One thing I have never regretted is trying to be with Mama and Papa as much as possible. I always tried to be with them at Christmas anyway. One Christmas a few years before Mama was gone, we weren’t together. Don’t remember the reason. I called her and we couldn’t talk; both broke down and cried. We hung up and when I got myself together, I called back. I told her then that would never happen again, and it didn’t.

As the family all know, Papa was a Mason. Of course it is a very close organization, and when Papa was learning his Masonic rights, he couldn’t do that in front of Mama, so what else? He practiced on the pigs.

As Willie reminded me, Papa always had his cough remedy; kerosene and sugar. The things we remember and the things we do forget. I remember how Papa could always crack pecans and get them out whole with his pocket knife. Of course, we could have saved him a lot of trouble just cracking them with a hammer, but of course they wouldn’t have been so good.