What was going through your mind Sylvia Anne McLamb?
(This story appears in my StoryWorth published book from 2022 and is published here on our August 3 Anniversary. It is part of a series of StoryWorth memories that made a book.)
A Yankee from New York shows up for Sunday dinner in Stokes Bridge, South Carolina
The way I tell the story is that Sylvia said she went to Church Summer Camp after college graduation (an age usually beyond that of normal campers) so she probably went as some sort of counselor or helping with the music. The story that I think she told me was that she prayed during that camp week for a way out of the relationship that she was in that time because there was not the kind of connection she wanted. She had been in the relationship for awhile and she was not sure there was a way out, So, she prayed.
It really was not that many weeks later that a war-scarred Marine who had just finished nine months of overseas travel from Rome, NY to Kathmandu, Nepal, showed up in Bishopville as a new hire at the school where she was a music teacher — Ebenezer Elementary School on Highway 15 in Lee County, S.C. just outside of Bishopville and a couple of miles down the highways from Stokes Bridge. Sylvia lived in Stokes Bridge where her father and mother — in fact pretty much her whole family — served Savannah Advent Christian Church. Her father had been pastor of the church for 35 years or so.
With the help of her older sister and her husband (Donna Lee and Buster) Sylvia had attended Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina and majored in piano and organ, achieving some notable grades during her college years. She graduated at the beginning of the 1970s when there were still relatively few options for women in the workplace. She also lived at home with her family much of that time and was figuring on a life in Bishopville or maybe Hartsville. She was a true Southern girl/woman and there was a pretty strong lifestyle expectation that was included in that description. She was a knockout. She is a knockout! But somehow, that particular fact did not impact the cultural expectation that she would probably always be living fairly close to her family and childhood home. And, very likely the other major part of that expectation is that she would be making that life with a Southern guy who had grown up pretty much as she had with a sense of place as a Southerner.
But then the phrase some people have heard so very often kicked in, ‘be careful what you pray for!’ That guy, who she just happened to pass when leaving school after meeting with Mrs. Eckley, quickly noticed her. She probably didn’t even know he’d passed her on the steps. But as school began and as days passed they were not ignoring each other. They were noticing each other. And, the guy she was seeing was noticing that she was not noticing him as often as he wished. Somewhere in this time, there was a breakup and she did not bounce back to that guy as she had done in the past.
We are talking 1971, who remembers details. But suddenly, one Sunday, I was invited to have Sunday dinner in Stokes Bridge with Sylvia and her family. Her mother and father, her four sisters, both brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews, a couple of cats, a rowdy well-loved poodle-puppy named Bunny and this longer-haired, strange talking Yankee, who happened to be a new teacher at her school that she may have seemed to like more than if he were just another colleague. And, this person was not only a Yankee, but he was a Catholic in an environment where a good number of Christians did not believe Catholics were Christians.
To know what might have gone on as that event unfolded would need a lot more information than my limited perspective of that time could offer. Sunday dinners were unique events focused on some of the best food that can be imagined — called Southern cooking. But they were also pretty much command events at least for the McLamb family on a weekly schedule. If Linda did not get there for dinner, she pulled into the driveway later in the afternoon.
So, what was Sylvia thinking when she invited this third/fourth grade teacher, who looked to everyone like a hippie and who was known to attend the Hartsville Catholic church and talked most decidedly like a Yankee to Sunday dinner? It would be interesting to get Sylvia’s take on the answer to that question. But, since it is never good to speak for Sylvia, we will go down another path to end this story.
I might have been an unusual specimen for a boyfriend but the reception and treatment I received from the beginning in the McLamb family was the epitome of what was known as Southern Hospitality. There were some great connections made that first Sunday. As with almost every new encounter with people in that Southland at least a couple of family members did want a first-hand answer to the question of did I and where did I go to church. And you know there had to be lots of curiosity. But the questions were often unasked and answered in the way I might have responded or the interest I showed in the conversation. I think there was a lot of observing that was happening but I am guessing I was oblivious to a lot because as far as I can remember I was just being me. That means that while I might not have paid any attention to Bunny and even less attention to the cats, I did engage the young ones in talking and playing. That first Sunday turned into many Sunday. Eventually one Sunday, Posey, Linda’s husband, may have summed up many of the feelings as he looked me straight in the eyes saying — Puffer — for a Yankee you are a pretty solid guy. Or words to that effect.
The Sylvia/Puff connection was obvious and it had to overcome some pretty deep-seated concrete cultural barriers and it is very likely the family’s acceptance of this unknown liberal, yankee, catholic former Marine had much to do with the fact they stayed together decade after decade. And those Church Summer Camp prayers literally moved mountains because Dick Puffer was pretty much the most unlikely person to end up as a school teacher in Lee County, South Carolina.
