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Mom's name wasn't Johnnie

Local columnist

link Grant McGee

Does your mother-in-law have a nickname for you?

I got to thinking about this the other day when I heard that some of my cousins still refer to my momma as “Aunt Johnnie.”

Johnnie was not my momma’s name.

It was a name given to her by my grandmother, my momma’s mother-in-law.

You probably know someone like my grandmother: No woman was good enough to marry her boys.

So when my dad came back to the Southland after World War II with a Yankee bride, well, the stage was set for conflict.

The opening shot was my grandmother deciding that she wasn’t going to be calling my momma by her given name of Dorothy.

“So your grandmother decides that she’s going to call me ‘Johnnie,’” said Mom. “She said, ‘I had a maid a few years ago named Dorothy and I don’t think my boy should be married to someone who has a name that a maid would use.’”

“When she called me ‘Johnnie,’” said Mom, “I would correct her and say, ‘My name is Dorothy.’”

‘“Alright Johnnie,’ said your grandmother.”

“When your Uncle Bud came back from the war with a West Virginia girl, well, that just sent your grandmother into a dither,” said Mom. “She didn’t like either one of us.”

But Mom and my Aunt Becky came up with a plan to level the playing field: They started calling my grandmother “Madame.”

You see, while my dad and uncle were off to war my grandmother turned her home into a boarding house. All of the renters were young women from the local business school. So, with the house full of women, grandma’s home took on the appearance of, well, um, one of those houses full of women that sell, um, well, their favors; yeah that’s it, their favors.

I was grown before my mom told me why she called my grandmother “Madame.”

And I never did find out what my grandmother called my Aunt Becky.

Grant McGee is a long-time broadcaster and former truck driver who rides bicycles and likes to talk about his many adventures on the road of life. Contact him at:

grantmcgeewrites@yahoo.com