Ritter Roots

I have, for the longest time, wanted to put on record memories of my grandparents. So much has been lost with their passing, and they have all been gone so long. Who I am comes from each of them, and the older I am, the more my mind wonders, and after being away for forty years or so I am now living maybe twenty feet from where my Mamaw Stewart washed clothes in an old ringer washing machine outside the back door of their old farm house. I will speak more of this ringer washing machine at a later time but today, I want to look back at my first grandparent that went home to be with the LORD, Mamaw Davis.

I have given a fair amount of time pondering what my earliest memories of Mamaw are, but I just can’t put a date on it. I am guessing around 1959, but I am just not sure. I hate it because I loved that woman with all my heart and I know she loved me right back. So much of the way I try to relate to my grandchildren came from her.

I suppose the first concrete memory would be of her in the kitchen and she was preparing either Thanksgiving Dinner or Christmas Dinner. One thing I can remember about her kitchen was a huge round fluorescent light that was so bright that the room almost glowed. Why cant they make a light like that today? Even though on that particular day I have no recollection of it, I know from later Davis holiday dinners that her table would have had two things on it that were legendary. A home made banana pudding and a made from scratch fruit cake. She use to soak the cake in pineapple juice. Fruit cake gets a bad rap but her cake was great. That day the main thing I remember was the bread.

Children are amazed by things that are very ordinary to adults and looking back, with all the work that went into that feast, the most amazing thing was a store bought loaf of bread. I can’t remember how it tasted and most likely it wasn’t even good. But the slices were red…and green…and all these years later in my mind I can remember blue! The more I dwell on it, the more certain I am that it was Christmas dinner.
I remember her apron. And I remember the house. A small house in Louisville, close to the Watterson Expressway with a large front porch. I would love to go back there, to that house. But the old neighborhood was eaten up by Stanford Field, Louisville’s Airport. And nothing looks the same anymore.

I remember our family being very close, and I can remember her and Papaw owning a farm in the same county that my dad grew up in.

Now, here is where I need to step out of the story to lay some groundwork for all the other stories that will be centered around my grandparents.

My grandparents on my mom’s side, the Davis side of the family, were from Edmonson County, the county joining the county my dad was from, Grayson. Mamaw Davis was a Ritter. They lived in the area that is now part of Mammoth Cave National Park. The Federal Government took everybody’s land that lived around the cave, in the middle of the great depression to create the park system. I am sure some small amount of money changed hands but until they died that’s the way it was always presented to me: They took our land.
In nineteen sixty two or three, the Western Kentucky Parkway took their land again. Here is something you need to understand when it comes to all government: when they want what you have, you, have no say in the matter.
The parkway landlocked their farm. The road that connected their farm to a highway vanished. I never heard them say it, but I can hear it in my head….they took our road. WE will speak of this damn parkway again.

That was such an awesome farm, and later I would incorporate many of the qualities of that farmhouse into my cabin. There was no electricity. There was no plumbing. There were no bathrooms. I have memories of Mamaw cooking on a wood stove. Memories of coal oil lamps. Memories of outhouses. Unlike in the city, the nights were alive with owls and whippoorwills. Crickets and lightning bugs. And stories about the past. We don’t do that anymore. I believe things would be better if we did. When there is no respect for the past there is no respect for the present.

I-65 was not finished yet, and I can remember when it opened. As busy as the interstate system is now, when it was new, there was not a lot of traffic. It made our trip to the farm much faster and here is a funny thing we would do when riding with Mamaw and Papaw; they loved to scavenge the interstate! Those were the days of roll down windows and wing glasses. Air conditioning in a car? Nobody we knew even had air-conditioning in their homes! A new interstate and hot weather meant the cars were going fast with the windows down. That usually meant stuff was flying out of cars and that meant Mamaw was watching, waiting!

That farm had a huge apple orchard and I can still remember the smell of the orchard. The first dried apple pies I remember came from there. Mamaw would cut them up and put them on the tin roof to dry out, make her own pie crust, fold them into half moons and I would give a thousand dollars for one bite of one of her pies today. They lived on two more farms after that but this one was the magical one for a little boy from the city. This is the farm where I got my first bicycle. One last thing that I remember about here is that when it became landlocked, we would park on the edge of an old farm road and walk through a culvert that was under the parkway, to pick the road back up on the other side. Then we would walk to the farmhouse, carrying a metal cooler with us.

My mom says that she remembers electricity there because she remembers at least at some point they had a television and that jogged another memory of listening to a radio so we are uncertain of when but we do both agree on the coal oil lamps and I have one of them now. Even though it has not been lit in over fifty years, it is still one of my most prized possessions and someday when I am gone I hope it will pass to the next caretaker for safe keeping. Where was I ? I remember….

Two more farms. But in the same way that the first time that I know for certain that I remember my Mamaw Davis, and that it was in the kitchen. The last time that is burned into my heart was also in the kitchen of the last house she would ever live in. There are other memories, but there is sadness interwoven in so much from that point on.

I am guessing it was right after Christmas nineteen sixty eight or early January and it was cool, but not cold. I was playing with a tape recorder I had gotten for Christmas in the room next to the kitchen and I could hear my mamaw that I loved with all my heart crying.

Sobbing.

Looking out the screen door at Papaw feeding the ponies, and I knew she was mourning being without him. Even though we didn’t understand at the time, we had heard whispers. We knew. Mamaw was dying. Cancer. They had given her so much radiation that the nurses wouldn’t touch her and sent her home to die. She did, but not quickly. Cancer is so sad for everyone. I remember when we got word of her passing, my mom took care of her until the end, and when the end came my mom was with her. The dying was horrible but the passing over was not. My Mamaw Davis sat up in bed and saw her momma, called her name and left us.

One of the most humble people I have ever met.

Dipped snuff.

Very small frame and long black hair she wore in a bun most of the time.

Always wore a dress.

She, like most of her generation, could pretty much do anything.

Very soft spoken and very religious.

She had several sayings. One I remember is, “pretty is as pretty does.”

She also reminded me often of the boy who cried wolf.
I loved my other grandparents but with each of the others there were things pulling me in different directions,all the things attached to growing up, becoming an adult, a parent. With her ,it was just a boy coming to terms with losing someone he loved.
My oldest daughter, after trying for so many years, gave me my first granddaughter. They named her after my Mamaw Davis…Novella.