Annie Mae was married to my cousin Irvin, but we called him "uncle". Irvin was born out of wedlock which was a terrible thing back in the day, so instead of calling him cousin, it seemed better to call him uncle. Don't ask how that worked; that's just how it was. I never heard him called anything but Uncle Irvin.

Irvin's father must have been a big tall handsome blond guy, because that's what he looked like--he looked nothing like his mother. He had a wonderful mellow tenor-ish voice and the best laugh I have ever heard.
He was drafted into WWII and got sent to Germany where he was injured and taken prisoner by the Germans.

Somewhere from the time he went in the Army to the time he was freed from the Germans, in his travels to bases here and there, he met a girl in Oklahoma named Annie Mae and married her. She was so beautiful, like Ava Gardner's little sister. Thick wavy black hair, blue eyes, skin like cream, and dimples in her cheeks.

I remember one spring seeing her squatting on a table next to the hand pump in her back yard washing dirt off some radishes. I was about 8 or 9 years old, and thought she was like a rose in the backwoods desert of Mississippi where she had been transplanted. She had a collection of miniature objects, but the only ones I remember were some tiny Coca Cola bottles.

Annie Mae died young from Bright's disease, a kidney disorder. She was the first person in my life to die and I sobbed and cried as she was lowered into the hard clay. Her family wanted so much to take her body back to Oklahoma, but Irvin wouldn't let them. Now her little gray stone is hard to find, surrounded by her husband's people, far from her folks and home.

susil