Bessie Meek Carrington: In Her Own Words

By William Carrington

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669815716

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Copyright © 2022 by William Carrington.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 03/29/2022

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Contents

Introduction

Foreword

My Mother, My Sisters, Myself

My Father

Louis Josserand

Home Remedies

My Parents

Sustenance

The Necklace

Girl Scouts in Texas

Chiang and Kai Shek

Summertime

Manners and Morals

Changing Times

Austin Public Library

Wartime

Junior High School

My Sister Marian

Austin High School

On Achievement

College Days

The Importance of Orange

Expanding Horizons

Getting Married

Frances and Henry

Having Babies

The Army Life

Laramie

Abe and His Descendants

Summer Sojourns – I

Bloomington, Indiana

Life in Bloomington

Summer Sojourns – II

Moving to Columbus

Parallel Deaths

Ann Arbor

Girl Scouts in Michigan

Colombia – via Mexico

Colombia 1970

Becoming a Librarian

More about Library School

Detroit Public Library

Cars

Another Columbia

Canadian Oil

The Lottery

The County Farm

Living with the Wildlife

Spring Sojourn – III

Three Stars

Chinese Connections

It’s in the Blood

Shopping

Bellagio

On Retirement

Maria

Anticipating the Reunion

The Reunion

Introduction

First, a word on how this book came to exist. Mom was for many years involved with what is now known as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Duke University. She first began as a student after she retired from her job as a reference librarian at the main Duke library. She took a class on memoir-writing from a more experienced writer but, in true Mom fashion, moved on to become a teacher in later years. The chapters collected here appear to have mostly been written as assignments for one or another of her classes at the institute. The hardcopies contain comments from some of Mom’s readers and, with them, her files also included her comments on the hardcopies of others’ writing (which are of course not included in this book).

We found electronic versions of about half of these chapters shortly after Mom died in 2016, and Mary assembled them together over the next year and wrote the following Foreword to go with the chapters and the many wonderful pictures that you’ll see in what follows. In 2021, as we moved our father out of his cottage and into the memory care unit at Collington (the senior community in Maryland to which they had moved in 2014), we found another trove of hardcopy chapters of Mom’s memoir. These now account for more than half of the words that you’ll find in this volume.

As we assembled these documents that Mom had left in her physical and electronic file drawers, the following questions naturally arose. Why didn’t Mom assemble these herself? And given that she didn’t, is it appropriate that we assemble them now into what seems to us to be a coherent whole? There’s no authoritative answer to either of these questions, but Mary and I both thought, as we read over this material, that it would be a shame if Mom’s descendants didn’t have access to this material that we found charming and informative. So we pushed aside any qualms and moved on to assemble the document before you. We hope that Mom would approve.

Second, while you’ll learn a lot about Mom from hearing her story in her voice, I’ll start you off with what I said at her memorial service in 2016. It’s been almost six years since her death, but the words still apply and it feels good to say them again.

Bessie Meek was born in Houston, Texas in 1931 and was mostly raised in Austin. She married our father Paul Carrington in 1952, when he was 21 and she was 20. She still had a year left at the University of Texas when they moved off to Massachusetts, so she completed her degree by correspondence. I believe that she’s still the only Phi Beta Kappa in our family. They were married for 63 years and she always said that she married the best guy she knew.

She had four kids by the time she was 32 – think about that, grandkids! Clark and Mary and then, later, myself and Emily. Mom was sweet when she needed to be, particularly when we children ran into emotional or physical problems, but also always clear that she had high expectations for us. We sometimes met them. And she was fearless and game for anything, living in fourteen states and four countries, much of that globe-trotting done with four children in tow.

Mom was restless as a full-time mom, however, and so got her Masters degree in library science from the University of Michigan in 1971 at the age of 40. She then worked as a reference librarian for the cities of Detroit and Ann Arbor and then, for 20 years, as a reference librarian at Duke University. She was always looking forward to what’s next, which in library science meant computers. If it had been up to her, the card catalog would have been used for kindling five years earlier than it actually was.

She had little patience for pretense. She was an elegant cook, but she would tell nosy kids that we were having slime pie for dinner. Her stock response to the question of where are your people from, sometimes asked in the South, was that her family consisted of ex-convicts from Tennessee. She called her collection of family recipes the white trash cookbook – it’s a real thing. When we lived in Michigan, she and my dad joined a relatively distant swimming pool in part because the application for our neighborhood pool asked about applicants’ college fraternities and sororities, which they found snooty and obnoxious. In contrast, she was typically generous and patient with people doing an honest day’s work. Janitors, cashiers, sales clerk – they all got Bee’s respect and courtesy. In her last illness, she became great friends with her Senegalese orderly.

She did not suffer fools gladly. This rule applied to professionals of various stripes, including lawyers, doctors and, particularly, stockbrokers. I have particularly in mind here a Merrill Lynch stockbroker in Durham, North Carolina named Clarence and various accountants in Alberta, Canada who shortchanged her on the small gas interests that she inherited from her oilman father. But it applied with particular force when the fools were her own relations. I’m looking at her nephew Hank, in particular, but I think that all of us children were found wanting from time to time. She recently, for example, let me know quite bluntly that I was paying too much for tax filing services for a jointly held account. She held others to the same high expectations that she had for herself.

Indira Ghandi said: There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there. Our mom was firmly in that first group. In her retirement, she did the work with the Durham, North Carolina literacy council, with the Durham library foundation, with the Duke Institute for Lifetime Learning, where she led classes in autobiography, and with the Durham league of women voters. She became an active member of the league of women voters here in Prince George’s County after moving here at the age of 82.

And she became fully engaged with the Collington community upon moving here. A notepad I found on her desk is indicative of that engagement, as it contains a seven page to-do list for what she wanted to accomplish with regard to IT at Collington. Here is just a smattering of what was on her list:

1. Add birthdays monthly to website.

2. Get up to date meeting schedules.

3. Weekly updates for the Collingtonian.

4. Better pictures? Consider adding a composite Banner

5. Check navigation – Should it open in a new window?

6. Resident profiles – should they be password protected?

7. District meeting – Game room

8. Printer problems in library – ask Michael Thomas

9. Put ‘how to" information in the directory for the following items:

a.   Voicemail

b.   Wi-fi.

10. Create Wordpress accounts

The list goes on and on, and perhaps she had checked some of these boxes off her list already. Our mom was, even to the end, ambitious, outward-looking and diligent about solving problems. The world needs more people like that.

Will Carrington

Bethesda, MD

March 2022

Foreword

Bessie Carrington was a force of Nature.

I often think our Mom was born ahead of her time. If she was born a half century later, she could have been a mathematician or a scientist. I rather think it would have been Geology for her. But she was born at a time that offered women only a few life choices: motherhood, nursing, teaching. She was a stay-at-home mom for a good long while, but when she got her chance in Ann Arbor, she went for it by earning a library degree at the University of Michigan.

As a librarian myself, I know what attracted Bessie to the profession. There is always something new to learn and to master. Everyday is full of intellectual challenges and you get to help people with their burning questions. It really is fun. But that did not seem to be enough, either. After ten or fifteen years at Duke University, she retired from her job at Perkins Library to join Dad on sabbatical in Hawaii. (Pretty good life choice, there.) When they returned, Bee (as she is known to her family) spent hours donating her time and expertise to the League of Women Voters, Durham Public Library and the Durham Literacy Council. It was not until her memorial service that my siblings and I began to realize what a force she was beyond our lives. It was as though we could not see the forest for the trees.

Together with her husband Paul, Bessie lived all over the United States -- in numerous houses -- and raised four children (Clark Dewitt, Mary, William James and Emily) while Paul pursued his career in legal education. This book documents Bessie’s impression of those myriad places they lived and traveled, the people they befriended and the animals they treated like family. She wrote most of these after her retirement from Duke University, often while working with seniors at the Duke Institute for Learning in Retirement.

Energetic and intelligent, Bee never suffered fools well. She did not accept mediocrity at work or from herself. If she saw a problem that needed solving, she was most likely to roll her sleeves up to do so herself rather than complain to others. When we were little, she used to refer to herself as The Little Red Hen. The Little Red Hen (LRH) made the cookies, weeded the garden, mopped the floor, filled the bird feeder and did the laundry. As far as I can tell, Bee never outgrew the LRH syndrome. When she died, Will found a legal pad on her desk that had a seven-page long list of things to work on at Collington, the retirement village where my parents resided. She was interested in updating the residents’ web page, sprucing up the listserve that she had started, hosting the League of Women Voters of Prince George’s County at Collington, and the list goes on. She was a catalyst for change wherever she lived.

I hope you enjoy reading Bee’s work and perusing the photos compiled here. She is much loved and missed.

Mary Carrington

Severna Park, MD

Christmas 2017

My Mother, My Sisters, Myself

My mother, Annie Bessie Buchanan, was the older of two girls. Her sister, Clarabelle, was seven years younger than she. My grandmother, Isadora Hanks, was the second wife of John Hiram Buchanan, an east Texas lumberman. Mother never said a kind word for her step brothers and sisters; in fact, she did not want to have much to do with any of her relatives, except for her mother. Her father died before I was born; he and my grandmother were divorced about a year before he died.

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Bessie, Clarabelle and Maude Meek

We went to visit Big Mama in Nacogdoches every summer. She was a very vivacious, opinionated person, but everyone seemed to like her. She was warmly greeted when we went shopping in town. Hello, Miz B, how are you today? Would ring out as we approached. Once a redhead, she dyed her hair a disgusting henna color and powdered her face heavily to disguise what I now suppose were freckles and incipient skin cancers. Others may have been on the lookout for her for different reasons, for she had an abysmal driving record. When she got a car that had an automatic transmission, the word got out that Miz B was on the road!

My grandmother had a beautiful vegetable and flower garden. I loved picking carrots and beans, but mostly admired the beautifully fragrant nasturtiums. In our garden in Houston, we mostly had roses and petunias, plus lots of shrubs that did not require any maintenance. An annual task was picking the bagwords off of the arborvitae bushes; it was disgusting but necessary.

Mother didn’t talk much about her childhood, except for some anecdotes about being drawn about in a goat cart. When my aunt Clarabelle wanted to join the DAR, my mother claimed their ancestors were runaways from Kentucky and Tennessee. Maybe this was true, as in the mid-nineteenth century, many families fled the tax collector or the duty to serve in the army. Most of them were lumberman, makers of shingles and purveyors of building supplies.

I did hear some stories about going to Sunday school, or rather, not going to Sunday school. Apparently, the high school kids sat in the balcony at the Baptist Church. As the sermon wore on, they would stealthily exit and congregate to smoke cigarettes. Once married, I never knew my mother to attend church on a regular basis. However, she was a very fair and honest person; she just did not need any higher authority to be that way. I think that she gave up religion along with Baptist life styles.

My parents were married January 1, 1922, when my mother was just 20 and my father was 23. At the time, my mother was attending Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas, which was a Baptist school. My mother claimed they married on New Year’s Day so that Daddy would not forget their anniversary.

My sister Marian was born on May 31, 1923. Following his work in the oil business, my parents moved from boomtown to boomtown, living in Corsicana, Mexia, and Mineral Springs, all in Texas. None of these were large towns and Mother frequently agitated Daddy to take her to Dallas to go shopping. Tradition has it that he always got there just in time to go window shopping as the stores closed. Mother was fond of fashionable clothes, particularly shoes. She was always well-dressed, as was my father. My father always wore a dress shirt with long sleeves. Maybe this was fashion, but it was also very practical in the Texas sun. In addition, he always wore a hat in public, preferably a Stetson or Panama straw hat. When there was enough money, both of my parents knew how to buy and wear beautiful clothes.

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Bessie and James Meek

Finally, they moved to Dallas, where my sister Blanche was born June 28, 1926. Blanche was a blue baby, the result of a leaky heart valve. At that time, there were no surgical solutions which are now commonplace. She grew up with this condition, which was limiting, but not crippling. The major result of the bad valve was generally bad circulation, resulting in shortness of breath, splayed fingers, blueish lips and poor skin. I never knew the difference.

The next child, a boy, was born with a fatal heart condition, and I am sure my parents grieved over the loss of any child, particularly a boy. He only lived a short time. As a mother, I can only imagine the anxiety of expecting another child in 1931, in the middle of the Depression. So, as the saying goes, I was born in 1931, after my parents moved to Houston. My parents always said that they were lucky to have three girls; what else could they say? When I applied for a passport in my adult years, I learned I did not have a name on my birth certificate. I was always called Little Bessie.

Marian, being the oldest girl, was the boss. I actually stayed out of her way as much as possible. Not only is she older, but she is the tallest of us three girls. My middle sister and I were very close. We shared rooms and colds and doll houses and played games with each other incessantly. We were both fond of solitaire and similar card games, as well as listening to the radio programs then popular. In the afternoon, we listened to Jack Armstrong, Captain Midnight, Sky King, and the Lone Ranger while we did our homework. We frequently fell asleep at night listening to Jack Benny, Bob Hope, or Phil Spitalny and the all-girl orchestra.

Growing up, we called my middle sister by her nickname, Tootsie. Now, it seems like a perfect name for the Twenties, but when she reached high school, she rebelled and wanted to be rid of such a childish name. Since she was named for my father’s sister, she insisted on Blanche instead of her middle name, Virginia. I was devastated. For a long time, I did not call her a name at all; it was as if a stranger had taken over. My best friend and companion was replaced by a teenager who didn’t want to have anything to do with a twerpy little sister who called her Tootsie. As a result, we never used permanent nicknames for our own children, although we did have many alternate terms of endearment for them.

Being the youngest, I suppose I was also the most difficult. Every young child asks why, but I must have been particularly exasperating. It was very frustrating not to be able to read, when everyone else had his or her nose in a book. I memorized the picture books we had at home such as Ferdinand and Wee Gillis. I would go to visit my parents’ friends and read these books to any audience, although I never was really reading. One day, about the time I was in kindergarten, my brain came together and I could read from then on. What liberation! After that, my mother just said, Why don’t you go look it up?

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Bessie and Tootsie, circa 1940

School was easy for me, but not for my sister. Mother made sure we were equally valued, though. When report cards came, the query was always, Is this the best you can do? I could never honestly say yes, so there was yet an unobtainable goal. My sister was also asked the same question, so if even though her grades were not as high as mine, their goals for her were the same: do the best you can do. Sometimes I helped my sister with her math problems, and she helped me with her artistic ability. We never got monetary rewards for good grades; it was expected.

We were also disciplined equally. We knew we were in real trouble when Mother broke off a switch from the privet hedge and began methodically stripping the leaves offf. The anticipation was worse then the punishment, which was not severe.

When we lived in Houston, up until I was 10, we had servants who did most of the cooking and cleaning. Mother did the shopping and the childcare. Even so, she had lots of spare time, which she spent playing bridge and reading. She also sewed a lot, making us clothes to wear and often elaborate wardrobes for our dolls. It was an outlet for her knack of style. Nearly every evening, she enjoyed a martini before dinner. This usually included two onions, one for me and one for her. She never drank too much, just a nip at the end of a long day.

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Bessie in Galveston, circa 1940

My Father

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Before the age of computers, when everything was known, we had to fill out forms nearly every year at the beginning of school: name, date of birth, address, telephone, father’s occupation…It was my father’s occupation that gave me the most trouble. I knew he had an office in the Magnolia Building in downtown Houston and he went there when he was not out of town. He did travel a lot.

I also knew that he had quit school at 16 to work as a roustabout in the oilfields of east Texas. Just about every kid did that as it was hard work and good money. Born in 1899 in Groveton, Texas, there were not many role models to follow: farming, lumber, retail, insurance, etc. These occupations did not require a college education. I don’t know how he avoided being drafted in 1917, but maybe it was because he was in an essential industry.

After some time, his hand was injured by a rope burn. If I recall correctly, he was trying to keep a tool from slipping down into the well casing and wound the rope around his hand so he had a better grip. Alas, he lost control and the rope pulled out of his hand, burning off all the flesh and most of the sinew. He had to stop working in the fields, since he could no longer grip the ropes or tools after he recovered from the injury.

Since there was no workman’s compensation insurance then, he turned to work more to his tastes and talents. First, he was a landman for Humble Oil. A landman goes out and secures contracts with landowners who sign over their drilling rights and mineral interests to companies that think there is oil somewhere nearby. Geological exploration for oil was in its infancy then, too; the geologists knew vaguely of the formations under the ground by evidence at the surface; hills, valleys, outcropping of rocks, type of soil and rocks and sometimes from cores taken from existing oil wells. Often extensive leases were made, as it seemed foolish to contract too little land rather than too much. Ordinarily the landowner got a promise for a royalty of 15% of oil and gas produced, as well as a lease bonus for signing up. So Humble would give Daddy a list of properties, he would go to the appropriate county courthouse and start talking to the landowners. If Gulf or Texaco got wind of this, they might start a bidding competition, so the landmen tried to downplay what they were doing as much as possible.

As a result, my father became an independent oil broker. He later mused over whether he would have been more successful staying with Humble like his friend, Hines Baker, who became president of the company. He also noted that Baker had a law degree and a few credentials that my father lacked. He did not become a wildcatter, a driller who tried to garner other people’s money to pay for leases and drilling. He just played along, arranging various deals and leases; usually, he did not get paid but took a 3% royalty interest in the investment. Being independent, the parties involved did not know who was interested in drilling and it was a valuable service. Soon my father had a reputation for absolute discretion and honesty in his dealings. In addition, he had a lot of charm. Storytelling was his forte, as was his usual good humor. He had friends all over Texas.

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There was a dark side to his personality, though, as he became an alcoholic. Nearly everyone he associated with drank: beer, cocktails, highballs, you name it. Prohibition didn’t seem to have made much of a difference. And he was a gambler, through and through. Nearly anyone who wanted to make money in the oil business had gambling in their blood and the stakes were very high. So it was that my father carried this passion to the card table. I think some years we lived more on his winnings on