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Picture of the day -
February 16, 2007
"Aunt Ruby"
My mom grew up with six sisters, four brothers, and a house full
of hard work and love. The Lord called her brothers Lloyd and Virgil
home before I was born, but I had the opportunity to get to know and
love the rest of my aunts and uncles when I was a youngster. They
were all very good to me and I love them all dearly, but my Aunt
Ruby Hamm will always hold a special place in my heart...
Ruby was a woman whose love knew no bounds. She lived a hard life,
first helping Grandma and Granddaddy Parker raise her younger
siblings, then raising a wonderful family of her own under very
difficult circumstances. Life handed
Aunt Ruby more than her fair share of problems and worries, but she
always had a smile on her face and a warm hug waiting for me every
time I walked through her door - and I walked through her door a lot
as a youngster.
When I was growing up, Aunt Ruby and her family always lived close
by. Their house was "just up the holler" from ours in Widener
Valley, Virginia, and when we moved hundreds of miles away to Amelia
County, she and Uncle Ambrose moved there too and rented a house
just down the road from ours. I wasn't old enough to go to school
then, so when mom and dad left the house to drive to their jobs in
Richmond each morning they would drop me off with Ruby. She
would take care of me just like I was her own until they got back
that evening.
I absolutely loved staying with Aunt Ruby. From a child's point of
view, she was the perfect babysitter. As long as I was "good", she
let me do pretty much anything I wanted, and when she took me to the
store with her she would always give me a dime to spend on some candy
or a toy. Back then, a dime was a lot of money, and many times she
really couldn't afford to give me one, but if she had one in her
pocket I got it. That's the way she was, loving and generous to a
fault, "doing without" in order to make the people she loved happy.
Some of my favorite childhood memories take me back to the many
times when Aunt Ruby and I would sit in her living room and separate
the "bad" beans and "trash" from the good beans while watching
Captain Kangaroo or listening to Buck Owens on the radio. After we
had finished "cleaning" the beans, she would throw them in a pot
along with a big chunk of fatback and some water, and before I knew
it the entire house was filled with that wonderful aroma of
simmering brown beans. I believe that cooking a great pot of beans is an art, and
every pot Ruby cooked was a masterpiece. To this day, I have never
tasted brown beans that were as good as the ones Aunt Ruby used to
fix.
When our family made the move back "home" from Amelia, Ruby's did
too. We moved back into our house in the "holler" and they moved
back into theirs, and Ruby continued taking care of me just like she
had done before. When mom had to go somewhere or do something
without me, she would tell me to "walk up to Ruby's". Then when she
returned home or finished her task, she would call up there on the
"party line" and tell me to come on home. I loved staying with Aunt
Ruby and she loved keeping me. I'll never forget those days.
I was 13 when I received the saddest news I had ever heard in my
young life. The
phone rang early on the morning of April 27, 1974, and the crying
voice on the other end of the line told mom that Aunt Ruby had passed
away in her sleep. I'll never forget that day or the emptiness her
passing left in my heart. I had lost my "second mom" and I knew that
my life would never be quite the same. Aunt Ruby was an angel in my
eyes, and when I get to heaven she'll be one of the first people I
"look up".
In loving memory of Ruby Parker Hamm - My second mom...
December 24, 1913 - April 27, 1974 |
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