Salvage

fragments from a past

Friday, January 21, 2005

EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT THE MEBANE MILLSES, IN HONOR OF G. K. MILLS

I would like to say some things about my father and his family in commemoration of his birthday. If I look through all the files and boxes of papers in the house I might learn when his birthday really was. But there's no time do that just now; none of the family Bibles records it, and so we'll be approximate. I have a dim impression from childhood that it was January 19. But that could as easily be one of my stepfathers' birthdays. My mother, a Pisces, married three Capricorns in a row--all with birthdays around January 19th--and had a Capricorn child, poor woman.

A picture named sailordad.jpg

This was the Daddy George I knew throughout most of my childhood--this tiny photo, exactly, and some memories, were all the evidence I had of him. I kept it in a little brass frame next to my bed.

A picture named premedad.jpg

Here he is at work in the Appraiser's Building in San Francisco around 1951 or so. He spent the Korean War years there, in the Coast Guard, ages 18-21. He's probably 19 here.

A picture named premedad2.jpg

In his off hours he could be a little rowdy.

A picture named momndadsmall.jpg

My mother left rural Iowa when she was 18 and made her way to San Francisco, where her older brother was stationed in the U.S. Navy. Paul, who was pretty rowdy himself, introduced her to his new party pal, George Kelly Mills. They hit it off right away. Mom said she fell in love with him because he had eyebrows like Tyrone Power.

The power of eyebrows.

Soon I was a bit more than a twinkle in Mom's eyes, and when she was four months along her older brother drove the bewildered couple to Reno for a quick wedding. (I did not know this about my history until I was 49 years old.)

A picture named momndadfishing.jpg

Mom and dad fish off a pier in San Francisco while waiting for me to arrive. That's me, under Mom's coat somewhere. They're both 20 here. I was born in the wee hours of a December morning at the University of California at Berkeley Hospital, delivered by a Navy doctor, while G.K. and my uncle paced in the waiting room.

A picture named millsfamilysmall.jpg

And here we all are. You will never see a smile on their faces after this.

In October 1953 my father is discharged from the Coast Guard and he takes his family home with him to Mebane, North Carolina.

A picture named xmasgroupmills1.jpg

Mom meets the Mills family, a rowdy bunch all around. They were all employed by the White Furniture Company. Mom, center, a reader and a thinker, appears to be a little lost.

A picture named memomdadmills1.jpg

Our first North Carolina Christmas.

A picture named grampamills1small.jpg

I have not one memory of my grandfather, William James Mills. But I find I am attracted to men with magnificent exposed scalps.

A picture named gramnme.jpg

Of my grandmother, Lacy Ann (Gore) Mills, I recall that she used to set me on a stool in the kitchen while she cleaned up after meals and would mix the dregs of the coffee with milk and give it to me. Mom told me Grandma Mills had a beard and used Nair on her face every day. She told me Grandma Mills was mostly Cherokee Indian just barely down out of the hills. She also told me Grandma Mills chewed tobacco and carried a coffee can around with her to spit in. (I wonder if that's what the little bucket there is for...?)

A picture named dadnme2.jpg

This is the last photo of me with my father. He never smiled in any of them. My memories of him: Sitting on the floor when I was two, watching him read a newspaper. He would fold it into columns lengthwise, and I tried and tried to fold a section that way, but failed. I have a memory of him on crutches. Mom confirmed this--he was in a motorcycle accident at some point. I remember sitting across from him at lunchtime, eating soup. I watched him crumble his saltines into it, and I tried to crumble my crackers the same way. Couldn't. These are prelanguage memories, when it seemed my entire consciousness comprised the impulse to duplicate my parents' actions. I have no memory of him holding me, talking to me, or even making eye contact. But that doesn't mean much. I can't conjure up such memories about anyone else, either.

Before I turned three my mother left the Millses--dad loved his 'coon hound and his mama more than he loved her, she said--and took me to Iowa and left me there with her parents on the farm. She went back to North Carolina and got a job proofreading maps in Burlington. (Her mother had been a proofreader for Life--or Look--in Des Moines for a while. Must be a gene. That's how I got started editing. This blog is evidence that the skill wears off over time.) Mom sent for me when I was three-and-a-half, but it didn't last. She used to joke that when I walked outside one day and said "Where y'all goin'?" she knew she had to leave the South. God forbid her daughter should talk like a Southerner. She hated the racism (as a conspicuously part-Indian girl growing up in blonde blue-eyed Iowa, she knew what it felt like). She used to force the black woman who babysat for me to sit at the table with her, in the front window, in full view of the neighborhood, and have something to eat before going home. Mid-1950s. The babysitter was terrified, Mom told me. She felt bad about that later, after she'd grown up.

Anyway, after 1956 I never saw a Mills again.

A picture named olderdadsmall.jpg

I found this photo of my father in my mother's things after she died a few years ago. I wonder when he sent it. I remember he sent me a photo and letter when I was 11 or so; he was holding up a bunch of fish on a line. This looks like the same era.

A picture named gkmillsobit_small.jpg

When I was 18 and living on my own I thought maybe I could finally get to know the family on my other side, so I wrote a letter to my father, addressed simply "George Mills, Mebane, North Carolina." Three months later I heard from someone named "Aunt Lib" in Burlington (I think it was my father's Aunt Elizabeth). She included this obit with her letter and told me all my Millses were dead. I promptly forwarded the letter to my mother in California (who threw it away) and lost the obit clipping. To this day I don't know how anyone died. It says here "three days of illness." He was only 37. His father had died the year before. His mother died the year after. And I remember Aunt Lib said in her letter "the doctors said it was insufficient oxygen to the brain." Which could be hanging, drowning, smothering, tumors, what? what? Two weeks ago I found the obit, after having given up searching. It was weird. I hadn't thought about it in years. That morning I woke up and something told me it was in my big family bible. And it was. Tucked clear back in. I went right to it. I couldn't do that again today when I went to fetch it for the scan. I practically had to tear the Bible apart to find it.

So now I have some names. And maybe someone is still alive who is related and can tell me something. I hope so. He was cute. And I still have dreams about him. I think he was probably a good guy.
4:02:29 PM

comment []