Jeni wrote this song in the days following the death of her Great Aunt, Edith Geneva Smith Mullins, who died on July 24, 2020. Edith was eldest sister to Jeni's Grandmother, Ann Shreve Smith.
Jeni remembers Edith in this tribute:
Aunt Edith once went to visit the house of her little girlfriend up on Smith Ridge and they saw the prickly horse chestnuts lying on the ground. The horse chestnuts reminded them of lady’s hair curlers, so both girls wound their flossy blonde hair onto to the sticky prickly balls and ran in to show their mothers how beautiful their hair was going to be. The girls spent several painful hours while their mothers picked the chestnuts out of their hair.
Aunt Edith left school after eighth grade because she didn’t have much truck with school and felt she’d had as much of it as she needed. The butcher at the Company Store up on Jewell Ridge had offered her a job. She was beautiful and personable and had a good head for figures. She loved working at the Company Store and waiting on the customers. She had money of her own to buy ready-made clothes and she danced at the Green Fly Cafe downstairs from the butcher shop. All the fellas thought she was a wonder.
She met a handsome fella at a hamburger joint in Richlands. His family, though local to Southwest Virginia, were establishing a timber business in Florida. She got married and went all the way to Florida. Eventually, she had three children and a swimming pool. When we were kids, we all thought she was romantic and famous because she lived in Florida and had a swimming pool. And she was romantic and famous with the piercing eyes of Bette Davis and the figure of Marilyn Monroe.
Like all of the Smith girls, she came from the coalfields, but she had a certain glamour about her. She and her husband, Doug, visited friends out in Idaho and bought a ranch there as a second home and business. Her family called her Katie because her husband, Doug, said she was like Maureen O’Hara in a movie where she was called Katie. There was a bunk house, there were cowboys. There was an airstrip. Doug learned to fly and one night their plane crashed. He died and she didn’t. They wrote a message in their own blood to their children. Her children saw their Dad buried while she recovered in the hospital out west. She lived with a scar down the center of her face. She never remarried.
Her husband left behind a heavy equipment empire and she ran it. She went to the office each day and rented cranes, diggers, and trucks to construction firms all over Florida. She helped to build Miami, Orlando, Daytona, and Fort Lauderdale. She joined groups, sewed and cooked for charity, and decorated her house to the nines for every season and holiday.
Her son, who worked with her in the business, died suddenly of cancer. She kept on at the helm with her office cat. Her daughters and grandchildren, and great-grandchild looked to her for her humor, for her straight-talking, and for the alligator on her back porch. She lived through hurricanes and floods. She raised the biggest Staghorn ferns you’ve ever seen. She fed them banana peels.
Her one grandson died suddenly this spring. Her daughter – interior decorator, former airplane hostage, with the world’s most glamorous red hair, and a sharp sense of humor – is battling cancer. Her daughter – gourmet chef, rock of her community, with a smile that melts you to pieces – and grandson – writer, sports fan, cigar aficiando – are holding down the fort, walking in her shoes, and feeding the staghorn ferns. They are grieving while physically separated from all of us who love them and who loved Aunt Edith so much.
Over the years, I showed Aunt Edith black and white pictures of our family and she told me stories of preachers, miners, shootings, and illegitimate children. I still have many songs to write from the stories she gave to me. She told me about the time she and her little friend thought horse chestnuts would make wonderful curlers for their hair. Her daughters said I was like a little Edith because I looked so much like her. I've always loved that.
She was our movie star, the glamorous and tough-as-nails woman who walked across our screens and will be walking through our hearts and our stories forever.
Goodnight, Katie. Goodnight, Edith. Goodnight, Tazewell Beauty Queen. How blessed we were to be loved by you. How blessed we were to love you.
Jeni Hankins grew up in the coalfields of Appalachian in Southwest Virginia among a family of miners, moonshiners, and
journalists. Her writing pulls the grit, gumption, and keen sense of observation out of that heritage like drawing water from her grandmother’s well.
In every song, Jeni’s “true sense of place shines through – old as the hills, but brand new at the same time.”...more
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