Thursday, November 30, 0002
Mary’s Service When Lynn asked me to say something at Mary’s service I said, “Oh, I don’t know if I can.� And then she said that Mary had wanted Nancy and me to say something. So then I knew I had to. I decided to tell you how Mary Ann Williams Ransom came into our lives. As most of you know Mary was born and raised in Denton, Texas. That is where our family came from also. When we were growing up both of our grandmothers lived in Denton so we spent a lot of time there, visiting in the summer and driving up for big Thanksgiving and Christmas family dinners. I was too young to know the exact details but it seems that my Grandmother Russell knew Mary’s family and Mother was just home from the hospital with a new baby - my sister Nancy - and I was just barely walking. I guess Memama thought Mother needed help taking care of two babies. Mary told me that she came down to Dallas on the Intererban and my Daddy picked her up. Nancy was born in October - in fact, today is her birthday - so Thanksgiving was coming up and Mother decided to have Thanksgiving dinner and invite the whole family. Mary said that she had never cooked a turkey and dressing and Mother sure didn’t know how. But Mary told me that they did it. Mother went to the store and got the turkey, etc. and they fixed it somehow. That was the beginning of many, many years of Mary’s turkey and dressing and boy could she make good dressing. The other day when I was out at Park Manor visiting her she introduced me to the nurse who came in and said that she had known me since I was a year old. I got to thinking as I was driving home that I guessed that Mary was the only person alive who knew me the longest, other than Nancy at one month who didn’t know much. She always called me Daney. I asked her one time where that came from and she said Nancy couldn’t say Elaine so I became Daney. No one else ever called me that - only Mary. She was just always there. I remember standing in the hallway on cold winter mornings in a freshly ironed dress as Mary brushed my hair and put a big bow ribbon in it before I went to school. Before I married I accused my husband Wesley of coming to see me more because of Mary’s cooking. He lived in Ardmore, Oklahoma and when Mary knew he was coming she always made his favorites - fried chicken and one of those wonderful pies of hers. She told me once that her step mother taught each on of the girls a specialty. I believe Estelles was cakes and Mary’s was pies - chocolate, caramel. Does anyone make those anymore? - made with carmelized sugar. And strawberry short cake - she made little rounds of pie crust and built it up with crust, strawberries, whip cream, etc. She would bring in a normal size one for each of us. Then she built Daddy’s up as high as she dared and of course, when she brought it in to him he loved to tease her and ask her why his was so small. This past summer when my daughter Becky was here from Indiana and my granddaughter Sara was here from Santa Fe with her new baby boy we went out to DeSoto to see Mary. The first thing my children and grandchildren wanted to do when they came to visit was to go see Mary. Sara was telling her that she had an apricot tree in her back yard just laden with fruit and she wanted to know how to make Mary’s Apricot Fried Pies. She called them fried pies but she baked them and she told us in minute detail exactly how she makes them with a little pinch of cinnamon and a little pinch of nutmeg. When my son was born we lived in Sherman and Mary came and stayed with me. We had a washing machine but no dryer. I can see Mary now out in that muddy, cold back yard in Wesley’s cowboy boots hanging out the diapers as they froze stiff on the line. When my last baby was born we lived in Houston and Mother was sick so Mary came again. She got in my car and went to the grocery store and bought good vegetables and fed us well. I often told her she really spoiled all of us because she made everything taste so good. When we grew up and ate elsewhere
