“The most nourishing connections are the ones where silence feels easy and effort flows both ways.” ~ Unknown
what’s in a name?
I was 5.75 years old in October 1970, with pigtails and energy to spare. In this picture, I must have been very excited to visit with Shero’s first cousin, Qzella Lykins. You thought Kopana was the only unusual name in the family, didn’t you? Oh no. I come by it honestly. Naturally, I adored Qzella because she was outgoing and hilarious with a very similar sense of humor to Shero. Plus, with a name like Qzella, I felt less weird about my own unusual moniker.
It was Qzella who first introduced me to yogurt, and it wasn’t like the yogurt we find on shelves today. Yogurt in the early 1970s was unflavored, unsweetened, and much more tart, like slam your jaws shut for an hour tart. Not what a five-year-old would eat. It was decades before I tried it again. Today’s unflavored Greek yogurt is the closest thing I’ve found that even comes close to Qzella’s yogurt. But she was our city cousin, and being introduced to yogurt was like visiting a foreign country, so even if I hated the taste, I loved the experience, and my reaction had the whole family laughing until they cried. It was totally worth the lockjaw.
Qzella was raised in South Point, Ohio, across the river from Ashland in some of the Ohio Valley’s most industrialized land. By the time we got to Cannonsburg South of Ashland where we crossed the river to South Point, the air smelled of crude oil and chemicals. Fire stacks spewed blue flames everywhere it seemed. Although theirs was a lovely, modern mid-century cottage nestled just off Highway 52 near the railroad tracks that ran beside the river, the neighborhood was very much industrial, with mud, potholes, trucks of all kinds, trains running day and night, and the air outside would take your breath away on stuffy summer days. Shero and I would often talk about how the train we could hear in Southland (Lexington) reminded us of the train at South Point, but without the odor. Qzella had a younger brother named Paul, who eventually worked on the river in some industrial capacity. He was only 49 when he died of cancer. Her mother, Edna, was a younger sister to my Mamaw Adams, and she was an identical twin to Ruie. Edna married Kenneth Lykins, who was from Malone, where this picture was taken, although this was our house, not Uncle Kenneth’s. He was an ironworker at an iron plant near South Point. A WWII vet, he died suddenly in 1972. He was 58. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time this evening trying to find the house in South Point we visited often when I was a child, based on how I remember us driving there. The address is not the same today, and without a city directory, I can’t find it that way. The industrial environment is still in full effect, judging by Google Street View, but nearly all the houses are newer than Uncle Kenneth and Aunt Edna’s house, leading me to believe that, whether by flood or some other necessity, most of the original houses have been razed and replaced with newer homes or mobile homes. Both Qzella and Aunt Edna died of dementia in 2020 and 2009, respectively. Qzella was only 68. Edna lived the longest of the four at 88. I can’t help but feel the premature deaths of the men and the similar diagnoses of the women are related to the industrial cesspool in which they lived and worked.
Both Qzella and Paul had one child each, both boys. I know little about either of them today, but I sure loved their parents and grandparents. We spent so much time together when we were all young, and laughed heartily. That’s what I remember most about Qzella. Her tender laughter. I have been grateful for her. I’m only sorry we didn’t get more time together as adults.
No responses yet