[Granville-Hough] 16 Jul 2009 - Mrs Wallace
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough-trust at oakapple.net
Sun Jul 16 06:41:21 PDT 2017
I will be gone for ten days, so I will start doubling up on stories to get
ahead - David Hough.
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:54:04 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: ThankYouMrs.Robinson, - 16 Jul 2009
Mrs. Wallace.
When I first saw the movie, ôThe Graduate,ö I thought I had known
someone like the character who played the mother, who seduced her
daughterÆs 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 ôThank you, Mrs. Robinson,ö 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
JimÆs 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 WallaceÆs 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.
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