dressed unless she had on lipstick and earrings, though she wasn’t a vain woman. She also taught me the importance of sun protection. I wrote a blog post about that experience, too. You can read about it here.
My Grandmother Roe at 91
And I can remember her putting on her makeup standing in front of a little mirror hanging between two windows on her back porch. I now know why that mirror was back there instead of in her bathroom.
It was her eyesight. I know this because I have the same problem now. I need better light just to shave my legs and will move over by the bathtub window for the task. My shower is too dark.
Her fragrance was “To A Wild Rose” by Avon. Years ago I realized that Pavlova has the same fragrance, and I always keep a bottle of it. It reminds me of her.
When I was four, on her back porch she taught me my letters and numbers. She had a blackboard on the wall back there. She was also the one that I remember reading to me. By the time I got to Kindergarten, I was ahead of some of the children in my class.
Me & My Ranny
We now know that my Dad had learning disabilities, but no one knew what that was back then. He had a hard time in school. He nor she ever told me, but I think maybe some of the kids must have called him stupid.
I think that, because he and she both were adamant about teaching us that you never call anyone that. The word itself was practically forbidden in our home. So I think she wanted to make sure I didn’t have those problems when I started school.
Ranny, Daddy & Me
Ranny was not the type to spoil us, though she loved us madly and we all knew it. But she didn’t spare the rod either.
There was a spirea bush between her house and ours. If we were doing something really bad, she would come flying out of her house, breaking off a switch from that bush; and I can still see her ripping those leaves off as she descended upon us. If you didn’t stay still, she would grab you by one of your ponytails.
Funny thing, though. It was ok for her to switch us, but when Mom or Dad would do it, she was surely the one we ran to crying.
But Mom and Dad didn’t let us cry too long after a spanking. They would say, “Dry it up or I’ll give you something more to cry about.” Ranny would say, “Lordy mercy. First you beat them and then won’t even let them cry.”
Ranny wasn’t as good a cook as my Grandmother Hamrick, but I loved Ranny’s fried apple turnovers and coconut cake. I spent a good half a decade after she died trying to replicate both recipes, which were never written down.
I finally figured out the turnovers, but my coconut cake just wasn’t the same until a few years ago. I ran across a recipe online that sounded right, except when they told how to do the icing. They warned that if you didn’t do it right that the icing would be a little gritty.
That is when I realized what my cake was missing. Her icing was always a little gritty. I replicated the recipe purposely doing the icing wrong, and I finally did her coconut cake. Boy, was it good!!
Ranny was still alive and living next door when I was raising my daughters in my parent’s old home. My girls had her living next door to them just like I did.
That is, until she passed. Jamie was 10, and Tracy was 7. What they remember best about her was how she would have them Tang and a grilled cheese sandwich ready for when they got off the bus after school.
I remember what she had for me and Pam when we got in from school. It was a leftover biscuit with a hole in it on its side that she made with her finger. She filled the hole full of cane syrup. Then she would send us outdoors to eat it.
She taught me the best way to sop a biscuit in cane syrup. You don’t just pour a little syrup on your plate. You pour a little puddle of syrup, then add to it a little pat of butter, and then whip the butter into the syrup using a fork. Boy is it good.
Ranny told us stories about courting Granddaddy Roe in a horse and buggy mostly to and from church back in North Georgia. Think about the technological changes she saw in her life. In her lifetime she went from horse and buggy to the invention of cars, airplanes and TVs to watching a man walk on the moon.
Ranny & Her Sisters. Ranny is on the far right.
I learned, though, a few months ago that she and my Granddaddy saw each other much more than just at church. Newspapers.com just digitized the Dalton Daily Citizen, and I found her name often in the society pages, along with Granddaddy’s, too. There they were at taffy pulls, picnics, and sings. They even wrote about her sleep overs with girlfriends. She was quite a socialite before she turned 18 and moved away.
It certainly didn’t fit my memory of her, though. She was the most unassuming, quiet, and sweetest person I ever knew. Honest to the core and always willing to see the best in anyone.
By the time Ranny was 18, her father moved the family south to Thomas County, GA where he bought farm land. Ranny said that Granddaddy Roe and Uncle Duff rode down on the train with all the family’s possessions and livestock. She and the rest of the family drove down in two Model T’s, one that belonged to her dad and one that belonged to her uncle. She had seven siblings.
After they moved down to South Georgia and after Granddaddy Roe returned from WWI, she and Granddaddy finally married. He told her that he would ask her to marry him only one more time, and she finally accepted after a courtship of more than five years. They married, leased a house just north of Meigs on the county line, and his brother John moved in with them the very next day.
Finally, she and Granddaddy Roe moved to Monticello and settled east of town in a house that later my sister Pam inherited. Daddy was born there. Pam’s children now own the house.
Her home there is where I lived for the first five years of my life. It took that long for Dad to build our home next door.
Grandmother Roe
Ranny had a breezeway and would sit and read out there. I remember coming in and sitting in her lap when I was so big that my feet dragged the floor. She had a great lap for cuddling.
I still miss her, though she’s been gone now almost thirty years. And I’m older now than she was when I was born.
A few years ago it was time for me to choose a Grandmother nickname for my first grandchild to call me. I decided that if no one chose the name Ranny, that it would be lost forever in just a few generations. I chose to be Ranny, and that is what my six grandchildren call me today.
I just hope I can be half the Grandma that she was.
