Emily Whiteside and Beth Saba

[00:03] EMILY WHITESIDE: I'm Emily Whiteside. I'm 66 years old. Today is Sunday, October 17, 2021. We're in Columbus, Georgia, and I'm here with my sister, Beth Saba.

[00:16] BETH SABA: She's my sister and I am Beth Saba, age 64, here today, Sunday, October 17, in my hometown of Columbus, Georgia, with my sister Emily.

[00:29] EMILY WHITESIDE: We were so excited to hear that StoryCorps was going to be in Columbus because usually things don't happen in Columbus, or that's what we thought when we were growing up. And we had thought about talking with our mother, but she demurred and my daughter suggested that Beth and I talk. So we thought we would just talk about growing up in Columbus. We're here in Columbus because my grandfather moved here as a 14 year old by himself and subsequently married our grandmother, who knew our mother's mother. They were from the same small town in south Alabama, so our parents knew each other from an early age. And when they married, they moved here to Columbus. And when we were growing up, Columbus was a small city in the middle to late 50s of between 80 to 100,000 people. And today it's over 200,000 just in the city. So I thought we would talk about what it was like growing up in Columbus. What is your earliest memory?

[01:53] BETH SABA: Well, I have a lot of memories of our nice little neighborhood called Lindsey Creek. I definitely remember going to what we called nursery school then. They call it preschool now. I remember specific incidents from that nursery school. We watched. We gathered around a little black and white TV and we watched some of the first Apollo missions. And I remember that my teacher and her family took a vacation to Hershey, Pennsylvania, and she brought back to all of us in class these little chocolate candies wrapped in silver, which I think was the first time I had had one. And she said, these are called Hershey Kisses or some people call them Silver Bel. And in Hershey, Pennsylvania, at the factory, all of the street lights were shaped like this. And so we each got to have one. And, you know, that made an impression on me. And I had terrific friends. My best friend from next door went to nursery school with me. And you had been there before I'd had. So I remember.

[03:08] EMILY WHITESIDE: That is so cool that you remember all those details. I have only one or two vivid memories of that same nursery school. And the first one is one of my earliest memories. It's when daddy, who was really tall, walked me to the gate to go in the first day. And I guess I hadn't thought about it before that he would not be there. With me. And I don't think I had ever been, besides Sunday school, off without them or a grandparent. And Mrs. Richards, one of the teachers, said, oh, she'll be fine. And I very much was sure that I was not going to be fine. And I remember holding onto his leg and thinking, he will not abandon me. And she said it one more time, and he turned around and walked off and did not even look back. And the latch shut right in front of my eyes. And I thought, traitor, you are not leaving me. I was very shy, but I did know one or two other kids there. Nobody from our neighborhood went. And I guess it was okay. I mean, I don't have any terrible memories.

[04:38] BETH SABA: Yeah, that's funny, because I always think of you as being the brave one. You know, you paved the way for me for so many in so many things, and I am much more shy than you are. But I did not have any fear of that, I think, because you had been there. And the fact that I knew several.

[04:59] EMILY WHITESIDE: People, you know, well, that's funny, because you're right. The older sibling does have to pave the way. But I never felt particularly brave. I felt. I'm trying to think of the word, like I did not want to be bossed around by anybody. And so that probably came off as bravado, when really it was just sass.

[05:39] BETH SABA: What's your earliest memory?

[05:42] EMILY WHITESIDE: That's funny, because we're 22 months apart. And I very distinctly remember staying with our grandparents when Mother went to the hospital for you to be born. And I was very comfortable with them, but I missed Mother and Daddy a lot. And I remember the morning that you came home, they pulled up in the driveway, and I just could not wait to get out of the car. And they were concerned because I was so rambunctious and squirming to get out of the car. Of course, no seat belts or anything like that. And I just hopped out. And I remember Grandmother trying to hold me back, saying, don't run. And I thought, what in the world are you thinking? I'm not going to run. And I ran and immediately fell on the brick steps and scratched my knee. But thinking, oh, drat, they were right, you know, but ran to the back of the house where you and I were going to share a bedroom, and there was the crib, and Mother and Daddy were standing there, and I was so excited to see them. But they, you know, must have said, look, look, look, there's Beth. And I do remember putting my foot on the crib and climbing up and Almost getting in when somebody's hand said no. And I thought, hmm, this isn't going to be as much fun as I thought.

[07:21] BETH SABA: But we shared that bedroom up until we moved from that house, which would have been 67. So we were like 10, 12ish years old, something like that. Right about. I was 10, you were 12, 5ft apart. Yep, yep.

[07:38] EMILY WHITESIDE: Before you were born, I wanted a sister so badly. They had a life size doll that had elastic on the feet you could strap it on and dance around with it. And daddy said, well, this can be your sister. And I remember thinking, you know, nice try. But he put the doll over there in the bed and had me pretend that was my sister.

[08:10] BETH SABA: That was probably the last time you played with a doll.

[08:15] EMILY WHITESIDE: Almost correct. Yeah, there were two dolls I played with. Now you were the doll.

[08:22] BETH SABA: Yeah, I loved them.

[08:24] EMILY WHITESIDE: Do you remember your favorite?

[08:28] BETH SABA: Let's see. Well, I've probably carried around a baby doll a lot. But the favorite would have been when I was in. I was probably just about too old to get dolls, but I loved the movie the Sound of Music so much. And there was a line of dolls made by Madame Alexander to look just like the von Trapp children. And so I got one Christmas and then maybe the next Christmas I ended up with a few of them, you know, and they weren't played with so much as looked at. And maybe I would fix their hair or something, but I loved those.

[09:10] EMILY WHITESIDE: And do you still have them?

[09:12] BETH SABA: I thought I gave them to your daughter, didn't I? Yeah, because I had boys and had no use for those dolls. And they were up in our parents attic. So I think she has them.

[09:26] EMILY WHITESIDE: Do you remember what daddy did with.

[09:28] BETH SABA: The dolls at our grandparents house? Our grandparents had an attic that you would access, you know, just by opening a door. You didn't have to pull anything down. And you walked up these, you know, steep stairs and you got to the top and there were just the exposed beams from the house, which was like a craftsman stall house. Dark wood up there, but two separate areas.

[09:59] EMILY WHITESIDE: Well, it had to be because of the stairwell. So there was a bridge that went over it. Right.

[10:05] BETH SABA: And we had so many dolls, so many cast off dolls from over the years that he collected them and took them to our grandparents house in Columbus. And he cleared an area on one side of the attic and he, when he showed it to us, we walked up there and there was this semicircle of dolls and an area like a rug, a little rag rug in the middle and we could sit on it and play with Them. And it was always fun to go in the attic. And there. There were those dolls. It was pretty amazing.

[10:39] EMILY WHITESIDE: He had the. Had a crib set up over there.

[10:41] BETH SABA: In the little high chair, everything.

[10:45] EMILY WHITESIDE: He was so much fun.

[10:46] BETH SABA: He really was. What's your favorite growing up? Memory of Daddy or one of them?

[10:54] EMILY WHITESIDE: Well, there were so many. You know, you always hear mother means work and daddy means play. And in our house, that was pretty much true, unless his temper got tripped. But he came home with a. I think it was a 1960 VW convertible. Black, big, old wide, white sidewall. And he would put us in that car on a Saturday. And, oh, my gosh, the police would be after you now, but we could sit up in that luggage compartment and just ride all over town. And he would. I'm sure he was doing errands, but he made it fun. Do you remember one Saturday, he said, I'm going to take y'all to Baby Street. He had such an imagination. But having grown up in Columbus, he knew all the different little areas. So this was Dinglewood, and it was no more than an alley, but it was, you know, one car width wide and forever. That is Baby street to me. And then he would drive us through Dinglewood, all the while telling stories about growing up and Columbus. And it was just like being in a time capsule. And I remember he would take us over to Lake Bottom Park. Now, you remember we lived right across from Lindsay Creek and were forbidden to go down in that creek for good reason. Rattlesnakes and water moccasins over there. But I remember he let us play all in the creek one day, catching tadpoles and frogs and running up and down in that water. It was great.

[12:57] BETH SABA: Yeah, I remember he would. When he would take us around on those errands, he would drive into somebody's driveway. We didn't know them at all, but he would. And we would just kind of be dying of embarrassment, but we really were laughing. We thought it was so funny. He would drive. He would toot the horn and honk the horn. Maybe they would look out then, by then, he was backing out. It was just, like, so much fun. And he would sometimes take several kids from the neighborhood. And we have a fantastic picture of the two of us with our two cousins, Tom and Will, in the back of that Volkswagen in our swimsuits. He had probably taken us to the cfa. Swimming.

[13:40] EMILY WHITESIDE: No, listen to where he took us.

[13:42] BETH SABA: Where?

[13:42] EMILY WHITESIDE: This is hilarious. To the Columbus Aquatic Club, which is directly across from where I live now. Oh, that's where we were going that day and he had packed a picnic or probably somebody packed for him and he just took all four of us off for the, you know, half the day.

[14:05] BETH SABA: Yeah, yeah. Do you remember any. Speaking of Lindsey Creek, do you remember any super fun things that we did there or you did there or what do you remember?

[14:20] EMILY WHITESIDE: What I remember about that neighborhood was every single house, maybe one had kids our age, and it was just an ideal place to grow up. Across the street was a creek, so there were no houses there. And that was pretty much our playground. You couldn't go down in the creek, but you could play on the banks. And my friends and I would ride bikes. We had those clamp on roller skates that you had to. And we would go skate up to the top of that hill, the little hill at the end of the street by the lesses, and go down. And I still have scars all over my knees from falling but not caring too much. And I think one of my neatest memories is a neighbor who ended up being a pretty well known artist, George Dudley, who was a good bit older than we were, or we thought so. He was probably only five or six years older, but he was very creative and he was a leader. He would have us all out there and he'd say, okay, we're going to collect these acorns, or what? It was always something natural, you know, and we were going to design it some way. We would be out there with rakes and we would rake up pine straw and make little mansions, you know, rooms. And this is my house. And I remember towards the end of the time we were living there, I guess the creek was being channelized and made very ugly later. But in that process, workmen were clearing out the end of the block down there by the lesses. And so what had been woods was now revealed. And I remember one day George Dudley had us over there and they. The workmen had pushed all these trees sort of together and it made a perfect little room, a hideout. And we just spent the whole day over there pretending we were adult, I guess. I mean, just. It reminds me of that book, Roxaboxin. Is it Barbara Cooney, right? Yeah.

[16:53] BETH SABA: Yeah.

[16:53] EMILY WHITESIDE: Well, that was. Just seemed like how we spent most days.

[16:57] BETH SABA: Yeah, we could use our imagination. And there was a popular TV show, Secret Agent man. And I played that down. I would go down to the banks of the creek. So I don't. I don't remember it as being forbidden. Mother probably didn't want us to get our shoes dirty, but. And I wasn't that Adventurous. But I remember going down there some and there would be like a little path that you could take from this part to the next. And so, I mean, I just, I remember all the fun and the friends in the neighborhood. For a while I had a very best friend next door. So much fun to just go out and be able to play with her. And it would thrill me to no end when by surprise, one of our parents would say, do you want to spend the night? Like we hadn't been bagging it. But Daddy would say, oh, Janet's going to spend the night. Or even this is. This is going to sound so funny, but it's like, y'all both. You and Janet both need a bath. Why don't you come over to her house and you can take your bath there with her.

[18:02] EMILY WHITESIDE: I doubt that happened today.

[18:04] BETH SABA: I don't know, but we thought it was fun. Yeah.

[18:07] EMILY WHITESIDE: Do you remember him setting up that telephone between our houses?

[18:12] BETH SABA: Oh, well, remind me.

[18:15] EMILY WHITESIDE: Well, it was nothing. It was a little bit fancier than a can and a string that had been waxed. But they were plastic phones and their bedroom and our bedroom faced each other. And the dads, you know, fixed it so we could very low tech talk to them next.

[18:37] BETH SABA: I kind of remember that.

[18:38] EMILY WHITESIDE: Yeah. One scary thing I remember in relation to the creek is while they were clearing that area, I was down there nosing around by myself one Saturday afternoon. No one knew where I was because you didn't have to tell anybody where you were going. You could just get on your bike and ride around. And I was down there and I had been reading Tom Sawyer and I was so jealous that Tom and Becky had caves and we didn't have caves and I wanted a cave. And you know how it is when your attention is directed towards something like that. You see things that maybe aren't really what they are supposed to be. Anyway, I was down there and I looked down and saw a hole that in retrospect was probably where they had pulled out a drainage pipe or was an animal burrow. I don't know what it was, but it was about a nine year old girl size. And I looked at it for a minute. I was very impulsive and I mean always. And the thought came into my mind, you should not go in there. But I did. And I crawled in. I mean, it was, you know, maybe bigger than a foot, but not much. And I got in and wiggled all the way in and then decided, no, this is not smart. I can't see anything. And there are roots hanging down. No telling what's in here and if there's an outlet. But when I tried to back up, I didn't know that your knees wouldn't let you go back. And I could not get out. I couldn't back out. And so the only thing to do was to trench crawl and pray that there was an opening. There was no light, and it was probably, you know, 12ft. And I remember thinking, if this caves in, no one will ever find me. Oh, my goodness, it was horrible. But I got all the way through and my head's poking out. There's the creek bank. And I was able to, you know, drop on my hands and get out. And I never told anyone about it, but that night we were at our grandmother spending the night. I remember just picking dirt out of.

[21:16] BETH SABA: Yeah, they would not have been happy to hear that.

[21:18] EMILY WHITESIDE: Oh, I would have been so busted. Do you remember anything about Rigden Road school that we went to?

[21:36] BETH SABA: I remember my first day of kindergarten for sure. Because if you recall, there was the school which was, you know, one level and then a little bit away from it, there was a separate white, little white house that was the kindergarten. And so I had my milk money in my envelope. I had my dress on. And I remember that because of the picture that they took of me that day. But I was going to kindergarten and daddy took me and you had been. And you had the same teacher. So I was really, really excited, but I was really nervous about it. You know, it was different than nursery school. But again, my best friend was going to be there and so he took me and he. Daddy made an adventure and made everything so much fun and he had confidence and so some of that rubbed off on me. But, you know, I'm. He introduced me to the teacher, but she knew me from. Because of you. And I remember that they had the tables that you would sit at named for each day of the week. So somebody would be at Monday another, you know, so you would end up learning the days of the week. And I was disappointed that Janet and I were not at the same table. I'm sure that was by design, but it was just a. It was a great experience being in that little kindergarten. And it was half a day, so, you know, I got to go home for lunch. But, you know, I had those same friends for the next four years. We moved when I was in fifth grade, I think, but it was a great school. Our parents were active with pta. We had carnivals. You and I had some of the same teachers, but not all right.

[23:26] EMILY WHITESIDE: It was a brand new School, you know, the neighborhood was new and yeah, it was a great experience for us. It was very homogenous, no diversity. And you know, because of that we had very limited experience with anybody who wasn't really WASPy.

[23:55] BETH SABA: Right, right. We didn't really have any. Yeah, we just, we lived in that bubble. We didn't really consider anything else. Looking back, it's unfortunate, but that is, that's the way it was then. Yeah.

[24:11] EMILY WHITESIDE: Yeah. We've talked a lot about daddy being fun, but mother was fun too. Do you remember some special things about her?

[24:21] BETH SABA: Yes. She was a stay at home mom and was very good at what she did. She loved her soap operas, especially as the World Turns. And she would tell you she liked to watch them because their clothes were so pretty. And she made our clothes. She took sewing after she married, I.

[24:40] EMILY WHITESIDE: Think right when we were very little. Sudie, our Aunt Sudie and grandmother were beautiful seamstresses and would make beautiful clothes for us. But mother decided she wanted to learn.

[24:53] BETH SABA: She went downtown to Ms. Pullen's Sewing School and she learned to sew and just took right to it. And so I remember things that she made for us. I remember she made doll clothes. I was into Barbies. She made tiny little Barbie clothes. She made a little Barbie jacket that had a little fur.

[25:16] EMILY WHITESIDE: Was it kind of Jackie O?

[25:17] BETH SABA: Yeah, very Jackie O. She, and she cooked. I remember her making decorating valentine cookies, heart shaped cookies for all the kids in the neighborhood. And they would have like a pink or red background and then she had written their name in white icing. But at the time I was. I had a stomach virus and I didn't want or need the cookie. It would not have settled on my stomach. Well, but they were so pretty to look at. And everyone was outside having a cookie and I was inside not having one. And then when I got better, I said to her, which was a few days, several days later, I said, could I have the cookies? She said, oh, Beth, they're not good anymore. I had to throw them out or eat them or. She didn't say that, but I never got the cookie. But she did. She was a very involved parent, you know, with the schools and our friends. And so those are my memories of her.

[26:23] EMILY WHITESIDE: She would make things really special.

[26:27] BETH SABA: Birthdays, birthday cakes she made. My birthday is around Easter. She had a cake in the shape of an Easter basket and it had jelly beans and coconut, green coconut. And then one time, I remember she said she was decorating just, you know, like a two or three layer cake and she was piping something on the side. And she said, beth, do you know what this is? And I said, a rope. She said, no, they're sixes. Because I was six years old.

[27:00] EMILY WHITESIDE: I can't believe you remember details like that.

[27:02] BETH SABA: I do remember that. Yeah.

[27:05] EMILY WHITESIDE: Neat. Yeah. She always knew exactly the right thing to say to our friends or to anybody. Put them at ease.

[27:19] BETH SABA: She's very gracious. Our 92 year old mother today is very gracious. She sure is.

[27:27] EMILY WHITESIDE: Still extends a lot of grace to me.

[27:29] BETH SABA: Yeah, me too.

[27:32] EMILY WHITESIDE: When we were little, we loved to hear stories from both of them about their childhood. And she grew up in Hedland, Alabama and had a very big family. Well, there were nine kids. And she would tell us a different perspective on life. We grew up in a big town and her town was very small where she knew everybody and could walk all over town and everybody knew her. But she and her siblings were really close and seemed to have a lot of great adventures. And daddy would tell us a lot of stories. Do you remember him telling bedtime stories to us where we were princesses?

[28:19] BETH SABA: Mm, mm. I don't remember that.

[28:21] EMILY WHITESIDE: He sat in a little chair in between our beds and with tell us those stories. But one thing he would talk about was when he. I think it was after he graduated from Auburn. I think it was that first summer he went out to work at Yellowstone park and loved it and.

[28:43] BETH SABA: Oh, in the soda fountain at Old Faithful.

[28:46] EMILY WHITESIDE: Yes. And it just sounded like the most fun. And I remember, you know, it seemed like it was a lot farther removed in time than it really was. Probably like 10 years. I think he was there in 50 or something like that, I'm not sure. But I wanted to go and found out how to do that and did end up going to work out there.

[29:18] BETH SABA: Yeah. You and a friend from Auburn, Mary, you got to know her because you both were going out there, right? Yeah, I remember all the planning. And you went out there and you would. I guess we talked on the phone rarely. I don't think that you. You might have written a letter or a postcard, but you had so much fun. And there was this activity going on for the employees and that one. And you had been here and. And I was at home that summer and going to pick up a couple of classes at the local college when I was home from Auburn. But it was. And it was okay. I was all right doing that, but I sort of wistfully was listening to your stories. And one day daddy came home and said, beth, we can get you a job out there. Would you like to go. And I just, I kind of didn't know what to think. But again, his confidence and his, this is going to be fun. And of course you were going to be there. And I said, okay. And so he kind of got it arranged. And they were always needing workers. And he walked me through every step of the trip because I had flown once, but this was going to be from Columbus, Georgia to Atlanta, to Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City and Jackson. Then a small plane to Jackson or West Yellowstone. And so he kind of told me what to expect and everything. And, you know, I did it. And do you remember when I got there? I do.

[31:06] EMILY WHITESIDE: I was on a break, sitting out on the steps to the dorm and, you know, people would come and go. And I saw a person coming across the parking lot who had short blonde hair. And you had always, always, always had long blonde hair and had just recently had it cut. And I remember looking up and it didn't register with me. And then looking down and doing a double take, literally. And you just giggled because no one had told me that you were coming. Oh, it was fabulous.

[31:42] BETH SABA: It was a surprise. Yeah. But you never, you were glad to have me there. You didn't resent that? I was, you know, kind of horning in on the fun. And we spent a lot of days off together doing things and, you know, it was a great experience.

[31:57] EMILY WHITESIDE: That was really a life changing experience.

[31:58] BETH SABA: That was life changing. Yeah. We got to know people from all over. We kind of got to know. So what some people think about the south kinda.

[32:08] EMILY WHITESIDE: Are you kidding me?

[32:10] BETH SABA: That summer was 1976 and Jimmy Carter was running and Gerald Ford came out there and spoke at Old Faithful. And so we had a name tag that would have our first name and then the state we were from and everyone would say, oh, you're from Jimmy Carter state.

[32:29] EMILY WHITESIDE: Oh, do you know Jimmy Carter? Yeah, when actually he only lived about an hour away. It was great.

[32:39] BETH SABA: And we made lifelong friends from out there.

[32:42] EMILY WHITESIDE: Right?

[32:42] BETH SABA: You know?

[32:44] EMILY WHITESIDE: Absolutely. And worked out there two summers. And then you had your own adventure.

[32:49] BETH SABA: And I went to Glacier national park for one summer and was a maid and had a lot of fun doing that. A beautiful, beautiful park.

[32:58] EMILY WHITESIDE: Yeah. Well, I think we've. We have talked about a lifetime of.

[33:08] BETH SABA: We've had a lot of fun and a lot of good memories and I'm.

[33:13] EMILY WHITESIDE: Glad we live closer together. I will say I wish I had been a more nurturing big sister.

[33:23] BETH SABA: Well, you became more nurturing as you got older. I don't think it's normal for people to be nurturing when they're two years apart that young. But you certainly have helped me out of many a a jam since then, and likewise. Yeah.

[33:37] EMILY WHITESIDE: Thank you for coming today.

[33:38] BETH SABA: Thank you for the conversation.