Lee and Osburn Howard were known as “Mama” / “Mama Lee” and “Papa” to children and grandchildren. Osburn was a carpenter, and Mama Lee went with him when he would go on one of his “jobs”. Both Osburn and Lee loved to fish and spent many days in a small flat-bottom fishing boat on some small nearby lake. He never had to run out of fishing bait, because he had Catawba trees lining both sides of his driveway. If that were not enough, he had a water overflow line which drained out beside the house, and this is where he had his earthworms.

Mama Lee loved to sit in her rocking chair on the front porch or “gallery“ as she called it, and watch cars go up and down the highway. She usually would sit there in the afternoon and unbraid her long white hair which went past her shoulders, then comb and re-braid her hair into a neat little bun. If an ambulance went down the road, she would call the funeral home that ran the ambulance and find out whom they were going to pick up. By the time the Henderson Daily News printed the hospital admission list and the obituaries, not only did Mama Lee already know, she had also spent the better part of the day calling everyone she knew to tell them. If Papa was in the Henderson Memorial Hospital for one of his many heart attacks, Mama Lee would go “visiting” to every patient, to see who they were and what was wrong with them

Mama Lee was the most pleasant of persons, she laughed at about everything, and she seldom showed any anger or sorrow. She was kind, and outgoing. Papa was quiet so they made a good match. She also made the best chocolate and caramel pies, but what the grandchildren loved best was her chocolate “sop”. This was a dark chocolate about the consistency of pudding, but it would pour almost like a syrup. Spending the night there meant waking up to chocolate sop and biscuits to dip in it. Getting a glass out of the cabinet was no problem since they had an unfailing supply due to Garrett’s Snuff. Since they both used snuff there was no end to the number of small glasses available which previously held that brown powder.

Both Lee and Osburn faced true hardships as children. Both lost fathers at an early age, and undoubtedly had to work hard each day just to survive, then to have children to raise during the Depression. Jube Howard once said that when he was young living at home, he never came home that his mama didn’t have his supper on the table, and his bed turned down.

Though they never had riches, every Christmas, no matter what, they would give each grandchild a 50 cent piece for “fire crackers”. Whatever cousins were there would hike a couple of miles down to the country store and get fire crackers. Usually while the kids were busy, the grown-ups would be playing “forty-two” dominos.