Granny Atkinson

The first great influence on my life was my grandmother, Granny Atkinson, as she was known to her 20 grandchildren. Granny was my day-care provider until I started school and my after-school-care provider until I was old enough to fend for myself. To the five youngest grandchildren (myself, my brother Tracy, our three cousins Ronnie, Scott, and Steve) Granny was the axis that our world revolved around. Our parents worked in town. Granny’s house was our home from morning until night. The five of us were as close as brothers in our pre-school years and in the summers.

It amazes me when I think back to my childhood and realize just how much our world has changed in the last forty years. Granny and Granddaddy were farmers in a poor, rural, South Georgia county. They farmed 140 acres of row-crops, cows, and hogs with the help of my Uncle Junior. They lived in a four-room frame house with no indoor plumbing except for a sink in the kitchen. As I got older and saw the homes of folks in town I thought that my grandparents must have been extremely poor to have still been using an outhouse in the 1960's and 70's but as I think back, I realize that of our nine closest neighbors only four had indoor bathrooms; those four being the houses that were built in the early 60's and financed by the Farmer’s Home Administration which would not offer financing unless the home met their specifications.

Granddaddy had suffered a severe stroke when I was around two years old leaving him nearly blind and with limited hearing. When we came into the room he may confuse me for Scott or Ronnie for me, but we would walk him across the road when the cows came up to water and he could tell you exactly which cows were his and which were Uncle Junior’s. One of his favorite things was to watch wrestling on TV. He would pull his rocking chair up to within an inch or two of the old RCA black-and-white set on Saturday afternoons and watch Florida wrestling on channel 6 right after lunch and Alabama wrestling on channel 4 later in the afternoon (right after the Gene Reagan Farm Report and just before Lawrence Welk). There was never more physical activity in that house than when Granddaddy got that chair rocking as Terry Funk and Jack Briscoe or Dick Dunn and The Wrestling Pro went at it. As weak as he was, I would have pitied The Masked Yankees or their manager J. C. Dykes if W. C. Atkinson, Sr. could have gotten his hands on them.

If I were in charge of dictionary illustrations, there would be a picture of Granny Atkinson next to the entry for "saint". Granny raised seven children and most of her grandchildren, keeping the house in order, feasts on the table, and doing whatever she could on the farm. Our first real jobs was helping Granny pick up pecans. I don’t know how she persuaded five pre-school boys to help, but we did.

Every day after lunch (dinner is what we call it) Granny would lay out quilts on the floor and five boys would nap. As we napped, Granny read her bible. I don’t believe there was ever a missed day. She would underline scripture. Practically her entire bible was underlined. It would take me nearly 40 years to learn the value of daily bible reading.

In those days visiting was still a regular practice. It seemed that everyone who passed by on the road would stop for a while and visit on the front porch. Many people stopped to buy some Watkins products. The Ladies Auxiliary of Hebrew Freewill Baptist Church sold these products as a fund-raiser. Granny kept cases of Vanilla Extract and Lemon Flavoring at her house and folks would come by to get some when they needed them. She also used those flavorings in the magnificent cakes that she would bake from time to time. I would love to have one of her Lemon-Cheese cakes right now. I have the recipe, but when she wrote down the ingredients, she didn’t write down the quantities, so I have not had much luck at replicating exactly her recipe.

Granny was what we call in our church a "quiet disciple". Full of faith and humility, she quietly witnessed to her children, grandchildren and everyone she met. Several cousins and an aunt are still active members of Hebrew Freewill Baptist Church. My daddy was baptized and joined that church just weeks before he died. I am sure that Granny cried tears of joy in heaven that day, just as we did here.