[Granville-Hough] 16 Jul 2009 - 12 July 2005 - Thank You Mrs. Robinson

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Mrs. Wallace.

When I first saw the movie, “The Graduate,” I thought I had known 
someone like the character who played the mother, who seduced her 
daughter’s friend, the recent graduate from college. When she went with 
him to a local hotel for the deed, they signed in as Mr. and Mrs. 
Gladstone, that being the name on a travel bag. There is a famous song 
from the movie, something like “Thank you, Mrs. Robinson,” her movie 
married name.
The person I knew was Mrs. Wallace, wife of Jim Wallace, a tenant farmer 
who lived on the Rufus Yelverton place just north of us. They lived on 
Highway 28, on the Mize to Magee road, about a block across the road 
from Mr. Yelverton. Larry Hough lives about two blocks west from the old 
house site. I have forgotten the given name for Mrs. Wallace, but I 
cannot remember when anyone else lived in the house. So she and Jim were 
married at least 15 to 20 years. We could say for Jim that he was a 
World War I veteran, barely literate, but basically honest and 
well-intentioned. He was a hard worker at the farm work he knew how to 
do, and he worked on shares with Mr. Yelverton. One could also say he 
was the most cuckolded man in the county and not be far off the mark.
Mrs. Wallace was just a typical farm wife who minded her own business, 
helped Jim with the hoeing and cotton picking, and kept an immaculate 
garden. She helped Mrs. Ceba Yelverton with the housework and yardwork 
and did the washing. She did not go to church and visited no one I ever 
knew. She had no apparent interest in other women. She did learn our 
names as we would frequently leave the school bus at her house in the 
late fall, go down through the woods by a very productive wild persimmon 
tree, and eat our fill of persimmons. When she learned why we left the 
bus at that point, she paid no more attention to us. We were just the 
Hough younguns coming home from school going to eat a bate of persimmons.
Judging from the unsolicited messages I get every day on the internet, 
there must be a population of women who will never be satisfied with the 
husband they have, or with his physical attributes, and who actively 
seek solace from other males. Mrs. Wallace must have been one of those 
persons. We do not know when her sexual conquests began. An early victim 
we knew was Farrel McAlpin. He came along our fence line in the cattle 
lane, then through our barnyard, then a half-mile through the woods to 
Jim’s house on the highway. At first we thought he was visiting his 
cousins, Ceba (Ware) Yelverton and her husband Rufus, or his uncle and 
aunt, Will Lack and Mrs. Lack, who had been a McAlpin. One day, we had a 
hired woman, Dick Evans, who visited Mrs. Wallace for some reason, and 
found Farrel in bed with her. His clothes were hanging on the clothes 
cabinet, and he had jumped naked into a closet. Dick Evans was somewhat 
malicious in nature and stayed all afternoon, with Farrel in the closet. 
After that we knew very well that Farrel was not visiting any of his 
relatives, but it was none of our business. We just waved to him as he 
passed through our barnyard a couple of times each week.
Even in those days we had family reunions of sorts, visiting our 
Richardson relatives in Polkville area, or our Arender and Baldwin 
relatives on upper Cohay. We learned there were a couple of young 
Richardson men at Polkville who would not take part. When we arrived, 
they disappeared into the nearby woods. We concluded they were too shy 
or backwoodsy to tolerate company. Imagine our surprise when we began to 
see them at Jim Wallace’s house. Now, Polkville is way up in the 
Northwest corner of Smith County on Strong River. Jim Wallace and we 
lived way down in the Southwest corner of Smith County. No roads connect 
directly. We never learned how these Richardson fellows learned about 
Mrs. Wallace and her hospitality; but there they were.
In our last year at the Hough house, we began to see a McAlpin grandson, 
now deceased, come down our lane. He was about 17 at the time. We 
guessed he was learning how with Mrs. Wallace. He had one peculiarity. 
He always wanted a raw egg. We would find one freshly laid, and he would 
demonstrate tapping the ends open and consuming the whole egg in one big 
slurp. Later in life we learned many people have steak and eggs, or just 
raw eggs, preparatory to sexual activity. Somehow, this young fellow had 
already learned this technique. Maybe Mrs. Wallace taught him.
At some point, Mrs. Wallace found a man to her liking and divorced Jim. 
This fellow was jealous and had her cut off all further contacts with 
her former friends and visitors. Mr. Yelverton died about this time, and 
this couple moved into the Yelverton house to take care of his widow, 
Mrs. Ceba Yelverton. Jim Wallace, however, was still employed as a 
handyman. He lived alone in the old house or wherever he chose. In the 
morning, however, he got his breakfast from his former wife, the same as 
she fed her new husband. The new husband was angry but his wife said Jim 
had taken care of her for 20 years, the least she could do for him was 
to give him a good breakfast.
I do not know how it all ended. It is my belief that Mrs. Wallace never 
charged for her hospitality. She was very discreet, and any publicity 
came from the men, not from her. Had she charged, she would have been 
branded as a hoar and banished from the community. As it developed, she 
lived in peace with all her neighbors and men friends. Perhaps she did 
more good than harm.