Photograph that appeared in the Brownsville States Graphic newspaper in an article about my grandmother’s updated kitchen.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house in Haywood County, Tennessee. Lloyd “Bo” Williams and Elizabeth Castellaw Williams, whom we called Daddy Bo and Granny, both grew up near the house on Poplar Corner Road in Bells where they spent the majorioty of their lives.
Willie and Irma Steele built the house, and my grandparents bought it in the early 1940s when they wanted to move out of the middle of a field at the end of an unpaved road. Champ Watridge lived in the house at the time. Daddy Bo’s grandmother, Martha Jane Watridge Williams, and Champ’s father, William Henry Watridge, were brother and sister.
Champ lost a leg after an accident while he was cutting trees for lumber. According to family legend, they buried his leg in the Cobb Family Cemetery. When he died many years later, they buried the rest of him at Holly Grove Baptist Church Cemetery.
Over time, Daddy Bo and Granny bricked the house and enclosed the front and back porches. Those changes gave them a living room, an extra bedroom and a place where they could wash up before entering the main part of the house.
When they upgraded their kitchen, it was newsworthy and the States Graphic wrote an article.
Granny had a creative, gregarious personality depending on her emotional state at the time, and her house reflected that. For a young boy, it was a fun place to visit. Even as a child, I knew I needed to remember as many of the things in that house as I could.
A few years after Granny died in 1998, I took photos of some of the things I wanted to make sure I never forgot.
For me, and probably for several members of my family, the telephone desk is memorable. When Granny did not sew, can, cook or work outside, she sat there and talked on the phone with friends, neighbors and family members. Since it was a party line, she could (and did often) sit and listen in to her neighbors’s phone calls.
Today, these photos could be an exhibit of sorts. In museum lingo, one could say “they reveal a space in which mass-produced goods, Southern crafting and Midcentury kitch coexist as part of a highly personal visual language.”
Enjoy.
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