Travis Parman
Today, we lay to rest my grandmother, Billie Joyce. She made it to 94 and a half. And she was pretty good nearly to the end. Part of me believed she’d live forever. My “Granny Bill” was the baby of 9. Born just a couple months before the stock market crash of 1929, she told fantastic stories about growing up with an entrepreneurial father who was a barber with a sandwich and soda shop that catered to the Tusculum College crowd. He later became post master for the little town. She laughed that she always knew when her wildest sister had been out against curfew because there’d be unfamiliar chickens in the yard that she’d won dancing the jitterbug the night before. She met my grandfather, a student at Tusculum, in that family soda shop, and I believe she did all of his English homework until he graduated. They married and lived in one of the prettiest and most beautifully named places—Meadow Creek—in the rolling foothills of East Tennessee. She reared two children—my mother and uncle. And then the first wave of grandchildren spent as much time with her as possible. When I wasn’t there, I was calling. The only two phone numbers I know by heart today are my own and Granny Bill’s old landline now disconnected. We spent so much time with her under giant maple trees playing on the lawn — building cardboard forts and tree houses, playing badminton and Chinese Checkers, inching Hot Wheels in a convoy around the yard, helping to harvest chestnuts or exploring the woods to slide down steep leaf-covered hills on plastic bags. We enjoyed her delicacies that included a spectrum of fruit juice slushes she had perfected working at the family shop and Chef Boyardee box-kit pizzas all doctored up with extra ingredients. She made the best ever coconut cake from scratch with the silkiest homemade icing. At charity auctions in the ‘70s, one of her cakes would go for the equivalent of more than $250 now — not chump change in the little community where we grew up. She laughed readily, sang often, prayed regularly and never had an ill thought about anybody. In fact, a woman trying to slight her at the grocery store once asked, “Were you sick the other day? I saw you, but you looked so bad I didn’t say hello.” My grandmother who looked strikingly similar to my mother innocently responded, “You must have me confused with my daughter. I’ll have to check on her.” That still makes me laugh—but not as much as the story about the family hound traipsing into church to howl with the choir as my mortified grandmother and her siblings slunk down in the pews hoping no one recognized the singing mutt as theirs. As beautiful and elegant as my grandmother was—she could farm with the best of ‘em. She could out-throw most of the men when she stacked hay bails. She also grew amazing tomatoes — she didn’t grow them upward — she strew straw around them to let them grow outward. They were fantastic — especially alongside her cream-style corn and crisp and buttery biscuits—only outdone by her homemade dinner rolls. She taught us grandchildren to care about people—to ask questions and to remember details to follow up to make sure folks knew you heard them and understood them. She very much believed in needing to walk a mile in another’s shoes. She epitomized graciousness. I am so thankful to have benefitted from her guidance for all my life.
