Mamaw

There is so much to say...and so little of it can be put into words. Some you have already been told. That she was the shy daughter of a Baptist preacher who married the fast young man that her parents disapproved of her marrying. That she loved her God with a passion that few people can comprehend. She married twice but loved only once, choosing companionship in her later years with a man who was, in my opinion, never good enough for her. Now I know that there are cousins who were too young to know or remember our Papaw. And some of them call Frank Martin by that precious name. I'd like to go on the record here and now and say that if you are one of those cousins and read this, don't be offended. You are entitled to your opinion of Frank Martin, and I am entitled to mine. Like Ouiser Boudreaux, I can be pleasant. I even smiled at the man a time or two. That changes nothing. Least of all the simple fact the on his best day he was only about a quarter of the man my Papaw was on his worse day.

My grandmother was the paragon of patience. When I was a little girl she drank grapefruit juice. Wanting to be like her, I asked for a glass of grapefruit juice of my own, only to promptly go to the sink and pour half of it down the drain then fill the half glass of juice with water and drink the watered down juice. Which raises the question...why didn't she or someone else stop me? When I asked her years later, she told me she just didn't want to take away my sense of being pleased with myself
when I watered down my juice by myself.

Her favorite bird was a cardinal. She sat pie pans of birdseed in the snow and show me how to watch quietly when the beautiful male cardinals braved the threat of Papaw's old tom cat Tom to feed. She also liked violets. When she was in Florida, I tried to find a way to mail violets to her from our backyard. When she lived with us I would bring them to here whenever I could.

Faith and Realty Street

The true tragedy is that some of the stories have already been lost. The people who lived them have slipped away and I'm left with my memory which is tainted by my perspective and inability to understand the way things were in the South in the 1930's and '40's.

My great grandfather Robert Lee Prestwood was a Baptist preacher. References to him in family genealogy sources list him as Robert "Preacher Bob" Lee Prestwood. I've been told that during thunderstorms he made his wife and children sit in the parlor in case the Lord decided to speak to them directly during the storm. My Mamaw said that her father made them sit quietly so they would not miss any of the Lord's message.

That may sound as if I am being disingenuous but I am not. My great grandfather was a man who knew God and respected him and if he felt close enough to his maker to expect direct communication, I have nothing but respect for him.

He wasn't the only person the family knew who had abilities brought to them through their faith.here was an old woman, named Maw Shell who could stop bleeding.

Once when the sidewalk on Realty Street was new, there was a rope tied to the fire alarm box and my uncle Duane tripped on it and made his nose bleed. Mamaw couldn't get it to stop bleeding and told my father to run to get Maw Shell.

When he got to the old woman's house, she told him to go home and the bleeding would be stopped. And it was. According to my dad, there was a verse in the Bible that could stop bleeding but the information could only be passed to a man, not a woman.
I don't know why that would be except maybe because old people didn't use to believe in women speaking in church or ministering at all.

Not that it stopped them. My mamaw felt the urge to spread the word so fiercely that even when she had no money she found a way to minister. One time, in the middle of the Depression, when there was no money and she had a house full of children to feed, she purchased ten penny postcards. When she heard of someone who needed to hear the word, she would send one of her postcards with a bit of scripture on the back. Never did anyone in the family receive a birthday, Christmas or other card that did not have some appropriate scripture.

In her later years, she studied and eventually became an ordained minister. She officiated weddings performed other duties of the ministry. But she was living proof that a minister doesn't need a building to carry out the work of God.