Yes, Effie was our grandmother. I was almost named after her. She was a stately woman, much taller than her husband. After the divorce, she married John Haddock and moved to Indiana.... but not before she kidnapped my mother and enrolled her in Mrs. Bachman’s School for Girls in Florence, Alabama where mom stayed until she graduated. Pop remarried and had another family. He left my mother $1.00 so she wouldn’t contest the will. Effie and mother moved to Nashville, where she met my dad, after she graduated. Effie died when I was two. Dad took a job in Texas after she died and we moved shortly after. My dad loved Effie. He said she was clever, funny, a good business woman (she kept the books for Pop's grocery store).
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Suzie
Effie and John Haddock had a speakeasy in Indiana. That why Mom had to be in a boarding school. Pop had taken her out of school as she entered the 8th grade…to take care of the boys. When Effie heard about that, she snuck into the house and took mother in the middle of the night. Mom said she would come down to Florence once a month and take mom and her girlfriends out for lunch and a day of shopping. Mom said she was bigger than life. Furs, cigarette holders, strands of pearls, & driving a Dusenberg convertible. John Haddock died in my mom’s senior year, so Effie bought a house in Nashville. My dad was their “iceman” and they were the last on his route. He’d often stay for dinner and play cards. Mom was working in a button factory and dating other men but would often find my Dad at their house playing cards with Effie. Mom was dating Percy Priest who went on to become a state senator…she dumped him for my Dad. She’d often remind him of the mistake she made when she’d get mad at him. My sister, Jean had memories of Effie and adored her. She swore she saw her in mom’s hospital room as mother was dying. I was there but I didn’t see her, but Mother was talking to her Mom in her last breaths. Jean was down the hall, talking to the nurses and looked into the room from a distance and saw a tall woman standing at the foot of her bed.
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[In another's memory ......Your dad was a grocery delivery boy.....not an iceblock deliveryman.....presumably, in H'ville....on Holmes Avenue......Clara was visiting Mrs. White, Opie and our Grandfather.....on a break from her 'Catholic Boarding School'.....Clara offered Edwin all of her saved money....to 'take her away from "All This Mess"......after which, they eloped........The "pieces" fit together in several ways, don't they, Suzie? ]
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