My Valentine Remembers Life ‘Before Radio’

My Mother Celebrates 91st Birthday March 4, Has Vivid Memories of Life in Another World

by Woody Jenkins, editor

BATON ROUGE — I walked into my mom’s room Sunday to give her her medicine, and she was watching the movie Florence Nightingale for the 50th time.  She said, “You know, my great-grandmother was Florence Nightingale’s first cousin!”  I replied, “No, my great-great grandmother was Florence Nightingale’s first cousin!”  We laughed.  It’s an inside joke, because her great-grandmother was Hannah Nightingale but there’s absolutely no evidence that I can find that she was related to “the” Florence Nightingale.  Hannah married Grandpa Shaw.  So the family knew her as Grandma Shaw.  They lived on Oahu in the 1890’s when Hawaii was still a kingdom.  But they moved back to Texas afterwards.

Mama said, “I remember Valentine’s Day in 1928.  Grandma Shaw was visiting with us.  I was almost six.  Grandma Shaw put a record on the Victrola and started dancing.  She was quite overweight.  But she picked up her skirt and danced and danced.  We clapped and laughed until we cried.  I remember it as though it were yesterday!”

Then she added, “That was before radio, you know!”

“Mama!” I looked shocked.  “You mean you were alive before radio?”  I slapped my knee and started laughing.

She looked kind of serious but had a mocking grin on her face.  “I’ll be 91 on March 4th, you know!”

“I know, mama.”

I handed her her medicine and as usual made her pry it out of my hand.  “Stop it!” she said, “Give me that!”  She dug her fingernails into my hand.  “Ow!” I said, and let her have it.

She popped another DVD into her TV/VCR.  This time it was Gone with the Wind.  She has this habit of playing the same movie over and over again.  “I just want to slap Scarlet!” she said. “So stupid.  Rhett is so in love with her, but she keeps longing for that Ashley Wilkes.  Can you imagine turning down Clark Gable for Ashley Wilkes?”

“Well, mama, I don’t know.”

“Have you found me a man yet?”

I look shocked but recover and say “Yes, I have!  But I have to warn you, he’s 95!”  I bend over and hobble across the room as though crippled and pretend not to have teeth.  She howls with laughter.  “No!” she says, “You know I’m not interested in a 90 year-old man.  Find me an ex-Marine not a day over 65!”

My mother, Doris Jenkins, was born in Houston on March 4, 1922.  The family moved to Shreveport in 1928, right after Valentine’s Day.  “That’s when I listened to radio for the first time,” she said.  “It was KWKH!”

Mama met my dad, Ory Jenkins, in 1944 when he was recovering from war injuries at the Naval Hospital in Galveston.  It was love at first sight.  They had me and moved to Baton Rouge where she worked at American Bank on Plank Road.

Of all the blessings in life, having your mother at age 91 is one of the greatest, especially if she is a sweetheart, in relatively good shape for the shape she’s in, and can still “cut the mustard.”  Plus my Valentine can remember life “before radio”!