God, Ghosts, and Grannies

I was the epitome of the 60’s generation, “make love, not war,” “flower power,” Kent State, assassinations, black and white, no shades of gray. Dropping acid, smoking dope, peace, love, and comfort—I searched for them all. I knew more than anyone, I was smarter than everyone and, in the summer of my sixteenth birthday I ran away from home. I could have dropped acid, smoked dope, and disappeared forever. I now see the hazards of it all. I could have died. Instead, I met Bill.

Bill Byerly took me home, announced to my mom that we were getting married (he never asked me), and, three days later, we were legally hitched. When our first daughter was born, Alfred Eisenstaedt, the LIFE photographer, came to photograph our family of six living generations.

Eisenstaedt was the first famous person I’d ever met; he came to South Alabama when my daughter was 10 months old, expressly to photograph Trina, me, and her grandmothers. That early summer day not only gave us our “fifteen minutes of Andy Warhol fame,” it changed our lives forever.

There we were, six generations, six individuals, each viewing the world through uniquely skewed rose-colored glasses. A curious Eisenstaedt asked my great-great grandmother when her birthday was. She replied, “I was born November 18, 1871.”

Astonished, Eisenstaedt asked, “You were born only six years after the end of the Civil War?”

“That’s right,” she answered, “and I fed Jesse James biscuits on my back porch.”

I suddenly realized there was so much I didn’t know about my family. It occurred to me that if I didn’t know much about the women who sat near me, I knew nothing about my paternal side.

I knew my father was lost at sea from the USS Princeton during the Korean Conflict. My mother was pregnant at the time. I knew his mother, Mama Booth, wanted me to absorb the vast genealogical knowledge that flowed from her lips during our numerous fishing escapades. She taught me Irish superstitions, how to milk a cow, and how to keep baby quail alive when their mother disappeared.

Yet, when I asked about my father, she always answered with, “Let’s not talk about that,” abruptly ending any conversation.

My vivid imagination concluded that somehow our family was connected to the infamous John Wilkes Booth. No one would tell me anything, except that my father’s grandfather was named John Posey Booth, and he was murdered when my grandfather was only two years old.

That day, sitting in the hot Alabama sun, with all my grandmothers surrounding me, my addiction to finding our family history was born. I had to know more; especially after I discovered that not only was my grandfather murdered, but also my maternal and paternal families were interwoven with marriages and love through seven major conflicts, all the way back to the Revolutionary War, when my paternal fourth great-grandmother and my maternal fourth great-grandmother were growing up as siblings in the Carolinas.

This was the winning entry in the “Family Tree Magazine/Abbott Press Family History Contest.” I entered the contest on a whim; I read the announcement online and noticed that the essay must be five-hundred words or less. I started writing. Two hours later, I had my essay, but it contained six hundred and forty two words. So, I did what every editor does. I cut, and cut, until the number at the bottom of the word document read 500. Then I hit the send button.