The Bullock Family of Buena Vista, Georgia, part two

This is a typed "recollection" by my grandmother about her family. If you missed the first part of this story... click here to go back and read it....

There were the days we visited Juniper, Georgia. Aunt Mae and Uncle Will Posey lived there where Uncle Will had a casket factory. Later on, the casket factory burned and he worked for the post office.

Myra, George, Leon and Virginia are Aunt Mae and Uncle Will's children. Cynthia and Charles loved to go to Juniper (they are near the ages of these children). I only remember the big house and yard, the lake, the bridge over teh lake. Sis liked to mimic Aunt Mae calling the children home: "Lee-on, Geor-ge, My-ra, Shug". On the back porch were basins for us to wash up for dinner.

There were times we drove to Talbotton to visit "Miss" Pearl and her husband John. We would catch June bugs -- in some way we tied string to one of their legs. (Buddy Jordon, Virginia's future husband lived in Talbotton).

One time we were riding to Buena Vista in the old Whippet. A bee got in the window. Aunt Kate, Harry Bird and Edd Jr. were with us. The bee stung one of them. This temporarily presented a problem but relief finally arrived!

Aunt Relia and Uncle David moved to Atlanta in the 30's. (sidenote: the 1940 Census shows them living at 1290 S. Oxford Road in unincorporated Emory - Dekalb County, Georgia) Uncle David and a Mr. Fuller opened a fried pork skins business. This became a very profitable operation. Unfortunately, David Jr. lost his life in a plane crash at a young age. George joined the army. He was killed while on R&R - plane crashed into the side of a mountain somewhere in Italy. O.C. joined the Army during WWII. He became quite ill. Aunt Relia flew out to see about him. Barbara went off to Virginia Intermont College. (Barbara is about  5 years younger than I). Frank was still in school. (he is about five years younger than Barbara). After O.C.'s tour of duty he married Vivian Calloway. They have two daughters, Cordy and Karen.

Barbara married John Harris, a Georgia Tech graduate. They have one son, John III and two daughters, Susan and Kathi.

Frank, Aunt Relia and Uncle David's youngest son ws very active in the family business. He and his wife, Rita, have two daughter, Jan and Pam. Rita died some years ago. He is now married to his childhood sweetheart, Kitty.

Mother and Daddy's home was a gathering place for relatives before any of them moved to Atlanta. Daddy was a General Practician, practicing medicine at Crawford Long Hospital and had an established office located at the Flat Iron Building in downtown Atlanta.

Aunt Mae and Uncle Will moved to Atlanta in the 30s. Aunt Lillian and Uncle Oscar Garner lived in the Stone Mountain, Georgia, area where Uncle Oscar's family lived. (sidenote: the 1940 Census shows them living at 998 Cleburne Avenue, NE, Atlanta) They were "hard-shelled" Baptists, as they called them, whom used no organs or pianos- used a dulcimer-type instrument. They would have foot washings and there would be "dinner out on the ground" after preaching. I had the pleasure of taking Uncle Oscar and Aunt Lillian so experienced what the early Christians did as Jesus washed their feet.

Uncle Oscar was a World War I survivor. Aunt Lillian and Uncle Oscar have two sons, Charles, about Sister Jane's age and Robert, about Sister Bette's age. Uncle Oscar and Aunt Lillian eventually settled in East Atlanta on Portland Avenue. Uncle Oscar worked with his sister Rena's husband who had a large lumber yard, Williams Brothers. Nunnie (Aunt Lillian) enjoyed keeping a clean house - - I can visualize the curtain stretchers out on the driveway -- shortly there would be a beautifully starched organdy-type curtains. Nunnie also liked to cook... her chocolate pudding was so creamy and rich!

Charles Garner, Aunt Lillian and Uncle Oscar's son, was killed in a plane crash when he and his wife, Betty's  only son Charles Patrick Garner was only five months old. Charles was to participate in President Truman's inauguration - had been a top-notch pilot during World War II. It was a very sad time for all of us. The Lord, however, sustains us in our trials of life. Somehow He gives us strength - thought love and comfort of family, friends.. and Behold, we can now face the future with hope. Betty and Pat lived several years with Nunnie and Unk. They were devoted to them, attempting to fill the void left by the absence of Charles. Some  years later Betty met Culver Shore, son of a Methodist Minister. They were married about twenty five years. He was devoted to Betty and Pat - and helped Pat develop into a fine young man. (Betty and I shared many hours as friends and I enjoyed being in their home while they lived in the Orlando area.)

Robert, Nunnie and Unk's youngest son, married Grace early in life. They have 2 children, Robert Jr. and Carole Ann. They live in Birmingham, Alabama.

Aunt Kate, Mother's youngest sister, lived with Uncle Edd Hendrix, her husband, in the Grant Park Area. Uncle Edd had a Barber Shop (also "dabbled" in Real Estate, etc) --very successful business man. He and Aunt Kate have two sons, Edd Jr, little younger than Sister Jane and Harry Bird, about seven years younger than I.

Aunt Kate would ride the streetcar over to our home (while Uncle Edd was at work). She was a beautiful person, wore a short barbed hairstyle, had a natural waves in her hair. Aunt Kate was small in statue and a bit stout. She loved to cook, especially sweets, making the best chocolate fudge. Harry and Edd Jr. always looked like they "stepped out of a band box", their clothes so clean and pressed... we didn't get to enjoy her friendship long. She died of breast cancer at age 39.

Edd Hendrix, Jr. served in WWII. I can remember his homecoming and how Bette, Mary Rogers, Edd, myself and others went horseback riding. At that time there was a popular song out, "It Could Be Spring". Edd married Elaine; they have two children, Cathy and Eddie. 

Harry Bird Hendrix married young. He and Flora have 3 children, - Debra, Doug and Beth. (Harry may have been in the Navy during WWII days - I'm not sure).

Uncle Edd remarried one of Aunt Kate's friends. She was a wonderful companion to Uncle Edd and loved the children and grandchildren. Uncle Edd was always attentive to Mother and her sisters and interested in Uncle David's welfare. He was especially kind to me while I was experiencing a divorce and trying times -- he came to the house on Alder Court one day with a big bag of oranges!

Aunt Mae loved to eat, as most of we Bullocks do. When she prepared a meal it was a delicious spread, with all those homemade preserves and relishes. We learned many lessons in family life from Aunt Mae after she came to live with us. Mother was working, Daddy deceased. She saw that meals were prepared and chores done. Aunt Mae wanted the children to display good manners, especially at the dinner table. I remember our planting corn; she would drop the seeds in the ground, we would cover. We had fun working together.

Uncle David, Mother's only living brother, was a successful businessman. How we admired Uncle David -- he surely watched over his sisters, being sure all was well with them. He loved to smoke "Bull Durham" tobacco, rolling his own cigarettes. After he and Aunt Relia moved to Atlanta we saw them more. Bette, Barbara and I spent many happy times together, playing and going places with one another in the Little Five Points vicinity. Them they moved to a large home on South Oxford Road. Later on Uncle David bought an old mansion on Ponce De Leon Avenue, but, that must not have seemed like home -- they liked South Oxford the best, near Emory University.

Aunt Relia (Aurelia Highnote) Bullock, Uncle David's wife, has always been a remarkable person, standing tall in times of adversity. She not only stood the sorrow of losing two sons, she helped family members shoulder hard times. She was so good to our Mother, taking her to Sunday School and church and to the United Methodist Women's meetings. She visited in our home and was a great comfort to Mother after all of us had gone our separate ways. After Uncle David and Mother died, she and I shared many phone conversations. She was House Mother at one of the Fraternity Houses at Georgia Tech. I shared in some of the activities where she served as Chaperone. 

Kate Green Hall, Mother's cousin, moved to our home on Oakdale shortly after her husband, W. H. Hall had died. Cousin Kate was a business woman in Columbus, having her own millinery shop. How she met Mr. Hall, I do not know. What I do know is that she was a might brave woman to have married a man with seven children. (She must have been in her forties when wed). She and Mr. Hall ran a boarding house on Piedmont Avenue, beautiful old home with a large front porch. We would visit them on Sunday afternoon. Usually she served us homemade ice cream. (I can see her, right now, sitting in the corner of the sofa, feet propped up on the  coffee table as she corcheted... talking to us as she did.) She made delicious fruit cake, darling little caps and booties for babies and lovely pieces of crocheted lace, which would be inset into linen tablecloths. She was a pillar of St. Mark's Methodist Church. One time she said to me, "Don't you think I have a good figure for a woman my age" as she died a modeling act. We'll always remember Cousin Kate, tiny and somewhat stout, wearing her hair with a knot on top of her head... 
(sidenote: Kate Hall's address in the 1940 Census was Piedmont Ave, Atlanta, Georgia).

Kathryn Holmes, mother's cousin... closely associated to Cousin Kate Hall, spent time at our house, visiting as a young woman, then living several months with us after suffering a stroke. When I was working in Arlington, Virginia as a Government Employee, Pentagon Building, she showed me the Washington D.C. attractions. She was employed by the Navy Department and boarded in a lovely old home in a well-to-do neighborhood in Washington.

I believe her grandmother and our grandmother were sister-in-laws. When Kathryn died Emily Posey gave me a lot of her memoirs. Many family pictures were among these but no names on them; yet, some of them favor our relatives. A favorite writing you may remember, written by William Shakespeare was penned in an old autograph book, belonging to her mother, Mary:

"To thine own self be true, an it will follow as the night, the day. Thou canst not be false to any man."
"To be true to oneself and to all men is to be true to God. This is your desire, and by His grace will aid you in all the trials and realities of life, bringing you to a triumphant end and an abundant entrance into the everlasting  home of the soul". 

This was penned December 26, 1887.

The Depression affected so many people... our Father, for one. He had invested in Real Estate. Then he was involved in an automobile accident and left in poor health. He gave up office in the Flat Iron Building, renting a smaller place on Linden Avenue. After making a trip to Florida, hoping to improve his health, he came home, developed a cerebra hemorrhage, dying July 30, 1939. Our father made a name for himself in his "heyday"; he was one of the discovers of an ailment, called pellagra) He had a big practice and probably would have died wealthier than he was had he not had heart and not charged those who could not afford to pay... or if he had pressed hard to collect from those who could... 

To be continued....