memoir

The Rooster and the Boozers

 

The Austins lived just across the pasture from us.  Jody Austin “drank.”  In our neck of the woods, “drinking” meant a man was disreputable, deprived and likely beat his wife and children, probably didn’t hold a job, and likely was prone to violence.  It sounded a lot like today’s alcoholic.  Jodie qualified magnificently.  It was rumored that he had shot a man in a bar.  Folks left Jody alone.  Every Saturday night Jody hosted his “drinking” buddies for a binge. The festivities started with a huge bonfire.  As they sat around on barrels, old cars, and broken lawn chairs, they tossed their cans out in the darkness. They got louder, sometimes had a friendly fight, occasionally rolling all around the fire, finishing off with a little singing…a treat for all the neighbors.  Continue reading →

Baby Blues

We were a good couple.  Long before we got married, we agreed completely on important things…foreign policy, religion, life plans.  Then we got married.  Life was idyllic.  We were both in college, working student jobs.  Bud had saved over $500 and student loans covered my tuition. Continue reading →

Farm Life: Gotta Have Guts

Daddy loved home remedies and dosed us and the livestock readily.   Mother ran interference on cow chip tea and coal oil and sugar, but did let him load us with sulphur and molasses for summer sores. We never got summer sores, probably because we reeked so badly we were rejected by mosquitoes. I do appreciate Mother for putting her foot down when his more toxic ideas. No telling what kind of chromosome damage she saved the gene pool.

The livestock weren’t so lucky. They got coal oil for pneumonia, distemper, to bring on labor, and as a tonic, should they be so foolish as to look puny. Daddy hung ropes with black oil soaked bags for cows and horses to rub against as protection against insects, which they gladly did. When an unfortunate cow bloated from green hay, he inserted an icepick in her distended belly to release gas. She ceased her moaning and resumed cow business as usual, grateful for the relief.

Farm kids grow up with a lot of responsibility. In addition to our daily chores, Daddy left us other jobs to do before he got home from work and started on his farm day, expecting us to figure things out without explanation, not always the best plan. When my brother Billy was around eleven, Daddy remarked that the old hound dog nursing eight puppies was off her food. He told Billy to pour some syrup over her feed(country for dog food) so she would eat better. Bill got a jug of syrup and headed out the back door. After a while, he came back in, smeared in dog poop, shirt torn, scratched and bitten from head to foot. “Boy, what in the world happened to you?” Daddy asked, incredulous at the sight.

“Oh, I was putting syrup on that old dog’s feet and she tore me up. She dragged me through the dog yard fence and all over the dog yard, but I did finally get syrup on all four  feet.”

As I said, Daddy frequently set us to tasks with inadequate instructions. On one occasion a sick duck foolishly allowed Daddy to spot him. The specific instructions to my brother were, “Go out there and get that green-headed duck staggering around out back, and knock her in the head. No wait, first pour a couple of drops of kerosene down her throat.” Billy picked up the kerosene and was gone a few minutes. When he returned in a few minutes, my dad inquired, “How’s the duck?”  He was obviously surprised Daddy would even ask, knowing he’d sent him out to knock it in the head.  Daddy didn’t mean to tell us to do anything twice.

Bill replied, “It’s dead.”

Daddy said, “You didn’t give it the kerosene?”

“Sure I did,”said Bill, “and then I knocked it in the head, just like you told me to.” Even Daddy had to admit, clearer instructions would have been better.

We butchered a beef late one Saturday evening after Daddy got home from work, finishing really late. Our place was the last house next door to a huge nature preserve. To Daddy, this meant, “not private property,” a perfect place to dump off guts.  He told my brother to load the mess into the ancient farm truck and dump it near Peter Spring Branch, a couple of miles back in the woods. (Yes, Billy was underage for driving but did drive the farm truck on the farm and in the woods. It was the sixties in the South.) It was way too late to haul it off that night.  Then Daddy remembered the truck was broken down(as it often was) and left the nasty mess in a tarpaulin-covered wheelbarrow tellng Billy to dump it first thing in the morning, not amending his earlier instructions, assuming Billy would understand he didn’t expect him to push a barrow of guts a couple of miles. Wrong!!

We got up early the next morning. Billy and the wheelbarrow of guts were gone. An hour passed…no Billy. My mother was furious when he was gone past time to get ready to church. She was trying to raise us right. We went on without him, much to my envy.  Still not home when we got home after noon, Mother knew something was obviously wrong.  He would never have voluntarily missed Sunday dinner. Mother was really worried now.

Finally, after two o’clock he came into view pushing the empty wheelbarrow, circled by flies and trailed by all the hounds in the country covered in congealed blood, guts, mud, and vomit. He had wheeled the guts the entire two miles over muddy roads, through deep ditches, and rough terrain, pestered by flies and dogs to the original site Daddy indicated. The trail was so rough and muddy, his load dumped several times, making a horrible job even worse. He didn’t dare not follow his orders, so he scoopd the stinking guts up every time they dumped, fighting dogs and flies for possession of the prize, vomiting as he wrestled them back in the barrow.

He was sick the rest of the day, not even able to eat Sunday dinner. If he did fake misunderstanding as I suspected, just to miss church, he was welcome to all the gut-hauling he wanted.

Good Old Sue

Trouble had its own plan and always lurked in the shadows waiting to jump me.  The simplest thing could go wrong.  There was just no way to anticipate what was down the road.  Billy and Troy were out of pocket when Uncle Parnell was ready to leave.  Daddy sent me and Sue to look for them.  Jamey and Froggy told us they had seen them close to the railroad track.  Daddy had told us many times not to let him catch us on the railroad track.  We played close to it all the time, but out of consideration to him, were very careful not to let him catch us.  Jamey and Froggy went along to help us.  Near the railroad, we found Billy’s sling shot.  I knew he would never have abandoned it.  This was serious!!!!   Froggy slipped under the fence and scrambled up into one of the railcars, pulling Jamey up after him.  We heard them exclaiming, “Golleeeee…would you look at this! Continue reading →

Ruth Elaine and the Exploding Baby (from Everything Smells Just Like Poke Salad Kathleen Swain’s memoir of growing up during the Depression by Linda Swain Bethea)

The first-grade class prayed for reprieve as Luther Simpson stumbled through a page of Jane and Fluff the Kitten while the second-graders dawdled over their sums across the aisle in our shared classroom.

Little Ruth Elaine Lawson, a girl I’d had always thought dull, dropped her head to her desk and snuffled quietly, before bursting into great, heart-wrenching, snotty sobs. Startled at this display in a child normally so quiet, Miss Billie knelt at her side, trying to console Ruth her.

“My baby brother’s dead!!! Baby Willie got cut in two by lightning in his bed last night!!!   Ooh!!! Hoo!!! Hoo!! Hoo!!! Hoo!! Hoo!!”

A collective gasp swept the classroom. True enough, there had been a terrible storm, lightning and thunder, violent enough to keep children and adults awake, but news of this terrible tragedy hadn’t gotten around yet. Shocked, Miss Billie embraced Ruth Elaine pitying the heart-broken mother who had been too undone by grief to keep this small one at her side today. The class buzzed, shocked at the news of Baby Willie’s death. Miss Billie silenced us with a fierce look, told us she’d be right back, and led the weeping child from the room, leaving Lessie Perkins to take names of evil-doers.

The whole class erupted, energized by this thrilling break in a dull day. Leonard Pope sparked a riot as an exploding baby, inspiring a room full of exploding babies as little girls feverishly tried to get the details of Willie’s catastrophe straight, thoroughly understanding the link between social status and sensational gossip. Jack Parker illustrated the explosion on the blackboard. Self-righteous, Lessie Perkins listened at the door as Miss Billie spoke to her husband, the principal, Mr. Kinnebrew. Questioning Ruth Elaine, they learned that none of the family had been notified of the tragedy. It was decided he’d get someone to take his class and notify them. As he headed to his office with Ruth Elaine, Lessie alerted the class of Miss Billie’s return. Students raced for desks, papers flying in their wake. Lessie feverishly working to get all the names, despite the fact that she’d had as much fun as anyone. Studiously oblivious to the thunderous noises preceding her reentry into the room without Ruth Elaine, Miss Billy didn’t even look up as she took the list Lessie waved imperiously. Unperturbed, she picked up where the lesson had left off.

The real tragedy resumed as Luther resumed his tortured reading. Following along just enough to keep myself out of trouble should I be called upon to read next, I immersed myself in delightfully gory images of pudgy Baby Willie, lacerated by lightning from the right shoulder angling to the left hip, a smoking mess of blood and guts covering his snowy bed linens and blasted to the walls and ceiling beyond. Repulsive stalactites of stomach contents and clotted blood dangled from the charred ceiling dripping bloody patterns on the pine floor. Little Willie’s spirit was sure to haunt to the house where he’d met his gruesome death, forcing his bereaved family to flee and fall into greater and greater misfortune as time went on. Little Willie’s spirit would linger, intent on torturing all those foolish enough to venture near on a dark stormy night. …….Oh the story went on and on. I deeply regretted not having befriended colorless little Ruth Elaine earlier in order to be nearer to the tragedy, but resolved to remedy that mistake as soon as possible, nevermore to miss a precious dramatic tidbit. The ghost of Little Willie might even pay a visit to his grieving family while I was there comforting my dear friend, Ruth Elaine, making me a central character of some future thrilling story.I schemed carefully, leaving out no possible benefit to myself.

Desperate to be the bearer of bad tidings, I plotted to race home at recess instead of waiting for lunch, but suspected John might have the same idea. Fortunately, I was first out when the bell rang, a full two hundred feet ahead of John, and raced ahead up the kitchen steps, flushed by victory, to spew the thrilling news, only to be deflated as I interrupted Mama and Daddy discussing who Mama would catch a ride with to take food out to the Lawson’s.   Turning from the woodstove where she was putting on a pan of cornbread, Mama scolded “You know you don’t have time to come home at recess. Now get a biscuit and get back to school.”

I didn’t get to tell anybody. The news had already spread like wildfire.
Out of respect to the family, Mr. Kinnebrew dismissed school at noon. Ruth Elaine, normally socially invisible, wandered from the office with her lunch bucket, mystified to find herself Queen of the Playground. The big girls jostled for position around her, shoving lowly first graders to the side, demanding details of the catastrophe.

“Did it set him on fire?”

“Did guts splatter everywhere when he exploded?”

“Did any get on you?”  

A real crowd-pleaser, Ruth Elaine’s story got bigger, better, and more macabre. She was just about to eat lunch with Bessie Sue Jones and Clara Pearson, the meanest fourth-graders in school when she looked up to see her mother’s two older sisters, Myrtle and Mavis, coming toward her, crying their eyes out.

“Oh, Ruth Elaine, why ain’t Maysie sent for us? What ‘n the world happened? This is going to kill pore Maysie!! She’s allus been nervous, takin’ it so hard when Mama died and never gittn’ back to herself after the baby.”

At this, Ruth Elaine forgot her new friends and got serious about crying. Her aunts put her in the wagon, vainly trying to console her, and headed up a parade including the minister and a benevolent delegation of church ladies bearing smoked ham, fried chicken, casseroles, cakes, and canned goods snaking toward the Lawson home. The bounty and variety of food bespoke the magnitude of the catastrophe.

The brilliant beauty of the blue sky fall day belied the terrible loss to be confronted as they journeyed toward their painful destination. Myrtle and Mavis kept thinking of Aunt Sue who’d lost her mind after the mad dog bit her little Joe. She’d been no good to herself or anyone else after living through his terrible death. Maysie had always been so much like poor Aunt Sue. Ruth Elaine wailed louder as they neared the house, begging them to turn around and take her back to school. The aunts pitied her and fussed over her, thinking of the horrible things she had witnessed, Ruth Elaine crying ever louder at their concern.

Dreading what they’d find as they pulled up in the sunny yard, Myrtle’s husband, Joe, called out, “Yoo Hoo! Anybody home?”  

For a minute, the only answer was the barking of Will Lawson’s hound. It was impossible to see into the dark, unpainted house. Eventually, Maysie Lawson, interrupted at bathing and nursing Baby Willie, came to stand in the dark doorway. With her frazzled hair and unkempt appearance, clutching what her sisters interpreted as a blanket-wrapped body in her arms, her sisters feared she was unhinged by grief. They wailed anew, “Oh Maysie.! Pore Maysie!”

Nearly blinded by the sun in the dark doorway, seeing only the outlines of her sisters and the crowd behind them, poor Maysie knows they could only have come tell her Death has claimed Ruth Elaine, since Will, Baby Willie, and her sisters are there with her. Sweet little Ruth Elaine, her darling little girl! Had she even kissed her before shooing her off to school that morning? Broken by loss, she fell to her knees keening, “Oh my poor baby! My baby! I can’t stand it!”

Holding Baby Willie even tighter to her bosom, she wailed, burying her head in Willie’s blanket. As Maysie keened her loss, Ruth Elaine peeked from her hiding place behind the wagon seat. Myrtle and Mavis moved toward poor Maysie, still huddled in the doorway, wanting to comfort her, yet dreading her disintegration when they had to take the hideously, disemboweled body of Baby Willie from her. At this point, Will came whistling around the back of the house to see what had the dog all stirred up. Myrtle enfolded the weeping Maysie tenderly in an embrace while Mavis took the blanket-wrapped child’s body. Chubby little Willie, squalled out in protest before rooting at his Aunt, assuming one breast was as good as another. Shocked, Mavis shrieked and nearly dropped him. With Maysie sobbing for poor Ruth Elaine who was obviously alive and well, and Little Willie, chubby and hungry in his aunt’s arms, Confusion reigned. Knowing the whole mess was about to unravel, Ruth Elaine dragged herself from the wagon to face her parents.

Mortified to find themselves the hosts of a wake for a live child and parents of a phenomenal liar who’d duped the entire community, the Lawsons made the best of an embarrassing situation and invited the community to a Thanksgiving celebration for the child they might have lost.

I’d had never been special friends with Ruth Elaine, but that night, I studied her. How in the world had Ruth Elaine ever come up with that wild story and carried it off so well? Her ability to had cry so convincingly that no one ever doubted her was impressive.  I watched her closely for a long time afterward, but sadly, the flame of her imagination had burned but once and briefly, perhaps due to the interference of her parents or paucity of opportunity.

Her elevated social status was fleeting.  Even though I initially felt shortchanged and resentful upon learning that there would be no fine funeral, to this day I am still grateful to Ruth Elaine for a wonderful tale that has been shared at many family gatherings.

To be continued

Things Mothers Do

aI miss all the things my mother used to do for me. Even though she had to get up to a freezing house at five-thirty in winter to do it, she always had a hot breakfast on the table when we got up, usually hot biscuits, eggs, fresh milk, home-made jam or preserves, and either grits or oatmeal.  Like most kids, I didn’t want it, but she insisted.  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”  After the whirlwind of getting the older kids on the bus, she’d wash, iron, clean, sew, tend the garden, and when she finished her own pleasant tasks, do whatever extra things Daddy had to help her pass the time, all between taking care of however many of the children might be babies or toddlers. Continue reading →

Squeaky crapped my pants! Smarty Kitty update

Squeaky crapped my pants! Really! Just in case you didn’t read my earlier post.  I bought “Smarty Kitty” off an infomercial when I was seduced by the idea of a cat using toilet, instead of the cat box.  Never mind that Squeaky had been happily using his cat box without fail for the entire five years since we adopted him.   Now, he won’t go near it, leaving surprises in the bathtub, on towels, on rugs, in my sewing basket……..I am frustrated by the mess and feel guilty for confusing him.  I’ve considered euthanasia, for me, not him, but that seems unethical since I took him out of a shelter and promised him a good home. Continue reading →

Mixed Nuts

 

When you are dealing with family, it clarifies things to have a scale.  You don’t have to waste time analyzing people when you have a ready reference.  This one works pretty well for us.

  1. Has a monogrammed straight jacket and standing reservation on mental ward.
  2. Family is likely to move away without leaving forwarding address. Has jail time in the past or the future
  3. People say, “Oh, crap. Here comes Johnny.”
  4. Can go either way.  Gets by on a good day.  Never has been arrested.  Can be  lots of fun or a real mess. Relatives usually will invite in for coffee.  Likely to have hormone-induced behavior.
  5. Regular guy. Holds down a job.  Mostly takes care of business.  Probably not a serial marry-er.  Attends  church when he has to.
  6. Good fellow. Almost everybody likes him or her. Volunteers for Habitat for Humanity.  Manages money well enough to retire early.
  7. High achiever.  Business is in order.  Serves on city council.
  8. Looks too good to be true. What’s really going on?
  9. Over-achiever. Affairs are in order.  Solid citizen.  Dull, dull, dull.  Could end up as a 1

Instead of saying, “Uncle Henry’s a pretty good guy, but sometimes he goes off the deep end, you could say, ‘He’s a usually about a 6 but he was a little 4-ish after Aunt Lou took his new truck and ran off with his brother’.” Or… Continue reading →

Clothilde

I was almost named Clothilde. (KLO-TEEL.  Wouldn’t have taken mean kids long to rename Kotex) So were my three sisters. No matter what heinous deed my mother may have committed or may commit in the future, I forgive her because she stuck up for me when it really mattered. Daddy was raised in North Louisiana during the deepest of the Depression, one of seven children always on the brink of starvation. His father either rented a farm or sharecropped when he couldn’t manage rent. Daddy didn’t speak often about his family’s situation, but occasionally slipped up and revealed the difficulties they suffered. They were a troubled family, economically and socially and moved frequently. Continue reading →