Published at Ruth Ann Scanzillo’s Music & Musings / YouTube.
6/12/22. littlebarefeetblog.com
Tag Archives: psychics
The Autograph.
Mammy had an autographed photo of Billy Sunday’s wife.
She kept it in her Bible.
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But, why?
According to Wikipedia, William Ashley Sunday was an American athlete who, after being a popular outfielder in baseball’s National League during the 1880s, became the most celebrated and influential American Christian evangelist during the first two decades of the 20th century. Helen Amelia Thompson Sunday was his wife, an indefatigable organizer of his huge evangelistic campaigns during the first decades of the twentieth century, and eventually, an evangelistic speaker in her own right.
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Mammy was my grandmother. Born in 1890, she and Pappy moved to Erie from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre when Pappy was hired by BuCyrus-Erie to build cranes.
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She used to tell me of the tent meetings down state which she had attended, where she met Pappy. These were huge gatherings of people, who came together from all points rural to hear the Gospel preached by Billy Sunday. I believe Mammy recounted that she was led to the Lord by Helen Sunday, after one of these meetings. I also remember that, while she used to enjoy playing Solitaire alone in her bedroom, Mammy gave up the deck of cards once she got saved. I often wonder if thereafter she stopped playing the Key Game, which celebrated psychic skill and at which she excelled, as well.
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Mammy’s name was Mae Elisabeth Learn. She’d been second maid to a wealthy, Jewish brewer in the Poconos before meeting Henry. He courted her, to and from Sunday’s tent meetings, until the day he declared: “ You Mae Learn to be Sweet.”
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Pappy’s name was Henry Thomas Sweet, and his parents had hailed from Cornwall, England. When he and Mammy married and traveled to Erie, Pappy carried on Billy Sunday’s evangelism by preaching on the street corners. His was a hellfire and brimstone, Bible brandishing English orator’s style; with his booming, a-tonal baritone, he’d hand down God’s order to the vagrants: get up from the gutter! repent! and, get a job.
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When I look at images of Billy Sunday, I can’t help but note how much he resembled my grandfather. They shared cut features and a strong jaw and the same, resolute expression. Mammy did not resemble Helen Sunday; she had a softer countenance, and always bore a sweet smile.
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But, together, they had both responded to the call of evangelism proposed by Billy and Helen Sunday. They’d pulled up stakes and moved all the way across the Commonwealth to carry it forward. And, Mammy, who spent the rest of her days raising their four daughters, tending two flower and vegetable gardens and, together with Pappy baking hundreds of loaves of bread and both hooking and braiding rugs, sat in her rocking chair when day was done, Bible in hand, praying for everyone who came to mind, with Helen Sunday’s photograph just inside the cover of her Bible.
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I remember the year I met my husband. We’d been introduced through a mutual friend, whom we both respected greatly. Our friend, and his private teacher, was the principal oboeist of the Erie Philharmonic during the years when Maestro Eiji Oue held the baton.
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I had developed a deep respect for our maestro, which bordered on fixation. He had aroused every passion within me, from artistic to sensual to spiritual. He, however, had a strong preference for his principal oboeist, whose petite stature and feisty nature matched his own.
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My husband to be was enamored of her, as well; but, she was soundly married to the love of her own life, consumed by their mutual performing careers and and the raising of their four children.
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And so, each of us foundlings was brought together by stronger forces, upon the common ground of emotional commitment to another – he, to our mutual friend, and I to my Maestro. When my husband proposed marriage to me, the act was spurred by her very challenge; when I accepted, my anticipations extended to include the potential for an expanding realm of human connection which a bond with him would create. I would marry up, into a world which could include, by scant degrees, the object of my passions.
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Maestro Oue did not attend our wedding, though I believe we sent him an invitation, and both of us were sure to include our beloved oboeist in the musical ceremony. Our marriage lasted just over two and a half years (not counting the year of courtship), the second of which my husband spent living and working in Indiana, and it ended seven months after my mother’s death.
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I have two, framed companion photos of myself with our maestro. And, there is a Wheaties cereal box which features his image, nestled on the top shelf of my entertainment center in the music room of my home where I have practiced, rehearsed, and provided private lessons for 30 years.
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At the top of the box, just above the logo, in Japanese:
his autograph.
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© 9/18/19 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. All rights those of the author, whose story it is and whose name appears above this line. No copying, in whole or in part, permitted without the author’s permission. Thank you for respecting original material.
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Dropping Your Sunglasses.
Mammy was the family saint. She always had a smile, a cheery, chatty story, and a deep peace. But she was also profoundly intuitive, perhaps even psychic.
As a child of the late 1800s in eastern Pennsylvania, my grandmother’d enjoyed the “Key Game”……one blindfolded, spun around, then sent – still with the blindfold on – to find the key hidden by the room full of players. And, who could say how she always found it, every time, and quickly.
Yes; Mammy was a source of comfort and encouragement to a vast extended progeny, primarily through daily, hourly prayer. But, she was also quite superstitious. Long after putting aside the deck of cards when, as a young girl, she converted to the life of a Christian, she retained several “beliefs”.
One of them concerned omens. Mammy always knew that, if a bird fluttered by your window, you needed to stop and pray for the safety and protection of all your loved ones. And, this, along with other signs, she took as seriously as she did a direct answer to supplication when it came her way.
In the days before my mother died of cancer, lying in the hospice bed brought into her room at home, a crow appeared in the back yard. The bird was lame, unable to fly, only walking slowly across the yard. This omen was impossible to ignore and, in spite of my fragile faith, I knew my mother would soon pass.
Decades earlier, our dog, Nero, had been a lively part of our family. The day I’d come home and was met by an eager wagging tail and a face, that face still branded in my memory, of a beseeching, sweet animal who wanted to chase the stick, me too busy at that moment, bounding instead into the house – at that very second, something told me that this would be the last time Nero would ask me to play. Sure enough, two days later, our precious dog was dead of a flipped stomach, my pleas that she be lifted by someone strong enough and carried to the vet ignored by everyone.
The year my beloved father moved in with me, I’d searched for a daytime caregiver to supplant my efforts while at work finishing up the school year. One girl I’d been directed to contact by a woman who overheard me in the drugstore. She came so highly recommended that I could not ignore the opportunity. But, the day she showed up at the front door and I looked into her face, there was a grey shadow that crossed her countenance. A sensation passed through my chest and out the other side. Though I couldn’t know at the time, she would be the prime suspect in a household theft discovered days later, with only my 94 year old father as witness.
Last Christmas I took a trip south, to visit my brother and his family and to check out the baby grand piano that was waiting on hold for my perusal. Upon entering the dealer’s showroom, I removed my sunglasses and looked around at the setting in the lobby. In a few minutes, the salesman with whom I had spent many email exchanges preparing for this moment appeared. Lean, taller than me, balding and bow tied, he extended his hand. As I reached to grasp it, my sunglasses fell to the floor.
Bending down to pick them up, I had yet another of those infinitesimal moments. The same feeling I’d had so many times before tore through me like a fleeting current, so brief so as to be almost undetectable, as if my body intended to process and discard it before my mind could react. This was yet another sign, and another foreboding.
And, typically, I disregarded the omen. Following the salesman into the room, I would subject myself to a power of persuasion so overtaking that months would pass before I would fully grasp what had happened to me.
Today, I sit facing a legal scene that will likely take weeks of my most precious thought hours, impacting my productive quality and every aspect of my more nourishing anticipations. And, I can’t help but look at my Mammy’s face, in photograph and illustration, and feel her gentle admonishments, and implore her intercession one more time on my behalf. And, I ask the Almighty for an even bigger sign the next time, one that might slap me right in my tracks and make me feel the pain. Far better a momentary hurt than half a lifetime of regret.
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo
5/1/15 all rights the author’s. Sharing allowed upon request. Thank you.
littlebarefeetblog.com
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