Common Threads

My earliest memories of my maternal grandmother are conjured by the smell of Dove soap, which she always used. She was a creature of habit. Where my paternal grandmother used double coupons to buy whatever was on sale, my maternal grandmother stuck with the tried and true brands that she trusted. Dove soap was among them, and every time I see a bar of that classic white arced-shape seal that reminds me of a golf club driver head or whenever smell it, I think of her.

She was born Eunice Catherine Sands in Tattnall County, Georgia July 14, 1923 and she died of Parkinson’s Disease February 16, 2009. She and my grandfather retired to Glennville, Georgia after she’d worked at the Sears Catalog Company in Waycross, Georgia and he’d worked for the Southeastern Coastline Railroad in Waycross. They’d lived in Blackshear for jobs, but they’d moved back to the farm where she’d grown up with her parents and into the tiny one-bedroom place that became a Vidalia Onion farm; then, someone bought that house and moved off the farm when my grandparents built a new brick house with full rose gardens and lovely grounds because of my grandmother’s green thumb (my mother inherited the green thumb, but I did not). Incidentally, I’ve often wondered, since the link between herbicides and Parkinson’s Disease has been discovered, whether my mother’s and grandmother’s diseases were environmental rather than hereditary. I don’t know enough about the historical causes of death to draw it back and look for patterns.

In the photo below, likely taken somewhere between Claxton, Georgia and Glennville, Georgia between 1915 and 1930, you can see Eunice’s father, Clarence K. Sands, far left, sitting with a fellow named Slater Tootle, a doctor’s son, in the carriage. Standing to the right of them is John Holmes Sands, my great grandfather Clarence’s brother, who went by Holmes. Of course, the danger of all these old family photos starts with a wonder or two, and then a rabbit hole of genealogy with full searches of all the people close to them and what they did and whatever became of the horse. And whether or not they, too, used Dove soap or made their own from lye in their backyard like my other great grandparents.

The photo below, while not dated anywhere on the back, appears to have been taken somewhere in the latter years of high school or as a senior photo.

Here I am with my grandmother in the photo below. My mother simply wrote “69” on the back of the photo, indicating the year. Since the azaleas are in full bloom in their yard in Blackshear, Georgia, I can tell I was just a few months shy of 3, so my grandmother would have been 46 in this picture.

The photo below was taken in our den in Reynolds, Georgia, and was taken in September 1971 – two months before my baby brother Ken arrived. Eunice is holding me and my armful of Barbies, and her son, my uncle Robert, is in the photo too. He was graduating and going into the military. There’s another story here in the photo, too. Dad never met anything he didn’t start to collect, and all those bottles were dug up from the dump in Reynolds. I still remember going out with them and digging near a small creek to help them find these and clean them. They used bookshelves to add to the collection before the book collection took over. I saved a few of them (including the smaller of the two guitar shaped bourbon bottles, and my brother took the larger one) after Dad died, and while my brother and I sold the tall shelf on the right to a family who could love it more than we could, I kept the secretariat that is behind my uncle – – it’s the oldest piece of furniture I remember in our home all those years, going way back to our Kentucky days.

I also found the picture below interesting, too. This is my grandmother’s sister, Madelle, left, on the swing, with my mother at her feet. Madelle’s friend Doretha Dyess is pictured there with my mother’s childhood dog named Tippie (later, she and my uncle would have chihuahuas named Tootsie and Topper, so this makes me wonder whether I get my love of the sound of similar words from my mother – – or whether one of my grandparents did the actual naming of dogs).

And as I discovered names and dates of family members, the most interesting fact was the discovery of my great grandfather’s middle name. The K in Clarence K. Sands stands for Kenneth. My brother’s name is Kenneth, and I had no idea he was named for our maternal great grandfather! It’s surprising what you can learn when you take time to snoop around the family tree.

And for today, a Zip Ode for Glennville, Georgia, where the Sands family cemetery is. Glennville’s Zip Code is 30427, and for this poem I’ve used each digit of the zip code to determine how many words each line gets. Zeros are wild cards where you can pick any number of words 1-9 or use a symbol or emoji.

Glennville, Georgia 30427