Shirley Reedy Reich Story
Hello, my name is Shirley Reedy Reich. My mother's name was Mabel Ruth Reedy (daughter of James Roland Reedy), my father's name was Mars Edmons (son of George Monroe Reedy). If you were at the last Reunion, you may remember my brother Jim telling the story about how he interviewed for a job AND DIDN'T GET IT. The interviewer either thought he was ignorant because he didn't know his mother's maiden name, or crazy because he DID know it and the parents were related to each other. Yes, they were cousins.

I was born and grew up in Detroit - I was a city kid. If you needed bread or eggs, you went to the store and bought them. If you needed to go to the bathroom, or take a bath, you went to the room in the house that had the appropriate porcelain fixtures in it. If it was too quiet in the house, you turned on the radio - listened to the soaps like "Portia Faces Life", or in the evening "Amos and Andy" or "Inner Sanctum".

If you were bored or lonely, you could go next door and visit your neighbor - or you could pick up the phone and call a friend or relative. Or you could get in your car and go to Sears or Penneys and shop til you dropped.

I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade when my parents decided that Mother, brother Jim and I would come to Granny's farm right after Easter and spend the summer. We came down on a Greyhound bus - they always had lots of little paper bags to hand out to those who couldn't take the sway. My brother and I used them a lot. Daddy would come and get us before school started.

So I finished my school year in the 2-room school in Paisley where my Aunt Georgia taught grades 1 through 4. Keep in mind that my idea of a school was a red brick building - a BIG building - that had doors and windows, long hallways, indoor bathrooms with the usual equipment. And then I went to school with Aunt Georgia - the Paisley school had 2 rooms and NO BATHROOMS.

If Aunt Georgia was teaching first graders to read, for example, they went to the front of the room and sat on a bench. The rest of us were supposed to be studying. Each grade would be called to the front of the room for whatever subject they were studying. I've never understood how you were supposed to study with all the conversation going on up front. Aunt Georgia told me I must call her Miss Georgia Mae, just like the other students. Like - these kids didn't know who I was? But they pronounced it MIZGEORMAE = and I never did learn to say that right..

I was envious that the other kids got to go home in a big yellow bus - I rode home in the car with Aunt Georgia.- not much fun there! . And "home" was Granny's farm. If school was strange to me, getting used to life on the farm was even stranger.

"Grocery store?" Most of the food we ate was right there. Granny had cows for milk (cream and butter also provided by the cows, I learned). Chickens for eggs and fried chicken; an occasional pig; a vegetable garden. What more could you want? Well, an ice cream cone or Oreo cookie would have been nice. No "pop" either - that's what we Yankees called cold drinks.

But you sure didn't go hungry at Granny's.

We've all heard the stories of Granny's outhouse on the creek - how the boys would catch catfish no one would ever fry. I was always afraid I'd fall through one of those holes and be eaten by an alligator. Granny would fill a big metal tub with water in the morning, out in the yard, so the water would be warmed by the sun. Mid-afternoon was bath time - outside! Well, the boys bathed outside - the tub of water was moved in to the side porch for girls to bathe. Modesty at all costs!

I grew up thinking that our radio was always on - that's what everybody did. To this day, the first thing I do in the morning is turn the radio on. But at Granny's, the only time the radio was on was to listen to the 6 o'clock news and maybe "Amos and Andy". Why? The radio was battery-operated and Granny was frugal with the time it was on. There was no electricity on Granny's farm.

That was a difficult concept for me to understand - no radio? Where were the light switches to turn on in every room? And why didn't the phone ring? Oops - no electricity!

And Granny didn't have a car - to my knowledge Granny didn't drive. So there weren't any shopping trips to Sears or Penneys, which I imagine were as far away as Orlando.

But you know what? Of all the memories I have of Granny's farm, I don't have any of being bored. There was always something happening - from chasing a snake out of the "cool" room where Granny kept the milk from the cows, to grabbing eggs out from under a chicken before she pecked your hands. I don't remember much about the schools I went to in Detroit, or the houses we lived in. But I do remember Granny's farm.