Person:Vallie Snead (1)

Father's bible gives date of birth as 9 March 1892, but death certificate and tombstone give the date as 14 March 1890.

Note that both VS and sister Grace made their ages 3 years younger than they actually were on the 1920 census! See file of B.D. Lindsey. On the same census, VS's sisters who were living beside her--Daffie, Jewel, and Sallie--all also fudged their ages, D and J shaving a year off, while Sallie took two years off her age.

I have very fond memories of VS, who was my grandmother. These memories begin when my grandparents lived in Little Rock and Sweet Home--see file of Benj. Dennis Lindsey. I enjoyed visiting my grandparents very much, though often on trips to Little Rock from El Dorado, before my Lindsey grandparents moved to El Dorado, I'd prefer to stay at night with my grandmother Simpson in Little Rock. I can recall an occasion when my grandmother Vallie Lindsey begged me to stay with her, and I refused; this hurt her feelings, and she leaned against the door of her store, crying, as we drove away. My father was impatient with his mother for showing her feelings, and said that she "wore her feelings on her sleeve." I'm shocked that I showed so little compassion for her feelings.

VS was a wonderful cook, and some of my fondest memories are of the delicious dinners she cooked for us in the store or later at her house in El Dorado--roast pork with pickles served on the side, turnip greens with cornmeal dumplings in them, vegetables galore, and always a dessert. She herself loved any kind of sweet, and on trips from El Dorado to Little Rock, we'd always stop in Fordyce at an ice cream place that served a strawberry ice cream she dearly loved. I can recall an occasion when she finished one dish of the ice cream and asked for another, and my father refused, and drove us off, saying, "You're digging your grave with your teeth, Mama." On other occasions when we'd eat in cafeterias, if VS would put more than one dessert on her tray, he'd snatch one off and put it back.

I can recall the wonderful peanut brittle VS made, with a bit of baking soda added to the candy at the end, to make it foam up before it was poured out to harden. She also made wonderful fried pies, which she called tarts.

VS loved flowers, and her house in El Dorado was surrounded by the usual flowering shrubs--beautiful camellias, gardenias, hydrangeas, etc. Outside the front yard stood a huge mimosa, and in the back yard in a circle around a pine tree was a bed thick with violets. These were in bloom when my grandfather died in Feb. 1976, and I picked some of them and gave to VS to wear. She looked at me with disbelief written across her face, and said, "What would people think of me if I wore flowers to my husband's funeral?"

VS was a very sociable person, who had many friends, many of them from her church, which she attended faithfully, whenever she could get a ride. She was an ardent Baptist, and not always very happy with the Methodist ideas of her husband's family. My grandfather's brothers could make her very angry by saying that Jesus could not possibly have been immersed in the Jordan River, because it had too little water to dunk someone in it. Though the Lindsey family saw no harm in indulging in the occasional nip, VS was adamantly against any kind of alcoholic beverage, and on the one occasion when I ever saw her take a sip of beer at a family gathering, she spat it out immediately, saying, "Why, it's pure poison."

Like all her siblings, my grandmother had a very witty way about her, and loved to sit on the porch and laugh and talk. She was not a very fastidious housekeeper, and after cooking her day's dinner and tidying up a bit in the wee hours of the day, she'd sit down and read or watch television for the rest of the day, playing the t.v. so loud it could be heard a block away outside the house. She also loved to talk on the phone when anyone would call to chat with her, and was not above amusing herself by watching her neighbors and speculating on their lives. In El Dorado, she was convinced that the lady living beside her was carrying on an affair, and had the chair in her bedroom arranged so that she could sit in it and watch the neighbor's comings and goings, and the comings and goings of a man she believed was carrying on with the lady.

Pictures I have of VS in her early life show that she was a very pretty woman, rather tall and thin, with black hair and green-gray eyes. In her later life, she tended to gain quite a bit of weight, though she was never more than pleasantly plump; she had a build typical of the Snead family, with large hips and thin shoulders. Because of her weight, she often had trouble getting in or out of chairs or cars, and her lower legs and feet tended to swell.

As long as I knew my grandmother, she suffered from a kind of palsy that made her spill coffee as she tried to drink it, and made her handwriting spidery and shaky. I've been told that the death of her first child, Edwina, as a small girl deeply affected her, and may have precipitated the shaking. My Aunt Helen, a nurse, believes that her mother may have had Bell's palsy or Parkinson's disease. VS never quite forgave her father-in-law, Dr. Alex. Cobb Lindsey, for allowing her daughter to die. She believed that her father-in-law had little medical knowledge, and that a better doctor could have saved the little girl.

After the death of her husband, VS declined rapidly, and eventually had to be moved to TX, where her children Carlton and Helen lived. She was placed in a nursing home in San Antonio, near Carlton, and by the end of 1976, had lost much weight and was experiencing marked disorientation. Uncle Carlton tells me that in the last weeks of her life, she refused to eat, and would clench her teeth when he tried to feed her. On Christmas day 1976, my family planned to drive from Little Rock to San Antonio to see her, but before we could leave, we had a call saying that she had died. Uncle Carlton says that when he told VS we were coming to see her, she said, "They won't make it in time."

I recall my grandmother as a very kindly and generous person, who loved her family dearly, and always enjoyed her grandchildren's visits. Her generosity, and her free hand at making long-distance phone calls and buying the best of commodities, often vexed her more frugal husband. She also had an eye for the current fashion, and her hems would drop and rise with the latest styles. Her trips to Sunday School involved fashion study as much as bible study, and she'd come home talking about the hem lengths and styles of the other old ladies in her Sunday School class. Though she regarded the short hems as scandalous and would cluck her tongue about them, very soon after other class members raised their hems, she'd follow suit. VS also had a weekly standing appointment at the beauty parlor, where she'd have her hair washed and set, and where it was rinsed a shade of slate gray that sometimes verged on purple.