Kathryn's House, Part 5: Saucer Magnolias

Today's good thing is no new mice in my traps and no new mouse poop on my desk.  Was there only one mouse?  Nope, I take that back.  Three new mouse poops on my desk.  The war goes on.

This is the last installment on my trip to Kathryn's house.  I figure I can milk a weekend trip for only so long. 

This posting is about heritage and tradition and keeping a flame alive ... maybe. 

Ernest & Cordie Wright Parker

My Grandmother Parker was a remarkable woman, although I never appreciated it until after her death.  When I was a child in the 60s, she was sort of frightening ... a plump woman with frizzy gray hair who was frequently without her dentures and had loud opinions on everything from the obscene shortness of my cousin's skirts to those "niggers" who were getting uppity.  She seemed to talk endlessly of death and tragedy.  Unlike my maternal grandmother, who was soft and sweet-smelling and spoiled her three grandchildren at every opportunity, Grandmother Parker had dozens of grandchildren and couldn't keep all of us straight.  Her delivery of a silver dollar for each birthday, couldn't compete with Grandmother Isenberg's lavish gift giving.

As I grew older, though, I had more appreciation for the strength and courage of this farm woman.  In 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression, she was left to raise ten children on a farm alone.  My dad was nine years old when his father died, and he was about the middle of the children in age.  At the age of 39, as a woman alone, Cordie Parker managed to keep her family of ten fed and clothed, when others were jumping out of windows and despairing. 

Not only fed and clothed, but educated.  Grandmother Parker set a great store by education because she had always wanted to go to high school herself. In her family there was only enough money to send one of the daughters away to high school, and Cordie's crippled sister Ada was the logical choice.  Cordie made sure that all of her children graduated from high school and most of them even went to college -- and she was so proud when my father received his Ph.D.  

We grew up on family stories about the children picking cotton and Grandmother Parker baking wonderful bread and selling it at the roadside.  When the family cow had a calf, my father was given the calf to raise and was able to sell it to make his first college tuition payments. 

We have a legacy of a close and loving family.  And they're still close.  Although Dad is now 87, only two of the seven brothers and none of the three sisters have passed on, and they stay in close touch with each other.  

Kathryn's old house in Paducah.
The magnolia was planted at the corner
 on the right of the picture.

To finally get to the crux of my story:  Grandmother Parker was known for her green thumb.  She could get anything to grow.  At the old family farm in North Carolina, there was a lovely saucer magnolia tree and, at some point, my Dad and Mom took cuttings from it and planted them in the front of our house in Lexington.  The tree grew large and when Kathryn moved to Paducah, she took a rooted piece of it and planted it in the front yard at her old house in Paducah. And it grew there.  Now that she's moved to her new house, she's rooting cuttings of the old tree to plant at the new place. 



Rooted cutting of Grandmother Parker's
saucer magnolia



"Greenhouse" for three of the cuttings
we hope will root in
about a month.

 She generously gave me one of the rooted cuttings and we started 10 more in hopes that some will root.  I've got them down here in the basement under my plant lights and I've got my fingers crossed.  These aren't just ordinary plants -- they're a piece of my heritage.