In 1965 grandmother Tiny Tucker told me she was born March 1, 1879 to James Henderson Taylor and Lovicy (Jackson) Taylor on Stinking Creek in the Flat Lick community of Knox County Kentucky. My personal memories of Tiny are colored by her deep religious faith that had been deeply engrained in her during her girlhood years in the Pentecostal oriented mountain churches of her homeland. This faith of hers was a genuine, authentic part of her view of others, the world and herself. It influenced every facet of her life, I recall in her old age when needing to sign a check with her shaking hand she would bow her head for a moment in prayer asking for a steady hand, and then sign the check. Grandmother had been aware of her mortality since a girl. After visits she always seemed to be aware of her finitude and would say somberly as we departed, “Well goodbye and if we never meet again on this side, I`ll meet you up there “as she raised a shaking finger pointing above. She lived to 6 months past her 95th birthday. She out-lived her husband, 3 of her 4 children and 1 or 2 of her several grandchildren. She was a woman well acquainted with loss, sorrow, heartache and grief. In my later years I had little chance to update whatever childhood impressions I may have had of her. My sisters, for instance, seemed to adore being with her and found her to be mischievous at times and a fun loving person. Our grandmother had one of those simple, non-questioning faiths nurtured in the remote hills and hollows and tough life of the Kentucky Appalachian Mountains in which the profundities and complexities of the world and life others wrestle with (pain, suffering, greed, injustice, corruption, hate, poverty) are washed away by belief and trust and replaced by an inner assurance that somehow God, in whose hands we all dwell, will one day make it all right. And she now knows the answer to that eternal question that ever human generation has asked, “What is on the other side?” She died full of grace and years in Arkansas on October 7, 1974.
In 1965 grandmother Tiny Tucker told me she was born March 1, 1879 to James Henderson Taylor and Lovicy (Jackson) Taylor on Stinking Creek in the Flat Lick community of Knox County Kentucky. My personal memories of Tiny are colored by her deep religious faith that had been deeply engrained in her during her girlhood years in the Pentecostal oriented mountain churches of her homeland. This faith of hers was a genuine, authentic part of her view of others, the world and herself. It influenced every facet of her life, I recall in her old age when needing to sign a check with her shaking hand she would bow her head for a moment in prayer asking for a steady hand, and then sign the check. Grandmother had been aware of her mortality since a girl. After visits she always seemed to be aware of her finitude and would say somberly as we departed, “Well goodbye and if we never meet again on this side, I`ll meet you up there “as she raised a shaking finger pointing above. She lived to 6 months past her 95th birthday. She out-lived her husband, 3 of her 4 children and 1 or 2 of her several grandchildren. She was a woman well acquainted with loss, sorrow, heartache and grief. In my later years I had little chance to update whatever childhood impressions I may have had of her. My sisters, for instance, seemed to adore being with her and found her to be mischievous at times and a fun loving person. Our grandmother had one of those simple, non-questioning faiths nurtured in the remote hills and hollows and tough life of the Kentucky Appalachian Mountains in which the profundities and complexities of the world and life others wrestle with (pain, suffering, greed, injustice, corruption, hate, poverty) are washed away by belief and trust and replaced by an inner assurance that somehow God, in whose hands we all dwell, will one day make it all right. And she now knows the answer to that eternal question that ever human generation has asked, “What is on the other side?” She died full of grace and years in Arkansas on October 7, 1974.
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