LUCY BELLE (WEEKLY) ADKINS 1884-1979

SAM AND LUCY ADKINS--50TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

   Lucy B. as she was called by the adults who knew her, was about 5'5" tall, slightly built but quite muscular.  She was rather dark complexioned and when she was younger, had dark brown hair that had turned gray by the time of my earliest memory.  Her eyes were hazel and her voice was rather high pitched.  She had deep scars on her right hand (as I remember) that were caused from glass cuts she received when her house caught fire and she broke a window to get something out of the burning house.  Grandma Adkins was a spry little lady even into her later years. My Dad used to say, “Lucy was always busy and she went about things "like she was killing snakes."  There is one story I remember hearing about her--this happened one time when she wanted Granddad Adkins to come home from a poker game he was in at a railroad line shack.  When he did not come home, grandma took a wet gunny sack and stuffed it in the chimney of the shack and "smoked" him and his cronies out.  Granddad came home.

   When I think about Grandma Adkins, I marvel at the things she saw and the changes that occurred during her lifetime.  Our 21st President, Chester A. Arthur was in office when she was born and Jimmy Carter was President when she died.  Nineteen different men would be sworn into this office (Cleveland twice) during her lifetime.  She witnessed everything from foot travel to lumber wagon, covered wagon, stage coach, paddle wheeler on the Mississippi River, car, train and airplane.  She prepared meals on stoves heated with cow chips, corn cobs, wood, coal, kerosene, gas and electricity.  The development of sulfa, penicillin and flu vaccines were discovered during her life time.  Her houses were lit with candles, kerosene lamps, gas lamps and electric lights. Lucy endured two world wars and then the Korean and Vietnam situations.  Music came to her by personal presentation, radio and television.  She once told me about going to a World Fair in Chicago, IL.  At that fair her father would send her and her sister Eva to the educational exhibits while he attended an "International Geographic Presentation" entitled "Little Egypt” She was a grown woman before she knew the truth about Little Egypt.  She had lived in a sod house, then a wood house.  She lived through fire, flood, feast and famine; the depression years were extremely difficult for her and Granddad Adkins.  She witnessed the explosion of the Atomic Bomb and the landing of a man on the moon, both of these events via Television.  Granted there were others who experienced the same things -- but this Lady was my Grandmother.  

   Grandma and Grandpa Adkins were married April 29, 1903 in Beatrice, Nebraska.  To this marriage seven children were born but only three lived to adulthood.   Lucy was christened Methodist and is buried in the Trenton Cemetery.