I left for my Tennessee-Mississippi sojourn sans laptop (R.I.P.), cell phone (forgotten at work), and socks (oops), but I’ve got a camera, and just finished rereading As I Lay Dying, so I should at least get some photos and some Faulkner up. (Did you know the people of Oxford used to call him “Count No-Count“? I didn’t, or had forgotten, . . .
Textbooks devoted to Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil were part of the State of Texas’ high school curriculum in my grandmother’s day, evidently.
Robert Bruce, my mom’s dad, sits at the far left of this shot next to Christine, the woman with whom he cheated on my grandmother throughout their short marriage. She became his third wife. I like to think the dinner photos became progressively less grim with each of his 13 marriages. The picture above was taken at Sivils Drive-In (below) . . .
Martha Rebecca Johnston, my grandmother, was born April 23, 1905. She died nine years ago, on May 6, 1998. This post originally included an anecdote about her dream of heaven, which she wasn’t too crazy about, and her funeral, and now you can read it at the end of “My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a . . .
Zone Johnston, my granny’s father, was always dragging his wife and kids to carpentry jobs throughout Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and beyond, and then abandoning them in favor of a new pretty face. According to my mom, “[his wife’s] people would have to come to where they were and take them home until Zone finished his work and wandered back . . .