ADELLA VONCASSIE SMITH

(1910 - 1985)

Born the 10th child of Ben and Maggie Boyd in Cleburne County, Alabama, her formal education was from the Cleburne County school district.  Adella was an avid reader, and as long as I can remember she always had books or magazines in her home.

She was a very good cook and housekeeper.  A quiet person, I never knew her to deliberately hurt anyone's feelings, but she had that temper associated with all the Boyd clan.  When you made her angry you knew she meant business.

Adella was the mother of two daughters, Dorothy and Betty Jane, and one son, James Leo.  When I was a very small child I remember my mother having to go to the doctor quite often.  I was always afraid because the office was always dark and I feared old Dr. Harris.  As I look back I am convinced that my mother suffered from some form of paralysis to her legs.  I remember Elma and Easter rubbing her legs with some form of medication all of the time.

I know of one trait she had and that was brushing her teeth.  She would brush, it seems, up to 20 minutes at a time and when she passed she still had the most beautiful set of natural teeth anyone would want to see.

She loved sports - especially wrestling and baseball.  She didn't need any one to keep her company when those two sports were on.  You could hear her yelling clear across the street when she was watching or listening to a baseball game and with wrestling she would imitate the wrestlers.  She didn't want to be disturbed while she was engaged in her games.

She also enjoyed traveling and after she was able to do so, she was always going someplace with her church group or just going to visit her family.

Dorothy Boyd McKinney

A Perfect Place - Grandmama

I think of her often.  I don't hold many childhood memories, but the years can not erase the memory of a perfect place, Grandmama.  Whether sitting on the couch together by the window, staring out at whatever the day might bring, or long walks to town together hand in hand.  Grandmama in her straw hat carrying a handy stick, as she told me stories of times past.  Maybe sitting on her small porch huddled together in silence, when there were no words needed.

I remember peaceful times at her feet clipping away at her aged toenails.  Time that I would sit for hours listening to the Braves games on the radio, or watching wrestling on television, two of her favorite things.

Nothing can replace the time I spent with her in her kitchen as she prepared a loving meal, always from scratch.  Just the little things made this a perfect place.  I even miss her loud snoring at night as I would lay awake beside her with thoughts of this perfect place.

There you could find much love, peace and tranquility.  I long to be there again with Grandmama.  A perfect place.

Tammy Boyd

Oh, How Sweet it is to Remember Grandma
(Adella VonCassie Smith)

As this project started to unfold, I could not resist thinking about my grandmother, Adella VonCassie Boyd Smith, and the indelible memories that I have of her. There are three events that stick out in my mind of all the memories that I have in my young life that involve her.

It was the summer of 1967 and I was making my first trip to Alabama. After a very long ride on the Trailways bus, we had finally made it. We got out of the cab at the bottom of the hill and my mother saw that the house where Grandma had lived in was no longer there. We picked up our luggage and walked to the home of Elvin and Minnie Smith. Once there my mother asked about where Grandma lived. After receiving the directions, we struck out again looking for Grandma’s house.

As we approached the house, Mr. Frank Ray was outside and my mother asked him if the house across from his was Adell’s. When he said yes I know that I was relieved because it seemed that we had been walking for quite some time although it had only been a few minutes. As we walked up on the porch with our luggage in hand, we could see Granddaddy sitting in his recliner in front of the screened door. He looked at us and yelled to Grandma who was in the kitchen, “Adell, somebody out here on the porch with some chillins. You better come out here ‘cuz I thinks you got some compney”.

Grandma rushed around the corner with her apron on and flour all over her hands. She was asking Granddaddy who we were when she threw open the door and starting screaming, “Lord, Na! It’s Betty and the chillins!” I remember her smiling and hugging all of us real tightly. She led us in the house and had us to put away our luggage. Being the youngest, I followed her into the kitchen where she was cooking her dinner: fried chicken, navy beans, and homemade biscuits. I lucked up that day because I got the whole cake (a extra large biscuit made from the leftover biscuit dough). This was my first recollection of seeing and meeting my grandparents but especially my grandmother.

Fast-forwarding our lives to 1980 after the death of my grandfather, Grandma spent some time traveling between Alabama and North Carolina. She would spend part of the year at home and part of the year with us. Whenever she came to visit us I was her hangout partner. I would often go to church with her at Kingdom Hall and spend lots of time in the backyard under the tree in the shade reviewing the lesson for the week.

During one of her visits, I decided that since I had to get up early in the mornings for school that I would make some sausage biscuits and put them in the freezer. The only thing I would need to do was warm them up in the oven in the morning for breakfast.

Since my mother made biscuits everyday and I had witnessed them being made hundreds of times, I felt that I knew what to do. Grandma sat in the kitchen and gave me sideline instructions. After putting in all the ingredients and cutting them out with the floured glass, it was time to place them in the oven. Grandma waited with me for them to come out. Upon retrieving them from the oven, the expression on our faces indicated that something had not been done correctly. Although the biscuits were golden brown, they were sort of flat. I broke one open and the inside did not appear to be done. Grandma with a smile on her face asked me to let her see it. She told me that I had added too much shortening. I sighed and said that I’ll just have to throw them away and start all over again. Grandma, sensing my disappointment, stopped me from throwing them away. She told me that she would eat them because she loved chalky biscuits. I was thrilled to death because I knew at that point that they must have been okay. My Grandma ate every last one of those biscuits, too. I know now that it was nothing but love for me that made my Grandma eat that mess because no one else in the house would touch them. I would not even eat one.

The recollection that often stands out the most in one’s mind is the last encounter that is had with a person. This is the case with me about Grandma. She was on her way back to Alabama from her visit with my mother. The bus she was traveling on had a two-hour lay over in Raleigh so my mother called me so that I could go there to see her before the bus left. Everything worked out well because not only did I get to see her we even had enough time for her to come back to my apartment to have dinner with me and meet some of my friends.

When I arrived at the bus station, I found her talking with two elderly ladies who were traveling on the same bus with her. As I approached her, I could hear her telling the ladies that her granddaughter was coming to see her before the bus left to spend time with her. When I asked her if she wanted to go to my apartment to eat since we had some time before she needed to be back, she also told them how proud of me that she was because I could make time for an old lady.

Upon arrival at the apartment, it was crowded as usual with the friends of my roommates and I. Grandma did not seem to mind, though. She talked and laughed with everyone
there. When it was time to get her back to the bus station, not only did I go but my friends did as well. They were all happy to meet her and asked her to come back to see them again.

All the way back home everyone talked about how much fun Grandma had been. I was always glad that she was my Grandma but on this particular day, I realized how much of a jewel she really was. I cannot even express the elation that I felt when my peers spoke of her in such a loving way.

Grandma your physical presence has been gone for almost 14 years now, but your loving spirit will forevermore be with me.

  Deidre Swindell

Remembering Grandmomma
(Adella VonCassie Smith)

One of the things I remember about my grandmother was her cooking. On Saturday mornings, we had streak-of-lean (that’s thick slices of bacon for the young crowd), eggs,
rice, biscuits, and homemade apple butter. Sunday morning breakfast was fried chicken, biscuits, rice and gravy.

Grandmomma made the best biscuits. Over the years I have tried to duplicate them without success. She would put flour, baking powder and salt into a sifter and sifted it into a bowl. Then she added shortening (lard is what it was called then). She used a knife to cut the shortening into the flour mixture until it was real coarse then she added buttermilk and mixed it with her hand. She kneaded the dough until it was just right, adding more milk or flour as needed. Then, using a wooden rolling pin that had been dusted with flour, she rolled the dough on a cloth that had also been dusted with flour. The cloth was really a flour sack that had been turned inside out and was used only for rolling dough. She used a biscuit cutter or sometimes a glass, to shape the perfect biscuit. I remember the “Poo” sound the dough would make when the biscuits were being cut. My dough never made that sound. When those biscuits came out of the oven they were as light as a feather. They would literally melt in your mouth. If you would spread a little butter on a biscuit you were in heaven.

Grandmomma cooked on a wooden stove most of her life. I remember when she and Granddaddy built their new house it required a gas stove that she didn’t like that too much but she adjusted.

I always wanted a biscuit from Grandmomma even when I was grown with children of my own. Over the years Grandmomma babysat one or the other of my children during the day. I was usually running late for work when I dropped them off, but Grandmomma almost always had a warm biscuit wrapped up for me to eat on the way to the office.

Berry cobbler, sweet potato cobbler, and fruit cobbler were all time favorites. There was a field in front of one of the three houses that I remember my Grandmomma and Granddaddy living in and in the field was a patch of wild blackberries. I remember Grandmomma, my brother, Darryl and I picking blackberries. Some she used for a cobbler right away and some she put into a mason jar for later use. The cobblers were beyond description. The crust was light, a flaky variation of her biscuits. The filling was sweet and bubbly and if you got a piece of the cobbler when it was warm from the oven it was pure ecstasy.

Also in that field was rabbit tobacco. Grandmomma would make a tea from that plant that was good for some type of ailment but I can’t remember what. It did taste good though. I had a friend named Theresa Rawls and together we tried to smoke rabbit tobacco wrapped in brown paper. We would have gotten away with it except for the ducks that Grandmomma raised in the backyard. We hid back there to smoke and nearly choked. Our coughing and gagging set the ducks to quacking and Grandmomma came out of the house to see what was wrong with them. She was very protective of her ducks but not so protective of my rear end when she saw what was going on. Needless to say, I didn’t smoke rabbit tobacco around the ducks after that.

Another thing Grandmomma could do was iron. Granddaddy was what kids today call “all that”. Even though he worked in a pipe shop I never saw the man dirty. Grandmomma kept his clothes washed, starched, and pressed so neat that the creases in his pants could cut meat. That is another amazing thing because until they built their house, Grandmomma used a “flat iron”. That was a cast iron iron that you heated on the stove. She washed by hand using a rubbing board and a Number 10 tub.

She used boxed starch to get that crisp look. There was a brand of starch called Argo that came in broken chunks. She put the starch in a pan of water on the stove and stirred it until she got the consistency she wanted. She poured the starch in the rinse water, dipped the clothes in and then hung them outside to dry. Sometimes the clothes that were to be ironed were taken from the clothesline while still damp. She rolled the clothes into balls to keep them moist for ironing. If the clothes got completely dry they were sprinkled with water just before and during ironing.

Grandmomma was a mild-mannered woman, but underneath that calm exterior was the heart of a tiger. I remember a couple of times when that legendary fighting spirit showed itself. One time my former husband physically abused me. When Grandmomma found out about it, she asked me in a calm, level tone of voice, “You want us to kill him?” There was no emotion in her voice but her eyes said she was serious. I divorced that man for his own good.

Jennifer Boyd Staples