Granny Chimma and her Ballerinas

This is Daddy Tom King and Chimma, adopted grandparents who raised mother in Okolona, Mississippi near where Elvis Presley was born. Daddy Tom was a rail road engineer. He is tickling tall, lanky Chimma to get her to smile for the photo. She was a dancer in her younger days and taught mother to dance at a very young age. Chimma was related to the Munson family.

This is an advertisement for the Munson Steamship Line painted by the famous artist N. C. Wyeth. The Munson family (descendents of Norway's Vikings) bought up old ships, refurbished them and sailed them to Cuba and South America to transport sugar. Eventually they tried to run luxury liners. They had ships that sailed from New York to Atlantic City to Cuba.

The family story goes, that two of the Munson boys became tinkers (tinkers shun wealth) and left the family to adventure out west. One boy made it as far as the Mississippi River and threw his tinker's pots and pans into the river and said "this is the place" and settled down in Mississippi. He was Chimma's father.

The Steamship Line eventually went broke (they bought one ship that was so bad it sank in the harbour before they could fix it up). They had labor troubles during the period that the unions were gaining strength, because they were not so nice to their crews. According to a union organizer (a tinker, no doubt), the Munson captains made their sailors sleep on straw cotts and they could only eat one hot dog each meal. If anyone complained, wanting more than one hot dog, they were put out at the next port, no matter how far that was from home! The Munson family didn't captain all their ships, of course, but such behavior did put them out of business because the unions backballed them.

The Munsons were reputed to be a good Christian family who were very charitable. The Cuban immigrants love the Munsons for taking them on their sugar ships to safety from the Cuban Revolution. There are many photos of these ships and crews online because of the Cubans. The Munsons now have a trucking company. You can see their trucks with Munson on the side.

The above picture is one Mother thought was of herself, but it is actually of the abducted little Dorothy who had thick curly hair. Chimma used to make little outfits using handkerchiefs that she twisted and tucked as you can see at the shoulder. I guess that is from the "dance of the seven veils" showing what kind of dancer Chimma must have been. We are getting into really old culture now. Mother used to put me in such skimpy stuff. Mom could make a bathing suit with two handkerchiefs artfully twisted and tied inspiring some sun tanning lotion ads. Check out the vegetation which is the same as in the photo of Chimma with the dogs below.

The photo above is of Mother at about two or three years old sitting on a vanity the day Emma dropped her off with her mother Chimma. You can see Emma is dressed in her Carnival outfit. She must have been a "hoochie coochie" dancer of sorts, I guess. Probably pretty tame in those days. You can see her relection in the mirror, looking at Mom with disappointment in her face. Her own daughter had been kidnapped and mother was left in her place. She left Mom and never saw or spoke to her again. Mother told me Chimma told her that her mother was a writer and had published magazine articles. I found on the internet an Emma Meaks or Meeks who wrote charming articles about the Appillachian peoples who lived in Tenn. Chimma told mother that her mother was an "invalid" and that was why she gave her up. It is clear she was not talking about this Emma, because she is no invalid here or in the Sunday School picture below. She was dressed to dance. No wheelchairs in Carnivals. Wow, these kidnappers were so helpful and informative weren't they. Daddy Tom and Chimma were really something!

They were good to mother, teaching her how to tap dance and ballet. She had a great vocabulary and could spell anything. She graduated with honors from high school and was elected to participate in the Miss America contest. She made it to the finals of the Miss Mississippi contest and won second runner up. She tapped as her talent. She could sew her own clothes and she could take beautiful photos with her Brownie Camera, which she processed herself with her own dark room. She did some tricks with photos making sillowets of a fisherman in from of grey tone of the willows in the park and the lake. She was very talented. Daddy wouldn't let her work.


The photo above is of Chimma Munson King with her pure bred Pekinese dogs she raised to sell. Mother said they was nippy little animals. She also made "bathtub gin" during prohibition to make money and mother said she met all the local politicians who were Chimma's customers.
Notice the plants we called elephant ears with the big leaves.


Mother told me this was a picture of herself, but I got to looking closer at this photo and I realized, it was a photo of the abducted Dorothy, actually sent to her grandparents, the Kings, to let them know that Dorothy was well cared for and living in a nice place.
Nice kidnappers! (She is too old to be photoed after the picture of mother on the vanity. She is not my mother who had thinner hair.)

Chimma must have been a dancer, because she taught her girls ballet at a very young age. Mother tried to teach me, but she did not turn my legs into the first ballet position like was done to her and to this little girl. This youthful body molding caught on in Hollywood.

This girl probably became a big star who I won't name here. She looks very much like Mother. Daddy Tom was related to the King family in Texas. You may have heard of the King ranch. His family owned a bank. My guess is this was dirty politics having to do with the Carnival crowd, rather than anything to do with the Kings being social climbers. See "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." Also see "M", a European film about abducted children in Nazi Germany. The children run free in Brooklyn--a little insight as to the significance of freedom in America from such influences as in "M". We have lost that war. Our children are no longer safe to run the streets like they did in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn".





















Above is a picture of Momma and Daddy dancing at a Jackson School Dance. The little town of
Jackson, South Carolina had appeared on the map when Dupont built the Savannah River Project where they enriched uranium. Daddy had worked during the war at Oak Ridge (they didn't want to send him into battle because he studdered--said he couldn't relay commands), so he decided to continue working in the nuclear field. That is little brother Jimmy and Johnny in the far mid picture. That dancer above the chair is not smoking in the school. Photo error. He became a lawyer and his brother a doctor.




This is a Sunday School Picture of
Emma (second row from bottom-far
right). She does not look very happy.
She never got over losing her little
Dorothy. I guess that is her husband
in the top row in front of the middle
column. He was an electrician.
Mother never had anything to do
with either of them, but she did inherit
their property when they died. I guess
they never had any other children
after they lost Dorothy. They retired
to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Emma
was kin to the Munsons who had a
steamship line. She had Viking blood
in her, so she liked being around boats
and the water I guess.