Vanilla Flavored Memories
October 10, 2024
By Tom Poland
Springs creaking, Granddad’s maroon Ford rattles down Mom and Dad’s long dirt driveway. Washouts make for a rough ride but that doesn’t stop Granddad. Here he comes selling Watkins products. His trembling hands pull a bottle of vanilla flavoring from a box, and whether it needs shaking or not, it gets all shook up. Destination? Mom’s fabulous pound cakes.
That was long ago. He grew cotton and ran a country store in eastern Georgia. Toward the end of the line, he sold Watkins products back when door-to-door salesmen weren’t met with hostility.
Were Granddad Walker alive, he’d be 128. Into this world he came June 14, 1896, destined to be handsome. You would have thought he was a Kennedy with his square jaw and thick shock of hair. He looked like ill-fated Bobby. I will write here that women liked Granddad and he liked them, and in time that would lead Grandmom to break a window to retrieve the family Bible from her burning home.
Grandmom’s rescued family Bible.
As for Granddad, he dyed his hair black till the end. The day before a stroke killed him, December 5, 1988, I stood by his bed, trying to decipher his unintelligible speech. I made out just one word: Imelda, the name of his baby daughter.
I bring my pen to this family tale not because of its woeful history but because Watkins vanilla flavoring helped Granddad work his way back, partway, mind you, from a long family rift. Some children never forgot, never forgave, and the divide lived on until Death buried it, but the rift’s back-story is a story for another day. Aside from the falling-out, two memories surface of Granddad, he of the uncommon first name, Cleborn. The first, a boyhood memory, involves a crystal radio I made. I held the earphone out to him and a trembling hand slowly raised it to his ear. Music played and a smile broke out. He got out his wallet and handed me a dollar bill. It might as well have been a $100 bill, so strapped was he.
Early family photo of my granddad, Cleborn Benjamin Walker, with four members missing.
The other memory was his penchant for nicknaming people based on some physical attribute. He had five daughters and four sons. Over the years suitors called on his daughters. One fellow, bug-eyed like Rodney Dangerfield and hard of hearing, wore two large, cork-like hearing aids. He’s park in Granddad’s sandy yard to call on daughter Priscilla. Granddad would watch him step from his car and warily cast his bug eyes about. “Cilla, old Stopper Head is here,” proclaimed Granddad. During that contentious time, Granddad plastered a nickname on my father who was bald by eighteen. He wrote Dad a fiery letter in which he called him “Persimmon Head.”
Mom bought vanilla flavoring at local stores but the day came when she didn’t. My heart tells me that Watkins Vanilla Extract gave Mom an excuse to know her dad again. After that ice-breaking kindness, a few of his children thawed a bit before that stroke killed him. One son, however, refused to go to his funeral. I’d tell you more but I just can’t, but I can tell you this. There comes a day when memories rise like phantoms to become the only thing we have left.
I knew a woman, 96, who could barely hear and see.
“What do you do all day?”
“I lie here and remember my family.”
I do too. To this day, fragrances of vanilla flavoring and pound cakes live inside me. Asphalt covers my boyhood home’s driveway but grass grows in cracks where Granddad parked his maroon Ford. Trembling hands and all, he got out to make a few dollars. Soon, fragrances of vanilla flavoring and pound cakes filled my parents’ home. That was long ago. A new owner took over my boyhood home, and I hold tight to my vanilla-flavored memories.
Georgia native Tom Poland writes a weekly column about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and culture and speaks frequently to groups in the South. Governor Henry McMaster conferred the Order of the Palmetto upon Tom, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, stating, “His work is exceptional to the state.” Poland’s work appears in books, magazines, journals, and newspapers throughout the South.
Visit Tom’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email him at [email protected]
