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Ma,
The One and Only 
Written by: Katy

      On June 10, 1908, a beautiful baby girl was born in Newbern, Tennessee in her lovely home. I better know her as Ma, but her parents named her Ruby Lucille Johnson.  She is my great-grandmother. This is the story of her life.
     Ma had two sisters, a mother and “Daddy.”  Her sisters were Velma Elizabeth and Lila Cherry, and her parents were Mary Elizabeth Hurt and Earnest Love Johnson. She was two years younger than Velma Elizabeth, whom she called Sister and eighteen months older than Lila Cherry.   She was very close to Cherry as they shared similar interests in sports, but not as close to her other sister, who liked to stay in the house.   Ma loved to play outside with Cherry. They were pretty much best friends. They all went to school at Newbern Grammar School, which had 8 grades. Her principal called Ma Ruby, although her friends called her Cille.  After two weeks of school, when she was in 3rd grade, she was playing a favorite game, “Pop the Whip.” When she was at the end of the line, she broke her leg.  She was out of school until Christmas, and during that time she used a little red chair for a crutch.  My grandmother still has that chair.
     Ma was only eleven when she witnessed the terrible death of her grandmother.  She was really close to her grandmother as they lived next door to each other.   She was home from school one day, due to a bad cold.  Her grandmother was strolling along the wooden porch when she tripped on the steps, and hit her head on the ground below her and broke her neck. Hearing the thud, her maid, Mrs. Brown, ran out to her. She called  to “Miss Mally” but she was dead from the fall.  It was Ma’s misfortune to witness this, but it is something that she will definitely never forget.
    Transportation was different back then. Some richer people had cars. Though Ma’s family was pretty rich for that time, they never had a car. Her dad, who was a mailman, always drove a horse and buggy, but never learned to drive a car.  Their horses were named Billy and Bird.  Ma enjoyed riding them all over the neighborhood.   Ma’s favorite childhood toy was a family of dolls that they had. She loved to play with them the most.   My grandmother still has these dolls, which have a special place in an antique rocker at their house in Tennessee.
    When the Johnsons went on vacation, Ma always wanted to go to the countryside to visit relatives, and they usually did. As I said before, the Johnsons were pretty rich. Ma and her siblings didn’t do any chores! “I guess we were spoiled” she stated. When she was a kid her life was pretty normal, but as Ma grew it became rather interesting.
     When Ma was eighteen, she was a flapper. A flapper was the “hippie” of the day. She lived on the “cutting edge.”  She danced a lot, but, surprisingly, she was quite bad at the Charleston, which is and was a very famous dance. However, she was good at the shimmy. The dresses she wore were short for the time. I guess she lived up to her father’s nickname for her, Steel.
     Ma also had a job in her teenage years. She worked in a drug store. She mainly worked as a soda jerk, “But I did anything he [her boss] wanted me to,” she said.  Ma worked there from her high school graduation when she was eighteen, until she married at age twenty-six. She worked from eight a.m. to six p.m., and received a dollar a day. And when she worked on Saturday from eight a.m. to ten p.m., she was paid one dollar and fifty cents. Ma loved her job, but there was one embarrassing day that she’ll never forget.   Part of her job was to help people find things when they came in the store.  A man walked into the store and asked for help finding medicine. “What is it used for?” she asked. “I need medicine for piles.”  Both Ma and the man were very embarrassed.  Ma said that was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to her.
     World War 1 was going on when Ma was growing up. She recalls a plane flying over their house, and being scared that they would be bombed. They would listen to their radio after dinner to find out what was happening in the war. In World War 2, her brother-in-law fought.
    The Johnsons always had pets. Ma’s dad loved animals.  They had a yellow and white tabby that she loved.  They also had horses to carry the mail and for transportation, chickens to provide eggs for the family, and a pig for meat, and a milking cow.

    Ma played sports as a teenager. She loved to play basketball. She was a center. She was short (Ma was only four foot eleven) but very good. The uniforms they wore back then were bloomers, along with their underwear.
    Ma’s best friend was Evelyn Holman who would later marry a man she always referred to as “Mr. Shuck.”

    One of her other friends went to Memphis and brought back a card game called Bridge. They started a club, which has been running ever since. In fact, Ma’s sister died two years ago when she was on her way to the weekly club meeting.  Ma also had a friend named Kathryn Christopher who taught her how to knit.  My mom has many beautiful sweaters that Ma knitted for her.
     Ma was engaged to a man named Clifford three different times before meeting my great-grandfather and marrying him four months later on September 12, 1934.  Ma says that the best thing that ever happened to her was finding the husband that she did.   Ma and Pete had a baby girl on May 8, 1936.

     “I haven’t retired yet!” she said, even though she never worked outside of the house after she was married. Because of Pete’s job, they moved all over the world. They lived in England, Portugal, Lebanon, Canada (Montreal and Edmonton), and all over the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. They traveled by car, prop plane, jet, train, and when crossing oceans, an ocean liner. When they went to all these places, Pete worked, and Ma went sightseeing.
     The polio epidemic in the 40’s, and the flu epidemic were two major illnesses in Ma’s day. Luckily, she did not catch them.  Ma remembered another embarrassing time, when she wanted to go to the movies. They didn’t have any available cash for the 15 cent admission price, so Pete said to go see him at the office on the way.  Pete borrowed the 15 cents from someone at work so that he could give Ma the money to go.  They were embarrassed to ask for the money, but he gave them the cash anyway.
     Though Ma always had electricity, many things were invented in her lifetime. Cars, television, radios, microwaves, airplanes, space shuttles (landing on the moon), polio vaccine, helicopters, telephones, washers, and dryers were some major inventions. Before the washer and dryer, the job of cleaning laundry was hard and tedious. First, you had to fix a big tub of boiling water in an iron pot outside, and rinse the clothes. Then, when they got hot enough, you put in soap, and stirred the clothes until they were clean. After that, you rinsed them, and put them in a clamp. The clamp was two cylinders that were close together. You put the clothes in between them, and pulled the crank on the side. Then you would change the water with a hose. This devise would break buttons, but would wring the clothes out pretty well after a few times of doing it.  I would never want to do that, would you?  Ma’s mom had a wood stove in the kitchen and had a coal oil stove in the dining room to cook.
     Pete retired in 1970, and the happy couple moved back to the 70 acre family farm in Tennessee, where they still live today.  I have many wonderful memories of Ma. One of them is the wonderful smell of her kitchen. It always smells like cooked vegetables and beef. We walk in there, and it always smells like something’s cooking.  Another thing I will never forget is how friendly Ma is to people.  She always greets people with a smile and a pat on the back.   I hope you have enjoyed reading this biography as much as I enjoy my great grandmother, Ma.

 

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