RRN Online Volume 493

November 12 '05

Volume 493

Meeting Marlin 2nd Of Twenty Swanson Children

A few weeks ago, Miss Callie Young, contacted me concerning a new book she was in the process of completing, and in the course of conversation she mentioned that she had spoken with Marlin Swanson. Marlin and I were among the eighty-nine writers who contributed one or more articles to Miss Callie’s most recent project, ‘Folk Tales, Facts, & Fabulations."

Somehow, my name was brought up, and after Miss Callie shared a little about me and my newsletter endeavor, Marlin stated, "He sounds like someone I’d like to meet."

I knew Marlin Swanson, by name only. I had read a few articles by him in Reminisce and Reminisce Extra magazines. I also knew he was a member of the famous Swanson family of Pontotoc County, and I resolved to meet him. I later learned that Miss Virginia Dillard had contacted Marlin on behalf of the Pontotoc Historical Society about participating in the book signing program. Thus, as soon as I determined the best weekend for a meeting, I called Miss Virginia to get his phone number.

"I’ve got it around here somewhere," Miss Virginia stated.

I’ve seen her "around here somewhere" and was surprised she found the number so quickly. Stacked beside her favorite chair are enough papers and books to fill a four-drawer filing cabinet and have enough left over to clutter a large desk. Yet, unlike me, she has an uncanny knack for remembering what’s where.

I phoned Marlin at the home of one of his sisters, last Friday morning, and explained who I was and that I would like to meet him at his earliest convenience. We decided to meet for lunch the next day, and I promised to contact him around ten a.m. on Saturday with more details.

I also asked Barbara and Sara Sue to accompany me, Barbara for her ability to remember conversations and Sara Sue for her ability to sustain a conversation even when others have run out of something to say. Barbara suggested Kirk’s Grill for our meeting, due to its popularity with local patrons and because it doesn’t have a noisy environment.

When I phoned Marlin Saturday morning to tell him where we would meet, I described the clothes Barbara and I were wearing.

"I’ve got on a rust colored shirt with light gray slacks. Barbara will have on a blue top."

I mentioned I might be able to recognize him from an old photo I’d seen in Reminisce, but he wasn’t confident that I could, and shared that he was wearing a stripped shirt and khaki colored pants, and then laughed, "And, my hair is silver."

I didn’t mention that my sister would be with us as we agreed to meet at 11:45.

Barbara accompanied me to Young’s Laundry, still complaining of chronic lower abdominal pains. She visited with Miss Cubell, while I washed my car. I had not completely finished wiping down the car when Barbara came out to tell me she was sick and needed to get home right away. We didn’t make it home before the nausea overtook her. She wasn’t feeling much better an hour later, and fearing she might have a stomach virus she decided it best she stay at home.

I picked up Sara Sue and explained that Barbara would not be going with us. I also explained that Marlin would be expecting to see a woman with me in blue, not lime green.

We waited for Marlin in the foyer of the restaurant. He was the first man with a stripped shirt, khaki pants, and silver hair to enter the front door, so we knew him immediately. As I introduced myself, he commented that my wife didn’t have on blue. Of course, Sara Sue quickly assured him that she was my sister, and I explained that Barbara had suddenly taken ill.

In the course of the next two hours or so, Sarah and I shared a little about our families as we learned a lot about the Swanson Family. I knew there were a bunch of Swanson children, and in my youth, I had heard of a basketball team comprised entirely of Swanson sisters, but I had forgotten there were twenty, that’s 20, of them. I also remembered, from one of the Reminisce articles, that Marlin was the basketball coach for his sisters and figured he must be one of the older of the siblings.

"So, where were you in the lineup?" I quizzed.

"I have an older sister. I was the next one born, and then I had two more sisters before I got a brother. In all, there were twelve girls and eight boys."

"We farmed, but we didn’t own a farm. My dad always rented a place," Marvin recalled. "He didn’t work much. He was a trader. He’d trade anything we owned, but mostly he traded cows and horses. I know, one time he traded our only milk cow for a horse. He did stuff like that. It didn’t make sense to me."

When Marvin mentioned his family was poor, I was prepared to hear a comparison, perhaps something humorous.

I wasn’t prepared for, "but, I didn’t know any family as poor as we were."

Listening to Marlin, it was easy to pick up that he had lived a hard life in his childhood and youth. His father was not a good provider for the family, but Marlin’s mom and he accepted the responsibility that the father shirked, and their labors literally kept the family alive.

"Once we lived near the little town of Houston. We’d pick vegetables and take them to town and go street to street selling them. Dad had an old pickup truck and sometimes he’d take Mom and me. She’d go down one side of the street, and I’d take the other side until we’d sold everything."

Marlin recalled an event that he still finds perplexing, "One time we were almost through picking the vegetables, when Dad cranked the truck and drove off without us. We had to carry those big sacks into town by ourselves."

Marlin’s early education began in the elementary school at Buckhorn, a community southeast of Pontotoc. He enrolled in Pontotoc City School (ninth grade) before enlisting in the Navy in 1944.

"I was eighteen years old in the ninth grade," Marlin told us. "I was held back to work. In fact, there were four of us in my family that started the first grade at the same time."

"We moved around a lot. We never lived more than a year in one place, because Dad would get into it with the property owner, and we’d move again."

"One place we lived, the owner had about fifteen milk cows. Mama struck a deal with him. She said she’d milk all his cows in return for all the milk her family needed. That was the only time I remember we had enough milk for our family. I don’t know how she managed cooking, plowing, milking, and raising us, but she did."

Had World War II not come along, Marlin might still be on a farm somewhere, though I imagine he would have made a far better farmer than his own father.

"They asked me when I joined the Navy, what I could do. ‘I told them I could chop cotton and corn and plow.’" Marlin remembered.

"How’d you like to be a sonar operator?" he was asked.

"I didn’t know what that was until they explained I’d be helping locate enemy submarines."

Following a special hearing test to match a "ping" with the returning signal, Marlin scored high enough to impress his superiors.

"Are you a musician?" he was asked, "We don’t see that high a score except with musicians."

Marlin, who is not a musician, served in the Pacific Theater until the end of the war. Upon his discharge in San Francisco in 1946, he visited a great aunt and uncle in Bakersville, CA, who urged him to stay and get a job in California.

To be continued.

Iuka Concluded Mineral Springs & Jack's

We walked along the sidewalk to our car, leaving the century old house that once served the community as a hotel. The Iuka Baptist Church complex took up the block across the street.

"I wonder if their Family Life Center has a white roof." I asked aloud, thinking of FBC Pontotoc’s new addition. "I can’t see the roof, but it does have a white edge showing."

From the vantage of the parking lot, we were able to determine the building did indeed have a white roof, but because of the gradual sloping roofline, and the structure’s proximity to the street it’s not noticeable to passersby.

We drove around the downtown area a couple of times, while I struggled to remember the sights of my childhood.

"I think the Kroger store Dad managed was somewhere on this block," I stated.

"I believe it was on the next block," Miss Virginia replied.

Sure enough, the spot she pointed out had a more familiar look to it, and I was sure she’d found the right one.

"There was also a drug store with a soda fountain service not far from the store," I recounted, and Miss Virginia knew where it was, too.

Leaving the downtown, we were off to find the street my family had lived on in Iuka. We turned beside an old store adjacent to Mineral Springs Park and I commented that there used to be a service station there. My brother, Fred, and I once collected enough Sugar Daddy wrappers to win a giant Sugar Daddy caramel sucker at the service station. The Sugar Daddy was at foot or more in length.

I found the right street, but the big oak tree that was in our front yard is gone. I could not say for certain which house was once our home, and it may now be gone as well. But, we made the block and drove back again. On the second pass, I did spot the house on the hill with the curved walkway and brick lampposts where my brother wrecked my tricycle, irreparably.

I told Miss Virginia that because I didn’t grow up in Iuka – having only started to school there – when I returned to Iuka as an adult, it seemed everything had shrunken. The houses were smaller, the tree in our front yard was smaller, and the house on the hill with the curved walkway was also much less intimidating than before. It’s a visual experience that’s hard to imagine, unless one has had the opportunity to return to a childhood home without the benefit of having grown up in the same community.

We drove slowly around the neighborhood, as I absorbed the sights and sounds of today while remembering those of yesteryear. For example, the tires of our car made almost no sound as they rolled along paved surfaces, but fifty-seven years ago, the crunch of gravel rocks would have been audible, especially since our windows would have been lowered for the purpose of air-conditioning. Though, one thing remained unchanged, the sounds and laughter of children playing in the park.

We pulled back onto the highway and were heading west, when Barbara asked, "Weren’t we supposed to stop and sample the springs?"

It was something Miss Virginia had mentioned earlier, but I’d all but forgotten it.

"Yeah, let’s do that," I replied, while looking for a place to turn around.

We drove back to the east side of the park where most of the springs are concentrated, parked, grabbed a few plastic drinking cups out of the trunk, and walked to the closest spring.

Years ago, galvanized pipes formed the spouts for the naturally flowing springs, but those had been replaced with white, plastic, PVC piping. From my perspective, the mineral water didn’t taste any better that it did when I was a child. But, the best part was it didn’t taste any worse. It could be I’ve lost some of my sense of taste for, after tasting the water from several springs, I couldn’t detect any noticeable differences, whereas in my childhood some of it tasted a lot worse than others.

There remained a lot of to-dos on our lists that we hadn’t crossed off, but the day was nearly spent, and we decided to head back to Pontotoc.

At the time of our lunch, Miss Virginia had noticed the restaurant chain sold Blue Bell ice cream and had offered to buy us a dessert. But, we passed, thinking our stomachs didn’t have the necessary room.

"That ice cream might taste good, about now," I suggested, and that was all it took for a quick decision to revisit the restaurant.

We were trying to figure out the dessert menu at the order counter when the manager asked to help us. He suggested apple pie ala mode, and each of us decided to get one. Unfortunately, there were only two of the fried apple pies, so I asked for a peach pie.

I don’t think any of us were prepared for the large portions we received. I had envisioned a small scoop of ice cream sitting atop the small, fried apple pie, much in proportion to that which Barbara would have served at home. Instead the pies were heated, then halved and placed into an 8 or 12 oz cup and served with a large serving of ice cream between the halves. I could have shared mine with someone and we both would have plenty. Somehow, we managed to eat our servings in one sitting.

We trailed back to Pontotoc along the Natchez Trace, enjoying both the beauty of the roadside and the respite from the routinely hectic highway traffic. There’s a good possibility Barbara and I will be returning to the Iuka area in the coming months, especially if we can talk Miss Virginia into hosting the remainder of our tour.

Bodock Beau Political Humor

I catch up on Dave Letterman and Jay Leno by reading the Wednesday edition of the Federalist Patriot. I keep thinking Dave Letterman will have a top-ten list that I like better than the humor of Jay Leno. So far, I’ve not found one.

Jay Leno... What did Scooter Libby say when he bumped into President Bush at the White House? "Pardon me."

President Bush outlined the U.S. government's plan to fight a "bird flu outbreak." Apparently the plan is to attack the flu over there in Iraq, before it attacks us here. In fact, you know what he is calling his bird flu attack [plan]? "Flock and awe."

Here's the good news, yesterday President Bush announced his plan to fight the bird flu. The bad news? There's only enough doses for the Red States. ...

All this news about bird flu starting to scare you? Makes you miss the good old days of mad cow disease. ...

In yesterday's election the city of Denver voted to legalize marijuana possession. Fifty-three percent approve of marijuana. Boy, how does that make Bush feel? He's forty percent behind pot now. ...

Just when you thought things couldn't get uglier at the White House—yesterday, Prince Charles and Camilla showed up. ... Well, a poll in USA Today says 59 percent of Americans are not at all interested that Prince Charles is here visiting. Why should we be interested? Another foreigner without a job coming to America.

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