Mack was a vendor that went to the little country cafes and roadside stores selling them candies cigars, coffee and tea etc. My sister and I would play in the back yard every afternoon waiting for Mack's van to come down their gravel road. He always had a piece of gum or candy for us. He smoked big cigars. I liked the way he smelled. Whenever I smell a cigar today, I think of Mack. We'd follow him into the house and invite ourselves to supper. My favorite part of eating with the Lyfords was dessert. Mack was a diabetic. So Lyford would make him a sugar free Jell-O type dessert. She cut it into long thin ribbons and served it in these darling little dessert cups with a squirt of Redi Whip. It was so great. We'd bore them to tears with our little girl school stories and they would tell us corny jokes.
Once when we were having a bad ice storm, our mother sent us to spend the night with the Lyfords. We had lost our electricity and it was cold. They had a fireplace and power. They lived in the woods though. I will never forget that night laying in bed and hearing those long needle pines pop in half and crash to the ground. I was so afraid it would come crashing through the window.
When I made my first cake, I took it to their house so they could praise my baking skills. My sister tried to rain on my moment of glory by announcing she was going to marry Mack when she got older. Lyford said she could have him.
Lonia took a tablespoon of Jack Daniels every morning for her circulation. This was prescribed by the doctor or she wouldn't have done it because she was a strict Southern Baptist. Her preacher was on TV every Sunday. I always looked for Lonia in the congregation but I never did see her.
I remember one morning I was getting ready for school. The phone
rang and I answered it. It was Lonia. She told me to get my
daddy to come over right then because Mack was gone. I told my dad
and mom and they rushed over to their house telling my sister and I to
get on down to the bus stop.
When we got home from school, my mom had the sad job of telling us
that Mack had passed away. This was my first experience with death.
My sister was deemed too young to attend the viewing but apparently
I was mature enough to handle the event. I remember Mack looked a
little odd lying there. I could swear I saw him move. I was
ushered out after just a bit. Walking out to the parking lot, I finally
cried. It was very hard to believe. I mostly cried for my sister.
She loved Mack so much and couldn't come see him.
A few years later we buried Lonia. Then Lyford really became apart of our family. She and my mother were like mother and daughter. As a grown up, I always loved calling up Lyford to see if she'd like to go to lunch with me. She was always up for that. The most wonderful thing about her was that although she was 57 years older than me, we talked like contemporaries. She loved the Atlanta Braves and Jimmy Carter and Elvis. She absolutely hated Ronald Reagan.
My mother found her lying on the floor of her apartment one morning. She was worried when Lyford didn't answer her phone and rushed over with my dad. She lingered for a few more days but eventually joined her sister and husband in a little country graveyard behind the Sharon Baptist Church. In death we found out that she had lied about her age on her marriage certificate. She was ten years older than Mack. He never knew. She was 83 when she died. No one could believe some one so young acting was that old.
I got those little dessert cups. When the mood strikes me I serve red Jell-O ribbons with a squirt of Redi Whip on top.