Decoration Day

I always know when the pollen is in the air, the cars start turning yellow and my eyes constantly burn and water like a sprinkler system that it’s Spring and time for ‘decoration’. I’m getting to the age where very few Southerners and absolutely no Yankees have any idea what you’re talking about when you mention, ‘gettin ready for decoration’. It was time in my life that I love to remember, ponder and to this day miss very much.

‘Decoration’ was the day in our part of the country where families remembered and honored the dearly departed members of their families. My Dad’s family had most of the generations before my grandmother buried in a small cemetery adjoining a little country church named Ireland. Now none of these people were Irish as far as I can tell and I have no idea where the ‘Ireland’ name came from but most of those buried there were either ‘Moores’ or ‘Donaldsons’, my grandmothers’ ancestors.

‘Decoration Day’ was always on Mothers Day. Every year kinfolks from as far away as Ohio and as near as Boaz would start arriving on the Friday before and the pallets and old army cots would come out to make room for everyone. There was always a big contingent from Birmingham that would pile in and a few stragglers from Mississippi and Tennessee. I was young and never really understood how I was related to anyone except that my Mam Maw was kin to them thence they were my relatives to.

Friday night was always the big hamburger cookout night. Somehow an old fashion portable bar-b-q grill would appear and my Uncle Bill would cook hamburger patties for what seemed like hours. The menu never changed, hamburgers, with all the fixin’s, baked beans and potato salad that all the aunts would chip in to make and either fresh lemonade or heavily sweetened ice tea to drink. If my dad’s generation were really into it there was a freezer of ice cream but always a ton of the sweetest, chewiest and most delicious brownies anyone ever put in their mouths.

Saturday for the adults was for decorating the graves in the small cemetery at Ireland, down in the country. All of the ones who came early loaded their cars with what seemed like tons of flowers and plants (never artificial) to be placed on the graves of our ancestors. The men of the family made sure the little cemetery was covered with no less than two feet of pure white sand. The place always looked like it had been moved from Destin to Marion County by the Saturday before Mothers Day. For the kids Saturday was a day to roam and play in the woods near the church or in the piles of white sand that had been left when all the graves and cemetery were covered. I don’t remember what we ever ate on Saturday but I just know it was always great. On Saturday night everyone would gather on Mam Maw’s front porch to talk and remember growing up poor and happy. The adults would remember the same stories year after year. The time Marie got her first car, after working for Mr. Moses at the Courthouse. How she came out to the old home place at Fowler Flats and loaded up Mam Maw, Codelle and my Dad, who was just a little boy at the time, and bounced them up and down the road while she learned to drive. They always remembered when Lola left to go the Chicago to attend nursing school and got home just a day after I was born and how I had grabbed her finger from my crib in the little hospital and how since that day I’d always been her favorite. Those and a thousand other stories from everyone gathered taught me about my very special family and how hard life had been at the turn of the century and on through the 20’s, 30’s, and into the 40’ when things finally began to ease up a little.

Sunday morning was the big time of the weekend. My brother and I would go with my Dad to Mr. Dillard's ice plant to get, for many years, blocks of ice to ‘hold everything until dinner’.(dinner being the noon meal) Later when Mr. Dillard got an ice crusher we’d get several bags of ice to ‘ice everything down’. After we loaded everything into coolers, a possession of 12 to 15 cars would leave Haleyville for the 10-mile trip down into the country to the little church and cemetery where all our ancestors had been resting for years and years. Most ‘decoration’ days someone would have asked Judge Bobby Aderholt to preach a sermon. Bobby, who recently retired as a Circuit Judge, was probably just a young lawyer at the time and it was long before he fathered U.S.Congressman Robert Aderholt. Bobby was really a pretty good preacher, although he turned out to be a great long term judge, and he would give this bunch of Donaldson’s and Moore’s a pretty good fill of religion before the real serious business of eating got underway.

After the service the men would move the pews from the Church to a shady area to the side of the little church. Like magic white table clothes and more food that the my little mine could ever imagine would appear up and down these makeshift church pew tables and those gathered would begin the ritual of serious eating. My brother Jimmy and I would always be on the lookout for some big relative from Birmingham named Warner Reese(I never knew how we were kin or even his last name), who always brought his food contribution in a big cooler boldly sporting a huge 'Falstaff' logo on the side. Since alcohol was forbidden in our family we somehow knew Warner Reese would one day implode before our very eyes but either fortunately for him or unfortunately for us it never happen. Warner Reese was always worth watching. He was a big man, almost the size of our dad, but he dressed like someone from a big city like Birmingham. Light colored suits with big flowery ties, a tan or white hat and two-tone shoes. Jimmy and I thought he must either be the Governor or at least Mayor of Birmingham. I was so disappointed later in life when I learned he was actually a debit insurance salesman. What a waste.

By 3:00 everything was over. The entire party had loaded their coolers with the few morsels that were left and headed back into Haleyville to pick up their bed rolls and suitcases that were scattered across the town in the homes of all the local cousins and kinfolks. That night we were all back in our regular beds and things were quite for the first time in three days. We were back in school the next day and things were mostly business as usual except for the fact that we once again had met our family. Some of them we liked while some simply raised our curiosity, the fact was that once again we knew them. I really hate that my kids don’t have a ‘decoration day’; maybe there is another Warner Reese out there somewhere and mine and Jimmy’s grandkids will never get to see him.
What a waste.