Isabel Lackey Moser

She was born August 30, 1915 and died Nov 25 1989. She was at the Shelby Convalescent (?) nursing home in Shelby, where she had been since 1987. I think that she bled to death from a perforated stomach (ulcer?). She had been given medicine for something else (arthritis?) which prevented blood clotting and then was kept on the medicine when it was no longer needed. Also a feeding tube had been left in too long. Both Brenda and I were with her when she died. She died the same way Brenda would die 20 years later, taking fewer and fewer breaths until finally she didn’t breath any more. It was late in the afternoon, about dusk (which is when Brenda died). Earlier that day she told Brenda that she loved her.

This is what I know of her family tree:


Here are the bits and pieces I know of her family lore…

WD Lackey Sr. was Cleveland County sheriff from 1914 to 1919, moving from Fallston to Shelby to take the job. At some point he was a county commissioner and the mayor of Shelby. He might have been the one who was in the Klu Klux Klan or it might have his son, Jesse. (Brenda said she found a costume when she was living with her grandmother Matilida.) Of course it could have been both of them.

Harriet Hessintine was a source of names. Isabel was almost named Hessintine but somebody (her mother or father) had the birth certificate changed. As Brenda told the story I had an image of somebody actually rushing down the street. Brenda’s first name (which she hated even more than the name “Brenda”) was Harriet. (I think “Brenda” came from the actress Brenda Marshall.)

Jesse Lawrence Lackey (who might have been a Klansman) was a car dealer. At one time (before or after he died) the dealership included Cadillac, Pontiac, Buick, and GM trucks. In the early 60’s they even had the franchise for MG’s and Austin Healey’s. His sons WD and Evans ran the business after he died. Isabel had an interest but, according to legend was cheated out of her share. Brenda said that the two brothers were in the habit of forging Isabel’s signature on legal papers.

Isabel was a sucker for smooth talking men. She was especially vulnerable after Curtis died. I think her brothers managed to get a chunk of Curtis’ veteran’s benefit. However having said that I should note the WD and Evans were kind to Brenda and helped her with her parents. WD was the one Brenda would call if her father ended up in jail or got stuck somewhere drunk. (Brenda told the story about being called to find them in the 56 Buick - Speedo - stuck in the middle of a muddy red clay field.) Perhaps the brothers felt that they were owed something for putting up with a bothersome sister and drunken brother-in-law. And of course in the car culture from which they came, cheating and being a hard-ass were just part of the game.

The only one of the Lackey ancestors that Brenda remembered was her Grandmother Matilda. Brenda lived with her for the last year or two of her grandmother’s life. I’ll write more about that in Brenda’s stories. All I’ll note here is that I was never quite sure why Brenda was there - although I suspected that her parents just wanted her out of the house. However, Brenda seems to have regarded those few years as the best time of her life. I think that when she (Brenda) moved back home in 1950 it was the beginning of The Fall (which was completed a few years later when Moser Furniture Company went bankrupt).

Either Matilda or Harriet Hessintine (the latter I think) had a difficult childhood, losing a mother early and having to look after a number of siblings. I believe that Matilda kept lodgers in the big house on Warren Street - evidently even after JL got rich. Brenda remembers a travelling sales lady who handled Luziers cosmetics. The woman gave Brenda facials and little sample bottles of cosmetics (Brenda always liked perfume bottles). Brenda also told stories about her grandmother making fancy pastries for the town’s rich people.

Matilda note (2/8/10) - Looking at this picture I remembered Brenda telling me that once Matilda locked herself in a bathroom and threatened to shoot herself. This was because of an affair by Jesse Lawrence. I think Brenda told me the story in response to my comment that her grandmother - based on pictures I had seen and on what Brenda had told me about living in her house, was very stable.



These are the bits and pieces that Brenda told me about Isabel’s early life…

Isabel seems to have been emotionally fragile and spoiled, especially by her father. (Did her brothers resent her or love her?)

The family, although living in town (Shelby, in the big house on Warren Street) kept a cow for milk. Isabel would feed the cow jelly biscuits, perhaps visiting the cow when things went badly in the house.

During her last years of high school, Isabel was sent off to St Genevieve of the Pines a Catholic school for young ladies in Ashville, NC. It’s my impression that a boy might have been involved. (At least one other girl in the extended family - Larue Lackey - went off the deep end for a man.). Isabel transferred from St Genevieve to Fassifern - a finishing school in Hendersonville, NC. I never heard Isabel talk much about it - but she didn’t talk much to me anyway (never addressing me directly by name). I know that by the time I came on the scene she wasn’t keeping up with anybody from that time. However her annual is signed by a number of girls. Brenda treasured the Fassifern class ring but I think it was lost.

At one point, Isabel had a driver’s license, but sometime in her youth - before she was 20, ran off the road and never drove again. However, as soon as Brenda became 16 she bought a second car for the family which Brenda used to haul her mother and run errands. I recall that the Isabel was the calmest passenger I ever encountered. Nothing bothered her - even the time I drove our Buick station wagon across the rickety bridge. (Brenda, Yancie, Isabel, an I were coming back from Saturday night dinner just across the SC line in Gaffney. I took a scenic side road and ended up crossing a rushing creek over a bridge that literally seemed about to fall in. Once on the bridge and committed I was horrified but Isabel laughed and seemed to think it was a grand adventure.)

According to legend she first saw Curtis when they were all in Cohen’s department store in Shelby - she maybe with her mother and he by himself. She was smitten by the dark, dangerous looking person and was told he was that “Moser boy”.

Although I’ll write about this in Brenda’s stories, I think Isabel visited Curtis twice after he was drafted in the Army late in WWII. The last visit was the train trip to Ft Polk Louisiana. She was accompanied by Brenda then. However, I think there was an earlier trip taken by Isabel and another young woman from Shelby whose husband was also in the service. They drove down (to Ft Polk?) in the woman’s car, having borrowed gas ration cards from a lot of people. I was always impressed by the courage it must have required for her to take that trip.

Here are some post-Curtis stories, again, bits and pieces (mostly my association with her - I'll write about Brenda's association in her stories)…

When she was younger, before I knew her Isabel was thin and very pretty - if that picture at the first of this is any guide you could say that she was smoldering - in the current vernacular, hot. By the time I came on the scene in 1961 she was plump - still pretty I guess - but as a superficial 21 year old I would have had trouble seeing the still smoldering charm of a somewhat overweight 46-year old woman. (Also in my own defense from the beginning I detected something wrong with her.)

I was always deeply suspicious of Isabel - at least until the last year or so. She pretended to be one thing and was I thought something else. Her friendliness - until the end - always seemed feigned.

After Curtis died in 1963 we lived in her house on Blanton St until sometime in the mid-1980s when she moved into an apartment. There was never any question. Brenda was going to take care of her mother and if I wanted to live with her (Brenda) I would come too. It was like a door slamming shut. Brenda felt that her mother would not survive without her. I felt that Brenda would not survive without me.

Throughout the 60's and early 70's I hated Isabel for her drunkenness and dependency - for the hold she had on Brenda and for what I perceived as her deeply devious nature. She brought drunk men into the house. I threatened to kill one with my good carpenter's hammer and I hit another one in the face, splattering his blood on the kitchen floor. A few times I yelled at her. Once I grabbed her behind the neck to forcibly move her from one room to another. I probably wanted to kill her.

Some time in the early 70's Isabel began to gradually straighten herself out. By the time Yancie came along in 1976 she had stopped drinking altogether. She finally moved a little past the vile freak show that had been the Curtis/Isabel partnership. Isabel and I still had an uneasy truce, never speaking to each other by name.

Sometime in the late 70's Brenda and I bought the Blanton St house from Isabel and she moved into an apartment where a friend lived. I always thought it was brave thing for Isabel to do. And of course I was happy to have her out of our house.

Funny asides...

There was an earthquake in Shelby - maybe in the early 70's. It happened late at night and woke us up with rattling dishes. Isabel went running across the street to cousin Reid's house, leaving Brenda and I to our own devices.

Another time something happened to the furnace and the house filled up with smoke. The cat Angel woke us up. Again, Isabel ran across the street to Reid's house

After Yancie came on the scene Isabel was a good grandmother - not exactly hands-on (I always wondered how she managed to look after Brenda) but devoted. She was Grandma Bell. Yancie loved her and has fond memories of spending afternoons at Grandma Bell's apartment, lying in bed, watching soap operas and eating junk food that I think Isabel asked Yancie not to talk about.

For a while Isabel actually had a couple of jobs and was president of the local Business and Professional Woman's association. She got into the politics and drama - maybe even getting Brenda to come to a few meetings.

Then a number of acquaintances died, including her friend and neighbor at the apartment. Isabel started to come a little unglued. She wasn't drinking again, but she became afraid and anxious. We bought a larger house with a light airy basement apartment so she could move in with us.

It didn't work out.

It was my understanding that Isabel would stay downstairs and we would stay upstairs. I said something one night when I came home and found her upstairs about to have supper with us. I immediately regretted it because I could see that she was genuinely hurt. I think she continued to come upstairs to eat with us but she started to become more and more irrational. It wasn't exactly my fault but what I said didn't help.

The climax came when Brenda went to work one morning and left Isabel sitting on the commode. Isabel said she couldn't get up without help. Brenda didn't believe her, thought it was an act, and yelled. Later that morning, feeling guilty Brenda came back home accompanied by Margaret her coworker at the Right of Way Department office. Isabel was still on the commode. However when Brenda reached out it required no effort to pull her 160 pound mother up from the commode. She rose with no effort. And I think Brenda said there were no marks on Isabel's bottom from having sat on the commode for three hours. When getting back to the office Margaret, normally a mild-mannered little woman announced "That woman is crazy as hell." We never knew if Isabele had been sitting there the entire time or seeing Brenda's car pull in the drive, she had run back to get on the commode. We suspected the latter.

(When we were all living on Blanton Street Isabel would lie in bed all afternoon watching TV then get up a half hour before we got home to fix supper. Rushing around the kitchen her hair flattened in back from being in bed all afternoon she would complain about having been in the kitchen for hours fixing our food.)

In 1987 Isabel went in a nursing home and we sold the big house no longer needing all that room. Isabel had some good months in the nursing home, blending in

Curtis Polk Moser

He was born Feb 25, 1912 and died Nov 8 1963. He had a heart attack while attending a Shelby High football game and died shortly after arriving in the hospital. I am not sure he ever went into a room. Brenda was with him. I think I was with Isabel at the admitting desk. Brenda said his face turned horrible colors.

This is what I know of his family tree:


This is what I know of his family lore.

The Richardson’s were genteel (“gentiles” unlike the Moser’s who were maybe the other thing). There is supposed to be a picture of one of the Richardson’s sitting on a horse beside Robert E. Lee who was also sitting on his horse (Traveler I think). According to Brenda’s version of the family lore Uncle Brad got that picture, maybe passing it down to his daughter (Brenda’s cousin) Marlene.

Susannah Polk Rape was reported to have descended from President James K. Polk who was supposed to have been born in the southern part of Mecklenburg county where the Moser’s and Richardson’s lived. Brenda said that she and her father once got into a vile argument about the name “Rape”. Brenda told him they had an ancestor with that name and her father declared that it was not true (implying that his family would not sullied by having a ancestor with such an odd suggestive name.) Brenda did not indicate if this was an ongoing argument or if Curtis was sober or if she did it just to annoy him.

Henry Moser was the only grandparent on her father’s side that Brenda seems to have remembered (although Grandmother Dora and Great Grandmother Jean lived for some years after 1940 when Brenda was born). She recalled Grandfather Henry as being a tall kindly man who wore shoes (sandals?) when wading in Buffalo Creek on the family’s raucous Fourth of July picnics.

The family grew up around Waxhaw then moved to Shelby - something to do with Henry’s cotton brokerage business I think.

After Grandmother Jean died in 1949 Henry married Marian Nash - who was my second grade teacher at Washington school in 1946/47 (I liked her - even though her refusal to let me go to the bathroom resulted in an accident that has since become a part of my own family legend). Marian ended up in the late 1980’s in the nursing home with Isabel and my father - although by this time none of them recognized one another.

To Brenda, the most significant aspect of the Moser lore was the possibility (likelihood in her mind) that the Moser’s had once been Jews. She said it was never discussed much (except when her mother Isabel would get mad and call Curtis “an old German Jew”) - but seemed to be understood (although Brenda’s cousin Carol had never heard the story when I brought it up at one of our high school reunions).

Jewishness was the subtext of Brenda’s life. She read books on Judaism, wore a star of David around her neck and had a menorah and a dradle which she prominently displayed (and which I have left on the coffee table in the living room). At times she toyed with the idea of converting to Judaism. We talked so much about it that when Yancie was in grammar school and asked about her religion she said that she was an orthodox Jew (this from a blond, blue-eyed Nordic looking child).

We never could trace the lineage back to the verifiable Jews. However, a second or third cousin named Keiger who had Moser connections told Brenda that he found a town in Germany where all the Mosers were Jews. I think he might have said that the original American Moser’s were peddlers. I speculated that the Moser’s came over in the one of the early immigrant waves then for economic or social reasons became Protestants.

I don’t know much about Curtis’s early life. Although not rich, the family seems to have been well established in the middle class.

I think Curtis attended a couple of years of college - maybe Wingate. He was artistic and musically inclined. Brenda remembers him sitting drunk on front porch of the Blanton Street house playing Ave Maria on his violin, tears running down his cheeks.

I think he was born in Waxhaw. The family moved to Shelby, maybe in the 1920’s or 30’s.

At one point Curtis drove an oil tanker truck. His route took him across the mountains and he later told Brenda how scary it was to drive the big trucks down the narrow winding roads in the ice and snow.

Brenda said that Isabel and Curtis saw one another the first time at Cohen’s, a department store in downtown Shelby (the Cohen’s planted a tree in Israel when Curtis died), Isabel seems to have been taken with the dark “Moser boy”. She always had a thing for the dangerous ones.

Before being drafted into the Army late in WWII, Curtis worked in Charlotte for the Sterchi’s furniture company. He laid out newspaper ads and had a little office with a window that overlooked Tryon street. (I told Brenda several times I would shoot a picture of the wall and the window but I never did and now the building has been torn down.)

The family lived in Charlotte then, in a nice little duplex in a nice little neighborhood near the black university, Johnson C Smith. Brenda remembered this as an idyllic time. A Good Time. Everybody seemed happy. Curtis and Isabel dressed in fancy clothes and went Charlotte’s bonafide nightclub, the El Morocco. They mingled with the town’s up and coming young people while Brenda stayed home, looked after by the neighbor lady, “Mrs. Mews.”

The family moved back to Shelby in 1944 or 45. They might have moved because Curtis was drafted into the Army or maybe because Isabel’s mother wanted her daughter closer. I think it was the latter reason, which, if true, was history that would repeat itself when Brenda and I were married and faced with the possibility of our own move to Charlotte - away from her mother. (Like the cats and vacations, this was one of our ongoing issues.)

I don’t think Curtis saw any combat in the war. He ended up guarding Japanese prisoners on one of the islands, maybe Formosa or Saipan. One of the men he guarded painted a Japanese-looking picture of Brenda on a piece of parachute silk.

(There is a story about the memorable trip Brenda and her mother took to visit Curtis when he was in training at Fort Polk Louisiana. I’ll tell that in Brenda’s history.)

Curtis returned to his family in Shelby after the war. I am not sure what he did when he first got back. Maybe that’s when he drove the tanker truck. But at some point, certainly by the late 1940’s or early 50’s he started Moser Furniture Company. Brenda never said where he got the money. Maybe from his father. Maybe from Isabel’s mother.

According to the legend, the company did well at first. However, things started to go badly when Curtis’ brother Brad joined the business. Brad spent money they didn’t have on company delivery trucks. He also had a vicious temper and got into fights, sometimes pulling a knife on people. (Brenda told a story about how Brad’s children, Brad Jr. and Marlene would fight, chasing each other with scissors.)

In the middle to late 50’s the company went bankrupt. Brad and his family left Shelby for Florida. Curtis stayed in Shelby and tried to pay off the debts. They would have lost the Blanton St house if it had not been transferred into Isabel’s name.

As described by Brenda this was the Tragic Fall - when everything fell apart. Curtis went from just being a heavy drinker to becoming a drunk. Isabel started drinking heavily. And a very dark side emerged in both of them. All their demons came out. Their house became a gathering place for drunks and deviates. Brenda hid in her room - but not always successfully. (But despite all that Brenda remembered him as the one who looked after her when she was sick, applying musterole ointment to her chest. And he cried the day she married me - which might have been prescient on his part.)

After the Fall, Curtis never had another decent job. He sold Shell Homes, driving around Western North Carolina in a fast-back Buick coupe with a replica of one of the pre-fabricated houses mounted on the top of the car. (Brenda said the car/house combination looked funny in the snow - a car with a house on top with snow on the house.) When I came on the scene in the winter of 1961, he was selling cars at Lackey Buick/Pontiac/Cadillac/GMC truck - working for his two brother-in-laws, WD and Evans. According to Brenda they treated him poorly, but at least did not fire him when pulled his week-long drunks.

I remember him as a dour scary man who did not say much. The following from my novel REDUX is based on Brenda’s household…

She told him to follow her to the kitchen where she would fix his nose. They passed a room illuminated by a flickering light. A man, dressed in a rumpled suit, smelling vaguely of vomit, slumped in a large chair before a television. Ida stopped and leaned forward, her hands on her hips, chin stuck out. Peering at Abby , the man said in a gravelly voice, "Whozethat?"

Abby stepped back. He had an image of the man suddenly leaping up from his chair, like a corpse coming to life, yelling in his face.

Ida said, "Abby Burns - Brad punched him in the nose."

"Sonofabitch" Abby didn’t know if the comment was directed at him, Brad or someone else.

Ida's eyes narrowed and her lips pulled back, exposing filmy teeth. There was bile in her breath. It was like fire. She hissed, "You're the sonofabitch."

The man replied casually, "Slopgut whore," then cleared his throat and coughed several times, eventually leaning forward and stomping the floor with his foot.

Ida, smiled, said "Humph" and continued down the hall, leading Abby into the kitchen.

She directed him to sit at a yellow Formica top dinette table. A dishcloth covered what Abby assumed was a pile of clean plates stacked in one corner of the table. Dirty plates, containing leftover mashed potatoes and pieces of meat covered in grease, had been left at two places.

Curtis liked to drive. For a time the dealership sold British sports cars and I recall him darting around town in an Austin Healey with the top down in the winter. He wore a dapper coat and a jaunty cap. He claimed (and in my experience could) drive better drunk than other people could sober. One day he headed out drunk to Fayetteville (where his brother Bob lived). Isabel and Brenda had me follow him to make sure he was OK - or at least to get help if something happened. He drove in an absolute straight line. After 30 miles or so, he pulled off to the side of the road and when I walked up, laughed and said that he would be all right. He was in a good humor that day.

He started having chest pains in the fall of 1963. He was 51. The doctor told him that it was his heart but he didn’t seem to care. The one time I expressed any sympathy or concern (actually patting him on the head!), he looked at me pitying disregard - knowing that I had no idea what I was talking about. But even I knew that death was a release for him - that he sought it.

Of course, when he died, we became responsible for Isabel. Which might have been one reason for his look of pity.

NOTES (I'll add notes as new information pops in my head.)

Girlfriends (2/5/10) - There were some. Brenda remembers a woman that Curtis would bring around. I don't know what the stated connection was (maybe she was his secretary) but Brenda understood (perhaps hearing Isabel and Curtis fight about it) that she was a girl friend. Brenda said the woman was very nice to her, as if she was trying to win her over. After Curtis died a letter came for him from another woman (in Chicago?). I don't remember the contents except that it was obvious there was a romantic connection. Brenda seemed pleased that her father had in his last years even a tenuous connection to the possibility of happiness. She called the woman to tell her what had happened. I don't remember the details of how that went. However, I think the woman had a Jewish name - which also pleased Brenda.

Airplanes (2/5/10) - Curtis was a pilot, maybe learning to fly in WWII. I don't think he ever got the sort of license that allowed him to take up passengers. But he and his brother flew to Chicago on business trips (which might explain how Curtis managed to see the girlfriend mentioned above). Brenda remembered somebody (maybe Brad) taking her up in a little plane. She liked it. She told about her mother running around on the ground below as seen from the airplane. I don't know if this is something she saw or something she was told.