Guest Blogger Berkley Clayton takes a trip down memory lane...
Growing up in the 1960's South
I want to write about growing up in Capitola in eastern Leon County, FL. For people here in the Leon County area of North Florida, Capitola is a suburb of Chaires!!
I specifically want to talk about my grandmother and her parents on my father’s side. My grandmother’s father was named Wilson Decatur Boyd and her mother was Nellie Whiddon (Boyd). Both of them were born in the 1880’s and raised in the area in and around Monticello, FL. He called her “Nellie” and she called him “Mr. Boyd”. Prior to their death in the mid 1960’s I never heard one call the other anything but “Nellie” and “Mr. Boyd”.
When I was born in the mid 1950’s my great grandparents were in their 70’s. To me, my brother and my sister they were known as Grandma and Dindiddy. (Don’t ask me how or why he had that name, it was before my time!) (Editors note, rap names
.......... were big in the 50's?)
Dindiddy’s father fought with Company E, 1st Regiment, Infantry Reserve, Confederate States Army,
during the Civil War. Some of the State of Florida Civil War paperwork indicates he was discharged “south of Baldwin” in January 1865 which is near Jacksonville.
Dindiddy was a farmer all his life. I have a color picture of him sitting on a horse in front of the barn that was by the house in Capitola. That barn was partially destroyed by a small tornado that went through Capitola in February 2008. It also destroyed the same white three bedroom house where my father was born and where my great grandparents had lived.
Grandma’s mother was a teenager during the Civil War and her father owned slaves. Dead long before I was born, I still have the Fashion Southern Calendar clock.........
..... that Grandma’s mother bequeathed to my grandmother upon her death. Patented in 1876, it still keeps excellent time. My first memory of Grandma was of her outside in a bonnet, dress almost to her ankles with laced up high top black shoes, raking leaves in the yard and pushing them into a fire to burn them. No bagging leaves and putting them by the curb back then!! Dindiddy was there helping, wearing a long sleeve khaki shirt and khaki pants. I can’t remember ever seeing him in anything else. When he was outside he wore a beige Stetson hat ........
.....and you better never touch that hat.
Both of them lived with my father’s parents in a three bedroom white house in Capitola. My grandparents used the back bedroom and Grandma and Dindiddy slept in the front bedroom. This bedroom had a fireplace and a lot of cold winter nights were spent in that room watching the 19” black and white TV on a rolling cart. (This writer spent a lot of time carrying wood into that room so they would be warm in the winter.) ...
Rawhide and the Beverly Hillbillies were favorite shows that they watched. (Don’t talk while they were watching TV.) Grandma would sit in a small rocking chair and Dindiddy would sit in wooden straight back chair. He chewed.....
Bloodhound plug tobacco and dipped Honey Bee snuff from a small can and would spit tobacco juice into the fire at regular intervals. My grandmother and Grandma would tell him to stop spitting in the fire. He ignored them both. He would sit on the front porch of the house; feet propped up on the railing, and spit tobacco over the railing into the azaleas. My grandmother tried to get him to spit in the Maxwell House coffee can she gave him for that reason, but of course he ignored her. I can still see in my mind the spots of tobacco juice on the ground just over the railing off the front porch.
Grandma and Dindiddy were married 50 years at the time of my early memories of them. They slept in the same feather bed together every night that they were alive. (I hope I live long enough to be married that long.) I can still hear them arguing back and forth of some incidental thing. As young as I was then, I knew my great grandfather would say things to her just to get her to react in some way to what he said. Even with that, when they sat on the front porch together in side by side rocking chairs they would hold hands.
Grandma would kill chickens............
.... in the barnyard by ringing their necks and putting them in a kettle of hot water to pull the feathers. I was with her one day and wanted to “wring the chicken’s neck”. She did not want me to do it and I finally talked her into it. I took it and made one turn and let go. Of course the chicken was just pissed off and ran away. Grandma was mad too since she had to go and catch the same chicken again.
By the time I got old enough to realize what was going on, they were both in their 80’s and starting to fail. Grandma could still cook good biscuits though....
Almost as good as my grandmother!!! She tended to half bake the one’s she made, since she made them for “Mr. Boyd.”
Grandma had a stroke in 1965. My grandmother, my grandfather and my mom and dad got a hospital bed and put it in their bedroom. She died several days later due to complications from that stroke. Dindiddy
I wish that I could take the video equipment that we have today and go back and talk with my great grandparents about the Civil War and WWI and WWII. To be able to talk with someone whose mother and father lived through the Civil War would have been an awesome thing. Just think of the information and insight of being able to talk with someone like that!! I would say to anyone that reads this get a video camera and interview your parents and grandparents.....
... and put it on CD or DCD or anything. Your children will thank you for it one day. My kids will never have any knowledge of my great grandparents because there is nothing left of them other than one or two old photos and none of video/tape recordings.
As an aside: I “interviewed” both of my grandmothers while they were still alive about what it was like in Florida and Texas in the early 1900s. I have had the VHS tape transferred to DVD. That is something that I will always treasure and remember.
- BC
