Thank you for validating my Great-Uncle Marion! He and my Great-Aunt Eugenia were farmers in Colombia, TN and lived in this marvelous old southern plantation house complete with white columns and mimosa trees. They never had any children and Janet, my second cousin and I would go spend two weeks with them in the summer. The first week we would go to Florida and the next week we would have fun being farm kids. Aunt Eugenia, taught us to make clover chains. We made crowns and jumped rope with them. We helped dig potatoes and Uncle Marion showed me how when you harvest cabbage to cut off all the sucker heads but one and you could get a second harvest. He is the one who told me the difference between the barred and the cuckoo.
Oh and they taught us to play Bridge the Chess of Card games. He was a wonderful man, a WWI veteran, a member of one of the last military band units that actually took the field of battle with their instruments and their guns. He taught me to love farming. He was quiet, and funny and a little bit shy. He only stood about 5'5". He was probably 2 inches taller in his prime. He was a strong man even in his seventies and eighties. I would always give him a solid bear hug at the Christmas family get-together to let him know that I did not consider him an weak old man. He would always match the hug too and laugh. By this time I was almost as tall as him.
When the discussion of the barred vs. cuckoo came up I remembered what he had told me about it some 40 years ago. It all came flooding back in a rush and brought so many other wonderful memories with it. Thank you all for triggering that recall.
