Friday, March 6, 2015

Sepia Saturday: The Babbs Stories

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.




This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt suggests music and dancing.  According to my mother, Daddy was a good dancer while she was not.  His mother taught him.  The thought of my granny dancing fills my imagination with all kinds of pictures.  Sadly, there are no real pictures of such joy when a mother and son are dancing. 

However, Daddy put those lessons to good use, supplying me with one good photo.  My dad attended at least one high school dance.  The BIG one.  Maybe it was a prom or maybe the Senior dance for the Class of 1945.  I don’t know for sure, but it was important enough for the school to take a group picture.

St Joseph Academy Dance 1945 Portsmouth, Virginia  http://jollettetc.blogspot.com
Daddy is in the second row, third boy from the left as well as third boy from the right.
Babbs is partially hidden but is on Daddy's right.


Daddy’s date was a girl called Babbs.  But theirs was not a love story. 

Copely Hill in Charlottesville, Virginia about 1952  http://jollettetc.blogspot.com
Me with my two grandfathers.
Momma and Daddy are at the door to our trailer. 
Babbs married a boy who graduated with Daddy named Jimmy Boggs.  Like our family, Jimmy and Babbs lived in one of the little trailers on Copely Hill in Charlottesville, popular among the married students at the University of Virginia. 

A long week of study often led to relaxed weekends at football games or shared meals in the cramped quarters of those white trailers.  Momma and Daddy used to laugh when they recalled “the Babbs stories” from those days.

Babbs Story #1
Sometimes when they got together, they played Twenty Questions.   It was Babbs’ turn.  One of the questions was “Was he a politician?”  Babbs’ response was, “I guess you could say he dabbled in politics.” After Jimmy, Momma, and Daddy used up their twenty, Babbs proudly revealed the answer that had stumped students of law and of architecture:  Adlai Stevenson.  Imagine their reaction – a mixture of laughter and anger and frequent echoes of “dabbled in politics” said with a combined exclamation point and question mark.

Babbs Story #2
Babbs was sitting at the table with paper and pencil.  “How do you spell porken?” she asked.  The others were puzzled.  “Porken?  What’s that?”  In all sincerity and innocence, Babbs said, “I’m working on my grocery list and I need ‘porken beans.’” 

For more stories of dancers and musicians and those dabbling in blogging, visit my friends at Sepia Saturday.


© 2015, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.


30 comments:

  1. Great post! Most chuckles for a long while over Babbs stories.

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  2. Hilarious stories. Hurray for the Babbs of this world. Their stories continue to make us smile long after they are gone.

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    1. I hadn't thought about Babbs in years. Finding this dance photo brought back some fun little memories.

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  3. ProBABly a good thing for you that your father didn't marry Babbs :-)

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    1. Ooh groan. You've had too much rest! Go outside and play.

      Yes, Daddy made the right choice.

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  4. I agree with Jo. A lucky escape. :-)

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  5. I had a little friend as a child who told me she had "cartogets" which turned out to be car tickets. Now that I have poor hearing I wonder if she had hearing problems too. Great photo and funny stories.

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  6. That Babbs was a character wasn't she? As soon as I saw, "how do you spell porken," I knew what was coming. Wow. It was fun reading your post.

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    1. She WAS! She was one my parents' favorite friends.

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  7. Those were the days, when people really dressed for the occasion. Poor Babbs, little did she know she’d be the cause of our chuckles so many years later.

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    1. I know -- and now I'm hoping her daughter or someone related doesn't stumble upon this blog. My parents found Babbs to be fun and funny, not dumb, so I hope this blog doesn't sound like I'm making fun of her. These were stories my parents used to repeat as a fond memory.

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  8. I loved the Babbs "porken beans" story. Too funny! It appears in the first formal picture the group has just performed the Grand Procession (I think that's what we called it?) where two couples on opposite sides of the dance floor process up & around & come down the center in fours - each foursome in turn then going back up the side of the dance floor to come down the center in a line of eight, & so forth. I did it once where the final line was 16 across. Fun!

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    1. Not familiar with the Grand Procession but it sounds lovely.

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  9. Your father was lucky to be towards the front in the photo. Those poor couples in the back! Unless the photo they got was a large one.

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  10. Love the stories - and I love the photos as well. That first one of the High School Dance is full of social history.

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    1. The dresses! The corsages! Social history abounding!

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  11. When I saw your first photo I thought it was some kind of marching band! But where were the trombones?

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    1. Probably stashed in a corner. You know how those trombones interfere with corsages.

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  12. At first I thought oh too bad that she's hidden, but I guess she wasn't meant to be anyway! I like that pork and beans story too!

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    1. HA -- yeah, since I seem to have given the wrong impression of Babbs, it's a good thing she's hidden.

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  13. A lucky escape for Daddy, but not so much for Babbs who went through her married life as Babbs Boggs!

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  14. I'm still laughing over the porken beans! The more I think about it, the funnier it gets...

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    1. I know -- I've been giggling off and on about it too since I wrote this post.

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