Page 54 - Senior Link Magazine Spring 2021- Online Magazine

Exceptional
Gleaning from Grandparents
HOW LEGACY HAPPENS by Ted Wilson
I had an inkling of
have the honor of
having grandparents
and a great
grandmother who
greatly impacted my
life. My grandmother,
Lola Whorton, was, for
a time, a young mother
working as a hairdresser
and raising two children.
Then Jim Keene came
into the equation with
two children to add
into the mix, and they
moved to Lorenzo from
Central Texas, where
my Mother, Anne,
graduated high school.
My siblings and I called
our grandparents Lollie
(Lola) and Jim. We called Lollie’s
mother, Grandmother.
Grandmother (Bertie) lived in Hale
Center and spent a lot of time with
us. She had a little round screen TV
in her home and liked to watch the
Dallas Cowboys on Sundays after
worship and wrestling whenever it
was on. Grandmother was small but
feisty and would get upset at the
refs when the game wasn’t going the
Cowboys’ way or when the “good”
wrestlers, like Ricky Romero or the
Funk brothers, were
getting hammered
by the “bad”
guys. Righteous
indignation would
spew at those
unrighteous attackers
of the good guys.
I never witnessed
anything other than
a sweet disposition
any other time. I
54 Lubbock Senior Link
SENIORS
get to stay with Lollie and Jim often,
what Romans 12:9
especially in the summer, sometimes
is evil, cling to
states, “Hate what with my brother Paul. Jim walked to
the gin that bore his last name, and
what is good.” we would always walk there with
him. Not so much went on in the
Grandmother office during the summer, but we
did not drive, were enticed by those 6.5-ounce glass
so we walked bottles of cokes in the coke machine,
everywhere. It and we had the key.
was just a couple
of blocks to the The office was okay, but the gin, with
grocery store and all its machinery, was a wonderful
only a bit further place to explore, climb, and hide.
to the Methodist I preferred climbing up shafts and
Church, where gears rather than the steps leading
she attended to the catwalks around the various
faithfully until mechanisms that separated lint,
she had a bad seed, burrs, and such and conveyed
stroke that left her them to the proper spots. I knew
paralyzed and placed in a nursing every hidey-hole in that building. I
home for seventeen years before she would be alarmed if my children or
died just a few months shy of her grandchildren did what I did at that
hundredth birthday. Visiting her there age. I also enjoyed helping Rooster,
was difficult because of her inability Leon’s right hand man, make repairs
to speak. I learned that sometimes, whenever I could.
love is just presence. God has used
that reminder to strengthen me since Lollie was a beautiful, dignified lady
my wife Jody’s stroke 20 months ago. who was also so much fun. Most of
the time, she wore her dark hair up
My granddad, Jim, owned and in a crown of braids on top of her
operated the gin at Estacado, a few head. She was a great cook – famous
miles northwest of Lorenzo, on the for her pound cakes and banana
Lubbock, Crosby County line. I would pudding. The men would wash, dry,
and put away the dishes after meals.
In the evenings, we would often sit
on the front porch, visiting neighbors,
watching the Boy Scouts rolling each
other in tires, and listening to cicadas.
Mornings would find us gathered
around the kitchen table where Lollie
or Jim would read from the Bible and
Upper Room devotional and pray
our thanks to begin the day. Every
Sunday, we attended the Methodist
Church where Lollie sang in the choir,
and Jim was an usher. Several times,