KEEPSAKES con't from p. 6 KEEPSAKES continued suspicious person was spotted near his shop. One day, Lt. Looper was off-duty and eating lunch at his parents’ home with his mother, who was recuperating from heart surgery. They ate (Jan. 31, 1975), while his father worked in the garage. Through a window, the lieutenant saw a man headed toward the garage. He went to investigate. As Looper entered the garage, he was shot once in the head and died the next morning. Looper’s father was shot (probably first) and died four hours later. (A suspect was sentenced to death; that sentence was commuted to life; he was paroled in 2010.) We lived then in Greenville, S.C., and Carol wrote to Ms. Vera Looper, the Lieutenant’s mother. After weeks of receiving Carol’s cards, Ms. Looper called Carol, and they became friends. Carol, who taught elementary school, asked if she could do something to help Vera, who had little extended family. “If I make a list and you could go to the grocery store, get things, bring them home and put them away, that would help me,” Vera said. Carol and our two daughters, Janelle and Suzanne, then ages eight and three, rallied to that project and created holiday displays inside Vera’s new home, a modular type structure. (She left her old house.) Carol had helped Vera with shopping for over a year when she and Suzanne, then age four, were visiting Vera. From a bedroom, Vera brought out a 15-inch-tall, brown-charcoal colored, teddy bear. “This is Frank Junior’s bear he had as a baby,” Vera said. “I know you’ll never let it get out of your family.” She handed Lt. Looper’s bear to Suzanne. Vera died a few years later. So far, that bear is still “in our family.” I have two celluloid dolls my late father played with as a child on a small S.C. farm. Celluloid, one of the first synthetic plastics, was created from wood in 1863 and used for jewelry, dolls, etc. from the 1870s-1930s, sources say. Dad’s dolls (a boy and girl in schoolchildren’s garb) are dented and light as a feather. Dad and Mom gave us those dolls years before they both died in 1989. My maternal grandmother, Ma Crain (Lillian), a tall, thin lady, played the guitar and sang hymns and sad country songs, evidencing a melancholy temperament. When Janelle, our older child, was small, Ma made a 17-inch-tall doll for her. The doll wears a light-colored dress and red cape. The doll’s hand-stitched, blue, frowning eyes sit far apart. I smile when I see the doll’s mouth. Ma made that mouth turned down on both ends. The doll appears unhappy. Adrian KEEPSAKES con't. next column Celluloid dolls. Elmer said, “Art is when a human tells another human what it is to be human.” I believe Ma, probably without k n o w i n g , communicated her melancholia through her artwork on that doll’s face. We still have the doll, though it belongs to Janelle. Perhaps she’s not yet ready to display it in her home. The last rather large keepsakes I’ll mention are Pa Crain’s (my grandfather) plows. I worked as Pa’s “water boy” when he plowed behind a mule. We fished at “pay lakes” for catfish, and I listened to him sing “Victory in Jesus” as we drove to Landrum, S.C., to get corn ground into meal. I rode with him and Ma on their Saturday “milk and butter route” visits to the “big city” (Greenville, S.C.). Three of Pa’s “walking plows” sit in our garage: a “turner,” a “distributor” (guano dispenser), and a common “furrow plow.” I’ve dragged those plows through two work-related relocations. When I look at those plows, I can still envision Pa holding the wooden handles of one of them as he walks behind a mule. Those plows are keepsakes I’m not ready to let go of – no, not yet. Someone said, “When people leave our lives, we hold onto memories.” Keepsakes can help us remember. �� Larry Steve Crain lives in Southern Pines. p.8 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. No. 127
20587PG
To see the actual publication please follow the link above