Mrs. Katherine, The Beauty Shop Counselor

This week on A Daughter's Inheritance, I'm joined by my colleague and friend Gail Miller, who works alongside me at the College of Professional and Continuing Studies. Gail shares the story of her mother, Mary Catherine Williams, known to everyone as "Miss Kat", a beautician for over 50 years whose chair became a place for more than just haircuts.

Gail talks about growing up around the quilt frame at her grandmother's house, the community of women who helped raise her while her mother worked, and the quiet strength her mother carried, including the customers Miss Kat would let slide on payment, no questions asked, until they could pay her back. We talk about growing up in the segregated South, the things that generation simply didn't discuss, and the powerful, unspoken ways love and lessons got passed down anyway.

This is a conversation about nurturing, community, silence, and strength, and about a mother whose actions spoke louder than words ever could.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

She loved making sure everybody was okay. And she won, she made sure that we were we had fun. Cause our house, her house, our house was the party house. Now she liked to throw a party.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hello everyone, and welcome to A Daughter's Inheritance. I'm glad you're joining us uh today. Uh I'm excited about our guest today because we are colleagues and friends. Uh Gail Miller. Welcome, Gail. Well, thank you. Appreciate you having me. Gail works with me at the College of Professional and Continuing Studies, and she takes care of a lot of things, including uh our facilities. And I think you just left a whole group of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in our auditorium. Yes, about 50 kids. Yeah, so it's uh summertime and uh and a lot of those kind of camps and things are going on. So startful native, been here for your whole life. My whole life, all my life. I've been at Mississippi State for 27 years. You said you started in dining services.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

Yeah, it was catering in 1998, 99. Um, Bridget Harding, oh yeah, Harding, catering. She she actually hired me. Okay, and so I started there six months, and then in January I started with continuing education. Teresa Stewart um hired me as um the secretary.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Yeah, we were talking about this podcast, and I said, Hey, you know, would you be interested in being a guest talking about your your mom? And I said, Go listen to the first, you know, the first episode. It kind of sets the stage. You came in my office and sat down and said, Dr. Seal, you just opened up a can of worms. Yes. What did you mean by that? Explain what that kind of stirred in you.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

As I was listening at a lot of the women talk about their mom and their relationship with them, and it got me to thinking, what do you know about your mom, Gail? What did she, you know, a lot of things start to come to my mind, and but really hid was I was thinking, hey, I'm not the only one. You know, you start thinking about things like that when you hear people talk about things they went through with their parents, their mom, or their dad, and you're like, I wasn't alone. And as we go through life now, we realize we're not alone. We just don't talk about those things because we feel like it's just me. But it also brought back emotions. My mom passed in um November 17th of 23, and so that brought a lot of emotions back as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Sure. But well, I'm glad you said that it it made you feel like I'm you're not alone because I think that's part of the purpose of this podcast, and I appreciate so much our guests like you who will share their story and be honest about it. Because uh most everybody I have on, they're like, Well, I don't know if mine's gonna be interesting, but it connects with people because mothers and daughters have the ups and downs, the good, the challenges, the funny stories, the hard stories, and they really do connect with people.

SPEAKER_03 3:20

Exactly, exactly. Because I wanted to also step out of my comfort zone, and that's one of my challenges is stepping out of my comfort zone, talking about certain things because growing up, my mom, she you know, there were things you just didn't talk about, or she didn't ex she then didn't explain certain things to me. So I learned by just watching and not just her explaining things. So by watching her and my grandmother, and there's another person, her sister, Emma Gil Emma Gillespie, she was like my second mom. And it was a difference with her, and she would say, Okay, Gail, and she would explain certain things, but use it in a biblical way to help us help me to understand.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

So, okay, we we might get to some of those things we're not supposed to talk about, so y'all stay tuned because those are that's gonna be good stuff. What's your mom's name?

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Her name is Mary Catherine Williams, better known as Miss Kat. Miss Cat. Yes, she graduated from Anna Laura Beauty School, she was a beautician, and she was a beautician for over 50 years until her health started failing, and she started her business. The the one I remember is right where Dr. Douglas Connor, his big his office was, is it was in a basement. She's sort of a jack of all trades. She didn't have any certain thing that she would like to do. She did um Avon, she did so flavor, it was just a lot of things that she used to love to do. But more so, she was by being a beautician, she saw like a counselor.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

A counselor, and um she helped people through different difficult things. But one thing I remember about her is when her customers would come and say, Miss Cat, I can't pay today. Oh girl, please, that's no problem. And she would just go up when nobody knows that that customer didn't pay. So later on that week, I would see them walk in the door. Hey, Miss Cat, how you doing? And they would stick their money in her pocket and she just keep doing hair. She was she was that type of person.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Yeah, I think beauticians and bartenders are some of the best counselors that there are. So tell me a little bit about her early life. She grew did she grow up here in Startville as well?

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Yes, she grew up in the community called Rock Hill. Okay, and that's where her mom, her dad started. Grandma, her mom was a homemaker, from what I remember, because she she did a lot of quilting and she she was a community type person. Um, ladies, women would love to be at her house setting up the quilt. And so mom, what I remember, is mom dropping us off at grandma's house and going to do her, going to to the beauty shop. She was um a quiet mom didn't she talk.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Your grandma or your mother? My mother was quiet.

SPEAKER_03 6:33

Yeah, grandma, nah. She was she wasn't quiet. No, she wasn't quiet at all. But mom was, she was a lot of things were unspoken, but her facial expressions.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Uh-huh. You know. Your mother, your mother spoke loudly with her face. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 6:48

That's what we were like, uh-oh. Afraid. Uh-oh, we did something wrong. We see that her that eye squinch and her lips get really, really tight. Oh, yeah. You knew you were in trouble.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

We were in trouble. Well, you know, I grew up, I say I grew up underneath the quilt frame because my my grandmother and my mother and all their friends, they put up the big quilt frame and it was like a little tent, you know, we'd get up under there, and of course, like, you know, you you roll the edges the more you did, and it got smaller and smaller. But my cousin and I, Linda, yeah, we spent a lot of time up under the quilt frame playing tent and listening to their stories that they were telling.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

That's that was a fun part because um grandma, her house had three horses. Well, they c I call them horses. But the and then the long pole that rolled up. Like the saw horses. Yes, yes, yes. And that's what the women would sit. It was like four on each side. And we would watch them quilt. And so finally I said, Can you show me how to do it? And the little ladies would stop and say, This is what you do, Gail. You quilt now. I found some of my mom's. Actually, I found a whole um trunk full of her quilt pieces that she started that she never finished. And that was like a moment of um, oh wow. So have you have you quilted them? I had started yet.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Okay. That's not looking at the to do list, yes. I got you. I gotcha, I gotcha. What was her growing up like?

SPEAKER_03 8:19

I don't quite remember.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Were they did they live out in the country? Were they?

SPEAKER_03 8:22

Yes, they live out in the country, in the country, and during the time she was growing up, they walk to church. They walked, they had a dirt road, they were walking the rain, cold, snow. But she grew up in in, like I say, in Rock Hill, and the school she went to was Henderson, if I remember correctly, the school on the hill. But I don't quite know a whole lot about her growing up, knowing seeing um pictures. I think my memory started when when we were we used to live on Highway 25 and her going to beauti school, and then going to the beautician, going to going to work.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

And so, but so she didn't talk much about her childhood.

SPEAKER_03 9:09

No, I would hear things like from my cousins, my cousins or my aunts, you know, tell me a little bit about her, but it's nothing that I can't, I don't remember her as you know, growing up as a little girl.

unknown 9:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Did she have a good relationship with her mom?

SPEAKER_03 9:24

You know what? That's a good question. I don't mom worked and we stayed with grandma or my big big mama. She was always she was she worked and she was very, very independent.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah, well, you said when you listened to the episode about my mom, yeah, that my mom was independent too.

SPEAKER_03 9:41

She was strong, she's very strong-minded. And my dad, he was in the one of the wars, I can't remember. So as I was taking this course, the veteran certificate, I learned that what he had was PTSD. And so it's a lot of things that happened, you know, with my dad and my mom, but she became a strong person in the family. As my, you know, because my dad was dealing with, you know, that trauma.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Now you have two brothers.

SPEAKER_03 10:11

True, yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Older, younger?

SPEAKER_03 10:13

Younger. I'm the oldest and the only girl. Okay. Uh, my brothers Terrence and Reginald. And so we like maybe four years apart. And growing up, I was the one responsible if things didn't get done. So I had to be the one that makes sure we get chores and stuff done on Saturdays. If not, I'll be the one getting in trouble. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

So you were a little bit of a mother figure to them.

SPEAKER_03 10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah. Did your parents meet in school?

SPEAKER_03 10:39

Where did you know what, Dr. Seal? I really don't know. I've seen pictures of I've they have their wedding pictures, but I know they got married in 1963, March the 17th, on St. Patrick's Day. Okay. I don't know. They didn't talk about how they dated or how they married.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

She didn't talk about her childhood.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

She didn't talk about their dating. Mm-mm. My mom just she wasn't that that person that discussed things.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Personal stuff.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Yeah, personal stuff like that. And growing and growing up, we didn't have those conversations. But I would see pictures of things that happened, but far as conversation about, hey, how me and your dad met or how relationship with grandma, with her mom, and stuff like that. It was just that generation that didn't dis didn't discuss things of that nature.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

It was like a need-to-know basis.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

We will tell you what you need to know. Right. But she was always making sure that we were involved in stuff. That's one thing I remember growing up. She made sure I had band lessons, piano lessons. We went to Baptist conventions, all those things. My brother, she made sure that we were involved in things. And she one thing about her, she never, she never left her her nieces or nephews out. If we went on vacation, it'll be about eight of us. Packed in a truck, on the back of the truck with a camper, and she took would take us to Liberty Land, Opera Land.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Liberty Land, in Memphis.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

Yeah, uh-huh. But she she was a she was a nut a nurturer. She loved making sure everybody was okay. And she wants, she made sure that we were, we had fun. Because our house, her house, our house was the party house. Now she liked to throw a party.

unknown 12:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

Yeah, party. And with Dacqueray and all the other stuff, the kids go to the room, uh-huh. Go in the back. And so we would be up around the corner trying to sneak. But uh-huh. See, this is that stuff we're not supposed to talk about. Hey.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Now, when did she go to beauty school? Was that before she got married or after?

SPEAKER_03 12:55

That was after her and dad got married. And she was, I'm not quite sure if she was going to beauty school, but I know she 1963 is when she got her cosmetology license. How old was she then? When was she born? Mom born in 43. I can do the math. Mom born in 43. So she was 20 when she went to beauty school. Oh, wow. So she was young. And so she she got married in 1960. No, her she got her cosmetology license.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

In 63. So she was 20 when she went to school. Right. So she she was she had her own money.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

Did because she was Mom, she used to I wait a minute. I remember she used to work for these people. Their house was on Lewisville Street. Right there. I'm thinking right there the corner where Crabtree, that white house, that pretty white house that they have now. It used to be a house there. And she used to work there. That's what she used to do before she went to beat a school. Now I remember. She used to work at a house there. So I'm not sure if she was working there and going to school.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

So growing up in Mississippi in the 50s and 60s, you don't know, did she ever talk about was that a tough time? Any challenges that she faced?

SPEAKER_03 14:06

You know, during that time, I remember when we would go to the dentist, we would have to go in the back. But Dr. Long and we went to this clinic, we would always have to go in the back, but I didn't know why. She never explained why we were going on the side instead of the front. And things like that. She until I got older and she was talking, she said, you know, Dr. Long is the first dentist that stopped us from going on the side for appointments. And I'm like, I didn't know that. You know, little things like that she wouldn't talk about. She didn't talk about the hardships of growing up during that time. And you know there's were some. Yeah, because she she I don't, she never did. She never, she just explained why. But she didn't show any anxiety or emotions about during the time. That's what it was.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I don't know if I've told you this, but I grew up in Phil Philadelphia, Mississippi. And when we would go to the movie when I was a kid, there was the window there where we would buy our tickets and we would go in. And then there was a side window where, of course, we had the Choctaw Indian Reservation. And so the Native Americans and black people would buy their ticket on the side and go upstairs. And I didn't, I was like you. I didn't know why. I remember saying one time, well, I want to sit upstairs. You know, not understanding really what was going on, that we were the privileged. I thought, well, they get to sit upstairs. You know, it's just different how you see things at different ages.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

Because the same thing as state theater. We with um my friends and I would go to the movies, would I can't remember where we paid, but I remember going upstairs, and that's where we watched the movie. In some places we just knew not to go. They didn't, they just said, no, you don't go there. But okay. We didn't question back then we didn't question. If they tell us something, we didn't question why.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

We just follow direction. You obeyed your parents? Yes. When they said because you didn't want to get the look. No, I didn't the look of the other whoopings. Yeah. So tell me about your mom's your business.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

You were telling us a little bit about it. She it was Williams Beatles Line, and she her first shop was down in Dr. Connor's basement. There, I had a lot of mothers that raise us, taught us when she would be doing hair, they would be helping us with homework. And so Mama, she didn't have a set schedule. Everybody knew if she said, Well, be there at 10 o'clock. If mom didn't feel like it, she'll get that 10:30, 11. But her customers would faithfully sit and wait, you know, and then she would work like 12 or 1 o'clock at night.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

She would get it done. It just might not be on top of you.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Her she they were patient with her, they understood. And like if she said, I'm not feeling well today, Catherine go lay down on the couch. They'll make her lay down on the couch, and she would rest by the hour. They'll sit there and wait. And she would get up and fix and start again. And so there's of quite a few older ladies, probably in their 80s, that still remember saying, I used I taught you how to read, Gail.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:20

Her business, she had a lot of clients. And so she moved from Dr. Connor's office to um it was Highway 25, her and my cousin Teresa. And then she moved to the house on Jackson Street, but next to the Methodist Church, until her that's where she stopped right there when her health started failing her.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

You had a a good childhood growing up underneath the quilt at your grandmother's house. Yeah. And and and at the at the beauty shop.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

Yeah, I did. And that's being around a woman, which you know I would call mom, because they helped raise and a lot quite a few of them taught me, helped me through school. And so I've I had a great relationship with mom as far as her her action spoke louder than words. She would she would show the way she acted, but I paid attention what she did do and what she didn't do. But for sharing verbally, mom, I don't remember things.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

It was the other women that taught you things.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

Yeah. Mom, she would help me, but it was more so she was working and her custom was teaching.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

Doing, you know, helping with helping all me and my brother with homework.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

So it was a real community. Yeah, it was yeah. Which I think we miss some. Now we don't have that community as much as we did then.

SPEAKER_03 18:37

Nowadays you can't discipline somebody as child without getting upset. Back then, you would either get the eye or you get a pinch, but you knew to follow direction, you know, be obedient growing up.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Well, and I think those other women in our lives are are important. I mean, I I think back the women that were, I grew up on the Fork Road, and there was women that went to church that were homemakers with my mother and grandmother, that they were important people in in my life. Yeah. For a long, long time.

SPEAKER_03 19:10

Right. And a lot of people wasn't our family or cousin. We would say, Cutting Ruth, cutting Emma, and we're like, how they be cutting? So it was a lot of names that everybody was cousin or or auntie. Nowadays, that's missing, especially for our young ladies. They don't have that, that I hate they don't have that nurturing that we had growing up because it helps to shape how you carry yourself. And those women that were in that beauty shop and my mom helped me to help shape me where I act, you know, where I carry myself. Yeah. And so um my mom was a I call her the uh beauty queen, and her sisters, they would wake up, cleanse their face, put their makeup on. And what her