Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday!
Born December 18, 1885 in Bluff Springs, Florida, Escambia County north of Pensacola, my grandfather Walter Henry Gentry is 127 years old this morning. He married my grandmother, Mamie McClammy, and they had five children. My mother, Louise Gentry, was second, born 1912 in Bluff Springs. Early, the family moved to Pensacola, where Daddy Walt went into the business with his brothers Lee and Elbert. Lee I don’t remember, but I do remember Uncle Eb.
Established in 1909, Gentry Brothers Loans and Pawns was in several places off Palafox in Pensacola, the last being at 10 E. Intendencia for many years. Seems to me there’s a vacant lot there now.
Daddy Walt was always loving and generous with us. My first bicycle came from his pawn shop, as did many other things, including clothing during the Depression, jewelry and the tall radio we had in the living room during my growing up years and listened to "The Shadow" and "It Pays to be Ignorant" and "Kate Smith" and "Baby Snooks" on Sunday evenings. On your birthday every year Daddy Walt gave you a stack of silver dollars for your new age. Except for my mother, his other two sons and two daughters borrowed heavily from him, promising and never repaying. One Christmas he gave each one a paid receipt for what they owed him, but my mother received a $1,000 bill, the first one I ever saw. In those days that was enough money to buy a new Chevrolet, Ford or Plymouth but I think she invested it in real estate.
Originally riding a bicycle to work, Daddy Walt loved cars. His first was a Maxwell touring car, then when Walter P. Chrysler bought out Maxwell, he bought Chryslers. I still have a mental picture of every Chrysler, Plymouth, DeSoto and Imperial he owned from about 1936 on, the first I remember being a silver DeSoto Airflow sedan. The one non-Chrysler car, and I don’t remember it, was the Auburn. In her last days when my mother and I would talk I asked her about the Auburn. She said it was a beautiful car, two tone red. One time when their car broke down during a visit to Pensacola, my mother and father borrowed the Auburn to drive from Pensacola to Panama City so my father didn’t miss work. She said it got eight miles to the gallon on the highway, not good when your paycheck was seven dollars a week, even with gasoline a dime a gallon. They drove the Auburn back the next weekend and picked up their Chevrolet. I think soon after that was when they traded with Bubber Nelson for a new 1935 Chevrolet Master DeLuxe coach, our first car that I remember clearly. “Coach” was Chevy’s name for a two door sedan in those days. It was black with white sidewall tires and yellow spoke wheels, and a radio and heater. It had no trunk, the spare tire was on the back. Front opening doors, and running boards of course. The 1935 Chevrolet Master was the first year with an all steel "turret top" body instead of the wood slat and fabric insert in the roof.
Daddy Walt was a member of the board of deacons at East Hill Baptist Church for long years. It was a live, thriving congregation, and going there with him was where and how and why I loved Sunday School and church early in life. On a Sunday morning in Pensacola, while my parents and grandmother stayed at the house, the three of us and our two cousins piled into the back seat of a light green 1942 Chrysler Windsor sedan and he drove the three or four blocks to church, always parking on the same corner aimed out for quick and easy exit later. Often parking next to us was a 1937 Cord sedan that always caught my eye. Once parked, Daddy Walt would turn around to us in the back seat and dole out a nickel to each of us, our Sunday School offering for the morning.
When we walked into the house later, it always reeked deliciously of fried chicken, and there would be freshly grated cream corn pudding. The grownups ate in the dining room, we children around the huge round kitchen table. At least, it seemed huge to a small boy.
When we walked into the house later, it always reeked deliciously of fried chicken, and there would be freshly grated cream corn pudding. The grownups ate in the dining room, we children around the huge round kitchen table. At least, it seemed huge to a small boy.
That afternoon, before we left to drive home to Panama City, the front doorbell might ring and a boy dressed all in white be standing there with a quart of orange sherbet, brought speedily by bicycle from the drugstore a couple blocks away.
My Gentry grandparents were half a generation younger than my Weller grandparents. I loved them all dearly, but if I had to rank it would be Mom best of all and Daddy Walt second always huggy, as was Mamoo; Pop was reserved, not outwardly affectionate with us though always kind. This is the first time I've ever admitted that ranking and if anyone quotes me I'll deny it. All four of them are buried in St. John’s Cemetery, the Weller plot near the front dating from 1898 my father's sister Carrie who died a dozen years before he was born, the Gentry plot about halfway back dating from 1939, my Uncle Wilbur's wife Margaret.
Daddy Walt died in 1976, age 90, when I was forty years old. I flew down from Harrisburg for his funeral.
TomW