Day 21 - Mother's Roots, Lakota, and Puckett's Farm Equipment

   

 

At mid-morning we set off down I-85 toward Gaffney, South Carolina, my Mother's birthplace... no road trip being complete, of course, without good coffee and Willie Nelson...

 

At Gaffney, we visited with Odis Vinesett, my Mother's mother's brother...  my great uncle...

 

Mr. Vinesett has an amazing story to tell, as he was part of the American forces captured by the Japanese at Corregidor, on May 6, 1942. Several months earlier he had shipped through Pearl Harbor just prior to the Japanese surprise attack there on December 7, 1941. After Corregidor fell Mr. Vinesett and his fellow captured Americans and Filipinos were forced to Cabanatuan (not the Bataan Death March, but a similar, sad event). Mr. Vinesett recalls the prisoners being herded like cattle into large boats, then being forced at the butt of a gun to swim a mile to shore, through waves and over coral. As one of the "lucky" ones, he was picked to be shipped to the Japanese mainland to work in the steel mills between Tokyo and Yokahoma, as part of a slave labor force. Mr. Vinesett recalls being marched through Tokyo on November 11, 1942, when Tokyo was the largest city in the world. He also recalls the Yokahoma still mill as being nearly two miles long. Enduring torture, humiliation, and unspeakable brutality, he also witnessed acts of kindness by some Japanese soldiers. He recalls a young Japanese soldier who, at risk to his own life, would drop cigarette butts within reach so that the prisoners might have a few simple moments of smoking pleasure amidst the agony. Mr. Vinesett was a Prisoner Of War for 3 years and 4 months. Upon liberation, he recalls being again moved through Tokyo... but this time the great city was a deserted, smoldering heap. Mr. Vinesett kept a diary on scrapes of paper while in confinement but it apparently has not survived. My Mother remembers that diary from when she was a young girl. Mother remembers being asked to transcribe the pages, but she was so troubled by the brutal content that she was unable to do the job. Mr. Vinesett forgave his captors even before being liberated, and even chose to serve in Japan for several years after the war before returning to his beloved South Carolina...

 

Around the Vinesett house...

       

 

We visited the nearby graveyard where my Mother's mother's parents are buried...

 

       

 

And another nearby graveyard where Mr. Vinesett's wife is buried... and where one day he himself will be put to rest...

 

Gaffney, South Carolina. My Mother recalls the day, in April, 1945, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral train rolled through town on the pictured railroad tracks...

 

       

 

 

 

The house where my Mother was born... catty-cornered from the (newer) Childers house (where "Chi-Chi" lived). "Chi-Chi" was Mother's "2nd" mother...

 

Site of the old Childers house, across the street from where my Mother was born. This was once a nice old home, so close to the side street (pictured) that there was no side yard and only a small front yard. I recall that the house was well appointed, though everything was old. The 2nd shot is of the little store that was behind the old Childers House. Mrs. Childers was my Mother's second mother...

 

We had our luncheon at Mel's Diner, near the Gaffney Peachoid...

 

       

 

We stopped at Hames Music, in the shadow of the Peachoid, as Father still had visions of a new mandolin on his mind...

     

 

Heading back up to Charlotte... Father dreams of that new mandolin... or was he pondering the Peachoid?

 

In the late afternoon I visited with Bill and Gigi, and the beautiful Lakota. Gigi would not let me take her picture, so I snapped a shot of her red hearth instead. Gigi's painting of Lakota is spot on!

 

www.gigidover.com

 

       

 

Bill and I repaired to the Puckett's Farm Equipment ("Your 21st Century Honky-Tonk"), in the Derita section of Charlotte. Bill got up and held forth, running through a few fine country songs, and his own "Lonesome Blues," always one of my favorites...