My family has lived in America since the late 1600s. I don't know a lot about my earliest ancestors but I have vivid memories of both sets of grandparents. My maternal grandmother is especially memorable since I used to spend weeks during the summer at her house. Her name was Athie Mae Poe.

We called our grandmother MyMaw. She was born in east central Alabama a few years after the Civil War not far from where the battle of Horseshoe Bend was fought when the Indians were being removed from the state. She was a tiny woman, standing less than five feet tall. What she lacked in size she made up for in spunk, common sense and country wit.

On the Chattahoochee

Papa's Store

She loved talking about "the old days." The last movie she had seen at a theatre was a silent film and she rarely watched TV except for the news or Billy Graham. She rarely went anywhere since the last automobile my grandfather owned was a T model Ford. Her connection to the outside world was maintained by faithfully reading "Grit" magazine. I loved listening to her talk. "Edgar hope me in the garden yesterdy" meant "Edgar helped me in the garden yesterday." "Let's go up to the H&H and get a dope" meant "Let's walk to the H&H grocery store and get a soft drink." She loved talking about the Old Times.

While talking one day when I was a teenager she told me a fantastic story: "Papa's farm was in the bend of Saugahatchee Creek not far from Tallassee Alabama. We had a smokehouse out behind the house where we salted down our pork after hog killin's. Had sides of beef in there too. We had to keep a lookout 'cause sometimes critters would try to get in the smokehouse and sometimes escaped convicts from the road gangs would come by lookin' for food. One night I heard a racket comin' from the smokehouse so I got Papa's kerosene lantern and eased out the back door to see what was happenin'. That's when I saw this great big hairy thing comin' out of the smokehouse with a side of beef on it's shoulder. Well, I'd never seen anything like that and hope I never do again! I looked at it and it looked at me and gave a kind of grunt and ran across the back yard and jumped over a four-strand barbed wire fence, still carryin' that side of beef!

"The thing walked like a man but was hairy all over like a gorilla. Well, I knew it wasn't no gorilla 'cause there weren't no circuses or zoos anywhere around there for it to escape from. The main thing I remember was that it stunk to High Heaven! I never smelled anything, man nor beast, that smelled like that! I won't never forget that smell. I never did find out what that thing was."

(I have always had an interest in the paranormal and in weird things like UFOs and Cryptozoology. It sounded to me like a classic Bigfoot sighting from what I have read. MyMaw was not in the habit of lying and since she had never heard of Bigfoot or Sasquatch her memory could not have been tainted by popular TV or movies.)

The part of the country where MyMaw grew up was still pretty much wilderness back in the late 1800s. She told me about listening to her uncles telling about how they fought the "Yankees" near Chattanooga during the Civil War and how they said it was so humid then that they could wring water out of their handkerchiefs.

One time she mentioned the time she was followed by a "Painter." I didn't know what a "Painter" was but finally figured out that it was what the country folk called black panthers.

Here's MyMaw's story about "Painters": "When I was a little girl I had to walk down to the creek to fetch water of an evening. I'd take two buckets, fill 'em up and bring them back to the house. One time it got dark on me before I got back up to the house. I could hear a Painter followin' me along the path. He was jumpin' from tree to tree followin' right alongside of me. I could see his red eyes glowin' in the tree limbs. I got real skeered and started runnin' back toward home. By the time I got home there was hardly a drop of water in the buckets! That's the last time I fetched water after dark."

It took me years to really appreciate the history and rich cultural traditions that I learned while sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table while she made biscuits in a big old worn out wooden bowl. I still miss the smell of that kitchen and MyMaw's fried apple pies.