As published in the book “LIN-E-AGE: Connecting Our Ancestral Dots” by Monica White (2018) ; Publisher: Bookemon.com
Conversation with Ann White Reynolds, second oldest daughter of beloved parents Philip White, Jr. and Mary Louise Brown White
“I remember my great-grandmother Molly Jenkins as a tall, slender, and elegant woman. She was always nicely-dressed. Her hair always looked nice, and she wore heels with her stockings knotted just above her knees. I saw an old photo of her recently and thought how much she looked like my youngest sister, Debbie, who passed away in 1996.
When Grandma Jenkins came to visit, we kids would sit on the porch talking to her while she taught us how to cut out paper dolls from old newspapers.
A lot of times her lunch on those days would be a thimbleful of moonshine, a chunk of cheese, and maybe an apple.
She called my dad Philip by the name of Kid-Shoe. (The name “Kid” stuck with him all his life. When asked how he got that nickname, someone said when he was a little boy, he had a pair of shoes made of goat kid skin that he loved so much, his brothers started calling him “Kid Shoes.”) Anyway, Grandma Jenkins loved her grandson Kid Shoe. As soon as he got home from work, she started calling for him—and kept it up all evening. She also loved riding in the car with him.
These were times when she came to Stotesbury to visit us, but I can remember going to Max Meadows to visit her in her home, too, and staying with the relatives. When she came to visit us, Frank Jenkins, her son, always drove her. She loved her Frank. I remember when he passed away. Grandma was really broken up. That’s about all I remember about her.
I remember a lot more about her daughter, who was my Grandma Lily Jenkins White, and who married Phil White, Sr. She was the love of my life. I remember her so well. She was a small lady, not quite five feet tall. She had freckles across her nose and under her eyes. She had long hair and hated getting it combed and brushed. Her daughter, Mozelle, would brush her hair and arrange it in a knot on top of her heads. Grandma would cry. (She must have been very tender-headed, as we used to say.)
My sister Pina—who was a year older than me—and I were forever crawling all over her. She would pick both of us up at the same time, carrying one on each hip. Sometimes she would put us to sleep for a nap and then listen to her favorite radio program, “Our Gal.”
Mostly, it seemed she was always working nonstop: making soap out in the yard, scrubbing the porch with bleach, washing clothes and hanging them on the line out in the yard, and taking care of my Uncle Earnest, who was confined to a wheelchair.
Sometimes, though, she would take my sister and me to the little corner store that sat next to a movie theater and buy us a popcorn ball. Pina and I would go back and sit on Grandma’s porch eating the popcorn balls until it was time to go back across the street to our own house—that haunted house that we lived in. (That’s another story.)
Another thing that I remember is that Grandmama White and Granddaddy White were always together. I remember it so clearly because she was so tiny at not quite five feet–and he was so tall- close to 6 feet and 6 inches it seemed like.
When she died, I remember both doors on the front porch being draped in black with a wreath placed between the doors. Grandmama was laid out in her casket in a bedroom that had been cleared out for her wake service. The room was empty except for the casket. My granddaddy sat at the head of her casket for 24 hours straight without leaving or getting up to sleep. He got up when it was time to go to the church for the funeral.
I loved her so much all I could think of was that they had taken her away from me. After she was buried, I used to lie awake at night as a child and wonder who I could get to help me go get my grandmama out of the ground.
Those are my strongest memories of her—her freckles and the rest. I can’t picture her face anymore. I think I might have blocked it out with grief. I do remember that she was always smiling. I never heard her complain. She spoke with a slight lisp—sometimes her words didn’t always come out the way she intended. She was a beautiful soul.” (Dictated to and typed by Gina, third oldest daughter of Kid and Louise, July 15, 2018)