Granny Dyal's Box of Shoes

Many interesting people cross our paths and leave their marks.  One such lady was Granny Dyal. Granny Dyal was not my blood relative, but neither was Aunt Mandy Broome or Aunt Bessie Stephens.  This story is about Granny Dyal and her box of shoes.

My cousin Bruce told me this story about his Granny Dyal's box of shoes he found when he was a little boy.  These shoes were not the fancy-go-to-church shoes she might save for Sunday, but old shoes of her family, children and grandchildren.  The shoes dated all the way back to the turn of the century through about 1960.  There were baby shoes worn thin by the tiny feet which outgrew them for larger ones, little girl and boy's shoes, ladies shoes, and men's work shoes that showed repair after repair and was finally beyond being wearable.

Granny Dyal kept the worn out shoes with holes in the bottoms or with wire stitches that held the soles to the top of the shoes.  Shoes that had walked hot fields and traveled long South Georgia tobacco rows behind an old horse or mule.  Shoes that helped a young bride walk to meet her groom. Shoes that carried a future soldier to sign up for war.  Granny Dyal had saved the shoes of her loved ones.

It was often at night before going to bed that Granny Dyal would pull that box of shoes out from under her bed.  One by one, she would take out a pair of shoes and would clutch them tenderly and would begin to pray. "Lord, please bless and protect my daughter (etc.) and her family..."  Her children and grandchildren lived away, far and wide, but these old shoes kept all of them close to her especially when she was worried when someone got sick or hurt.  That's when she would pull that old box out.  What was really neat was that no one ever knew about that old box of shoes, but Granny Dyal and her grandson, Bruce.

Bruce found out about that old box when he spent the entire summer with his grandmother.  He would take out those shoes and try them on.  His granny scolded him about that, for to her they were something sort of sacred.  The life of those old shoes were gone, but she had found a new purpose for keeping them.  Granny Dyal died in 1973 at the age of 84, and in that box was another pair of shoes.  These were from her great-grandson, Michael, Bruce's son.

It is me again, Lord, thanking you for the love and prayers of Granny Dyal.

A little Georgia Wisdom:  No one can have enough prayers said on their

behalf; therefore, remember a loved one or two as you pray.