My Mother, Nellie Eason taught me the value of saving money and how to do it. She would clip every coupon that she could use and would check the newspaper every Thursday for sales at all stores listed, and would make a list of items on sale that she wanted to buy.
She was always quoting cliches especially when we had done something wrong. Two of them were: “ain’t too old for your wants to hurt” and “if it don’t get you in the washing, it’ll get you in the rinsing” .
My mother loved to sing hymns. My sister’s boyfriend loved to hear her sing. He would come over to the house every Sunday after church and they would sit on the front porch and sing. She also loved what we called ‘Note Singing’ where in the first verse, you sing the notes to the particular song(doe, ray, me…) then you sing the words. She eventually joined a group and got the song book where each note on the scale was a different shape. This was also called ‘shaped note singing’.
Always, when she went to a store, she would keep her eyes on the cash register to ensure that the correct price was being rung up and always tell us to do the same. She caught several errors doing this. I often did this except one time when I wasn’t paying attention an item rung up for $45 instead of $4.50. Didn’t catch it until I got home. Even worse, I did it at a self-checkout register.
My mother and one of her sisters loved going to funerals whether she knew the person or not, it didn’t matter. If they couldn’t get any of us to drive them to the funeral, they would catch public transportation. Funny, I never asked why was that; but, I think it was because she would see people she hadn’t seen in a long while. I say that only because, sometime I would take her to a funeral and I would see people I hadn’t seen in ages.
I remember on one occasion when my baby sister had been acting up in elementary school. One day my mother decided to walk to the school bypassing the principal’s office and went straight to her classroom and just peeked in the window, didn’t say anything to anyone. I guess she was trying to catch her in the act. I know if she would have caught her , she would have had no mercy on her. You know, back then all doors were open during school hours and anyone could come in.
Hazel is the mother of my deceased best friend(Celia Hines), She was like my second mother.
Leave a Reply