Two years after working at Reynolds’ Metals, my father married my mother after less than one year of dating her. During their courtship and at the time of their wedding, my mother lived in Thomasville, Georgia, and my father lived in Richmond, Virginia. My mother was considered a beauty with wavy, dirty blonde hair, blue eyes (which she argues are green), a perfect smile, and killer legs. My father often referred to her as the love of his life. Plum was in favor of my father proposing to my mother, and she gave him the engagement ring Dick had given her.
When Dick proposed to Plum, he had originally given her an engagement ring with a tiny diamond. Plum graciously accepted it. Soon after, they got together with Aunt May who immediately asked to see the ring. When she laid her eyes on it, she was aghast and told Plum to hand it over. Plum did and Aunt May exchanged it for a much more appealing ring with a large center diamond with small diamonds wrapping around it in a yin-yang-like fashion. Plum loved it, and so did my mother. When my mother showed it to Aunt Dot, Aunt Dot took her to a jeweler to confirm the diamonds were authentic, which they were. My father later told me that was an extremely tacky thing for them to do. My mother has said my sister will one day get that ring, and I will be given the diamond ring left to her in Mama Elva’s will, which is similar but the small diamonds wrap around the large one like a gift package. She told me Mama Elva bought the ring for herself, and it represents independence. My mother wears it on days she feels like she needs extra strength.
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Both my mother and father thought they were marrying someone wealthy. Unfortunately, what neither of my parents realized is that there is a difference between marrying into a wealthy family and marrying someone wealthy. Neither of them had any money, but both had been raised amongst wealth and had acquired a taste for the lifestyle. As an engagement present to my parents, Granddaddy Scott paid off the large amount of credit card debt my mother had begun accumulating after the period when he and Caryl found out she had been lying about attending the University of Denver and they had cut her off. Plum and Papa threw them a rehearsal dinner at Glen Arven Country Club. By all accounts, it was a wonderful evening with dinner and dancing, and as a surprise during the party, and in front of everyone, my father gave my mother a beautiful aquamarine ring as an engagement gift since he had not spent money on her engagement ring. Later that night, while my father was in the kitchen at Plum and Papa’s house, talking with them about what a smashing success the party had been, they heard a knock on the back door. He went to answer it and saw Aunt Dot’s youngest child, Linton, standing there. Linton told my father that my mother was upset and wasn’t sure she wanted to go through with the wedding because my father was going to leave immediately after the wedding to go on a business trip. She said it was a sign that he would leave her later. My father then went with Linton to the Waffle House where my mother was waiting. He convinced her to go through with the wedding but told me later he wished he had seen it as a red flag for how spoiled she was and that he could have been the one himself to not go through with the wedding.
It had been my mother’s choice not to go on a honeymoon. They had originally planned an elaborate affair with an extravagant honeymoon in Somerset, Bermuda immediately following the reception, but at the last minute, because of fighting between my mother and Caryl, all the plans were changed and the wedding was cut down in size and moved to a much sooner date. My father originally had arranged to have all his groomsmen flown to Thomasville, Georgia on the Reynolds’ plane, but ended up embarrassingly having to cancel the plans with his friends and had a wedding party made up of only one, his stepfather, Papa.
Their wedding was on August 5, 1978, and only family was on the guest list (though even still, that meant a large number of people). My parents posed for pictures in Mama Elva’s yard and then got married at First United Methodist Church like Caryl and Granddaddy Scott had. After the wedding, there was a luncheon at Granddaddy Scott’s house, Gatlin Creek Farm. Gatlin Creek Farm had become his bachelor pad after his divorce from Caryl the previous year. Caryl got the house on Plantation Drive, which she promptly sold to the Chubbs and moved to Atlanta. During the many parties thrown in honor of my parent’s engagement, Granddaddy Scott would often sit next to my father’s sister, Allen. My parents soon began hearing rumors of a blossoming romance between the two of them and found the news upsetting. One night, when my parents were riding in the same vehicle as Plum and Papa on their way to an engagement party, they asked about the rumors they had heard. Plum immediately told them to mind their own business, and the subject was dropped.
On September 2, 1978, one month after my parent's wedding, Granddaddy Scott married Allen. To their wedding, my mother wore the same white lace dress she had just worn to her own wedding. Allen moved to Gatlin Creek Farm where Granddaddy Scott was living with Robert who had just turned 18 and was about to start his senior year of high school. Robert had chosen to live with Granddaddy Scott after his parent’s divorce because he wanted to stay at Brookwood School and living with Caryl meant moving to Atlanta. Allen and Granddaddy Scott’s marriage was short and they were divorced less than two years later. No one ever told me what Granddaddy Scott did to Allen specifically, just that he had been physically abusive to his children, and that he constantly cheated on Caryl without even attempting to conceal it. I was also told that Allen physically intervened to protect Robert from Granddaddy Scott on more than one occasion, and Papa had threatened to pay a visit to Granddaddy Scott with a shotgun. After their divorce, there was an unerasable line drawn between my mother’s and my father’s side of the family.
Since the marriage took place before I was born, neither my sister nor I grew up knowing about it. I always saw both sides of my family as extremely separate which is strange since they both lived in the same small town. When we moved to Thomasville, a Brookwood teacher, Sissy Faulk, asked my sister how she felt about Allen and Granddaddy Scott’s marriage, and my sister had no idea what the teacher was talking about. When she got home from school that day, she asked my parents, and the truth came out. It’s hard for me to picture Granddaddy Scott the way people describe him in his younger years. He was a different man than the one I knew. I never saw him get mad, and I gave him plenty of reasons. He was one of my favorite people. I wish he had treated my family members better. I think my relationship with all of them would be different. If he had been nicer to my mother and her mother, maybe my mother would have turned out nicer to me. He is ultimately responsible for the bad blood between my mother’s family and my father’s family. After Granddaddy Scott’s divorce from Allen, she never remarried.
Immediately following my parent’s wedding, my mother moved to Richmond, Virginia to live with my father. They lived in a cute little yellow house they loved on Libby Avenue with their miniature poodle, Snooky. Snooky was named after one of Aunt Billie’s nicknames she had gotten while still in high school. During that time, my mother worked in an upscale consignment shop and scored lots of clothes she loved for next to nothing. People would bring in high-end pieces and she would sell them to herself for a dollar. My mother and father were close to Plum and Papa at the time, and Plum and Papa often came to visit them.
In 1980, two years after living together on Libby Avenue, Reynolds’ Metals transferred my father to Corpus Christi, Texas. While living in Corpus Christi, Dick reached out to my father after being estranged since abandoning him in his childhood. Dick had fallen on hard times, and my mother and father invited him to come visit. Dick was an alcoholic and would regularly become belligerent, spending his days walking around the house rambling to himself. His visit began looking long-term, and my mother told my father he needed to go, so my father sat Dick down to give him the news. Dick said he understood, and the next day, my father took him to get a Cadillac and a dog. Dick drove to Indian Rocks Beach, Florida with his new companion where he spent the next couple of years until he died on January 18, 1985.
After living in Corpus Christi, Texas for a short period of time, my father was transferred back to Reynolds’ Metals’ Richmond, Virginia headquarters. My parents got a place in The Fan District, which is where they lived when I was born on April 25, 1982. I have no memories from that time period besides what I’ve been told in stories and seen in photographs.
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