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. . . .
My grandmother kept letters documenting the fallout from my grandfather’s affair (with the woman who became his next wife). In this missive (below), he urges my grandmother to leave her parents’ place and come back to him. The language becomes increasingly unhinged and self-pitying; I suspect he was getting progressively shitfaced as he wrote. Some notable passages (typos reproduced from . . .
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) . . .
I’ve been delving into family history recently, and my mom has been answering questions about her fascinating lothario father (above, right), who died the year before I was born. From recent email: Daddy was married 13 times, I think: once before he married Granny, then 2-3 times to Christine…. I have a letter here from Gran [from] when Daddy was . . .