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Saturday, February 9, 2008
Happy birthday, “Mo-mo”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The grand kids love to hear “Mo-mo’s” stories.
I understand why.
Eva Strickland’s tales dip, dive, cross and turn. They can be simple one-liners, one particular topic, or a series of disjointed narratives that manage to connect, to resonate.
On Sunday, Strickland turns 100 years old. She was born in Walton County, the oldest of 12 in a farming family. Her father rented land to grow or raise most of what they ate. And yes, sometimes she walked to school - a mile and a half each way - if she got to attend at all.
Crops came first.
“One day I picked 500 pounds of cotton in one day,” she tells me as we sit in the living room of the Tucker home she shares with Celia Jones, her daughter. “You worked from sun up to sundown. There was no clock.”
At that moment, I think of my late mother: Lizzie Mae Badie. She and Strickland are similar, salt of the earth people. They didn’t moan and groan about life. They just lived it, and along the way planted seeds so that their offspring might have it better.
Then, someone else comes to mind: Richard Pryor, the late, troubled comedian. Though crass, he respected the elderly. You don’t get to be old being a fool, he’d joke. Then, he’d add something unprintable about “wise” young people being dead as a hammer.
Back at Strickland’s home, we’re in the middle of a conversation about her love for sewing, quilting, attending church and watching the Braves. She has a baseball autographed by Tom Glavine.
Suddenly, she turns to her daughter, one of six children. “Celia, get that suit I made for my mother.”
Jones exits, then returns with a light pink and green ensemble. It’s about 50 years old, Strickland estimates. She shows the laced insides.
“I never heard my momma say a bad word about anybody ‘cept for this one lady whose family thought they ran the church,” Strickland says, laughing. “One day she said, ‘I bet she doesn’t have as many dresses hanging up in her closet as I do.’ I made all my moma’s clothes.”
She still sews quilts and baby clothes. “She can thread a needle better than me,” Jones says.
Several times a year, Strickland and Jones deliver “redressed” baby dolls to Noah’s Ark, a group home for children in Locust Grove. The dolls are overstocks donated by another childrens home. The women outfit the dolls in hand-made clothes.
“I love to do things for children,” Strickland says.
That leads to another story.
“I helped my mother deliver one of her babies,” she says, though she can’t remember if it were one of her brothers or a sister. “I stood right by her bed. I’d say, ‘Moma, you’ve got to help me.’ I’d wipe her face. The doctor got there just in time.”
Strickland’s been married two times, and has outlived both husbands. Besides being a homemaker, she worked 27 years for a Georgia manufacturing company that, during World War I, made tents for the U.S. troops.
Generally, she’s in good health, though she uses a walker, has a pacemaker and wears two hearing aids.
“Nothing I eat hurts me,” she says.
Before I leave, “Mo-mo” does three things.
She shows me a card from President Bush and his wife, Laura, congratulating her on her 100th birthday.
She gives me a baby doll to give to my 5-year-old daughter, Olivia. “Tell her to name it ‘Eva,’ ” she says, chuckling.
Then she tells me something I already know, that we all know, but can always benefit from hearing again.
“Life is what you make it,’ she says. “I hope you live to be 100.”
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
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