A special family picture
One afternoon, my mom and I were going through a box of old family pictures. I love looking at these people, people from another day and time, people whose blood courses through my veins.
One picture immediately intrigued me. “Who are these young people?” I asked my mom. She held it up and told me it was my Grandma and Grandpa Emert on their wedding day, my dad’s parents.
They were so young standing there with a handmade quilt as a backdrop. She had on a very simple long dress, handmade. He had on a dark suit with a rather formal long jacket. I told Mom they looked like children. She kind of laughed, and said, “They were children.”
Grandpa was 16 and Grandma was
15 on their wedding day. I just can’t imagine. They were holding hands when the picture was made which was rarely if ever seen in pictures like this; at least, I have only seen straight, unsmiling, no touching older pictures from the early 20th century. It was endearing to see them unafraid to show they cared about each other.
I believe they were married in 1911. The young couple made a home at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains across the ridge from what would become Pigeon Forge. I remember my daddy telling me that there would be apartments on that ridge someday.
He was right enough. Today, condos and homes dot that ridge, not apartments
As a child, I had a great time visiting at the old home place. My uncles and aunts would sit around the warm morning stove playing old timey mountain music with origins from Scotland and Ireland. I loved the music. Still do.
My Grandpa Emert was a logger and helped clear timber for roadways across the Smoky Mountains. He was hurt in a logging accident and spent the last years of his life as an invalid. My grandmother took care of him for almost 20 years before he succumbed to his injuries.
When I was a little girl, I used to sit by his bedside and talk to him. He was just the sweetest man and had the kindest eyes. I’d read him stories out of my “Dick and Jane” books and he’d ask me questions about them. Sometimes he was well enough to come out to the back porch and sit in a cane back chair or he’d stand and hold on to the porch railing. Grandma was always aware and kept watch on him when he did this. She made sure he was safe. I missed him when he died. A six-year-old doesn’t understand a whole lot about death, but all I knew was that he was gone, and I wasn’t able to talk to him again.
Throughout the years when we’d come to visit, I remember the warmth of the kitchen with the old wood cookstove. Although her kids eventually got her all electric appliances, Grandma never used the stove to cook anything. She said her cornbread and biscuits didn’t taste right. I can just smell the country ham from the smokehouse as she cooked it on that old woodstove. I’ve often wondered what happened to it.
I had the great joy to know all 11 of Grandma and Grandpa Emert’s children. My daddy was their fifth child. Grandma told me he used to hide under the porch so he could read. That sounds like something he would do. He was an officer and a gentleman and later a postman.
His greatest love, though, besides my mom and family, of course, was his music. He was an accomplished musician and in his later years entertained with his brother Otha as the Emert Brothers at the Museum of Appalachia and at other venues. Later, he and my first cousin George, played together as the Birds Creek Boys. Our son Heath played with his grandpa at his final concert celebrating The Delmore Brothers in Athens, Alabama.
My Aunt Reva, a college professor and the youngest died at age 46 of cancer. All the others passed in their late 70s and late 80s. My dad passed away in 2010 at 88. My precious Uncle Bill is the last survivor of this large mountain family. He is 87.
My Grandma Emert passed away in 1969 at the age of 72. As we went through her trunk where she kept her special things, we found a Dutch doll quilt top with my name pinned to it. One of my students finished it some years back and it has a special place on our bed. I treasure it.
Grandma and Grandpa Emert left a great legacy of what family is all about. This young couple lived out their lives in the Smoky Mountains in a home filled with children, warmth, laughter, music, and especially love.