Photo of The Month – Nov 2007
Birthday Party
Contributor: Ginny Ann Reid
It was April 3, 1937, and the occasion was Florence Greene’s eleventh birthday. Sweet little girls from all over Cliffside walked to the party at #8 Shelby Highway, home of Raud and Prella Beason Greene. Pictured are:
Front Row: Eloise Suggs, Geraldine Earls, Louise Wall, Virginia Ann Greene, Margie Nell Mahaffee, Lillian Dedmond, Daphene Moore
2nd Row: Grace Watkins, Coda Greene, Ruby Hawkins, Rose Mary Mahaffee, Oneda Greene, Geraldine Wall, Florence Greene
3rd Row: Lois June Wilson (from Avondale), Ruby Johnson, Oleene Hamrick
Back Row: Inez Splawn, Inez Mahaffee, Madge Beason, Genie Greene, Eunice Beason
Four of the girls were sisters, from the Greene family:
Shelby Highway was sacred ground to those who lived there. Especially so to Ginny Ann Greene, who never got it out of her system. She grew up, married Ashley Reid and they moved away to Sandy Mush to operate a clothing store. Decades later, when the final auction of “Cliffside” property was held, Ashely bought the land where Ginny grew up. The parcel is six acres on which seven Shelby Highway houses once stood, and where four more once stood up the hill on Green Street. They had no plans for the land except to clear it and preserve it for sentimental reasons, and, to ensure it stays in the family, have deeded it to their granddaughter Michelle.
Prella’s old wash bench is shown at right, and beyond it is the iron pot for heating water to wash the family’s clothes. She would agitate the scalding pot of clothes with a wooden stick, then lift the clothing into the tubs of cool clean water to rinse them. Drying involved twisting each item with one’s bare hands, to squeeze out the water, then hanging it on a clothes line or, as some housewives did, drape it across a convenient bush.
Virginia “Ginny” Ann died on November 25, 2015. She was buried in Cliffside Cemetery.