date night: the early years

or that time a birmingham woman fell in love with a gloster man

Mary Elizabeth (Davis) Anderson (1922-2014) & Richard Alfred Anderson (1918-1997)

Great-grandparents on their first date.

Married Oct 13, 1949 in Chicago, Cook County, IL.

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Mother Mary carried a pistol in her pocketbook

and would cuss you if you mistook her

for a white woman. see that soft cloud

of kools smoke round about you?

Pour crown royal in the red dirt

and say her name

Mother Mary

Black Mary

Mother Mary

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Papa Richard Owned a Dry Cleaners

& say it don’t take all that starch

to get the wrinkles out. The fabric

ought to flow too. He likes these

lessons on softness and I am glad

the war didn’t make a stone

out of him.