Family Trees

The pies. My grandfather’s small apple and peach orchard was beyond his pond. I wondered, “Why so far from the house?” Maybe it was the only place left. Whether he planted the trees or found them when they moved there in 1915 is anybody’s guess.

The fruit trees were not producing much when I came along. The apples were small and the peaches hard, when there were any at all.

There was a mulberry tree near the barn, but it may not have been a producer. My grandmother made jelly from grapes, elderberries and blackberries but not mulberries. There were jars of fig preserves, but the mulberry tree was eventually cut down and chopped up.

Those were fig loving people. Everybody in the family had a sprout of a fig bush from the home place in Barns Station, South Carolina.

I thought about mulberry trees when I passed the Berry College Campus north of Rome, Georgia, on US 27.

My mother’s favorite uncle lived in a house across Martha Berry Highway from the campus.

Uncle Gordon Keown was the oldest of a family of boys who grew up near Concord Church of Walker County.

He was actually a half-brother to those boys, including my grandfather, but nobody noticed. He made sure each of his brothers had as much education as they could handle.

Uncle Gordon graduated from Berry School in 1904 and never left. There was always a job to do for his whole life, from Postmaster to Resident Trustee.

Upon Martha Berry’s death in 1942, he was elevated to the post of Director to steer the school on the course she plotted.

A new Berry teacher migrated from New York and caught Uncle Gordon’s eye. She was Frances Cone Olmstead, and they married in 1912.

In 1926 my mother enrolled at Berry and spent as much time as possible with the woman for whom she was named: Frances. She taught my mother many of the finer aspects of being a gracious hostess.

The Keowns lived in a two-story house across the highway from the campus. My parents were married there in 1936. Martha Berry attended, as did President Leland Geen and others. Miss Berry gave my mother an ornate bowl as a wedding present. It is still in the family.

Out the back door stood a large mulberry tree. Frances Keown was admired for what she could do with a dishpan of mulberries. It was something my mother remembered. “Oh,” she said, “The pies.”

Nothing marks the site of that home where so much living took place except for that big ole mulberry tree. It hangs on stooping on buckled knees.

I wish I knew about turning twigs into viable trees because I would love to have a child of that old tree.

joenphillips@yahoo.com