I Got a Call on the Banana Phone

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Press the play button to hear Mawmaw Margie’s Song.

If you touch the heart button on this post, you are telling a dispassionate computer that a human read this. Then the computer will tell other computers and, perhaps, they’ll start waltzing to this song and the humans in the data bank will start to wonder. If you leave a comment, the computers might start looking for Elvis which would solve a deep mystery. Let’s see what happens. But seriously, thank you. The little heart tap does actually make a difference.

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Thirty-four years ago, Mawmaw Margie, went on up to the Picnic in the Sky.¹ She loved knick-knacks, plastic fruit, and alyssum. She had a natural wave in her hair and liked polyester trousers in loud colors. She covered her framed photos in plastic wrap to keep them dust free. She preferred Jim Reeves above all other country singers. She loved the Red Sox and thought the stripes on the Yankees' uniforms spelled mischief. When we were sitting at the kitchen table, she used to make a ringing sound, pick up the plastic banana in her bowl of plastic fruit, and say to us girls, “It's Charlie, and it’s for you!" I miss her so much.

Mawmaw Margie let us eat as much Booberry and Honeycomb cereal as we wanted. She had a vinyl floor in her kitchen that looked just like bricks and I thought the wooden post that held up her laundry line looked just like a cross. Since she didn't go to church like my other grandmothers, my little self thought that she just chose to have church outside with the laundry. And though people at the church talked about being "washed," Mawmaw Margie got right down and scrubbed. My sister Sarah and I chased each other in and out, out and in, through the sheets and blue jeans hanging on the line – Mawmaw Margie with clothes pins in her mouth and a pink hairnet on her head, laughing, laughing, laughing.

Mawmaw was one of those people who actually invited the Mormons from the doorstep into her house and gave them potted meat sandwiches. When she went on up to the Picnic, we found three Books of Mormon in her bookshelf. So, I thought I should include the Mormons in the song I wrote about her.

Mawmaw Margie had a great and mysterious smile.

I once saw the catalog for an auction at Christie’s in New York and loved discovering that Marilyn Monroe also kept plastic fruit on her table, so I thought it would be fitting for Mawmaw and Marilyn to have a chat in this song.

Mawmaw had a hard life and lost half of her family, including her mother Mildred, in the fire I sing about in my song Middle Creek.²

Mawmaw was divorced in the fifties, which was of course rare in Southwest Virginia, and her second husband died young and unexpectedly. She spent her late forties looking after her partner who had a stroke and was bedridden, and she herself died of treatable pneumonia and hospital error at the young age of 55. I remember feeling utterly shattered when she died and robbed of the chance to say goodbye because my mom, dad, sister, and I were too late in getting to her. I was sixteen. No one talked much about the fallout from bereavement then, so we all just went back to work and school. Our hearts were broken and we couldn’t say so. People just didn’t.

My mother, Marcy Hankins, with Mawmaw Margie and Grandpa Babe, who was Margie’s father and who is the subject of my song “Middle Creek.”

Mildred Osborne, Babe’s wife and Margie’s mother, who perished in the cabin fire on Middle Creek along with several of their children. Cassie, the oldest child in the photograph was away from home and survived.

In the chorus of my song, I mention “Hollywood weather.” In fact, one of Mawmaw Margie’s sisters, Effie, went out to Hollywood to be a movie star and ended up peeling potatoes in Idaho, but that’s another song and story. And, as we know, Hollywood weather itself is no longer the same as it was in the 1950s.³

This song is my tribute to Mawmaw Margie.

My former duo partner Billy Kemp and I studied some of my favorite Jim Reeves songs, especially “Welcome to My World” when we were thinking about the melody. We also consulted “The Blue Side of Lonesome” which features in the title to this song and in the chorus.

When we leave this earth, it’s funny the things that people might remember about us. I tried to put most of the things that I remember about Mawmaw Margie into this song. One thing about creating music outside of the mainstream is that I can write about anything important to me. And if I tell a good story I hope you will become just as curious about Uncle Roy Lee or Chicken Ridge as I am. This is the beauty of making very personal music and of making art that tells the lives of every day people who I knew and know.

Today would have been Mawmaw Margie’s 89th birthday. Happy Birthday, Mawmaw.

With Mawmaw Margie on my fifth birthday.

Welcome to the world of Mawmaw Margie. I hope you will find her as extraordinary as I do.

All the best from me, always, your friend,
Jeni

Here I am wearing Mawmaw Margie’s “baby pink hairnet,” as I call it in the song. I thought this was the coolest thing ever. Mom says that I brought it home with me to Boston and every time I decided to watch TV I put on this hairnet. This lasted several years. It just wasn’t TV time without Mawmaw’s pink hairnet!

1

I have a song and an album called Picnic in the Sky. It’s the musical story of my childhood complete with yellow squash, radio obituaries, and Days of Our Lives. You can hear the song and read the story here. Or you can hear me tell the story live in concert at the world famous McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica here.

2

You can hear the story and song of “Middle Creek.”

3

You can hear Effie’s song here. Perhaps I will write about her in another letter. I have spent so very much of my touring career in California and, in particular, in Los Angeles, so I am deeply sad about the wildfires. I used to play yearly at the Coffee Gallery Backstage in Altadena which had closed as a venue some years before the fires, but nevertheless remained a community space until the fires.

Here I am playing at the Coffee Gallery Backstage with Craig Eastman in Altadena, California, 2016. He’s playing the fiddle part you can hear on this song.

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Billy Kemp and I recorded the version of the song you’re hearing live with Si McGrath at the controls in All Saints Church, Barwick-in-Elmet, Yorkshire, England, in July 2015. The fiddle part was recorded later by Craig Eastman in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California. Neil, Mark, and Lisa added their parts in Leeds. I’ve never released this particular version which starts with the fiddle, so, I’m pleased to share it with you!New Song Club (Paid Subscribers) will receive a link to download this song in the coming week.

From the recording session 7 July 2015.

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Substack Notes where I post pictures and thoughts plus excerpts from other writers whose work I’m enjoying.

My shop where you can buy real albums that you can hold in your hand.

My website.

Instagram and Facebook where I post my adventures almost daily!

My articles for Modern Daily Knitting.

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My sweet doll friend Freda. Freda is a Heubach Koppelsdorf doll with a 320 head mold in size 6. Made in Germany in the early 1900s. She’s about 23 inches tall and as cute as a button. Her dress and hair were made in France. She especially enjoys dancing!

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