Grandaddy Rollie Deal had a Lincoln. Several in fact.
To tell you the truth, I am not sure how many there were altogether.
But, I am not talking about automobiles. Besides, Grandaddy was a Chevrolet and John Deere man all of his life. He’d never drive a Lincoln. No, these Lincolns were the President and they were on the currency.
I wish I remembered more details about it, but I’ve tried to piece them together as best I can remember. These were not just any Lincolns, or standard issue Federal Treasury notes. No, they were way more than that.
The importance of these Lincolns comes more from who they were given by than how much they were worth.
They were gifts given to him by his mother-inlaw, Anna Tyre Rogers.
Anna was my greatgrandmother, who I called “Granny”. She was precious. My memories of her are in bits and pieces, short episodes here and there that my four year old mind can retain and recall now, some 47 years later.
Granddaddy came to know Anna when he was a teenager. He had met and had his first date with Anna’s baby girl, Roanna, sometime in the early 1930s. Anna had been widowed when she was pregnant with Roanna and the new baby would be named for both her parents, her father, Roan and her mother, Anna.
In that old long ago, Rollie was just three. Anna had three children under the age of 10 and a baby on the way. She was 27 years old with a second grade education. She and Roan had built a large house with a wraparound porch shaded by pecan trees and chinaberry trees. It was mortgaged as collateral with the crop still in field when Roan died in a typhoid fever outbreak.
Anna knew hard times, but she managed to hold on to that farm, keep the family together, raise all four of them to be productive citizens and now, the baby, was almost grown.
Known as “Boy” for tagging in behind her brothers, Roanna, has been bashful about the tall, lanky, dark-headed Deal boy. She is barely five feet tall with shoes on. Rollie is all arms and legs and around 6’2. He had first taken a liking to her at church and he was soon smitten. He would sit with her on the wooden pews at Lake Chapel Primitive Baptist Church, the church of her father’s people. Her mother’s people, the Tyres, belonged to the Big Creek Primitive Baptist Church up the road apiece. Meeting once a month, the residents of the community would alternate between the different churches and different denominations.
After chores, he would run the approximately five miles from his house on the Big Satilla Creek, where he and his 11 brothers and one sister were hatched. He would cover the distance in long strides and travel over to Roanna’s house to court her and spend time with her.
They would eventually marry and raise four sons and that’s how I got here. Rollie would always honor his motherin- law and he loved her. Having lost his own mother when he was 5, I like to think she filled something in his life that was missing. He would always call her “Mrs. Rogers.” He always called my grandmother Mrs. Deal. If he ever called Grandma by her first name, she knew he didn’t want to hear anything else. I may have witnessed that twice in my life.
Anna would be an empty nester now and a tornado in 1948 would heavily damage her home. The Red Cross helped her rebuild it, but she spent the remainder of her life from then until her graduation to glory in 1978, alternating between the homes of her daughters. When my grandparents built their home in 1949, Grandaddy let “Mrs. Rogers” have first choice at picking her own room. We still call it “Granny’s Room.”
I’m not sure just when the Christmas gifts started. The five dollar bills were crisp, brand new and smelled like Christmas and new money.
The cards were bright Christmas red with an oval window for the President’s face — this one Abraham Lincoln — to shine through.
The cards had “Seasons Greetings” on them and no one was upset about that because every one knew the season was about Jesus and Christmas was merry.
Anna had known hard times. For years, she had struggled and not been able to give Christmas gifts. Now, she had been blessed and could do so. That $5 was big money then, compared to not having anything to give before. Every year, that was her gift to everyone.
Every year, Rollie would thank Mrs. Rogers for her gift and he would make a point to add it to his collection and show his boys and later his grandchildren, the collection of $5s, given to him in love by someone he loved. He would tuck them neatly, all facing the same way, back in the red envelope for a “rainy day” or for an “emergency.”
He still had them when he received his own summons to heaven in 1986. All of them. Every single one of them.
I say it often from the pulpit and I mean it from my heart. The most important things in life are not things.
The Lord tells us that it is more blessed to give than to receive and the lesson of Christmas is that we were given love and saving grace we cannot fathom.
That’s more than all the silver and gold — or Lincolns — on earth.
• Jason Deal is News Editor for The Blackshear Times. Reach him at jdeal@blacksheartimes. news.
