Marriage and an odd honeymoon in New Orleans

On April Fool's Day, 1932, Hardie asked my mother to marry him (she wasn't sure if he was serious), after warning her that he wanted to travel. They got married on August 20th of that year and planned to drive to New Orleans on their honeymoon. The morning of the wedding my father stopped at Pruett Carter's house to borrow a gun for the trip since he and Mom would be crossing the Badlands. Well, the Carters didn't know why he wanted the gun, so they stalled and stalled him ... and Hardie was late for his own wedding!

My parents had a wonderful experience when they got to New Orleans. In a bookshop they met someone who offered to introduce them to Weeks Hall, an artist and teacher who had been featured in Vanity Fair and who owned this marvelous old plantation in New Iberia called Shadows on the Teche. My mother told the story to me:

"When we arrived, the servants invited Hardie upstairs to meet Weeks Hall first. He was so colorful. He took us up in an old attic that had all these trunks filled with beautiful Mardi Gras costumes from all those years. Little satin slippers and all these things. He was proud of how he could throw a ball out the window, 'way out into the darkness, and his Springer spaniel would dash downstairs and outside and would bring the ball back to him.

“During the evening, Weeks Hall kept ordering drinks from his servant, three at a time, but I didn't drink much at that time. Hardie had two or three, but our host kept drinking what we didn't! By then it was about three in the morning and we finally said that we had to get back to our hotel. He responded, 'Wait till you see a favorite trick of mine.' He ordered his servant, Tenine, to get his straw hat and proceeded to pour Tabasco sauce all over it. Then he really was eating it, chomp, chomp! As we left, he got four servants to stand out in the driveway and sing, 'Look down, look down, that lonesome road.' Oh, it was really terrific. As we drove off, we could hear the voices faintly in the dark. Poor people, they were probably so tired.

"What made this story one of Hardie's favorites is that we later heard that Weeks Hall had told someone that 'Mr. Gramatky, like all artists, had his lady traveling companion with him.' And we were on our honeymoon!"

My mother described times shared with two of their best friends, Phil and Betty Dike, in the 1930's in California:

"They lived nearby and would come over for dinner. In the Depression, we'd just get together on the spur of the moment and have dinners. Betty was such a love and Phil was crazy about her ... I remember one time when Hardie and I went on a sketching trip with the Dikes. We were already married by then, and Hardie, to tease me, woke up in the hotel room that morning and said, 'Well, how are we this morning, Miss Cooke?' Just nice and loud so the people in the next room would hear. I could have killed him."