I didn't realize until talking with Patty's girls a week or so ago, that I perhaps have an obligation as the eldest child in the Brewer clan, to pass on some of the stories about the family.
I grew up spending most of my summers working for Grandpa Black in the roller skating rink. My grandparents didn't have a tv until I was probably in High School. During those summer evenings we all sat out under the big willow tree at Grandma and Grandpa Black's place and listened to stories about the good old days and watched the bats swooping down to gather the bugs.
I knew Grandma and Grandpa Black as well as I did my own parents. (That is grandma over my Dad's shoulder. She is wearing blue.) I also remember Grandma's brothers and sisters as well as my great grandmother - Elizabeth Margaret Jones Pirtle. Grandma Pirtle was a tough old lady and made the best blackberry cobbler. I would pick the blackberries for her and then we would take them to her in her little red sandstone house. She and Aunt Pete were always ironing as that was how they made their living. We would leave the berries with her and then come back the next day to sample the cobbler. I have several favorite stories of Granny Pirtle.
The first story that comes to mind is one about the Apache Chief, Geronimo. Granny had been left to raise 9 wild children when her husband died of a ruptured gall bladder at about the age of 46. They lived pretty much on what they could grow on their farm. During this time, Geronimo was on the war-path and no one felt particularly safe when he was around. One day Granny spotted Geronimo and his warriors in the distance. Granny gathered the children, took them out into the orchard where they hid in a ditch and watched from a distance as Geronimo went through their house, etc taking what he wanted and then leaving peacefully with his warriors.
The second story is of Granny's husband coming home in a Model T. He was very proud of it and took her out to teach her how to drive it. I guess he taught her how to do everything but stop the darn thing. She drove back into the yard where the children cheered her on. She panicked when she realized that she didn't know how to brake. Not wanting to run over the kids she turned the vehicle into a large pile of peach limbs that had just been pruned. The story has it that she was got out of the car very frightened and angry and never got behind the wheel of a car again.
Well, I guess I got a little distracted. (Its okay, I'm getting old.) This was suppose to be about Grandma and Grandpa Brewer. (The picture is, of course, their wedding picture.) They were married 11 June 1950 at the Jackson School in Grasshopper Flat- now known as West Sedona, Arizona. Mom was just 18 and Dad was 6 months short of 21. They had been childhood sweethearts in Sedona. I remember Mom telling me that when they were in elementary school that they would leave love notes for each other in a little hole in either a red rock or a tree (I can't remember which.) After High School Dad went into the military where he spent much of his time in the Caribbean and in Panama. He built airstrips in Panama as a member of the Army Air Corp. He said that when he went into the military he was Air Force but when he came out he was Army. It was on his return from military service that he and Mom were married. I was born just less than a year later.
Now the disclaimer. These are stories as I remember them. Please don't forget that they were told to me nearly a half century ago. They are only as accurate as my faulty retrieval system allows.
