A Wedding in the Family

This one is for Maddie, Ella and Sam.

On this day (Feb. 2 Groundhog Day) your great-grandparents Ollis Elton Brandon (O. E.) and Hazel Pauline Tucker(Polly) got married in 1934. They were both almost 20 years old. Your Dad called them Paw-Paw and Granny.

They were married in the parlor of "Bro. Reeves, a minister of the Gospel" as the marriage license reads. I wish I knew more about all the event. I think they met at a party. Both lived in small communities surrounding Anson, Texas--He in the Hanna Community and she nearby in the "shinnery".

When they married, O. E. was a share-crop farmer and part-time clerk at a grocery store in town. She had graduated from high school at age 16, and gone to Draughton's Business College in Lubbock the next year. She had a scholarship to the business school, but when her father found she was using some of the money he was sending her to take dancing lessons, he came and got her and that was the end of her schooling. I don't know about the intervening two years; I wish I did.

They had been married for four years when I came along in 1938. When I was three, they moved to Hamlin where they lived until they died. Polly died from melanoma October 22, 1976 at the age of 62. O. E. died Aug. 26, 1990 at 76 of an aneurysm after surgery .

Although often operating below the poverty line in money, they had a good life with three children. Dad spent his life working in various jobs--he was a trucker when they first arrived in Hamlin. He hauled wheat, peanut hay, etc. He also worked for the Hamlin Hatchery driving a chicken bus to deliver baby chicks to farmers all around Texas. O. E. later became a carpenter--he learned the skill while working at Camp Barkley (a WWII camp outside of Abilene, Texas). Polly was a housewife, but went to work at a department store when I was in junior high and was the seamstress of 2 stores in Hamlin before her death. Her last job was seamstress and accounts payable/receivable clerk at Heidenheimer's Department Store in Hamlin.

I am so glad your dad got to know them. Granny Brandon loved him as much as I love you. She made a little coat for him, because she loved to see him dressed up. I will pass it down to you. Paw-Paw called your dad "Sonny-Boy" and loved to watch him play at our house in Potosi. Brandon was 5 when Granny Brandon died.

I miss them both.