As far as I can tell, some twenty-odd years after the events of Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding, and about eight years before the novel appeared, my great-grandfather was hired to manage the plantation Welty fictionalized in it. The book is set in September 1923, at Shellmound, just north of Greenwood, Mississippi. Very little happens in Delta Wedding, and apparently that was intentional. . . .
Here’s one last picture of Granddaddy, the last cotton buyer in Drew, Mississippi. He’s gazing (in adoration? nervously?) at the great-granddaughter (i.e., me) he bragged about to the reporter.
When my dad’s father’s dad — we called him Granddaddy — closed down his cotton business, this article ran in the Drew, Mississippi newspaper. Granddaddy probably really did grow up in a house without a ceiling, a house so cold that “when papa would talk through the hall to the other side of the house his mustache would freeze.” And . . .
I’m coming down with a cold or something, so in lieu of the great-grandfather story I’d planned to tell, here’s a shot of Grandpa, my dad’s father, standing with the rest of the committee to welcome Mary Ann Mobley, Miss America 1959, home to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. (Larger version here.) Grandpa stands to Ms. Mobley’s right, wearing sunglasses.
Of everyone in his family, my dad is said to be most like his grandfather (above, right). In personality, I mean. Not in appearance. The elder Newton apparently was so severe and domineering that his wife, Louise (above, left; not to be confused with Great Aunt Louise), rejoiced when her hearing started to go. No longer did she have to . . .