Granddaddy Gallops

Since Mom was raised in Birmingham AL, but moved to Ohio when she married Dad, I never got to know her father very well. I was thinking about that and decided to write down what I know/remember about him. His name was John Fayette Gallops and he came from Georgia. (One of his brothers was named Grady.) He was very tall and had a lot of hair. We called him Granddaddy.

He worked on the Panama Canal before he married. Then he worked for the railroad running from Birmingham to Atlanta. Actually, he worked for a company, my mom once explained, that wanted him to oversee cargo that was being hauled on that train. Once he had a dog in his car. She said it was overcome by the heat and he worked and worked to come up with ways to save it, but it died. She said he felt terrible about that for a long time.

My dad said that when Mom took him to meet her parents, he overheard Granddaddy complain that he couldn't understand a thing that Yankee said.

Mom took me on a train to visit her parents when I was maybe 3 or 4? I remember a few things about that trip. I remember a black man wearing a hat with gold decorations on it walking down the aisle and giving me an egg salad sandwich wrapped in wax paper. He later turned our seats into a berth and Mom and I slept together in it with a curtain pulled across the opening.

Next I remember walking down a street (which was Alemeda Ave) and a thin little woman with black/gray hair in a bun and dark circles under her eyes, running towards us with her arms out, making a noise like she'd been hurt. It startled the shit out of me. My mom started to cry and I thought she was afraid. I also thought that it was a witch coming at us, so I cried too, but it turned out she was my grandmother. My mother called her "Mama".

When we went into their house, Granddaddy told me he had something to show me. He led me into the corner of their kitchen. There was a dead mouse in his mouse trap. He seemed pretty happy about that, but I'd never seen such a thing and felt sorry for the mouse.

I remember he held my hand and took me for a walk on a beautiful night. Mom dressed me in a pretty dress and shoes for that trip, with a tiny purse to carry. I think we road a bus too. He took me downtown and we stopped at what I thought was a theater and he bought me a paper cup of lemonade. He also stopped somewhere and let me select a toy but I don't remember what it was. I ate watermelon at their house and Granddaddy told me if I swallowed a seed I'd grow a watermelon in my belly. Oddly, I don't remember one thing about Grandmother after the "witch" incident, just a feeling that she was a kind woman.

Granddaddy came to visit us only once when I was pretty young. The biggest thing I remember about that is he left a red pill on the upstairs bathroom sink. I found it and thought it was an M&M and started chewing it. It was a bitter pill and made me vomit. He sent me a present for my high school graduation, a long strand of faux pearls.

Mom told me he was a member of the Presbyterian Church and (their) Ku Klux Klan. She said he had a white robe and hood in his closet.

He died in the early 70's; Mom, Dad and I drove to Birmingham to his funeral. Grandmother had been dead for a long time and he had remarried a woman named Minnie. Minnie buried Granddaddy in a grave where she too would be buried in the future. Mom discovered that when we were walking to the graveside. She started to cry because she had assumed/wanted her parents to be buried together. I, in my smart-aleck youth, stomped over to Minnie and her entourage to demand why the hell wasn't my granddaddy being buried with my grandmother? Mom was appalled with my behavior, but I never regretted it.

Also, after the service I took a couple flowers from an arrangement at the grave. Minnie squeaked "you're not taking flowers from the grave are you?" and to her entourage "I never saw such a thing!" I wasn't well versed on funeral etiquette, but saw nothing wrong with this. People looked shocked and I embarrassed myself, but I wouldn't back down to her and selected another. I never regretted that either.