Spunk and Spark: Nannie Rewrote the Rules for Love and Marriage

Sometime before Prohibition, Nannie sat in a beau’s roadster in the middle of nowhere Georgia, sipping beer.

“Why, we had broken down, Sistah,” she explained to me decades later—in wide-eyed innocence as she imbibed her evening sherry. “There was neither pond nor creek for miles around. I was so thirsty I could have baptized myself in beer.”

How convenient: her companion, a beer salesman, kept a few bottles handy.

From day one, when it came to men, Nannie was in the driver’s seat.

Spunky. That was Nannie all over. You gotta love that word. Some sources trace its origin to the 16th-century Scottish term spunk (a “spark”), with roots in the Gaelic term spong (“tinder, pith, or sponge”). In letters, Scotland’s famed 18th-century poet Robert Burns referred to himself as “Spunkie”:

“Spunkie, thou shalt henceforth be my symbol, signature, and tutelary genius! Like thee, hap-step-and lowp, here-awa-there-awa, higglety-pigglety, pell-mell, hither-and-yon, ram-stam, happy-go-lucky, up-tails-a-by-the-light-of-the-moon, has been, is, and shall be, my progress through the mosses and moors of this vile, bleak, barren wilderness of a life of ours. . . . Come then, my guardian spirit! Like thee, may I skip away, amusing myself by and at my own light. . . .”

Sure, Nannie was a lighthearted fun girl. But she also had gumption. The source? Home-grown defiance against a system that minimized women.

Her grandmother was helpless; her mother, hapless. “Grandma was ornamental, never practical,” sniffed Nannie. “As a widow, she wore a trailing black dress until the day she died and once fainted on a train in the summer heat.”

Nannie’s mother submitted to a tyrannical husband, gave birth year after year, and never took a day off. “Mama was tired, always tired. She spent her life in a hot kitchen,” she said.

Aunt Tea, Nannie’s generation-older sister, sought shelter with her parents after fleeing an abusive husband. She had little means to support herself and two children.

“Divorce and disgrace. Eternal damnation,” Nannie sighed. “Aunt Tea couldn’t do anything but take in sewing.”

Nannie did not intend to repeat history. At 15, she demanded driving lessons until her favorite sibling, Brother Bill, acquiesced. Soon after, Nannie buzzed back roads at the wheel of the family car.

Born in 1900, she sped headlong into the new century, shedding Victorian and Edwardian restrictions. At finishing school, Nannie polished her social graces but donned a middy blouse and bloomers to play basketball. (She supported Mom’s athletic endeavors in high school—basketball, swimming, diving, tennis, and field hockey—driving to countless games, meets, and tournaments. You might call Nannie the grandmother of soccer moms.)

In a dither about the female academy’s bland dinners, Nannie stalked fowl in the headmaster’s backyard. She swiped a hen and bribed a staff member to wring its neck and pluck and cook it. Later that afternoon, she invited the young ladies to a chicken salad feast in her dorm room.

The headmaster’s punishment? Banishment to her quarters. Nannie didn’t care. She knew she’d soon be flying the coop for something better.

My grandmother couldn’t wait to vote. Moreover, she couldn’t wait to get in and out of business school so she could support herself. As a newly minted stenographer at an Atlanta brokerage firm, she snagged her oldest gentleman caller when she caught my grandfather’s eye.

A decade older and rather formal, he asked, “Miss Acker, would you do me the honor of joining me at the moving picture show?”

“Certainly not, Mr. Brannan,” she said. “I’m not in the habit of keeping company with somebody else’s husband.”

“But I’m not married!” he fell back, shocked.

A bit of a flirt, she stepped forward, her gaze sweeping past his thin nose and resting on his silver hair parted finely down the middle: “Well, you’re certainly old enough.”

Pop fell in love right in the shadow of their office building.

I found tales of their courtship mystifying. Though Nannie went by the nickname “Peggy,” Pop used her given name, “Martha.” When I was in high school, Nannie rummaged in her closet and hauled out three dark green volumes of Emerson’s essays. “Do you want these?” she asked, carelessly stacking them on her vanity.  Until that moment, Emerson’s lofty meanderings bored me. My grandfather had inscribed the flyleaf of each volume:

To Martha

From S.T.

April 20, 1921

Nannie shook her head. “Birthday gift. God knows what your grandfather was thinking. What turns a girl’s head? Candy? Yes. Flowers? Yes. A dead man’s book?  No.”

Pop (“Sam”) was a bit of a mystery man. Though generations of his family dutifully joined The Long Gray Line, Pop refused the obligatory appointment to West Point. He had no love for Greek and Latin forcibly learned under his uncles’ stern tutelage and later refined at a preparatory school in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. He ran away to New Orleans and Texas for several undocumented years and became a stockbroker who sold insurance on the side.

Nonetheless, he was a studious fellow, poring over 15 monthly journals and four daily newspapers. He brooded over Edgar Allen Poe short stories, political op-eds, and financial pages. And he had a lifelong crush on his wife, a five-foot-two bundle of contradictions: business smarts buried beneath an almost giddy exterior. After their wedding night, Nannie took over.

The Rules

1. Two children only
2. A car (On Pop’s return to work, Nannie commandeered his ride and dismissed the driver. Ever after, Pop took the streetcar.)
3. Annual bridge party vacation with “the girls” on St. Simons Island, Georgia (no family, no questions)

My mother recalled Pop’s admonition that she and her brother cooperate during Nannie’s escape: “Now, children, Mother is taking her vacation, so let’s be extra well behaved while she’s away.”

Nannie loved to travel, but Pop was a homebody. “Fine,” she said, “but I’m still booking my trips and taking Cousin Dorothy [her longtime co-tourist].”

Until the age of 88, she ventured multiple times to Hawaii, Canada, Europe, and other states. In the Northeast, she had a good time turning on the charm. Her soft Georgia accent tinged with an Upcountry South Carolina drawl was a killer combo. “Yankee men can’t resist a southern accent,” she winked.

Pop protested the rules only once. He attempted to take back the car. “Of course, you may have it, dahlin’—if you learn to drive,” Nannie airily said.

She knew it an impossible task. Although Pop had only to prove that he could pull effortlessly into the garage, his nerves thwarted every attempt. He could never pilot 10 feet in a centered manner and repeatedly banged into walls.

From day one, when it came to men, Nannie was in the driver’s seat. And, to paraphrase Robert Burns, she skipped through life, amusing herself and Pop by and at her own light. Shine on, sweet memory.

* * * * *

A veteran of Time Inc. and Dotdash Meredith, Catherine Hamrick is the author of The Tears of Things: Poems (Madville Publishing). Her poetry has appeared in Appalachian Places, Appalachian Review, The Blue Mountain Review, The Citron Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, storySouth, and elsewhere.

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