YOU GOT A CARD FROM ME...
...like some of you did last year. I must point out that my daughter, Joyce, is the self-portraitist in this one. In addition this the 2006 model, I present to you some cards from previous years. There are quite a few folks who collect these and I'd like to dedicate this page to my recently departed cousin, Elois Jones Wiggins, whose refrigerator magnets held the old ones that you see here.
-Marvin T. Jones
"Hobson Reynolds was one of the stars
from my community. He and his brother went to Philadelphia and became
owners of a funeral home. There, Hobson became the Grand
Exalted Ruler of the Improved and Benevolent Order of Elks of the World,
and with such a fitting title, owned a Rolls Royce - the first I had ever
seen. The Grand Exalted Ruler was even interviewed on the Today Show.
When the G.E.R. Reynolds was a high school student, he wooed the ring
off the finger of my Aunt Martha. At a gathering later that day, she noted
another girl was wearing it. Ever polite, Aunt Martha said, “Honey,
that’s a pretty ring. I’d like to try it on.” After
the transfer, Aunt Martha thundered, “You’ll never get it
back!”
Hobson called on Martha the following day. When she asked him about the
ring, his flubbering and harrumphing did him no good."
I gave up my faint moustache
for this 1997 photograph. Carol's brother,
Alan, squeezed the shutter. As usual, Mickey's trying to smop my lips.
"My mother said that she and Daddy were newly married; and one day, they went for a walk along the woods. A little lizard scooted up the left leg of Daddy's pants. Well, Daddy started doing a hope the get the lizard out, but it kep climbing up his leg, sometimes gripping the fabric and sometimes grippin the leg itself. As the lizard climbed higher and higher, Daddy switched from shaking his leg to swiveling 'round and 'round, and grabbing the area where the lizard might be.
Daddy couldn't grasp the thing or shake it out of his pants, and it was now ar the top of the pants leg. He and the lizard were in a panic! Finally, the lizard started heading down the right pants leg. Daddy's swiveling stopped, but the leg shaking began once more. Soon, the lizard finally leaped out past the right cuff, onto the grass and into the woods. Now, I should tell you Daddy's version of this story, but that would be fair, wouldn't it?"
The photographs in this card were made from my first
digital
camera, bought only one month before in 2001. Ebay searches
tell me that it is now worth 5% of what I paid for it.
Mickey is still licking.
"Our dog sleeps next to me.
Sometimes, before dawn, he pounces all over me.
He is saying, “Get up and go down stairs.” I bumble downstairs
to find him at the
door, alert, and wagging his stump of tail. He is saying, “Let
me out.”
Occasionally, a male and female dog visit with us, and
they sleep in separate cages.
Just before dawn, our dog pounces all over me. I follow him downstairs,
and I bumble to the door. He is not there. I look in the dining room
and he is
at the cage door of the female dog. He is saying, “Let her out
- please.”
In 1995 when I made this card, I didn't know that my great-grandaddy's mill pond is called Montgomery Pond. It is in the woods between the Brantley's Grove and Newsome Grove communities. I never did catch a fish there. At least I hooked a "tappin'". Carol was the photographer, and thegolf cart belonging to my cousins Curtis and Carolyn carried camera, tripod, fishing poles and us back to the almost forgotten pond.
"This part of Flat Swamp is called the Switch. My [great] granddaddy, George James, used to own it. Please notice that Lillie [full name: Joyce Lillian Jones] and I are sitting on a root. Well, it was right here, in 1970, while sitting on this same root, that my cousin, B.G. Robbins, and I were not catching fish. But the cork on Robbins' line kept bobbing and sinking. And every time he pulled up his hook, there was nothing on it.
I had brought along my grandfather's shotgun [Parker Robbins]. So B.G. asked me to aim the shotgun near the cork the next time it went under. [NOTE: This is unsafe and probably illegal] When the time came, I pulled the trigger and was recoiled backwards off the root onto the ground. To this day, Robbins tells everyone I fell into the creek. This card is to tell you that he is a liar and to wish you a happy holiday season."