At 110, Love, Family and Coca-Cola Are Blessings

They filed into the small corner house throughout the day, leaning over to Mary Caroline Waskom’s left ear, the one that works best, to greet her and offer birthday wishes. The process usually required a couple of stout attempts.

Ten years ago, so many people came to celebrate that they had to hold the party at the senior citizens’ center. It was easier for Waskom to see, hear and get around back then. After all, she was much younger--only 100 years old.

On Nov. 14, a day before her 110th birthday, about 75 friends and five generations of family members gathered again in Colton to celebrate. This year, Waskom wanted to have the party in her home, which her first husband, “Mr. Davidson,” built in 1947.

Among those who attended was Waskom’s “baby sister,” Opal Townsend, who lives in Seattle. Townsend is 93, eats right, speaks often to God and goes for a walk every day.

Ask anyone who knows Waskom and he will say that she lives each day with an eagerness that’s inspiring. Long life, Waskom says, is a blessing, and while physical abilities wither to memories--like just about everything else in life--love and family do not.

At her party, she kept track of those who had arrived and those who were running late. Of particular concern was granddaughter Anna Collie of Ridgecrest, who was bringing the food.

“Where’s Anna?” Waskom wanted to know shortly after noon.

“She went to get the food,” somebody replied.

“Is Anna not going to bring food?” Waskom asked.

“She’s a little slow sometimes.”

“When’s she gonna get here?”

Food is not something Waskom forgets about. She remembers the steady diet of corn bread her family ate during the Depression, the oranges and, sometimes, candy given to her as a child at Christmas.

Waskom, who goes by Callie, was born in Texas and can remember how beautiful the oak trees turned in autumn, her favorite season. She recalls the cliffs, down by the ravine, from which she would jump into the dry sandy bottom.

Her memory is crisp enough to take her through more than a century of family births, deaths, marriages, divorces, new marriages, new divorces, starting from a day long ago.

“I remember when I was a year and 20 days old,” she said. “I had a brother born on that day, Alonzo. I learned to walk while my mother was still bedfast.”

Alonzo Louis came to be known as Lonnie. He was the curious one, according to a brief autobiography Waskom compiled 13 years ago with the help of a son and grandson.

“Once our old Seth Thomas clock stopped telling time,” she wrote. “So Papa gave it to Lonnie to take apart and see if he could put it together again. Well he did just that! He left out a lot of parts, but he got it to tick and tell time.”

In all, there were seven children. Brother Otto seemed always to have a skinned nose, she wrote. Once, he and a cousin chewed the arms and face off Waskom’s wax doll and hid it by the chimney behind the house. “You see,” she wrote, “at that time folks called chewing gum ‘wax.’ So the boys thought they had found a gold mine. . . .”

Her father, William Washington Parr, came from Mississippi and was a farmer. It was 1901, “in October,” she said, when Parr moved the family in a covered wagon from Texas to Oklahoma, which had not yet become a state. It was barren and cold there. That’s what stands out in Waskom’s memory.

“One year, I don’t remember what year it was, we didn’t see the ground for 41 days,” she said. “It snowed or sleeted, and by the time that would melt off, we’d have more.”

In 1907, “in December,” she married John Louis Davidson, a farmer who later became a blacksmith and welder.

They had three children and came to California in 1943. Louis died in 1954. It was, she said, the saddest moment of her life. At age 70, in 1960, she married again, this time to “Mr. Waskom.”

“I was a nurse after my first husband died, and I nursed this old man on the next block,” she said. “I met his son, and that’s who I married. I was pretty old, but we had about 23 years together, a little better than that.”

John Waskom died in 1984.

Some of the most important events in United States history have occurred during her lifetime. One of them, she said, was in 1919, the year women were allowed to vote.

“I went right down to register,” she said, “but I can’t remember who I voted for.” In all likelihood, it was a Democrat.

“I’ve always been a Democrat,” she said, “but I don’t really remember the difference.”

But the greatest date in history, she said, had to be Armistice Day, marking the arrival of long-awaited peace after World War I.

On a personal level, there also were many important events. There was the time she told herself she was going to pick 300 pounds of cotton in a single day, and sure enough, to the astonishment of all, she did. It gave her quite a feeling, she said, but nothing could match the joy she felt when her three children were born.

Only one of them, Marjorie Miller, 78, of Modesto, survives. Miller was unable to attend this year’s celebration because her husband was not feeling well.

She said by telephone that the most important lesson she learned from her mother was “to help one another and to be a good person.” She said Waskom always did her best to make life pleasant for her children, no matter how difficult times were. One year for Christmas, she made Miller a doll cradle out of an oatmeal box. Miller still has it.

Her mother spoke often of God and goodness, Miller says, but the words she remembers most vividly from her childhood are: “Eat your oatmeal.”

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Anna Collie and the food arrived at about 1:30 p.m. Family members gathered in huddles in front of the house, eating from paper plates. It was the first year, said Collie, that Waskom didn’t come outside.

In years past, she would come out to the porch, and that’s where they would sing “Happy Birthday” to her. This year, Waskom remained inside seated in her chair. The gathering spilled out the doors as everyone sang.

“She’s slowed down the last six months,” Collie said. “She’s still very alert, but sometimes she gets confused.”

While her birthday is an occasion for great celebration, it also is the fourth anniversary of the death of her son, Jones Davidson.

“She told me the hardest thing is to bury your children,” Collie said. “It’s something you never expect to do, and she’s buried two children and a number of grandchildren.”

She’s also outlived two funeral directors. “She made all her arrangements years and years ago,” Collie said. “Every time a new funeral director comes along, they assume she must already be dead, so we have to remind them.”

Out in the backyard, more people stood, talking, eating. Another grandchild, Darrell Davidson, 57, pointed beyond the lemon trees to where he and his cousins would dig in the sand during their childhood visits.

There were grapes and olives, good for throwing at each other, he said, and way in back to the right there was a chicken coop, which provided many fried dinners.

“She’s the guiding light for all of us,” Davidson said. “My father used to say many years ago, before he died, that she would outlive us all. He may have been right.”

As the century grows old with Waskom, she hopes to celebrate a millennium with eyes still wide for what lies ahead, for the satisfaction of having lived in three centuries.

“I don’t think I’ll be here [a year from now],” she said, “but I want to live ‘til New Year’s if that’s possible.”

She said her life remains good, although she wishes she could hear and see a little better. She is able to dress herself and live at home with the help of home health-care workers. Friends visit to read and sing to her, and she looks forward to the mail delivery at 2 p.m. each day to receive the latest news from relatives.

When asked by a reporter a couple of years ago what her secret to long life was, she replied, “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret.”

But now she is more forthcoming. “I’ve lived a clean life, no drugs, no liquor, no tobacco. . . . And I take a little Coca-Cola with a little ice cream in it every day around 3.”

She never complains, relatives say. Throughout her life she has tried to seek out the positive. The list seems to grow shorter with time. There’s still one thing, though.

“I still have my teeth, most of them anyway,” she said. “Not many people 110 years old still have their teeth.”

She doesn’t look far into the future anymore. As her sister, Townsend, says from time to time, “We’re the last leaves on the tree and the tree’s a-shaking.”

On everyone’s mind is how many years they will continue to meet like this to pay tribute to the one person who connects them all, and how long it will be before they come together to sing “Amazing Grace” when Waskom takes to “the hill,” which is how she refers to the cemetery where someday she will join both husbands.

She isn’t afraid of death, but there’s a disclaimer.

“I don’t look forward to it either.”

There’s too much good in life, too many candles still to be lighted, and every day at 3 p.m., there’s an ice cream float.