PeeWee was what we called my great grandmother. I have no idea why, that's just who she was, and that's what everybody called her.
She was born in 1903 in some rural shithole in smalltown, USA. Very fire and brimstone, southern baptist, sicko kiddie diddling husband - you know, the usual. Wouldn't let us wear shorts, beat us, blah blah blah. I honestly hated that woman.
But on hot summer nights, when it was too muggy to sit inside our unconditioned mobile home, I remember her in her old porch rocker, us chirrens sitting around her feet, begging her to sing to us the old creepy bluegrass/country songs she liked to sing in her warbly old church lady voice. Like this one, but old lady. She'd also tell us these over the top, fantastic stories that I used to think were made up for our benefit, but as an adult I found out at least 2 of them were very, very TRUE so now I'm wondering about the third.
There was this old fortune teller witch who lived nearby, she'd tell you the gender of your unborn child, let you know where to find your dirty cheating husband, she even solved a murder in Coweta County where some farmer dumped another guy in a well (they made a movie about that one).According to PeeWee, the locals accused the woman of being an agent of Satan, which she absolutely denied. Supposedly, her grave stone was struck by and destroyed by lightning on 3 separate occasions, which I guess had something to do with the devil? Also, her brain was sent off to whatever university to be studied to see if they could find the source of her psychic powers. Oh, and she had like a million dollars hidden in the walls of her old, dilapidated house.
Sounds like typical, Appalachian country folk tales, right? Except her name was Mayhayley Lancaster, and she was 100% real. The murder thing? Real. The psychic shit? Real. And there was so much more to her than that, she was a lawyer, a midwife, an activist and political advocate, and more. Go on and look her up. She's got her own wikipedia page, a billion youtube videos, and even a couple of books.
Story Two
PeeWee used to work in the cotton mill, and told us all about the time when the national guard showed up, parked one of those big gatling guns at the end of Park Avenue, pointed at the homes of the mill workers to intimidate them. The guard kicked people out of their houses and even murdered a few townspeople...why? Because the mills had been working everyone to death and people were trying to unionize. The big machine gun on wheels part used to freak me out and I thought there was no way a governor would have sent in the NATIONAL FRIKKIN GUARD to murder their own citizens, simply for asking for humane working conditions.
But this is the south, and the mill owners made their fortune off the backs of their slave laborers, so it should really come as no surprise to learn they continued this tradition. I found out PeeWee's crazy story was true about 30 years later, when I was given the book pictured. It's actually so much worse than I was told as a child, but according to my great grandmother, the violence was much, much worse than what the author here was aware of, because the news of these killings and beatings were heavily suppressed.
Story Three
This one was never confirmed. I have no way to confirm it. But PeeWee's other 2 insane stories turned out to be true, so this doesn't seem terribly farfetched.
In addition, PeeWee's brother Amos (whom we called Wig....fuck if I know why), in his old age, used to speak his thoughts out loud. Most of the time it was perfectly mundane things, remembering something his mama told him, some funny story about a long dead cousin, and...this one. in full detail. More detail than PeeWee gave us.
So, the story goes, when they were young, they were doing something around the village square, somewhere near Roanoke, Alabama. Som even I don't remember had taken place...church, maybe? Some kind of fair? I really don't recall. But, there was a reason why everyone was out that day. A shadow blocks out the sun, and they turn their faces to the sky, expecting a storm cloud, and instead witnessing a massive bird. Thunderbird, they called it. Black, with a wingspan the size of a biplane. It looked like a hawk, she said, but so so so much bigger then any they'd seen before. Everyone out went running for some nearby barn. Were barns normal in small, podunk towns back then? In the chaos, a small toddler was left behind, and this giant, plane sized bird swooped down, snatched up this baby, and flew off again. But they called the baby a "colored baby" because they were old at the retelling, this supposedly happened sometime in the 1910s, and that language was just how everyone talked, gross as it is. PeeWee left the story at that, but in Wig's demented old man ramblings, they later found some of the baby's bones on some rocky outcropping.
So, that's it. Those are my great grandmama's stories.
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