MaMaw (Jenny Morris Coffey)

The Humor of MaMaw

About 1920.

​I loved my Great-Grandmother, but of course when I knew her she was in her 70s and 80s. My grandfather told me wonderful stories of her of when he was young, and I want to share those. My Great-Grandfather was a postal carrier in a time when jobs were hard to get. So many times cousins would be deposited with his family so they would get fed and could go to school. Granville Bond was my grandfather's first cousin and he grew up with the family like a brother. My grandfather, Hubert Coffey, was born in 1914 and was the oldest of the family. Uncle Roy Coffey was born in 1916, the second child and Granville was about the same age as Roy. Around the time they reached school age, when it was time for bed, the boys, who shared a big bed, would run and dive into bed, against the shouted "don't run and jump into bed" of Mamaw. So she decided to teach them a lesson. The following night after a particularly rambunctious dive into bed, she carefully made the bed with bricks under the covers. At bed time the three boys took off, and my grandfather hit the bed first and was stunned by hitting the bricks. He told me it hurt so hard, but he didn't want to be the only one to land on them so he didn't call out until the other two had jumped onto the bricks and did call out in  pain. Granddaddy said they never did that again.

About the same time, the three boys would lie in bed and tell scary stories to each other before they fell asleep. Mamaw, who had arthritis in her hand, would hide under the bed, and as the stories reached their peak, she would slide her claw-like hand over the edge of the bed and grab the closest boy scaring the beejeezus out of the three. 

These stories were told to Carol Coffey by Hubert Coffey in about 1974.