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The One and Only: Jean Peacock Some of us are just born to rebel. I was the best little boy in town (for a while). Jean may have never been the best little girl in town for she was bent on carving out a life whose affectation was the opposite in so many ways from her mother. Mary Peacock was the most calm, cultured and well spoken person I think I have ever known, the product of a Wesleyan education in the early part of the 20th century. Mrs. Peacock was my speech teacher. She would pick me up early mornings before school and I would work on a series of speeches, ultimately being the program at the UDC or DAR. I spent many afternoons at her home standing in front of the fireplace with a book on my head, an attempt to improve my posture (an attempt I say). In the background (it is hard to imagine that Jean Peacock was ever in the background) would be the laugh and shrill voice of the daughter whose colorful language stole her mother's refinement. Over the years we would migrate to the kitchen where all sorts of cakes and other great food were prepared. Jean could throw a dinner party amid chaos and be happy as could be. She could also have on a dress, fix up and use china and silver and put on the dog! Her last hurrah was this sort of occasion where she imposed on several well placed folks in the community to serve her DAR buddies. She showed me the rooms she had finally organized and cleaned to perfection. I was not allowed to even step in the rooms for fear of making even the slightest mess. The last time I saw Mary Peacock (Goat to all who followed Jean's nickname for her very cultured mother) Jean had her all tied up with pulleys and ropes and she looked like a puppet. Astroke had rendered her unable to do much but Jean's clever care made her come to life. Thirty years later my last visit with Jean was much the same. A cow had slammed her down and while it would have killed most men, Jean recovered with all her ropes and pulleys. I was there to retrieve books for the library (she was a major supporter of our public library). She always had things to give you. I got some old books and some of her mother's speech teaching materials. The greatest joy for me was a 14 page letter I wrote her from an African trip I made through a dozen countries in 1968. She was a teacher, a farmer, an antique buff, and an iris and daylily expert. Her many interests kept her very busy. Once I went to see her and she was refinishing an old table, a job not easily accomplished through the layers of paint. More often than not she would be outside digging, slinging manure (symbolically and literally). Where are they now? She had 200 dollar iris rhizomes and she would not tell you which ones they were (unless you were one of the chosen). My pitiful clematis would have one or two blooms and hers had thousands! Nut grass got under her skin. This was not a good thing because she told me she would dig to China to get rid of it (actually is was the Florida artichoke that we have all battled). She told me not to worry because she had some material at 90 dollars an ounce that would get rid of it and if it didn't' she threatened to fix it where nothing would ever grow there again. And I believed she meant it. Among her finest hours was her desire to send her home grown fresh pecans to the surviving families of the police and fireman who died in 911. Don't think for a minute that she would just mail them to any old address. She burned up Congressmen until they got her the very addresses she wanted. Then she farmed out all these cracked pecans for us (her minions) to remove the shell. Some of you were her students and you know how passionate she was about government. Some of you were her DAR buddies and you know how she revered the past (first property in the county on the National Register of Historic Places). Some of you know her passion for antiques, auctions and placing things she loved. Fortunately I was never called upon to load cows, but I did have to drag gates and tin to protect her new butter bean patch from her cows. I told her that there were lots of young guys in Garfield who would work for $4 an hour, but she said she could not afford it. She could have well afforded it but she just liked having folks like me drag tin around her farm with her.- -Jack Atkinson is our regular guest columnist and a resident of Garfield.
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