Gma book - For print - 20 stories, 11 font, subtitles (75 pages)

What was your mother
like when you were a
child?
WRITTEN SEPTEMBER 28, 2019
M
y mother, Johnny Lee Jarrell, was a fun person and a good mother. Maybe
because of her upbringing in a very small community where everyone knew
everyone, she always knew how to make friends with anyone which I admired
about her.
She was born on October 27, 1910, in the tiny community of Oak Vale, about 50
miles south of Pinola, Mississippi, where her family eventually settled and she grew
up. I have a few memories of driving with mama to visit her extended family there
when I was growing up.
Mama was 18 when her family moved to Chickasaw because of her father’s railroad
job. She was the oldest of seven children, and always said she’d never have children
of her own because she was so sick of helping take care of her little brothers and
sisters. Of course she had to swallow those words later.
One day she walked into the local drugstore and caught the eye of my handsome
daddy working behind the soda fountain where he did all the cooking for
customers. According to the story, daddy asked her name and she pointed to the
rack of candy bars. “It’s one of those,” she said, meaning the Johnny Bar. My parents
married just a short time later, in July 1929, and had me just over a year later.
She was a good mom, but she was very strict with us girls and she did have a
tendency to be anxious. I have many memories of daddy trying to convince her not
to worry about something. I remember she used to get sick to the stomach when a
bad storm would come up, like she just knew something bad was going to happen.
My sister and I got bicycles when we were little and she wouldn’t let us ride them
anywhere outside of the driveway. I can hear her now: “Now don’t you go riding
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