Bigmom's Quilt
My grandmother was Mary Katherine Enlow Kirk Davis. She grew up around Notchie and Blackgum and Qualls, then lived at Boudinot, Stone Chapel and Tahlequah. She was a seamstress and tailor, and she owned a dry cleaners. She had five children and four of them were girls. So back in the 1940s and 1950s she designed and executed a lot of prom dresses and fancy girls' outfits, not just for her own daughters but also for all of their friends. She was pretty amazing as a seamstress. Cherokee County was kinda different when she was a teenager. Her brother Roy had the first car and was quite the popular guy. Roy, um, was a bootlegger. He was older and Mary would get her parents' permission to spend the night at his house in town, along with her girlfriend. Roy kept a stock of bootleg liquor under the flooring in his house, and the girls would help him lift out the bottles so he could load up his car to make a delivery. She told me, "Daddy would have been ashamed if he knew we'd been helping with bootlegging. They didn't know Roy was involved in that. But he'd give us money to buy a new dress every time we helped him and I'd come home with that new dress, looking proud." Bigmom also told about life at Qualls when she lived there with her parents. One time Pretty Boy Floyd came to their house and, as was the custom, anyone who came for a visit was invited to join in for a meal. He left some money under his plate.
Cherokee County was the home of a few outlaws back in those days and later on. Perhaps some time this blog will tell the story of Kye Carlile, who was just kinfolks to most folks around what is now the North end of Lake Tenkiller. Back then, he was a wanted man.
My grandmother passed away when my daughter Katy was about 4 years old, so it must have been 1989. She was the most patient and happy, hard-working and skilled woman I have ever met. She was funny and I always loved to stay with her because we'd make cookies without a recipe or eat big globs of honeycomb, drink Nehi Grape Soda, plant trees, pick strawberries or peaches, play with dogs, gather eggs, shop for Easter dresses-- and once she let me eat Exlax Chocolate because I threw a fit for it. We had tea parties with the neighbor girls, too. I don't think she ever said anything harsh to me. She claimed to be kin to Ulysses Grant, but made me promise not to talk about it because he was bad to drink and had disgraced the family. She said that one of men in her family in generations past (Abraham Enlow) was the birth father of Abraham Lincoln, and that Abraham Lincoln's mother had worked as a servant to the Enlows. She was from Quaker ancestors and her parents were fervently religious. She was a Nazarene for a while there.
When my grandmother passed, my aunts wanted me to have this quilt by her. I was the only family member quilting at that time, and this is just a quilt top. I have been saving it to make up for a wedding gift for my daughter (oops too late) or a niece. It is sateen blocks set into what you might call a lightning bolt pattern in pastels. I'm guessing she was making it for Katy and just never finished it. It looks like bright Mexican giant rickrack. Sateen is not a sturdy or durable fabric, so I just take it out every few years and admire it and then put it back into a dark closet, waiting for some future time.
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