Rachel Virginia Hicks turned 100 last week. I had the great pleasure of attending her birthday party.
She is also known as Granny Hicks and just plain Sis. Her family is a big one and she’s impacted so many lives during her 100 years that there were a ton of people at the party.
I didn’t get to talk to her till just before I left.
As we talked a family member came up to tell her goodbye. The lady said she’d come see her one day next week.
Granny Hicks said “Here’s what you do. You call and you say is Granny gonna be home and if they say yes you just come on. I’ll get a chicken and pluck it and scald it cause I know how much they all like chicken.”
That tickled me to death 🙂
And in typical Granny Hicks fashion she left me with a real piece of wisdom before I said goodbye.
I remarked that it was a good day and she said “Honey any day that you’re surrounded by family and friends is a good day.”
If you’d like to see the interviews I did with Granny Hicks go here.
Tipper
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How sweet ♥️. Happy Belated Birthday Miss Granny Hicks. Hope you also have a very blessed Easter. Miss Tipper you have a heart of gold. Happy Easter everyone. God bless everyone also, today, tomorrow and always.
Hi Tipper and Acorns. I read all your comments. Sweet Granny Hicks, I’ve watched many of your videos with her. I love old people. I loved my time as a nurse when I worked in the nursing homes, provided home health care and private duty nursing. I keep everyone here and up Wilson Holler in my prayers. Aso Prayers for everyone facing danger from wildfires in the Appalachian Mountains. I love y’all.
So kind of you to take the time to go to Granny Hick’s 100th birthday party. I’m sure it meant a lot to her and blessed you too. Thanks for sharing with us
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Granny Hicks is a true treasure. What a blessing to make it to a 100th birthday! Very special that you could go to her celebration, Tipper!
I enjoyed looking at a Johnny’s seeds catalog today, and noticing many of the varieties that you love to plant, Tipper! For anyone that is interested, they also sell hoops and insect fabric cover like you use for your cabbages.
Thank you for giving us another “Granny” to love and spoil!
Love & prayers for all ! Such a great story & enjoyed those shared in the comments also !
Wow! My mother’s cousin( my second cousin once removed? I never figured that out) turned 109 last month! She lives wither her daughter at home in Jonesboro, Ga and is doing well.
What a blessing! I enjoyed those videos. Such a sweet and pleasant lady. Happy Birthday Granny Hicks!
Amazing lady. Loved her attitude – especially when you asked her about reaching 100 and she said something like ‘she just kept going.’ Loved her sweater too with the birds on it. Lots of wisdom gained and lessons learned in those years. Thanks for sharing this, Tipper.
Granny Hicks is such a precious, dear lady. I love her attitude of people coming to visit…call & if I’m home then come on by! That tells a lot about a person. She is never too busy to visit with friends.
Happy belated Birthday, Granny Hicks! It is wonderful to be surrounded by family and amazing friends. I’m blessed to have my daughter, son-in-law and her 3 kids living close by. We have the grandkids stay for sleep-overs quite often, they wear me out but we love it and wouldn’t have it any other way!
Gene, I love the life clock, at 72 I made it around the bend and heading upward way too fast! haha. My aunt lived to be 102 and a half and I had 2 great aunts that lived to be 99 or 100. I can’t imagine the changes that they had all seen over the century of living.
Ron, your story is touching, what a beautiful women she must have been to put the love of her child first, I’m sure at times it must have been a struggle! Have a blessed day everyone!
How sweet of you to visit Granny Hicks on her birthday.
I recently read that our time is one of the greatest gifts we can give someone. It’s true.
Happy Birthday Granny Hicks!
Wow! What a sharp mind granny has! She is amazing.
My grandma wouldn’t relate much about her past life. But, she did tell us about the time she saved her husband’s life with a goose feather and goose grease. He caught the black death that killed thousands of people in 1903. His throat was closing up and he couldn’t breathe. She was a young bride then, but she had the idea to rub goose grease all through his very dry mouth and then down his throat. After that she said she had him sip a tiny bit of beef broth to give him strength. After a few weeks he was well enough to work, and he’d tell everyone how his wife saved his life. She lived to be 91 and was widowed for over 30 years.
Here’s one way to graphically check your progress toward reaching 100: Draw a clock face having just an hour hand. Let 12 hours represent 100 years of life. Starting at noon, move the hand to your corresponding age on the clock face–25 years old at 12:15; 50 years old at 12:30, etc. How near are you to midnight? Maybe I’ve posted about a “life clock” before. I don’t recall.
Gene, I didn’t know about a life clock. For myself I compare my life to being given a $100 bill when you are born. Each year of your life represents one dollar. Many of us never get to spend the last $25. We are online friends, I know you are can see the 100 years, I sure hope and pray you make it.
Granny Hicks did seem to be a little confused about the chicken. She needs to scald it before she plucks it. Them feathers ain’t gonna want to turn loose easy if she does it the way she described.
I think she meant clean it real good 🙂 Granny used the word scald like that too
Did Granny mention singeing her chickens after she plucked the feathers? Like when you burn a paper bag and hold the chicken over flames to burn off the little hairs that are left on it? I wonder how many people will know what I am talking about.
She didn’t mention that 🙂
I do! two chickens died at my grandparent’s home nearly every Saturday morning by getting their necks rung. After plucking the feathers off, Grandmother would singe the little hairs off using a sheet of newspaper. By Sunday dinner, these chickens had been battered in flour fried in our own lard using an old black cast iron frying pan. Granddaddy would only eat chickens he kept in an above ground wire bottom coop that had been fed nothing but corn and water. The colonel would have been a general if he could cook chicken like Grandmother.
I know about killing and prepping chickens. My MIL and I processed one almost every week.
Granny Hicks sounds like my kind of lady. What an inspiration
What a great picture of Granny Hicks with you. She is a beautiful and very wise woman. God has blessed her with 100 years to see her family grow and made many new friends along the way. Happy 100th Birthday to Granny Hicks!
God bless Miss Rachel.
Just to give an illustration of what turning 100 means, she’d have been 15 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, 37 when President Kennedy was killed, and 75 on 9/11, just to use examples of “We can all remember where we were when we heard X happened…”, and I’ll bet she remembers them all and a lot more besides, and could tell you stories!
Thanks for sharing these historical events as an easy mental reference. I really appreciate it. Wow- it’s really something to think about living through all that history!
Elders know things. I reckon I am one now. Don’t know when I stepped into that country. I don’t think myself that I am but others do. I could tell anyone who cared to ask one or two things they might would find useful but that I kinda think they have not thought about just yet. But in time we finally learn that when people are not ready, the message will not be received. Tipper, I’m sure your time and attention were appreciated by Granny Hicks. Who can say who was blessed the most? But the more important thing is that you both were.
Aww! Happy 100th to Granny Hicks!! I enjoyed so much your interview posts with her a few years ago. She has been greatly blessed and is still very positive about living.
Oh she must be a joy to be around. She’s so right. I love having my family around. It’s the best feeling!!
Belated Happy Birthday to her!
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Amazing!! 100 years. I thank the Lord for the wisdom of our elders.
Did you see Ramona and Melvin and how are they doing?
I did 🙂 They are doing good!
Granny Hicks looks and sounds so beautiful. Also, Ron’s story choked me up. I am blessed by this blog. Please pray for my husband as he is is having a battery of tests today in the coming weeks. He is a very independent man and hates to go to doctors!
HAPPY 100th BIRTHDAY, GRANNY HICKS!!! You’re a living testimony to the goodness of God! I had a great aunt Janie who lived to 101 and a half years. When I saw her she was so tiny and frail, she looked like a little child laying in her hospital bed and her girls took good care of her like a precious child til she was called back home to glory. In nursing I ran a lot of nursing units and my old folks were a blast! I’d laugh, cry, want to pull my frizzy curls out, and wanted to “box” a few of their low life relatives as well along the way not to mention some real “donkeys” I had to work with-if you get my drift. The best one was an old 90 something lady who’d stand SLEEPING holding a hall rail. (Old people do daredevil stunts like that or like kids would try. They argue about laxatives and bowels a lot claiming they’re all stopped up even though they are doing fine in that area. I decided don’t argue with them and give them anything within reason they desired up to and including chewing tobacco or alcohol.) It was so cold when I put her to bed once, she said “just crawl up in here with me and we will get warm quicker.” I thought that was so sweet. She loved baseball and they’d take her to Pittsburgh to see her professional baseball games occasionally. I only went to the Burgh to catch planes or see the GRATEFUL DEAD (which was one of the best experiences of my life.) Granny Hicks probably put down on the table the absolute best fried yard bird a gal ever ETT!!! Wouldn’t you love to see a gal wrestle up chicken like it used to have to be done? I ain’t never done a chicken to cook. Yummy on that chicken, Granny!!! God bless all of us old folks! I’ve heard it said I hate getting older but it beats the alternative. Don’t it now??? Meet me for a dance barefoot in the sun. Have a blessed day and stay healthy by avoiding quacks…take it from somebody who knows stuff that’d make your toenails curl and your hair stand up… listen now or don’t and say Ta Ta to all that pesky cash you got just laying about…
I took care of several 100 year old people during my career as a nurse. A few were able to converse and talk about the “old days” and they were thankful for their long lives. Being a history buff I always enjoyed hearing their stories about no having no electricity, using horses and buggies, and other stories about people they knew and how they lived. I had a great grandmother in Kentucky who was a granny woman, someone who delivers babies. My daddy said she lived to be quite old and would tell about her dealings with people. She had some interesting stories to tell. My mother is 96 1/2 yo. She’s still has a sharp mind even though her body is frail. She gives God the credit for her long life.
What a blessing. Happy birthday to Granny Hicks.
Great post. She is so right. Everyday you have family around is a good day and also a blessed day. During my years as an addictions counselor I would hear from almost everyone how terrible they had it. They would focus on all the negatives in their life and not how blessed they were. I was blessed to meet a 35 year old woman who became an inspiration for me. Since she came from the Tampa area she would be one of my clients. As I listened to her life and the reason she wanted to stay clean and sober I almost cried. She was a young black, blind, homeless, ex prostitute, pregnant, and it she was also dying of AIDS. She wanted to stay alive long enough to have her baby born and have her mother raise her. During the five weeks she was with me she never cried about her circumstances; she only thought about her baby. She prayed each day that she would live long enough for her baby to be born. She had to leave the program several weeks early because of the baby’s health. We prayed before she left. She thanked me for all I had given her and I told het she had given me so much more. About seven months later our program had its yearly reunion of residents who were still clean and sober and wanted to encourage the new residents in the program. One of my co-workers pointed out someone sitting towards the back of the gym listening to a speaker. It was my client holding her baby. I went over to her and sat down next to her and said hi. She turned toward me with the most gradient smile and said “Hi Mr Ron.” I asked if I could hold her baby and she let me. As I held het beautiful baby she told me she wad living with her mother and she was still clean and sober and loving God. She spoke of her answered prayers of being able to spend some time with her baby. She told me she would not be at next year”s reunion. She again thanked me. And I as always told her ad I tell all my clients I did nothing but show you the way and you did it. as he was blessed to have a family who loved and supported her and her baby. She wss loved. She was loved and blessed by God. She is gone to her reward now and her daughter is in her middle teens. Surrounded by God and a family that loves her. Thank you Tipper for another great post. See you Sunday.
I love this, thank you for sharing Tipper. Happy 100th birthday to Granny Hicks!!
happy birthday granny Hicks, God bless you very much, please continue to pray for my brother, I didn’t get much information yesterday about how he was feeling and what was going on, I’ve got a few problems myself, hopefully I can see the doctor on Thursday, God bless you
Praying for you both!
I had no idea Granny Hicks was 100. What a wonderful walking book of knowledge! I just loved the interviews you did with her. I can never get enough of listening to our elders talk about their life.
I loved listening to my grandparents talk of their life. My papaw was born in 1902 and lived just shy of his 94th birthday. His siblings lived long lives too. My grandmother on my Dad’s side was almost 92 when she passed.
I prayed my parents would live to be in their 90s, but Daddy was 76 and Momma 84 when they went home. I couldn’t imagine my life without them, but God sees us through somehow.
Thank you so much for the interviews with Granny Hicks, they are truly joyful. There is something about the voices of the elders that truly touches my heart. Maybe it’s all that wisdom!
We have a lady at my church that is 102 years old and still doing pretty good. I also like the words of wisdom about being with family and friends. I plan on going to a retiree lunch with my friends and former Michelin coworkers today. I spent 38 years of my life with some of them. We do this on the 5th Tuesday on any month that will have 5 Tuesdays.