Page 183 - Always Virginia

Always Virginia 171

Jack: What year was that when you had both Francis Devine
and Grandpa in love with you?
Mary Pearl: Oh gosh. I was married in 1911. About 1910, the
winter of 1910, around Christmas 1910 all this happened. I think
I knew him [Daddy] about six months before we got married July
12, 1911.
[She always called her husband “Daddy,” because he was the
father of their five children; and he always called her “Mom.”]
Jack: How did you meet Grandpa?

Mary Pearl: Visiting up in Hamburg, Illinois, at the Jones’s
home, my mother’s cousins.

Jack: How did you travel up there?

Mary Pearl: On the boat up the river. We’d get on at 4:00
o’clock in the afternoon in St. Louis. We’d dance all night, and
get up to Hamburg the next noon. I used to love those boat trips,
with a band and a dance. Really nice.

Jack: Did you have a room to sleep in on the boat?

Mary Pearl: Yeah. What’d they call them? Berths, cabins,
something like that. My mother and I went up there two or three
times. We had lots of fun like that.

Jack: And what happened? The story I’ve always heard is you
were driving along in a horse and buggy coming from the boat
with your cousins and you saw a red-headed man walking across
a field, and you announced, “That’s the man I’m going to marry,”
and your cousins said you couldn’t because you were engaged to
Francis Devine, and you said, “Not any more.”
Mary Pearl: No. We visited my mother’s cousin, Mrs. Jones,
and she said to me, “I know a nice young man who would be nice
for you to meet.” I said, “I know lots of nice young men.” She said,