Chocolate Drops and a Dresser

© Dr. Gary D. Lemmons, November 25, 2007

Born in 1902, my maternal grandmother, Cecile Mae Tyler was the only girl among four siblings in the family of Andrew Harrison Jackson Chesterfield Eli Morgan Polk Dallas Tyler on the banks of Norman’s Creek in southwest Coffee County, Tennessee.  Country to the core, lacking formal education, and steeped in the superstition of the age, she was a highly intelligent woman for her environment and for her place in time. 

Coming of age at the end of the First World War, she married my grandfather, Walter Lemmons, in 1920 and gave birth to my father in 1921.  A second child would die in infancy.  Then my Uncle Cleatus would be born in 1924.  After that, the doctor told my grandfather, in no uncertain terms, that my grandmother didn’t need to have any more babies.   She didn’t!

My grandfather was a hard-working man.  A farmer by vocation, he worked for a while on the St. Louis, Nashville, and Chattanooga Railroad.  During the Great Depression, he pulled a stint on the WPA.  When World War II began, he became civilian employee of the Corp of Engineers.  After the war, he returned to farming and also worked as a farm laborer for Mr. Bill Jones a wealthy farm owner and businessman in Tullahoma.

My grandparents never had a lot of money.  There were not a lot of frills in their home.  The house, itself, was one that my grandfather had built on property given to them by my great-grandfather Tyler.  It was plainly furnished with beds and sitting chairs.  The floors were hardwood with linoleum rugs.  There was no indoor plumbing until the 1970s.  Water was “toted” from the spring out back and the “privy” was a short walk down the path from the back porch.

As a child, I would often visit my grandmother.  Invariably, she would rummage around the kitchen and find some chocolate crème drops in a brown paper sack that she had squirreled away.  We would share the candy and enjoy visiting with each other.  Chocolate crème drops were her favorite.

In the front room, she had the only real piece of furniture of any value that she owned.  It was a four drawer dresser with mirror.  She kept her linens and other special belongings in that dresser.  I remember once when my uncle and his wife and daughter were visiting, my grandmother cleaned out the bottom drawer of the dresser and made a bed for my cousin, Linda, who was a small infant at that time. 

No, they didn’t close the drawer at bedtime! 

On the occasion of my eighth birthday, I asked my Granny for her dresser.  She smiled and said that when I grew-up and had a family of my own, if I still wanted it, it would be mine.

The other evening, Miss Debbie came home with a bag of chocolate crème drops.  I don’t really care for candy all that much anymore, but I took a piece out of the paper bag.  A bit of nostalgia swept over me as I looked at the old dresser that sits in our bedroom, and for just a moment I was eight years old again.

When I think of all the sacrifices that our ancestors made, when I think of the struggles that they faced with the skimpiest of resources, when I think of all the ways in which they contributed to the development of the society in which we live today and to all the conveniences and enjoyments that we take for granted, I am humbled.  At the same time I am more determined than ever not to allow the pettiness of people of poor character and the impudence of the indolent to hold sway.

For as long as I live, I will sting them with my pen.