BEYOND MAGNOLIAS

Mama

At the time of my father’s death, Grandpa Davies had recently given up unprofitable rice farming in favor of truck gardening, but his income from that activity proved inadequate to care for the houseful of grandchildren who had suddenly descended upon him. There was adequate land on his 80-acre farm so, figuring that they would need a plentiful supply of milk, he resolved the situation by establishing a dairy farm and putting the Kendall kids to work earning their keep. He also bought a new Model T Ford delivery truck and proudly embellished its panels with the title, “Magnolia Dairy, David M. Davies, Prop.” Between the dairy and vegetable farm we had all the milk we could drink and plenty of meat and vegetables to eat.  Mama, unfortunately, lacked cash to buy clothes and school supplies for her children. Her solution to the problem was to teach, one of the few occupations open to women in those days.  She had received a good home schooling education from her parents, both college graduates; but she needed a teacher’s certificate to gain employment.  She enrolled in Louisiana State University for a summer course and did better than the high school principals in her class.  In my family album I have a clipping from the New Orleans Times Picayune that summer. It is a photo of Mama and her eight children with the caption, “Wanted: A College Education for These.”  The accompanying story tells of a widow’s dedication and her determination to achieve her goal. At the end of the summer Mama got her teacher’s certificate and earned income by teaching for the next several years.

When I was five Mama took me with her to Sweetlake, some 25 miles south of Lake Charles, where she taught in a one-room schoolhouse. There were six grades and she taught all of them. She put me in the first grade. She was a very good teacher and a wonderful mother, but she always seemed to be stricter with me than with the other children in my class.  In retrospect I must confess that I benefited from her imposed discipline. When I was six Mama enrolled me in LaGrange school, where my siblings were already attending, once again in the first grade.  At the time I resented it, but being with kids my own age got me off to a better start than the second grade would have.

Mama enjoyed teaching, but because of her limited formal education the only openings available to her were in small rural schools too far from home for daily commuting.  At best she could only get home to her family on weekends.  During her absences the older children looked after the younger ones, but they all needed more maternal attention. One of Mama’s first purchases from her teaching income was a Model-T Ford to provide transportation for her kids to and from school, five miles each way.  My older siblings drove it until they graduated from high school and the next in order took over. The road we drove over was little more than a path through the rice fields, always muddy during Louisiana’s frequent heavy rains.  When the Model-T got bogged down, as it often did, four or five of us would pile out and push it out of the mud.  Eventually, under pressure from the newly elected Governor Huey P. Long, the Louisiana legislature appropriated funds to consolidate rural schools, improve rural roads, and provide free bus transportation and textbooks for school children. Our road received an application of oyster shells that made it passable during the rainy season, and Mama rejoiced that she would no longer have to buy us schoolbooks. With this she gave up teaching in favor of midwifery to earn the cash needed to keep her children in school.