Great Aunt Mollie

Great Aunt Mollie, she was my maternal grandmother's sister. She was the sweetest and funniest older lady that I have ever known. She would do things other elderly people would never do. Like laying in the floor and acting like she was having a seizure of some type just to make people laugh. She was always telling jokes or funny stories too. Mother and I lived in a trailer that was behind her house on Piedmont Avenue. It stood where the AT&T Central Office building is now in Rockmart. If memory serves me right we lived there after mother's first suicide attempt when we lived on Goodyear corner. Aunt Mollie was in her early 70's.

Mother had began working for the Telephone Company in Cartersville, Ga. She was back with my stepdad, W.C. It was during the summer apparently because I don't remember school but I sure remember those cathead biscuits that Aunt Mollie made. I would sit up on a stool and watch her make us some for breakfast. She used pure lard. I can remember the two tone blue/green rectangular box with the wire metal handle it came in. I use to say, "Aunt Molly I want to learn how to make biscuits like you do". She never measured, she just put her flour in a bowl, used her hand to hollow out the center then poured in the buttermilk. She would dip her four fingers in the lard box for a scoop of lard then add it to the bowl and to mixing she went. Those were the best biscuits. She made them big and they all ended up touching each other as they cooked. I can see and taste them now.

She kept her home neat and clean. She had some of the prettiest furniture, pictures, and whatnots. I remember thinking be careful not to mess up or break anything it was like a museum. She always made me feel special when I stayed with her. Her husband had died years before and her children all lived in other towns. I also remember Aunt Mollie had this very large Tupperware tray that held cookies. It had to be 2 feet in diameter. She always let me choose a cookie after meals.

One of the things Aunt Mollie and I would do was sit in her glider in her yard and watch all the cars go by. I remember she taught me the car game. We each chose a color and then counted the cars that rode by in that color. Who ever had the most won. Aunt Mollie was a storyteller too. I use to ask her about her life when her husband was alive. She would tell me some of their life stories. They had actually lived right across the street in a house that stood where the small strip shops are now on Piedmont Avenue. I hope one day that lots of young children will have good memories of me like I do of my Great Aunt Mollie Adair. Aunt Mollie had diabetes and I remember her having some difficulties with regulating it in years to come. She would eventually move to Holly Springs to live with her daughter until her death in 1978.