| This page is dedicated to the memory of ELMER & MAUDIE PRESLEY |
| Uncle Elmer used to be on his porch whenever I would be walking up the holler on my way home from school or visiting my Aunt Pauline's house. I would stop and take a rest on his porch and we would talk. He was so easy to talk to and I liked him a lot. He was a very easy going person. I only heard him yell a couple of times and that was once at Larry and one time at Maxine. Aunt Maudie was a very reserved person. If I was with my mom and we stopped to rest on their porch, Aunt Maudie would come out onto the porch and talk to mom. When I was very young I can remember Uncle Elmer and my dad working in Grandma Presley's corn field. They would help with hoeing the corn and then again would be there to help harvest the corn at the end of the summer. Uncle Elmer was a wonderful husband. He would wash clothes for Maudie, help her with cleaning the house. I am talking about a time when there were certain jobs for men and certain jobs for women and the lines were never crossed. My mom would have to carry her own water from the creek to the washhouse. Carry all the clothes to the wash house. Hang everything on the line by herself with no help from my dad. I don't remember Uncle Elmer ever going off to work. He must have been retired because he was always home. He and Maudie were not the type to run the road and gossip. They mostly stayed at home and minded their own business. Daddy and Elmer would help each other out whenever one or the other needed help. One time daddy and Uncle Elmer opened an abandoned mine that was between our house and their house. They hauled coal out of that mine because neither one of us had money to buy coal to cook with or keep our houses heated. Everyone in Dizney was a distant cousin on one side or the other. The only means of transportation before the 40s was by horse, foot or sled drawn by a horse. There was not a lot of socializing with people from other towns and intermarriage was a necessity if you didn't want to be an old maid. Everyone helped each other out because we all were family or had married into families with close ties to each other.. When I was three or four, I can remember a lot of people gathered in our house on the enclosed unfinished room at the back of the house. I think they were helping with the harvest from our garden at the end of the summer. It was either shelling corn or stringing beans. Corn was ground into meal for cornbread. Daddy made a grinding mill in our barn and would grind corn for people who needed it done. Alene and I were in the same grade in school. She was was much smarter than I was. When she graduated from high school she went to college and became a nurse. We were in the same Sunday school class. My favorite sunday school teacher was Mamow (Leona) Cloud. I just loved hearing her bible stories. Whenever I could sneak away and not let daddy catch me, I would walk down the holler to play with Alene. She had a play house set up at one end of the wash house, I believe. We would play with her dolls and toys. I never had but one doll that I can remember. Alene had a few more toys than I did. Elmer and Maudie had cats. Daddy hated cats but we had one for a short period of time. I loved to play with the cats at Uncle Elmer's house. Daddy told me a story about when I was first born or a few months old, they had a cat and he caught it sitting on my chest with its face in my face. There was an old wise tale that a cat could steal a baby's breath. More likely it was their weight on the babies chest that cut off their breathing. He took the cat outside and killed it. No cats were allowed in our family after that. Daddy was very protective of me because his first child was a girl and she died on her second day of life. I don't think Elmer or Maudie had a car. I never saw them driving a car. Their youngest son, Larry , got a car when he graduated high school. I believe he took them places they needed to go. Maxine was a majorette in the highschool band. She got to go on trips with the school band and I admired her very much. I thought that she was beautiful and so much fun. She would come up to my house to visit. She would teach me how to twirl the baton around my fingers. Maxine loved Elvis. I remember me, mom, pauline and maxine going to someone's house to watch Elvis on tv. Larry was different from the rest of us cousins. He was a little bit slow. I am not sure how much older Larry was than me and my brothers were. I don't remember him going to the the dizney school. He got teased a lot by the bullies in Dizney. As he got older he learned to fight back. My brothers and cousins weren't angels. They used to tease Larry too but no in a mean way. Larry had this little red wagon and he used to pull it up the holler to Mamow Cloud's house (which was the very end of the road in stretchneck). I remember one time, my brothers and cousins were in the creek near Mamow Cloud's house picking blackberries and Larry snuck up and threw rocks at us. He would run beside the wagon holding onto the front arm that guided it and then jump in and ride all the way to his house. That was his get away wagon. Whenever he would come up by our house or mamow Cloud's house and get into it with my brothers he would have the last word and jump in his wagon and no one could catch him. Nobody tried either because they knew they would have to deal with Uncle Elmer if he caught them bothering Larry. When Larry got older, over 18 I guess, he would drive his car to visit relatives. He got involved with the holiness church and would take trips with the church group. On one trip they were down south somewhere at a convention. Their religion believed that they could handle poison snake and not be harmed if their faith was strong enough. Uncle Elmer got a call that Larry had been bitten by one of the poisonious snakes. Some church members drove Larry home and just dropped him off and left. Larry was sick for some time and when he got older it was discovered that the snake bite damaged his kidneys and he had to take treatments on a machine to keep him alive. By the time we moved away in 1960, Alene was the only one at home. Most of their children moved away to Ohio except Alene. She lived in or near Harlan because she worked in the area as a nurse. After Uncle Elmer died in the 1980's aunt Maudie moved to Ohio also. Aunt Maudie passed away recently. She had to have been close to 100 years old. |