Letters to my Grandchildren Summer 1951

Joan and George. 

While I loved to pick cotton, I was not too fond of chopping cotton, de-weeding, and thinning out the plants.  However, in the summer of 1951 I was chopping cotton for a neighbor down towards Pink Lovelace's store.  Donnis Ashley and I were working in a field down there.  For lunch, I would always go back home where Mama would have a great lunch ready for me, and then I might rest awhile and go back and chop some more if it got cooler.

When I went home for lunch that one June day, Mama had lunch but she was also all a twitter regarding a letter that she had received from my Aunt Elsie who lived in Maryland.  Elsie's daughter, Joan, my first cousin was getting married, and she planned to have the wedding in August down at our grandmother's house.  She wanted me to be her maid of honor.  I was more excited about it than Mama was.  I'm not sure I had ever been to a wedding and I know for certain I had never BEEN in a wedding.

Beautiful Joan. 

Many of our purchases in those days were from the Sears Roebuck Catalog that arrived at our house in the mail every season.  That was the source of the evening dress that I would choose to wear in the wedding.  It was a lovely pink dress with a few rhinestones embedded around the front of the bodice and a sheer cape covering the shoulders. We told Aunt Elsie that I would wear pink so she could choose a picture hat as an accessory for me to wear.  She and Joan came down several days before the wedding day, and when I opened the hatbox from Hecht's in Baltimore that they brought there was this beautiful pink picture hat.  The prettiest hat I had ever seen.  It matched my dress perfectly.  That hat was a birthday gift for me too, my birthday was on the 23 of August, and the wedding was on August, 25.  I had just turned 14.  Joan was only 20.

Cheryl, the flower girl, and me. 

My Dad built an altar that was placed out in front of the beautiful Spirea bush ablaze with white blossoms in front of Grandma's porch.  The piano was pulled out on the porch.  I don't remember who played the piano, but our cousin Virginia Greene, who was an accomplished musician, sang. Our little cousin Cheryl was the flower girl also dressed in pink.  Chairs were placed out on the lawn facing the porch where a large number of aunts, uncles, and cousins who attended sat.

The wedding party in front of the altar in front of Grandma Greene's front porch.

I was happy to be in the wedding, but at the same time, I was sad that Joan was getting married.  She always came down to Grandma's in the summer for a long visit, and I knew she wouldn't; be doing that now.

After the wedding, there was a reception up the road at our Aunt Edith's house.  Joan knew I was sad because she wouldn't be coming in the summers to play, but she told me that I wouldn't be interested in playing for many more summers.  She was right.  It wasn't too many summers until I became interested in boys.