Person:Fannie Stem (2)

The death date on her tombstone reads 22 October. It is wrong.

Granny was a dream of a grandma. She kept a whole bunch of her old dresses in a room for us younguns so we could play dress up when we visited. She also allowed us to have free reign with her rouge, lipstick, and white shoulders body cream. Not only were we a mess, but we stunk to high heaven after an afternoon at Granny and Paws! I'll admit, she was a parents worst nightmare, but she sure was a little girls dream come true! She had a mischevious side to her that tended to get us kiddos in trouble on occasion. She would make up songs like : "Here comes the bride, Where is the groom, He took some ExLax and had to leave the room." Nothing too bad, just enough to embarrass our parents and get us into hot water when we would bust out singing it while walking through Ben Franklins or the grocery store. She also had a green thumb like none I have ever seen before or since. She could take a dead stick and plant it and it would bloom for her! She always had a yard of the most beautiful, fragrant roses and altheas. She was our families biscuit maker. You know the type, every family has one. She could make the best biscuits, but no one else could make them the same. Even when she stood there with you telling you how to do every step exactly like she did it --- hers were still way better than yours. She had some secret way of getting rid of warts too. I have no idea what it was, for one thing, I never had warts, but even if I did, she couldn't have shared the secret with me. There was something about it being something she could only pass to a grandson, and he could only pass it on to a granddaughter. I don't understand it, I never asked. All I know is that it seemed to work really well. She loved to tell jokes, many bordering on risque, yet never quite crossing that line. She seemed to know instinctively just when to back off before she offended anyone. Her sister, Lorene Stem Cunningham (Aunt Rena to us), wrote a little about Granny in cousin Vera Mae Watson's book "We'll See What Happens Next". Here is a bit of what Aunt Rena had to say about in that book: "My Pop was a tenant farmer, so they moved here and yonder to different farms when they barely did well enough to exist. It was in the same general area where my brother was born (Floyd) that my sister, Elma, was born April 7, 1909. Poor kid, she was named Fannie Elma, which name, Fannie, she dislikes very much even until this present day. She had a bad habit of forever waiting until she was placed on the bench by the dining table to eat, to let her bowels and kidneys (move). Needless to say, this got all the diners upset with nerves and nausea. Many unusual things were tried on her before that habit was broken. (My note: Knowing Granny, some of this was on purpose!) ... Our neigbors had a grandmother in the family who dipped snuff. They would get their snuff bottle and elm toothbrushes and settle down to an afternoon on the front porch, that seemed so enjoyable to my sister and I! Our mother and Aunt also used snuff. So we decided we would like to get some of their enjoyment. We got our brushes all chewed up good and began to twist it around in our mothers bottle that we had "borrowed" without asking for it. We began to mop, chew, and spit, just like we had seen the women do, but alas! Elma began to turn pale and got so deathly sick that we needed help. I probably did not get as much on my moppy brush because I did not get as sick as she did. This slowed us down, but we did try dipping again later. ... My sister, Elma, quit school and got married. She and her husband were married ten years before they had three lovely girls and at last a son."

Mrs. Roscoe (Elma) Davis (April 7, 1909 - Oct. 25, 1983)

  Services for Mrs. Roscoe (Elma) Davis, 74, are scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday in the Oakley-Metcalf Chapel with Oliver Murray officiating and burial in the Garden of Memories.
  Mrs. Davis, of 61 Patton St., Keltys, died Tuesday evening in a hospital in Houston.
  Born in Robertson County, she had lived in Angelina County most of her life.
  She was a homemaker and a member of the Fourth and Groesbeck Church of Christ.
  Survivors:  husband Roscoe of Keltys; sons, Randy R. of USAF, England; daughters, Mrs. Darrell (Marlene) Davis of Dallas; Mrs. Lee (Jean) Musick of Lufkin, and Mrs. Tommy (Paula) Largent of Hudson; sister, Mrs. Lorene Cunningham of Central; brother, Lamar Stem of Huntsville; ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
  Oakley-Metclaf, directors.