A Mother’s Day Story
As I turned off the paved roadway and headed down the approximately 300-yard trail toward the Thomas household, it was as if I passed through a time portal that carried me back into yesteryear. It was a place I’d driven by many times throughout the years, but I didn’t realize where the trail lead, and I was totally unaware of the sweet lady who lived just off the beaten path.
The lush green trees lined the trail on each side giving shade on the warm spring day. When I pulled my car into the clearing where Mrs. Ola Clifton Thomas has lived for a majority of the last 53 years, it was as if time had stood still, almost. Back in that clearing, the sounds of traffic were non-existent, many modern conveniences were nowhere to be seen, and the simple life of years gone by was present everywhere. Mrs. Ola still lives in the same house where she raised six children, alone.
The first 18 years of Ola’s life was hard. She was born in 1921, one of 9 children born to her parents. “We came to DeKalb County in a one-horse wagon,” Ola recalled. “I was a baby at the time.”
No doubt, Ola’s family faced the same hardships that other families of that day faced: homes that were not well insulated, little or no way to make a living other than the sweat of the brow (hard labor), healthcare that left a lot to be desired, and a lot of hungry mouths to feed. Large country families couldn’t afford to send their children to school because they needed them home to help work the farm.
On January 13, 1939, Ola Clifton, her mom, and Troy Thomas made their way to the Fort Payne Court House, where Ola and Troy were married by a judge. “I don’t remember the judge’s name,” 98-year-old Ola said, “but we got married on the day before my 18th birthday.”
Ola and Troy began their family very soon and had one child after another for the first few years of their marriage. Then in 1957, with five children and another one on the way, Troy left his wife and family to fend for themselves and “took up” with another woman. After that, times were really hard for Ola.
The year 1957 was a time in history when women stayed home and raised the children while men worked to provide for their families, but Ola had to find ways to provide for her children on her own. “We worked in cotton fields, corn fields, hay fields, anything we could do to make a little money,” Ola’s daughter recalled. “People would give us food from their gardens.”
After the divorce in 1958, once a month Ola and her children had to make the long journey to the courthouse in Fort Payne. I say the long journey because it was a long way at that time when traveling was not nearly as easy as it is today. With her husband gone, chances are Ola didn’t have a nice comfortable vehicle to travel in.
Drawing from stories told her by her uncle, Ola’s granddaughter said, “Maw Maw’s child support was only $19.50 a month, and the court took five or six dollars of that, which left Maw Maw with only $13 of $14 a month.” It would seem that single mothers have always found it hard to make ends meet.
Even though times around the Thomas household were hard, Ola never gave up; she kept trudging along day by day. With the help of her father and some uncles, Ola finally got a home of her own in 1966. The original building was a two story house located in Sylvania, that was torn down, and the material was carried to the Blake Community where a small one-story house was built for Ola and her children.
“We liked this place because it had a stream of good, cold water nearby. We had to go down just a little bank to get to it, but it wasn’t far,” Ola recalled. Ola still lives in that same house today. It has had some remodeling over the years, but the original integrity of the homestead remains. Aluminum windows with nice screens now sit in the window openings that can be raised to allow a cool spring breeze to drift in on a hot day. A wheelchair ramp has been added to accommodate Ola’s current mode of travel, and a bathroom and running water were added in November 2018.
Ola’s prize positions are the thunder eggs that she dug from the ground in Oregon, using a pick. “You have to be real careful using a pick on that hard ground ‘cause it might come back on you and hurt you really bad,” Ola said. (According to Wikipedia, a thunderegg is a nodule-like rock, similar to a filled geode that is formed with volcanic ash layers. They are rough spheres, typically about the size of a baseball, with centers of chalcedony, agate, jasper, opal, quartz or gypsum crystals, as well as various other mineral growths.)
Ola has outlived her parents, all of her siblings, two of her children, and several grandchildren. From the love she once shared with Troy Thomas, she gained six children, 23 grandchildren, 37 great-grandchildren, as well as 24 great great grandchildren and counting.
Although Ola’s actual 98th birthday took place on January 14, her family will be giving her a 98th Birthday Bash on Saturday, May 11 at the Blake Community Center located at 4645 County Road 505, Fort Payne, from noon – 4:00 pm. They invite everyone to come out and help them celebrate her 98 years of life. Please bring a covered dish or dessert and a 2-liter drink. The family is requesting no gifts, but rather a birthday card, as reading is one of Ola’s favorite past-times. “I read anything I can get my hands on,” she said.