A Week with Miss Sue in 1927

One summer my father had to be away holding a revival so Miss Sue Alexander, a wonderful member of his church, Taylor's Chapel, who lived alone on an estate inherited from her wealthy parents, insisted that "Sister Rucker" load her brood of five active children in her car and come spend the entire week with her. She said "Sister Rucker" deserved a break and if she would accept her invitation the week would be free of all responsibility and she would be waited on hand and foot.

Mamma washed and ironed our clothes and packed our bags and we drove to Miss Sue's country estate. She had young black girls, children of her house servants, to come each day to take care of us five children. Gama was assigned to a royal bedroom with the most privacy and we children were not to disturb her. If we needed anything we were to ask Miss Sue.

In the mornings Miss Sue would go to the kitchen and help prepare elaborate breakfasts. We children were all dressed and in the dining room before "Sister Rucker" was awakened by a servant with a china pitcher of warm water and towels to freshen up before she came down to breakfast.

Breakfast was served in courses, with linen table cloths, napkins and good china. There would be cooked cereal with pure cream and lumps of sugar and fresh fruit; homemade pancakes with warm melted butter and warm maple syrup; or special cooked eggs, ham and homemade tiny biscuits and grits and red gravy, plus homemade bread, fresh butter and cut glass dishes of all kinds of jams and jellies. The whole meal was a ritual of elegance. Flowers would be on the table and servants serving us. After breakfast "Sister Rucker" was to rest, sit in a rocker on the veranda, read, go for a walk, whatever she chose, the children were to be in tow of the servants. This was Sister Rucker's well earned week of total rest. She was absolutely lost. Several days into the week Sister Rucker came down with an awful stomach ache. Miss Sue pampered her even more. She ordered her to stay in the canopied bed and assured her she could cure her soon with her "causie", a potion she had learned to concoct herself and it always cured her servants. After getting Sister Rucker into bed, she bounced into a back room that was her store house. She kept all the staple groceries her tenants would need for the year there. It was indeed a country store. The tenants would come there for whatever they needed and she would open the big ledger on the plantation desk and put on the books what each one got and at the end of the crop year it would be tallied and a settlement made. So into this supply room she went and no one disturbed her until she came out with her "causie" concoction. She I went up to Sister Rucker's room with the "Causie", the silver teaspoon and I some kind of liquid to take the bad taste away, and medicated Sister Rucker. Well, needless to say Sister Rucker decided after the first dose that the cure was worse than the ailment, and she arose from the bed and joined the others, declaring an instant cure.

Miss Sue was so happy that the concoction had worked once again. It was a cure in reverse, but it worked.

We children loved the outdoors. She had old wooden double swings connected by a floor that you pushed and the swing worked. We almost wore that out. She kept cookies and fruit available throughout the day. The black girls would absolutely play whatever games we wanted, but we had good times with them.

When the vacation ended we had enjoyed days of luxury and pampering. But Gama was ready to resume her own lifestyle and she never took another dose of "causie", however her son, Edmund, reminded her of it through the following years when she complained of a stomach ache.