Granny’s Haywood County Folk Art Gallery

click to enlarge Welcome

Growing up I spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s house in Haywood County, TN. Both Lloyd “Bo” and Elizabeth Castellaw Williams, or “Daddy Bo and Granny” as we called them, had been born and raised near the house on Poplar Corner Road in Bells in which they would eventually spend the rest of their lives.

The house was originally built by Willie and Irma Steele and was purchased by my grandparents in the early 1940s when they wanted to move out of the cotton field and closer to the road. Living in the house at the time was Champ Watridge. Daddy Bo’s grandmother, Martha Jane Watridge Williams and Champs father, William Henry Watridge were brother and sister. Champ only had one leg after an accident while cutting trees for lumber. According to family legend, his leg was buried in the Cobb family cemetery.

Eventually, Daddy Bo and Granny bricked the house and walled in both the front and back porch to make a living room, an extra bedroom and a place where they could wash up before coming all the way into the house.

Granny was a very creative, gregarious woman with a great sense of humor which was reflected in the things she chose to create. Her home was a very fun place for a young boy to visit and, even as kid, I knew I needed to try and remember as many of the things in the house as possible.

A few years after her death in 1998, I grabbed some photos of some of the things in the house that I wanted to be sure to remember.

click to enlarge Little Boy and Frog

For my entire life, this little boy painted black and this frog sat together in my grandparent’s front yard with an assortment of other animals and characters made out of concrete. The boy had a hole in his mouth where you could stick a cigarette for some reason. By the time I came around, cigarettes were off limits so Granny would put sticks in his mouth hole.

click to enlarge Roosters on Ladder

Anyone can make potholders. Granny made potholders and then made the potholders into roosters. She made hundreds of these and sold them to make money for Providence Methodist Church. The Jackson Sun wrote an article about my grandmother and others selling their crafts to raise money for the church.

click to enlarge The Original Last Supper

My mother, Shirley Lovelace Williams, actually painted this during the “paint by number” period of the 1960s and gave it to Granny before I was even born. It hung in this same spot from that time until my grandfather’s death in 2008. As a kid I was told my mother painted it but years would go by before I found out Leonardo di Vinci painted it first.

click to enlarge Mallard

If you needed rubber bands, a stamp or a Haywood County Co-op inl pen, this mallard was waiting to serve. The mallard always sat on my grandparent’s television. It’s funny, the shows I remember watching most on their TV were “Memphis Wrestling,” “Hee Haw,” “Soul Train” and “The Lawrence Welk Show.” They had very diverse television viewing habits.

click to enlarge Crochet Dress

Like the rooster pot holders, Granny also loved to make crochet dresses for tiny dolls. Another thing she made, which was fascinating to me, was tiny aprons for dish washing liquid. It could sit on the back of the sink and not get its church clothes dirty. Boxes of tissue and rolls of toilet paper also got crotchet covers at her house.

click to enlarge Crochet Dress and Hat

Some of the crochet dress dolls also had hats like this one. She sat on top of the stereo.

click to enlarge Red Purse on Dresser

After Granny died, everything pretty much remained as she had left it when she was taken to the hospital with difficulty breathing. This dresser was in her bedroom. When I smell Juicy Fruit gum, I think about the red purse in this picture. I remember sniffing it that day just to see if it still smelled that way. It did. The photo lying on the dresser is of my Daddy Bo’s maternal aunt Jo Williamson Reid and her husband William T. or “Willie” as he was called. They lived across the road from my grandparents.

click to enlarge Crochet Dress with Hood

One of my earliest memories from childhood is of this bubble bath jar that had a ballerina on a pink rose inside the jar. It was on a shelf over the toilet in the bathroom and I rarely stood looking at it that I didn’t wonder HOW they got that rose inside the jar.

click to enlarge Closet Door Lady

Once, I actually had a nightmare about this fabric lady when I was spending the week at their house. It hung on the back of a closet door and was used to hold clothes until they could be washed. 

click to enlarge Gossip Chair

For me, and likely a few of my family members, this furniture is as classic as Archie Bunker’s chair, John F. Kennedy’s desk, and the furniture in Elvis’ Jungle Room. This is where, when not sewing or canning or working outside, Granny would sit on the phone and talk to friends, neighbors and family members. This is the spot where both good news and bad news came into the house, where advise was dished out, arguments took place, and plans were made. I remember spending weeks with them in the summer and wondering how she could spend so much time on the phone.

All this is gone now and my cousin Phil and his wife Sandra live in the house and have done a great job redecorating in a more contemporary style. I am glad I have these photos and a lot of video of the house so hopefully my children and grandchildren can get an idea of how lucky I was to have such a fun place in my childhood.

You can read more about Daddy Bo and Granny on the Williams and Castellaw sections of haywoodcountyline.com.