When I was a teenage counselor during Baptist summer music camp at Falls Creek one of the grade school age boys asked me: “Was your momma a dance hall lady in the olden days?”

He asked because Momma was doing The Charleston while someone played the piano. I have no idea what I told the kid.

Not only could Momma dance, but she was also a great cook. That’s why she was there that weekend.

She made the best pies, cakes, cookies, rolls, and even candy, though I do remember a Christmas when we ate her divinity with a spoon.

Momma believed if you could read that you could do anything.

That’s why she was able to give $2.50 permanents to neighborhood ladies in the late forties, although she’d never had one. She also learned to cut Daddy’s hair.

I was allergic to wool so Momma made my velvet coats. She made all my clothes throughout my teen years, which included costumes for church and school plays. She also sewed for me after I was married, all during my pregnancy, then my divorce.

She made curtains, blankets and I still have some of the afghans she knitted. She also made all my son’s baby clothes, bought his corrective shoes from Mr. Stoneman at Rothschild’s, and took him for haircuts.

Momma made Halloween costumes for my new hubby and me when we moved to Hennessey, and I remember when she made us Mr. and Mrs. Pac-man outfits.

She’d taught herself to wall paper and paint in the fifties, and when they came out with cans of spray paint in the sixties she got on a gold kick. She painted gold door stops, knobs, and even gold flower pots. We joked that if you stood still too long she’d paint you. We called her “Goldfinger” before Ian Fleming ever wrote his 007 best sellers.

Her fried chicken, fried okra and chicken fried steak were the best ever, and my respect grew for her the day I saw her wring a chicken’s neck, pluck its feathers and cut it up for frying.

She also made beautiful flower gardens, had tomato-growing contests with neighbors, and won water fights on Saturday nights with Daddy. He’d always start them with a large glass of ice water. She’d end them with the garden hose. Momma got used to

Momma got used to staying up late so she could see Daddy off for his graveyard shift as a guard at the news paper, and loved to watch Johnny Carson.

Come Mother’s Day Sunday mornings when I was a kid she’d pin a homemade red rose corsage on me for church. She’d wear white roses to signify her mother had passed away.

My Baptist momma is gone now, but I remember she always had a radio going above the sink in the kitchen. She taught me how to do The Charleston in the kitchen. I returned the favor as a teenager and taught her to do The Twist. That became a family tradition because I taught my teen son to Jitterbug. He later tried to teach the Methodist in me how to Two-Step.