Tommie and Nan | A Lifetime Together

I recently read a quote by Canadian author Nadia Scrieva that states, “Each meeting occurs at the precise moment for which it was meant. Usually, when it will have the greatest impact on our lives.”  I remember exactly when I met the Ennis family.  It was in the autumn of 1971, and they would become like a second family to me.  Tommie, Nan and their kids have had a profound impact on my life.  Probably as much as, and in many ways more than, my own parents.

I went to school with their two oldest children, Dennis and Stacey.  They were one and two years behind me, respectively.  Stacey and I became friends at school.  The Ennis’s lived in our neighborhood, at the other end of Rollingwood Lane in Gresham Park.  I began to visit their house on a regular basis at first, quickly evolving into every day.  They put up with me and never told me it was time for me to leave…

I suppose every neighborhood has a house that all of the kids naturally gravitate towards.  That house was always Tommie and Nan’s.  I have never in my life known two more gracious, kind, unselfish and patient folks in my life.  Lord knows they put up with a lot of crap from us.  There are more stories than I could ever fit into this space here.  Some should not be repeated, so I will touch on some of the ones that hopefully can be…

The Ennis’s were a Volkswagen family.  Tommie was a soldier, a career National Guardsman who worked in the motor pool at the Armory on Confederate Avenue in East Atlanta.  Like a lot of guys back then, he worked on VWs in his driveway in his spare time and on weekends.  I would hang out there while he worked on them.  This was one of the main reasons I developed a lifelong love for The People’s Car.  

They raised five wonderful children.  Dennis, Stacey, Sharon, Susan and Samantha.  Samantha was only two or three at the most when I got to know the family.  My friend Barry and I ran into her at Taco Mac Trivia Night several years ago.  She slapped me on the back and said, “Hey, I just turned 40 a couple of weeks ago!”  I looked at her and said, “Oh, hell no… you can’t turn 40.  You’re not allowed to turn 40!”  After she left and went back to her friends at their table, I looked at Barry and asked, “Now, does that make you feel freakin’ old or what?”

In the summer of 1972 the Ennis’s took a vacation to Panama City and invited myself and two other friends to go along with them.  They rented one of the old cinderblock houses that used to be on the beachfront.  It was next to the Holiday Inn and a few blocks down from The Miracle Strip.  It wasn’t until I was grown that I realized the magnitude of that undertaking.  I can only imagine taking four teenagers and three kids to the beach for a week.  Tommie sat on the back porch, drank beer and smoked Kools, then went to the dog track at night.  I understand why…

Nan is without a doubt one of the funniest women I have ever known, always smiling with an infectious laugh.  She always treated us teenagers and young adults as an equal.  I considered her one of my best friends even back then.  I had to go to summer school in the summer of ’72 and take a math class.  It didn’t help any, but that’s beside the point.  Tommie had bought a ’67 VW bus to fix up and sell.  I had a Ford Pinto, and at least twice a week, I would leave the house in the morning, go over to the Ennis’s and ask Nan if I could drive the bus to school.  She always let me, and that’s probably one of the reasons why today I covet a ’67 Bus…

They moved from Gresham Park to South DeKalb in early ’73, about as far south as you could go in DeKalb County.  Their new house was a split level brick on Linecrest Road, which straddled the DeKalb/Henry County line.  Tommie converted the carport into his workshop and was finally able to work on the Bugs while protected from the elements.   About a year later they put in an in-ground pool.  In the basement room that opened to the pool was a refrigerator that was always full of beer.  It may have been 3.2 Old Milwaukee from the Fort Gillem Class 6 store, but in the middle of July on a Sunday, it didn’t matter.  It was beer, and it was cold.

One Saturday morning in 1974 I was sitting around the pool with Nan and the younger kids.  We were listening to the radio, and they played Ray Stevens’ song, “The Streak.”  The kids disappeared inside, and we hear this giggling and laughing from The Basement Room With The Refrigerator.  All of a sudden Sam, the youngest, comes running out of the room naked as a jaybird.  Her two sisters, fully clothed, were right behind her screaming and laughing.  She makes a couple of laps around the pool.  Nan and I were cheering and howling with laughter.  Tommie came running down to the pool from the garage, and he wasn’t laughing.  He yelled at Sam, “Get in that house and get your clothes back on!!!”  Then he looked at Nan and yelled, “What’s wrong with you, anyway???”  She tried to look serious, and he stormed away.  As soon as he left we fell out laughing again.

Nan introduced me to Mountain Oysters.  I was over at the house one Saturday, helping Tommie with the Bugs.  At lunchtime, I walked in the kitchen and Nan was sitting talking to her friend Janet, who worked for a local vet.  There were two pork chops sitting on a plate on the counter.  I asked Nan, “Can I have one of these pork chops?”  She looked at Janet and grinned and said, “Sure, go ahead.”  I ate the pork chop and said, “That was pretty good, can I have the other one?”  They both fell out laughing.  I stood and looked at them and asked, “What’s so damn funny?  I just asked for another pork chop.”  “It’s not really a pork chop,” said Nan, “it’s a Mountain Oyster.”  “What the hell is a Mountain Oyster?” I asked.  She told me and I must have turned forty shades of green, from chartreuse to deep forest, because they started laughing even harder.  I ran out of the house holding my mouth, leaving them reveling in their jocularity.  The vet Janet worked for had been hog hunting, you see.  If you don’t know what a Mountain Oyster is, Google it…

Tommie and Nan have been married sixty six years now, a lifetime.  I don’t see them as often as I should or would like, and that’s my fault.  But I love them both deeply, and that will never change.  They have touched not only my life, but the lives of so many of the kids, teenagers, young adults and adults who grew up in Gresham Park and Cedar Grove.  I thank God that in His Infinite Wisdom he crossed my path with theirs.  It is a gift for which I am forever grateful.  Sixty six years… Still Cruisin’!  –J.