Genuinely Southern

What do chocolate-covered doughnuts, flying English peas, a rainbow-colored piano, and a Pennsylvania pussy willow farm have in common? Mark Ballard's family, naturally.

In this episode, Mark revisits childhood visits to his relatives in Dublin, Georgia, where two very different approaches to raising children made for unforgettable family memories. Years later, a cousin's wedding celebration introduces Mark to an unexpected family business, a self-proclaimed Pussy Willow Princess and a coffin-sized delivery that lands on his front porch.

It's a hilarious Southern family tale about colorful relatives, unexpected discoveries and why you never know what you'll learn over a piece of wedding cake. 

In This Episode:
  • Growing up among the Ballards of Dublin, Georgia
  • Chocolate-covered doughnuts from Williamson's Bakery
  • Two very different philosophies of parenting
  • Aunt Erbilene's unexpected name change to Betty
  • Flying English peas and a rainbow-colored piano
  • A wedding reception with spectacular flowers and homemade cake
  • The unforgettable discovery of a pussy willow farm
  • A coffin-sized package from Pennsylvania
  • Why Mark regrets throwing away hundreds of dollars in floral decorations
Chapters
00:00  Welcome to Genuinely Southern
00:45  Meet the Dublin Ballards
01:34  Williamson's Famous Chocolate Doughnuts
02:38  Two Very Different Families
03:38  Mama's Rules & the Gum Incident
05:28  Aunt Erbilene Becomes Aunt Betty
06:36  Flying English Peas
07:31  The Rainbow Piano Disaster
09:34  Robbie Becomes Rob
10:09  A Ballard Wedding Celebration
12:48  The Search for Homemade Wedding Cake
14:45  The Pussy Willow Revelation
15:56  Meet the Pussy Willow Princess
16:37  A Very Large Delivery from Pennsylvania
18:01  The Pussy Willows That Got Away
19:44  Lessons from a Colorful Southern Family
20:15  Closing Thoughts & Listener Questions

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Carlyle Place at Home - Inclusive, Interactive Retirement Living Without Moving

Creators and Guests

Host
Mark Ballard
Host & Executive Producer of Genuinely Southern

What is Genuinely Southern?

Whether through writing, broadcasting, or word-of-mouth, stories have always forged a connection between people and places. Nowhere else is this truer than in The South. Southern artist, influencer, speaker, and author Mark Ballard will weave stories of life in Macon, Georgia, and stories of the South. Tales told as only Mark can, will be interwoven with guest interviews and listener questions, and requests.

Mark Ballard:

Hi. I'm Mark Ballard. This is my Genuinely Southern podcast where I will share Southern stories and perspectives that show just how unique our South is. Growing up in the South gives people a little different perspective to life. I've always used the South to inspire me in my artwork, my writings, and even my food.

Mark Ballard:

I've been telling stories about the South for years in my newspaper articles, my magazine. I even had a television show. The South is more than a region to me. It's genuinely a way of life. That's why I'm excited to share these Southern stories with you and introduce you to interesting people.

Mark Ballard:

I'm proud to be Genuinely Southern, and I can't wait to tell you why. Today, I want to share with you a story that is sure to make you laugh, something we all need to do more of these days and times. Allow me to give you a little history of the Ballard family. My daddy and his people are from Dublin, Georgia. It's just a little skip from Macon down on the interstate.

Mark Ballard:

He decided to make the move to Macon, which is where he met my mother and they raised my sister Denise and me. We visited our relatives in Dublin a lot growing up. Daddy came from a large family. If my memory serves me correctly, there were 13 siblings. My mother was funny with a great personality and all the Dublin Ballards just adored her.

Mark Ballard:

I always loved going to Dublin to see the other Ballard's because they had have the best small town bakery ever. It's called Williamson's. It used to be in the Downtown Dublin area, but then they moved out when they had a new mall come in out there. Williamson's was the best bakery. They had all kinds of confections that you could even possibly dream of, but the one that always caught my attention were the chocolate covered donuts.

Mark Ballard:

They were not just iced with chocolate, they were completely dumped into a vat of chocolate icing that filled every crack and crevice the entire donut. Sometimes there was so much on there, you would have it filled up into the middle of the hole of the donut. I could not wait to get down there because I knew one of my cousins or aunts or somebody down there would have me a box of those donuts. They always made this sugar addicted Southern boy smile with glee. One of my daddy's younger brothers was named Bob.

Mark Ballard:

He was a psychiatrist, psychologist, I'm really not sure which but he went to college and had a great career. My daddy only had a fifth grade education, his mother died giving birth to the last child and daddy had to at 10 or 11 years old drop out of school and help care for his siblings that were older and younger. Because of that, he had a wonderful work ethic and provided a good life for us. Bob was one of my daddy's younger brothers. He married Irvoline and they had two boys.

Mark Ballard:

One was named Robbie and the other Doug. Things were different as we were growing up between our family and theirs. Bob with his education with mental health and what he did, they had a little bit of a different approach to let's just say disciplining kids than my mother and dad. Although I had to leave daddy out of it because I can't even remember my dad ever disciplined me. My mother was strict and she was a disciplined person.

Mark Ballard:

I mean, kept me and Denise, my sister in track. If we talked back to her or what comes to mind to me immediately is if we smacked gum, you know, like we're both getting out of school, she's picked us up, we're smacking gum. She had a little VW pale blue Herbie looking car, Volkswagen. And she would give us two warnings, quit smacking the gum. Because I'm sure she had had a long day and we're just like, Smack, smack, smack.

Mark Ballard:

And I was trying to smack louder than my sister and all that was going on and mother was about to lose it and she would say, One, quit smacking or you're gonna lose the gum. Quit smacking or you're gonna lose the gum. And if anybody smacked after that, which it was usually, I would say, I was really the nicer child. My sister would be horrified, but Denise would smack again. And mother could pop both of us, make...

Mark Ballard:

Turn her blinker on to turn onto our street, backhand my sister in the front seat hit me in the back, gum just went out of our mouths and never missed the lick with the turn. And should that gum have gone out the window, that car was gonna come to an abrupt stop. Whoever's gum it was was gonna have to get out and get it because we did not litter, we did not throw anything out of that vehicle. In comparison, when we would be around Robbie and Doug and my aunt Erbilene, they were very calm people and, you know, we were just fly by our pants fun and say anything. And I told mother one time after we visited, I got in the car and I went, Aunt Erbilene, just sometimes I don't think she understands me, mother.

Mark Ballard:

I'll say something and she won't reply back right away. And mother was like, Well, Mark, maybe she's thinking about what she wants to say. Something that my side of the Ballard family, we didn't ever think. It came out, we had to try to grab it. Sometimes a foot was in our mouth.

Mark Ballard:

We didn't know what was going on. But that was a new concept to me to actually think about something that somebody says to you before you blurted something out. One time Aunt Erbilene set my sister and me down at her house when we were visiting her and she said she wanted to talk to us. Of course we were nervous. We thought oh my god We've done something terrible and we're gonna be in trouble.

Mark Ballard:

And she said, I need to ask a favor of you and Denise, Mark. And I was like, okay. And she said, I've never been fond of the name Irvine, so I'm gonna ask y'all to call me Betty. So that was really the only time we did think a second, and my sister was the first to speak. And she said, well, we can't do that.

Mark Ballard:

And she said, why not? And she said, we'll have to call you aunt Betty, you know, ever the smart ass, my sister. So we've got that straight, but as a child, I'm thinking, I got in the car and asked the mother when I saw her, who changes their name? I'm sure that was another part of her name, you know, her whole name, given name. But I thought, who just decides one day they're not gonna be Erbilene, they're gonna be Betty?

Mark Ballard:

That was way before we knew that stars, you know, music people would make up names of one single name and stuff like that. Back then, when you got a given name, that was your name. One time, we were at their house and we were having dinner around the dining room table and Robbie, which was the older of the two boys, was at one end of the table taking English peas, which he called bullets, and using his spoon to propel them at various people sitting at the table. You just see this English pea just come zooming past you and I thought this is interesting. Me and my sister looked at each other like what's this gonna happen?

Mark Ballard:

Aunt Erbilene slash Betty said oh I feel a wet substance hitting me from... She was looking around to see if something was falling from the top of the dining room ceiling or what was happening. And I felt like saying, it's your son Robbie. He's down there shooting English bees. You haven't seen any of them going by.

Mark Ballard:

So when she finally figured it out, she in this quietest voice ever said, now Robbie you don't need to be throwing English peas at the table we're trying to eat here and if it had been at our house mother would have popped us straight across the face and we wouldn't have gotten any dessert. One summer Robbie spent a week or so with us at home and he came up to me we had a piano as I told y'all before in one of the other episodes we my sister and I both had to take piano lessons and mother had saved to get that piano and our house so small, basically had a sofa in the living room and that piano. It was like a shrine to probably the most money she's been on anything. And we had to practice in there and that was her piano. She couldn't play it.

Mark Ballard:

She wanted her kids to play it. And she didn't let me bang. Have you ever heard that? Well, you know, I couldn't get in there and just bang on that piano. It had to be played.

Mark Ballard:

So Robbie came to me with this whole thing of markers and said, I think I want to paint each key. I laugh even thinking about it. Paint each key of y'all's piano a different color and I thought about it for a second, which I usually don't remember. I use it just to blur it out, I actually gave that some thought and I thought you know what I think it would be gorgeous. Here are the markers.

Mark Ballard:

I can still remember where I was standing when my mother rounded the corner from the hallway to see her newly painted rainbow themed piano keys. She said, what? Who painted my keys to the piano? And I, having not done it, pointed to Robbie and I said he asked me for my markers. I didn't know what he was gonna do, mom.

Mark Ballard:

She picked Robbie up. Keep in mind, he's never had any discipline like we did. They never had been struck or anything. She had him by one arm and popping him and I thought he is gonna have to have therapy. It's a good thing his daddy was a psychologist.

Mark Ballard:

Time passed and Robbie recovered. He didn't have to have any therapy. He became a lawyer in Pennsylvania and we lost touch a little bit but I found out at the first family reunion when he came back that he no longer was Robbie, he had changed his name to Rob. So I'm thinking what is up with this family changing their names you know because I will always know him as Robbie, still say it today but he preferred now that he was a lawyer to be called Rob. Rob, I still still have trouble saying that, Rob slash Robbie met Stacy.

Mark Ballard:

She was a girl in Pennsylvania and they decided to get married. The wedding, of course, was up in that area, so none of the Dublin and Macon Ballards were able to attend. So they decided to have a little kind of shower, kind of meet the bridal party kind of thing in Dublin at the Chamber of Commerce so that all of the Ballard's that weren't able to attend the wedding could come there and meet the new bride and, you know, some of her family and all that kind of stuff. Now this is back in the days where things have changed now where you would have like a receiving line. You start at one end and the line backed out the door and you would just go up there and shake the hand or hug or any of the people all the way down the line.

Mark Ballard:

Anybody that was involved in the whole thing was in there so the line could be like 10 or 12 people and it took a while to get through. The first thing I noticed before you got to the line is everywhere I looked in that chamber of commerce, there were flowers, fresh florals everywhere, spilling off the tables everywhere. And I was in that business back then, and I thought, dang. Rob slash Robbie must have married into some money. So I'm thinking, wonder what Stacy's parents do.

Mark Ballard:

Well, Rob had told Stacy all about me, the fact that I was an artist and a decorator and blah blah blah. And he said, you're just gonna love Mark and his family because, you know, we were the wild and crazy ones. And we found out really quickly that so was Stacy. She was. So in the receiving line we get there and I'm still curious about the flowers.

Mark Ballard:

I can't get past that. And we go down and first of all we see Bob and then we see my aunt Erbilene slash Betty and she priming properly is dressed in a lacy kind of mother of the groom dress up to her neck and long sleeve and everything just perfect. And then I got to Stacy, she had the wedding dress on that barely, she was a buxom girl, barely made the cut at the breast level. I mean it was like if you looked at the two of them side by side it was like polar opposites. She said, Oh my God, Stacy did.

Mark Ballard:

Oh my God, you're the hardest guy. She just took my head and nestled it into her and I thought oh my god and Deborah was right behind me and she said I've just heard so much about you, we just don't have so much fun, da da da and Deborah pulled my head out of that hug and said I'm Deborah Mark's wife. So two things I was pondering at this point as we made our way down the receiving line. One is where are all these flowers? I didn't think Dublin had that many flowers.

Mark Ballard:

I don't know if they brought them in or what happened. But the other thing is I always want to know who made the wedding cake. I kid you not, sometimes I decide if I'm even gonna get dressed in a suit to go to a wedding if it's gonna have a snowball wedding cake. From scratch is a 90 year old lady making that wedding cake in her very own kitchen and butter is dripping out smelling, know, I mean, just a fabulous melt in your mouth kind of cake. So I'm trying to out of the flower arrangements and find out where the cake is and who made it.

Mark Ballard:

And somebody said, in fact, it was made by so and so so and so. She's lived in Dublin her whole life. And I was like, I cannot wait. I want a piece of cake. So I go over there and I remember me and the doughnuts.

Mark Ballard:

I love some sugar, addicted. I am trying to be inconspicuously getting pieces of cake and acting like I'm taking them to somebody else. Have you ever done that? Oh my, Deborah wants a piece of cake and then I eat it and then go back and go, well, you know, I saw somebody over there, they said, you bring me a piece of cake? And that person's thinking, I know you're eating all that cake, but it sort of worked for me.

Mark Ballard:

Deborah had gone to the punch bowl and she was there and I had went back for my fifth piece of cake probably. And aunt Betty is standing there talking to Deborah. And I walk up with cake hanging out of the part of my mouth and figured this is my chance, you know, to find out what Stacy's parents do for a living. Because I'm thinking they gotta be doctors, they gotta be lawyers, I know Rob was a lawyer. Somebody's got some money going around here.

Mark Ballard:

I said, aunt Betty, what do Stacy's parents do for a living? Yeah. I told you she has to think about it. So she was. There was in mid sip of some punch.

Mark Ballard:

Herbaleen is like a preacher's daughter. So she is... I've never seen a... Heard a cuss word come out of her mouth. I can't even imagine it.

Mark Ballard:

So she's thinking, Deborah sipping, aunt Betty turns to me with a serious face and says, Mark, they have a pussy willow farm. I was so taken aback I didn't even know quite what to say. Deborah spewed punch across the other room and I thought they have farms for pussy will I? I mean I had no idea and I mean they must be good business you know. So she said, yes.

Mark Ballard:

They grow those. And she said, they're not just pussy willows. They're fan tailed pussy willows. And I thought, well, dang. You know, I don't know if I've ever seen a fan tailed pussy willow.

Mark Ballard:

She moves on and we get away. Deborah has to go. She's got stuff all over her outfit. We're trying to get her cleaned back up and I'm thinking, what in the world? So next time I see Stacy, I march over there to her and I go, Stacy, I just heard from Erbilene slash Betty that you and your family have a pussy willow farm.

Mark Ballard:

And she said, we in fact do. And I'm thinking, am I living in another world? What is happening? You know, Stacy went on to say that fan tailed pussy willows are a big deal up there. They have a fan tailed pussy willow festival much like we have a cherry blossom festival here in Macon.

Mark Ballard:

She even said she was the pussy willow princess. And she said, and you being so creative, Mark, and you creating arrangements and all that, have you ever used them? And I said, no. I can't say that I have. I...

Mark Ballard:

Where do you get them? She said, don't you worry one bit. I will send you some. And I'm thinking please do because I got to be in the know about the latest things. She said they're popular blah blah blah.

Mark Ballard:

Weeks passed and I'm coming home bringing the kids home from school one day and when I turn the corner into our driveway I see a box that looked like a coffin could have fit into it. And I'm thinking, my god somebody sent me something fabulous. I had forgotten about the pussy willows. And so when I I just barely put the car in park, left the kids in the back seat running up there to see what kind of treasure I had gotten on the front... Filled up the whole front porch.

Mark Ballard:

To only read on the top for the return address was, these pussies have traveled all the way from Pennsylvania. And I thought to myself, don't you know that everybody from when that left UPS to the second state it got to with UPS to the third one fourth when get to Macon and go and, you know, they all read that thinking, what's in this box? Because it was like a life-sized box. And then they knew me from being on TV, so they're thinking we gotta deliver those pussy willows to Mark Ballard. I really couldn't believe once I tore into the box that this was what they were talking about.

Mark Ballard:

They were basically gnarly stick looking things. No little feathery stuff like you usually think about a pussy willow. They did have a pretty shape. It almost looked like a wood had been stained or something. Stacy had told me I could spray them gold if I wanted to for the holidays and this and that.

Mark Ballard:

I kept thinking, I cannot really see those in anything I'm creating, but, you know, thanks for sending them down south to me. So I took them in the big old box down to the basement and put them in there thinking one day I'll get around to coming up with something that these will be perfect for and I'll do it. But I didn't really ever have a chance because two or three later years later we had a little flooding issue down there and it messed up the box and the pussy willows, fan tailed pussy willows to be exact. So years later, I was up at a big to do floral event in Atlanta and we're walking around and out of the corner of my eye, I see a gorgeous urn full to the brim. Just nothing in there with those fantailed pussy wills.

Mark Ballard:

And I was like, Deborah, come here. We gotta go over here. There's some of those fantail pussy willows. So some hooty, you know, person that was helping hosting came over to the... Us standing there and he went, have y'all ever seen fantail pussy willows before?

Mark Ballard:

And I said, as a matter of fact, I have. Some of our relatives have a fantail pussy willow farm. You should have seen his expression completely changed and he said, okay, so well I can just move on, y'all enjoy yourself and all that. Well, I couldn't wait to find out how much they were for sale for because you know, I wanted to know if they were that important in the center of the room kind of arrangement. And I went over there and they were like, I forgot what it was a stem, but it was like 30 or something dollars and I thought I probably threw away $500 worth of fantail pussy willows that I didn't even know they're worth.

Mark Ballard:

Down South, we welcome all kinds of people and things. Some things we're familiar with and some things not. I've learned that if we keep our eyes and mind open, there's all kinds of ways of doing stuff. From baking from scratch cakes, the way we arrange flowers, to what we do with our education that we have or didn't have a chance to get, how we discipline our kids. I went to the chamber of commerce that day expecting cake and punch.

Mark Ballard:

I ended up seeing all kinds of beautiful flowers, and I was delighted to learn about a new component that could be used in both florals and decorating when a coffin sized box full of fan tailed pussy willows traveled all the way from Pennsylvania to me in Macon, landing on my front porch. Thank you, Stacy. Now if you have a question about me, personal or not, if you have an idea that you've heard something about me and you want me to elaborate it on, I love getting correspondence. Let us know. Email me at Mark@MarkBallard.com or you can message us on social media at Jen South Pod.

Mark Ballard:

Just drop me a little note if you have a suggestion about somebody that should be a guest or you wanna be a guest. We want you to enjoy listening to my stories of the South. Thanks for joining our conversation. One of my favorite things to do is share tales of our unique South. I hope you're gonna come back because there's always more.

Mark Ballard:

Thank you to our sponsors at Carlisle Place at Home. Check out at Mark Creates on Instagram and shop my artwork on Etsy. Hosted by Mark Ballard, Genuinely Southern is a podcast by Creek Media. The show is produced by Mark and Deborah Ballard and produced and edited by Stephanie Shadden. Follow us on social media at Gen South Pod and message us with questions you'd like to hear discussed on future episodes.

Mark Ballard:

Engage with us, like us, subscribe, share with a friend. Be sure to stream this and more podcasts you may love at streamthecreek.com.