Tag Archives: U.S. South

In Search of Ed Haley 165

05 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

When I got back in Nashville, I arranged all of Ella’s postcards into chronological order in the hopes of discovering some new revelation. Most of the cards were dated between 1908-1918, the years immediately prior to her marriage to Ed. Individually they carried only short messages from family and friends, but together they formed an interesting story line detailing events from Ella’s “single years.”

Ella was at the Kentucky School for the Blind in Louisville throughout the first part of 1908. She returned home to Morehead during her summer break, where friends wrote her fondly from Louisville, Nashville, Richmond, and Paducah. There was one card from “Bridget” – probably the same one that Lawrence remembered his mother visiting in Mt. Healthy, Ohio.

“Suppose you think I have forgotten you but think of you every day,” the card read. “Company season has started in and we are having plenty of visitors. Wish you were one. Your cousin Lula is expecting to go West for her health. She was much grieved to hear of the death of Aunt Henrette. Answer soon with love.”

In June of 1909, Ella received a card from “Loula Lee” in Denison, Texas. This was no doubt the same Lula Lee who Lawrence Haley had remembered playing music on the streets of Ashland at the same time as his parents, likely the same person as “cousin Lula” referenced in other cards.

“Hello Ella how are you,” Loula wrote. “all wright I hope. Got out here all right and I like Very Well. It is hot as Summer out here.”

There was also a card from Nellie Motts in South Portsmouth, Ohio.

“I rec’d your card a few days ago and was very glad to hear from you. I am having a delightful vacation. How did you enjoy the Fourth?”

Then this from “Mabel” in Mississippi: “I am away down in the Sunny South. Awful warm weather. I will be glad to get back to Kentucky.”

Ella was back in Louisville that fall where her brother Allie Trumbo sent several cards to her.

“Luther is at home now,” one read. “Please write within 23 hours this time.”

Luther was Ella’s other brother and a future soldier in World War I.

“Hello Allie,” she responded. “It seems as though you keep the road hot sending cards. Now I have written within 23 hours. What more do you bid me to do? The girls are waiting on you.”

Allie wrote back: “how is everything. We had a little rain last week. Please write within 22 hrs. I just got your letter out of the office and will write to you soon.”

“Thank you for the pretty card,” someone wrote from Providence, Rhode Island. “Am glad you are having a pleasant year. Be sure and do good work.”

More from Allie: “I couldn’t make out all of your card but I enjoy it very much. I will send you some cards of our town which will show the bridge and george’s house and part of grandmaw’s.”

“how are you?” one from someone named Cora in Morehead read. “We have biscuits this morning for breakfast and I am going to have fried potatoes for dinner and when I got your card last night we had beef steak.”

“You have been sending me the ugliest cards you can find,” Allie writes. “Try and do better. The creek was Higher than it ever was before Tuesday night.”

In November 1909, there was a “Forget-Me-Not” card from S.H. Childers postmarked in Hellier, Kentucky.

“I do insist on you sending me one of those pictures,” Childers wrote. “Never mind what it looks like.”

There were more from Childers, often signed, “Your lonely friend,” with passages reading, “I am not quite well now. Haven’t don any thing for two weeks. They tell me I am love sick but I don’t think that’s it.”

Bridget sent a Christmas card, signing her last name as Welsh, while another friend, “Flossie,” wrote a few months later.

“You may think I have forgotten you but indeed I have not,” she wrote. “Hope you are having a good time playing in the snow.”

In May 1910, Allie wrote from Portsmouth, Ohio.

“I came from Ashland on this Boat. We got here all O.K. and have got a job. Go to work Tuesday. I like to stay here.”

For the next several weeks, Ella received mail at 115 Woodland Avenue in Lexington, Kentucky. By June of 1910, she was back in Morehead. A card was sent there to “Miss Bridget Welsh & Miss Ella Trumbo” from Miss Henderson in Little Rock, Arkansas.

In July, there was another card reading, “Know you and Bridget are enjoying each others company.”

Late in August 1910 there was a card from “Aunt Anna” to Ella and Bridget: “arrived here all right. Am well and having a fine time. hope you are both enjoying good health.”

On September 7, “Oma” wrote: “Received your pretty card. I guess you will sure hate to see Bridget leave.”

Later in September was a card sent “With Fond Love” and stamped with a fanciful signature from S.H. Childress at the Sunset Ranch in Rhine, Washington.

“I have at last made up my mind to vacate Ky. and have done so. Will write you all a bout my future home when I get my slate.”

It seemed clear that this “S.H. Childress” was the same “S.H. Childers” who’d written Ella the previous fall. He wrote again in December.

“I believe is your first Xmas at home and I trust it will be the happiest you have ever spent.”

In Search of Ed Haley 163

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Once I returned to Nashville, I called Lawrence Haley, who was in the mood to reminisce.

“Me and Pop hitch-hiked to Cincinnati out of Portsmouth a time or two,” he said. “We took old 52. And we’d had about three rides to get there.”

I asked him if Ed took his fiddle on those trips and he said, “Yeah, if he thought he was gonna be in a little bit other than country settings, he would put it in the case. But most of the time, he’d just carry it in his hand, tucked under his arm, maybe, with the bow in his hand.”

I wondered if Ed packed any extra bags on the road and Lawrence said, “Mostly just the clothes on his back, unless he was going on an extended trip — then he’d pack him a suitcase. He’d, of course, fill it up about a third with his homemade tobacco. His own cure — apple or peach or something. He’d take him some of that with him and off he’d go.”

Lawrence Haley passed away on February 3, 1995, the 44th anniversary of his father’s death.

In Search of Ed Haley 159

26 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

In one of those “passing the torch moments,” Lawrence reached the telephone to his sister, Mona. I told her about Milt Haley being a fiddler, and she said, “Really? Well we didn’t never know that.”

I figured that Ed had kept all of the details about Milt hidden from his kids, but Mona said, “Well, he talked about it some, because I wouldn’t know what I know about it if he hadn’t. You did find out what I told you was true, didn’t you? It wasn’t my dad’s mother that was killed, the way I heard it. It was one of the Hatfield women. Got half her face shot away and it killed her. That’s why they retaliated against Green McCoy and my grandfather. That’s only hearsay, but it had to come from Pop. I do remember him saying that.”

Pat seemed pleased that Mona was visiting Lawrence.

“He asks for her a lot,” she said.

I wanted to know more about Lawrence’s condition.

“He sits with his eyes closed and he found a pair of sunglasses that look exactly like the ones his daddy wore,” Pat said. “These are a pair that one of the kids bought. They were laying on the dining room table and he picked them up and said, ‘There’s my glasses.’ He insists on wearing them and you would think it was Ed Haley back many years ago. He talks about horse and buggies a lot. He sits with your book constantly. He does not like to look at the picture of his mother’s tombstone. What keeps you in his mind a lot, he listens to the tapes and he knows he gave you the records. Beverly was here this past weekend. He knew who she was but he was still talking in riddles. But today he’s pretty much himself. He got up and got dressed about 5:30 and he’s been roaming ever since.”

In Search of Ed Haley 118

26 Sunday May 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Later that night, I got back on the phone with Grace Marcum. I just had to know more about Josie Cline.

“She was a little round-faced woman…a little short, chubby woman,” Grace said. “And she wore her hair twisted up on top of her head, a little roll, you know, in a pin. Seem to me like she was blue-eyed, as good as I can remember. Josie Cline’s been dead for years. She collected bridge toll on this here… Well, it’s a free bridge now. They freed it, but when it was first built, they let Josie collect the toll. And she lived there in that little house, her and her husband. Her husband was a paralyzed man, and he couldn’t talk. I don’t know what happened to him.”

I asked Grace if Josie was supposed to be Ed’s older or younger sister and she said, “I guess she was an older sister. She was a funny old woman. She could make anybody laugh. Fine person.”

I asked her again about Josie being a fiddler and she said, “Oh yeah, her and Mont both.”

     Who?

“Her and her brother Mont.”

So she had another brother?

“Oh yeah. Seemed to me like — Mont Spaulding. He wore colored glasses. He wasn’t very tall.”

How could Josie be a sister to Ed and Mont Spaulding when everyone all had different last names? Was she a half-sister?

“Well, she could’ve been, yeah,” Grace said. “But I know they was awful close. Yeah, they had a time. Mont was a pretty good fiddler, and Josie was, too. I couldn’t say which one was the best, but now they played at square dances and everything. Yeah, my dad hired them to play a many a Saturday night down there at the hotel.”

I asked Grace how often Ed came through the area and she said, “Oh, I don’t know. You know, I was just a small girl, and I couldn’t tell you nothing like that ‘cause my father had a grocery store on this side of the railroad — between the railroad and the county road — and I worked there with Dad. He put us all to work. Raised a big family of us, so we all worked, you know, we all helped out.”

After hanging up with Grace, I formulated a theory that maybe Milt Haley had Josie Cline by another woman before coming to Harts and marrying Ed’s mother. It was just a hunch, like the “Emma Jane Hager-Emma Jean Haley” thing. I also wondered if Grace hadn’t partially confused Ed with Mont Spaulding or if Ed was in fact a boyfriend to the widowed Josie.