Month: July 2015

Where Babies Come From

imageI have two younger sisters born seventeen months apart.  I was about eight when Connie came along.  Mother had told us she was expecting, but since I wasn’t interested in babies, I quickly put it out of my mind, not think thinking much more about it.  I even socked one of my cousins for saying my mother was pregnant.  I thought it was an insult like “trashy” or “low class.”  I was shamed to no end when my aunt confirmed that my mother was indeed “pregnant” and the word meant “expecting.”  Not only was Mother “pregnant!” She’d put me in a position to humiliate myself.

Connie and Marilyn's Toddler PicturesI found Connie very cute and entertaining once she got old enough to play.  Always happy to play with her, I’d forsake her as soon as she cried or needed a diaper.  Phyllis was a “little mother” and could care for Connie as well as Mother.  When Connie was a year old, Mother and Daddy announced a second baby was en route.  By now, I’d picked up a little misinformation and knew baby production involved the two of them.  They’d “done it” though what “it” involved was very foggy.  They’d alway said if I had any questions, come to them, so one day when Mother had her friends over for coffee,  I asked if they’d had to do “it” more than five times to get five children.  This clearly wasn’t the type question she meant.  I guess questions about Sunday School were more to her taste.  She invited me to mind my own business and not ask any more questions.

 

 

 

What???

sun hatI had a sobering experience today.  I was looking for baby diapers in the store today.  When I asked for assistance, the store employee pointed me towards the Depends!

Oops, Did I Say That?

imageFor a while when I was a kid we had the Sailor Bill Show, a low budget afternoon kid’s show featuring Sailor Bill and his sidekick Polly Parrot.  Everyday Sailor Bill showed a couple of cartoons, interviewed some kids in the audience, talked to Polly Parrot, told a few jokes and made some effort to entertain us. Continue reading →

Genie Joke

imageJoe was walking along the beach whe he found a dusty old bottle.  When he rubbed it, a genie came pouring out, “”I will grant you a wish, anything you want, but just one wish.” Continue reading →

Welcome Home, Baby

imageMother had said she was having a baby when I was about eight but I wasn’t particularly interested in babies, So didn’t think a lot about it.   I didn’t make the connection when when Daddy took us to spend the night with Miss Myra, one night.  I think we were supposed to spend the night with Aunt Julie, but she’d gotten sick and couldn’t keep us, Continue reading →

The Model T and Potholes

image

Mama held me tight on her lap in the backseat of Uncle Herb’s old Model T Ford as we bounced toward Clarksville, bound to spend the Fourth of July with Grandma and Grandpa Perkins.  She was worried I’d fall out the window, though how I’d have managed it was a mystery to me with the death grip she me in.  John sat next to the other window, a box with several quarts of Mama’s pickles and fresh tomatoes rattling between us.  Daddy stayed behind to milk and take care of the garden.  I don’t think he minded not going to Grandma’s at all.

In 1934, only a red-dirt road ran four miles between Cuthand Creek and Cuthand.  Rutted and often impassable in winter. It was riddled with huge potholes in summer, a real obstacle course for the battered old Model T Uncle Herb had just acquired.  We were delighted to see him and it, since he was the first in the family to own a car.  Dust fogged up about a half-mile from home when the car bumped into a pot-hole and rattled to a stop.  When it wouldnt start again, he lifted the hood, finding aimage

part had rattled off.  Looking behind us, he found the part, replaced it, and off we went.  This obviously wasn’t the first time it had worked loose.  The threads were stripped nearly bare.  After the next big bump, the same thing happened.  He found the part and screwed it back on, though he knew it wouldn’t hold long.  It didn’t.  Not thirty feet down the road, it fell off again on a moderately smooth section of road.  He left the left side of the hood up, had Uncle Dave sit on  the right fender and hold the part in place as he slowly navigated between potholes the rest of the way in to Cuthand, where he could make some repairs.  Mama kept a watch behind as Dave clung perilously to the fender while trying to keep the car running.  It was a long four miles into Cuthand.

Joke of the Day

image

Many years ago a Texas oil man rented a room in one of the finest hotels in New Orleans.  He asked that the tallest, skinniest, red-headed, freckled-faced woman who could be found be sent up to his room.  When she showed up, he told her to strip to her underwear.  When she obliged, he opened the door to the adjoining room and called his little red-haired daughter in.  “Now looky here, Becky.  This is ‘zactly what yore gonna look like iffen you don’t drink yore milk!”

Wonderful Old Fourth of July

imageThe Fourth of July seemed to be my father’s favorite holiday, maybe because it was celebrated outdoors, or perhaps because it didn’t involve the stress of decorating, the expense of gift-giving, or having a holiday meal indoors with a host of rowdy relatives.  We always celebrated with his relatives, a spectacularly fertile family.  Everyone of them had four to six children, exponentially more horrible as the families grew.  Though no one ever drank at our gatherings, the wild shrieking of the kids and rowdy hijinks of the adults certainly gave that impression.

There was always barbecue, usually a goat or pig, sometimes slow cooked in a pit over night, accompanied by mountains of potato salad, slaw, sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, baked beans, cakes, watermelons, and several freezers of homemade ice-cream. At any time a squalling kid or two bowled over by one of the bigger ones might be sitting atop a freezer holding a washcloth to a knot on his head while his daddy cranked it.  There were plenty of cousins for two baseball teams, made even better if some aunts and uncles joined in.  It was a job keeping the little guys out of the baselines , but most of them survived it.

Long before the days of paper plates, clean up was a nightmare.  Lots of women thought “the girls” ought to do dishes.  Thank God, Mother stuck up for us, but if we were at someone else’s house with teenage daughter’s, their mothers might insist.  Cleanup for thirty or forty people could take a couple of hours.  that was a nightmare for just two or three.

i loved to slip up on the women in the family and hear gossip.  Should I be foolish enough to ask a question, I was busted outdoors.  I usually couldn’t keep my mouth shut long enough to hear the good stuff.

In the dusk, we chased fireflies until time to light fireworks, thrilling to the Roman Candles and Sparklers.  I never learned to love firecrackers again after exploding one in my hand.  As the darkness closed in, Mothers spread quilts on the ground as the storytelling began, delightful tales of long ago childhood pranks, old family stories, and finally after the younger ones drifted off, ghost stories, made all the more delicious because Maw Maw believed every world she told.  There is no better story tha one told by a true believer.  How I would love to revisit one of those nights!

Uncle Albert and Aunt Jewel, the Lowdown

imageAs I got a little older, I found out Uncle Albert and Aunt Jewel weren’t dull; they were just worn out.  Besides that, Uncle Albert had a fascinating physical attribute Daddy slipped up and mentioned one day, to his later regret.  Uncle Albert had a tail!  From that moment forward, my brother and I stalked him, probabably the first nasty little, Continue reading →