memoir

Quirky Kids Birthday Party: Our Awful Friends Part 2

I had only been out of the bathtub about 10 minutes when this picture was made.  After that birthday party, this dress was never the same.  I never saw that little purse again.I first became aware of the Awfuls on the occasion of Jamey Awful’s fifth birthday.  It’s significant that my first experience was quirky, setting the standard from that day forward . I was probably about four and totally ignorant of what birthday parties entailed.  I only knew that Mother ruined a perfectly good day by calling me away from my sand pile to take a bath in the middle of the day, an unheard of event.  I was disturbed especially since she insisted on washing the sand out of my hair.  I’d just spent a good portion of the morning pouring sand on the top of my head, enjoying its powdery coolness showering down on my shoulders and the back of my sundress and saw no reason for her outraged reaction.  “I told you not to get dirty.  We have to go somewhere today.”

As far as I was concerned, sand was clean.  Mud was dirty.  Axle grease was dirty.  Chicken poop on my shoe was dirty.  Sand was white and dusted right off.  It was not dirty.  At any rate, Mother filled the tub with water and sprinkled in Tide Powder and plunged me in.  That was what passed for bubble bath at our house.  I would have been content to spend the afternoon there, but she washed my hair and hurried me out, ruining another good time.  Then she brushed my stick straight hair and stuffed me in a fluffy petticoat, a white fluffy dress with red and blue polka-dots, white socks, and sandals.  Worse yet, I had to submit to a photo session.  Mother was a novice with a camera making me pose forever, staring into the sun.  She’d gone to a great deal of fuss making matching dresses for me and Phyllis for Easter and was extremely proud of the effect.  Too bad the confection was wasted on me.  When she’d said Easter outfit, I’d envisioned a cowboy getup.

Then she walked us over to the Awful’s house.  I doubt Mother knew Mrs. Awful, since we’d never been to her house for coffee, even though they only lived a couple of houses over.  I guess the poor woman was scraping the bottom of the barrel to find enough kids for a party, since I was a year younger and Phyllis was a couple of years older and neither had ever laid eyes on Jamey. 

Mrs. Awful met us at the back gate.  There were a dozen or so kids running round in the yard, so once Mother made Mrs. Awful’s acquaintance, she headed home, promising to be back for us in a couple of hours.  She couldn’t have anticipated the goings on at this quirky party. Mrs. Awful ushered us in the back gate and the fun began.  I was in Heaven!

Best Left to the Experts

Phyllis Blonde
I am sure the hairdressers among you, as well as victims of bad haircuts, can relate to this sad story. This is my sister Phyllis, over at Anchors and Butterflies. Note the beautiful blonde hair. Wouldn’t you just love to have hair like that? Well, many years ago, in a land far away, she was home from college for the weekend, complaining that she needed a haircut, bad. A person could be forgiven for thinking that she meant a bad haircut I was just the one for the job. I got right to work.

Like all jobs skillfully executed, hair cutting looks easy enough. I’d watched it plenty of times and knew just what to do. I wrapped her wet head in a towel and dragged a comb through her hair, despite her fussiness about a mole and her ears. I kind of parted and pinned and got started.

I did pretty well at first, then took a wild whack on one side, getting it really short. When I tried to make the other side match, it looked awful. It was a mess of gashes and ridges. Her scalp shone through in spots. It looked like I’d used rick-rack to cut a pattern. I felt horrible, but started laughing. For some reason, I still thought I could save it, but the laughing gave me away. She jerked the towel away, speeding to the bathroom to look. When I didn’t hear anything, I dared hope she liked it.

“Wah! Boo Hoo Hoo! I’m gonna kill you!” She came flying out of that bathroom gripping her hand mirror and hairbrush headed In my direction.. She chased me around the house three times before Mother got her stopped. Fortunately, I had a good start or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.

Mother tried to calm her with some worthless reassurances like, “It doesn’t look that bad.” and her old favorite, “It’ll grow back.” Personally, I’d as soon have my teeth bashed in as be reassured, “It’ll grow back.”

Phyllis left later that day puffy-eyed, wearing a scarf. Mother had scraped up ten dollars for her to get her hair repaired, reassuring her all would be well. Phyllis skipped her classes the next morning, hunting up a “good” hairdresser. He told her he had seen worse haircuts — but couldn’t remember when.

I would like to have included an after picture, but there wasn’t one.

Our Awful Friends

Freedom at the Awful’s  Illustration by Kathleen Holdaway Swain

Mother was a cruel beast of a woman who rarely allowed us out of our own yard.  I felt so deprived when free-range children passed our house in pursuit of adventure.  Sometimes we were able to tempt them in with our tire swing, zip line, or huge barn, but invariably greener pastures called and we were left morosely watching them amble off to Donnie’s or Joey’s house.  Sadly, we’d pine as the motley crew and their retinue of dogs disappeared down the dusty road.  It wasn’t that we didn’t have wondrous opportunities on our own place;t we just hated being left behind.

Once we accepted our sad abandonment, we didn’t waste time whining to Mother that “We don’t have anything to do.”  I only made that mistake once and Mother set me to hanging out diapers, dusting, and washing woodwork.  In fact, she was mean enough to assign jobs to break up fights.  It’s terrible growing up with a mother who turns human nature against innocent children.

At any rate, a family neighboring us raised their fortunate children with a complete lack of supervision.  Those kids roamed long after dark, before daylight, dropped in for meals all over the neighborhood, drank out of from the neighbor’s faucets, rode the neighbor’s cows, and generally led a charmed life.  Though their name was Offut, I misunderstood it as Awful.  In her frequent dealings with these children Mother reached the conclusion Awful was an excellent name.  She was particularly offended when we came home from town and found them in the house making Kool-aid.  The Awful’s had little understanding of private property and had often had Kool-aid with us, so of course they felt free to help themselves, even if Mother had been careless enough not to leave it in the refrigerator.  Her attitude baffled our uninvited guests.  I think the syrupy floor and Jerry’s standing on the counter helping himself to a pack of Daddy’s cigarettes off the top shelf also ruffled her feathers, but she was the crabby type, after all.  The loss of cigarettes were of particular concern.  A carton cost two dollars and eighty cents, a significant portion of her fifteen dollar grocery budget.  At any rate, she took an unreasonable stance and forbade them to enter the house again when we were gone.  I don’t think they found it particularly disturbing since a couple more packs of cigarettes went missing before Daddy found a better hiding place for his stash.  

Grandpa Was a Dancing Fool

When my Grandpa Roscoe and his brothers were young, they never missed the rare opportunity to attend a dance or church social, no matter how hard they’d been working on the farm. They’d work like mad all week to get through in time to ride out to any barn-dance,corn-husking, or hoe-down set for Saturday night.  One fine evening, his brother George was laid up with a broken leg, so Grandpa slipped off in George’s brand new boots, reckoning he’d cut a much finer figure in them than in his old brogans.   After all,  there was no reason the boots should miss all the fun.  The rest of the boys piled in the wagon, riding off into the night, bound for a rollicking good time. This left the sorrowful George at home with Ma, Pa, and the young’uns.


Roscoe danced every dance, not leaving out a girl between eight and eighty, who’d allow herself to be jollied around the floor. His good time was reinforced by the jug he and his brothers had thoughtfully hidden beneath the hay in their wagon. After all, the horses knew the way home and they didn’t have to work tomorrow.  George’s boots were feeling tight, but so was he, so he wasn’t in too much pain right then.  It was two-thirty before they left, long after the last ear of corn was husked, the last girl rounded up by her pa, and the last note of banjo and fiddle music drifted to the rafters.  The boys piled into the wagon, gave the horses their head and slept their way home.

By the time they got the horses settled in and were headed for their own beds, Roscoe’s toe, freed of the agonizing tight boot, was screaming its complaints. Likely, his decision-making wasn’t the best that night, but he got out his pocket-knife and whittled his in-grown toenail, making the problem exponentially worse. He wrapped the agonized toe in a rag soaked in high-alcohol liniment Ma had bought from a traveling snake-oil peddler the week before. Then he propped his foot on a chairback high above his head, and lay on the hearth, before the fire to soothe its throbbing.  Finally comfortable, he nodded off.

Aware of the smell of smoke, and fearing he had died and gone to his reward for dancing and drinking, he awoke to find a spark from the fireplace had ignited the rag on his toe.   Dancing a wild jig, he struggled to rip the flaming bandage from his torch of a toe. Never mind about music or a partner!

Rattlesnakes, Bullfrogs, and Saran Wrap

imageBud really took offense with Bubba, his college suitemate just because Bubba was trying to pick up a little easy money.  It seems Bubba’s biology professor paid five dollars apiece for snakes.  One Sunday evening, Bubba came back from a trip home and tossed a burlap bed under his bunk and went on his merry way.  After a while, his roommate heard rattling, investigated, and found a sack full of rattlesnakes.  Bubba was rounded up and he and his snakes were evicted.

The roommate and the suitemates felt a little payback was in order.  The next night, they rounded up a bullfrog and left it in a bag under his bunk.  As soon as the lights went out, the frog started croaking.  In case that wasn’t enough, one of them stretched Saran Wrap tightly across the toilet so Bubba got a shower when he went to pee.

It got ugly after that!

Charley’s Tale Part 9

“I knew it!  I knew it!  I always knew I ain’t a girl!”  Charley felt like a prisoner freed from jail. Now at least I don’t have to pretend. Can you fix me?”

“We have to go in and explore your belly to free up that testicle and check the other side, but can’t change what’s on the the outside.”  Just want to make sure you understand before surgery.  If the testicle is healthy, do you want to save it?  The hormones are beneficial to men, and you’ll need it if you want to father a child.  Who knows what’s down the road for you?”  Dr. Farmer asked.

“Yes, I need it.  I want to be a man. Can you take out my female parts? I ain’t never gonna have no baby and I hate the curse!”

“I don’t know about that. I’ve never heard of taking out a healthy uterus. Do you need a little time to think about this?” asked Charles.  “It’s a big decision.”

“Dad, it’s not a decision.  I’ve had sixteen years to live with this. I have always known I’m a boy in a girl’s body.   Think of how hard bit would be for you to try to be a woman.   Now I don’t have to pretend.  It’s over.”  Charley looked relieved.

Charles felt awful for his part in Charley’s troubles, knowing his decision had and would cntinue to effect his child forever.  “Well Dr. Farmer, I guess Charley is ready to go to surgery.  I’ll be here when you get back, Charley.”

“Dad, you’ve always been here for me.”

“Okay, Charley, while I am in there, I’ll look for the other testicle.  We don’t want to have to put you to go through this again,”  Dr. Farmer’s positive attitude encouraged them both.

The two hours of Charley’s surgery were the longest of Charles’s life as he mourned the troubles he and nature were putting Charley through.  He prayed for guidance to be able to support Charley down this difficult road.  He’d never known anyone who went from female to male and knew it would be rough.

Charley was back in two hours, groggy but fine.  Dr. Farmer gave her a few minutes to rouse before visiting.  “Good news, folks.  Charley has two healthy testicles.  There’s also an undersized uterus, which I didn’t disturb.  I wasn’t able to examine the ovaries without making a much larger incision, so I left that alone.  If you ever have gynecological issues, we can take care of those as the need arises.

“So I can expect to become more male?” Charley asked.

“I’d expect so.  You already have a lean, muscular body type, much like your father.  I do see signs of a sparse beard sprouting.  The testicles are now resting in what was your labia.  Your vagina appears normal.  Your urinary tract in normal position for a female, so that here’s no change there.  Intervention would be a painful and the outcome uncertain, and I don’t have the expertise to do that.  I recommend you continue as you are.  To sum it up, you are a healthy male with a few female parts thrown into in.  It is possible you could father children, given what I see.”  This is a lot to think about, so feel free to ask questions as you think  of them. ”  Dr. Farmer shook hands with them both before leaving.

Charles turned to Charley, “That was a good feeling,” Charley mused.  “MY first time to shake hands, man to man.”

Bizarre Easter Visit: Cookie, Uncle Riley, and The Wonder Baby

Rubberneck 1Rubberneck 2Original art by Kathleen Holdaway Swain

We endured periodic visits from Mother’s bizarre  relatives, Cookie and Uncle Riley. Whether or not they were actually deranged was debatable. They definitely teetered somewhere between eccentric and maddening. Most people who had to interact with them on a regular basis held out for just plain crazy. Both held Master’s Degrees, Cookie’s in Education and Uncle Riley’s in Mathematics. Cookie was head of a large public school system in Texas. Uncle Riley worked for the government as a mathematician in the 1950’s. I won’t press that any further, except to say that somehow, they miraculously collided and produced Cousin Barbie, The Wonder Baby. On their way to an Easter visit in 1957, Cookie and Uncle Riley made a few stops.

I digress, but needed to set the scene for their visit. Because my mother had married a blue-collar worker, a man they considered “beneath her” and had three children, Cookie and Uncle Riley held the impression that my parents ran an orphanage and would be grateful for any gift of apparel, no matter how useless they might drag in. This particular trip, they came bearing refuse from a fire sale: ten pairs of boys black high top basketball shoes in a wide range of sizes, six identical but slightly singed, size eight, red and green sateen dresses trimmed with black velvet collars and waist bands, six dozen pairs of size two cotton satin-striped Toddler Training Pants, and three six-packs of men’s silk dress socks in a nude tone, a color I’d never seen anyone wear. In addition to these useless prizes, they’d stopped by a fruit stand and gotten a great deal on a box of fifty pounds of bruised bananas and an Easter duck for Barbie. By the time they’d reached our house many hours later, four-year-old Barbie, Easter Duck, and Bosco Dog had romped in the back seat and pretty much-made soup of the bananas. Fruit flies circled the old black 1943 Ford merrily as it rocked to a stop. Uncle Riley, the mathematician, anticipating breakdowns didn’t believe in wasting money on new car parts. He always carried a collection of parts extracted from a junker in his back yard to keep his old clunker running. He also split the back of his old jeans and laced them up with shoe strings when they got too tight, but that’s s story for another day.

I know Mother must have dreaded their visit, with its never-ending pandemonium, especially since for some reason, the only thing they shared with Daddy was a healthy contempt and barely concealed animosity for each other. The three of us kids were always delighted to see them, in spite of their bizarre offerings. One pair of the smoky-smelling shoes did fit my brother, but shredded in a few steps, due to its proximity to the fire. The dresses were put back for “Sunday Best,” Thank God, never to be seen again, since neither of us girls was a size eight, nor was partial to singed, scratchy dresses. Fortunately, for my parents, at the moment, they had no size two toddlers for the training pants, though they did manage to come up with a couple just a few years later. Easter Duck, however, deeply interested four-year-old Billy.

Sensing misfortune in his future, Mother tried to run interference for Easter Duck, fearing for his health. For some reason she was distracted by the madness of intervening between Daddy and her whacked-out relatives, getting dinner ready for the whole crowd, dealing with out-of-control kids, and finding places to bed everyone down for the night. Not surprisingly, her concerns for Easter Duck were pushed to the bottom of the list. Never having been deprived of anything she wanted, ever, Barbie had no intention of being parted with Easter Duck. Billy needed a better look, and having had plenty of experience dealing with mean kids, patiently waited for his chance. Forgetting Easter Duck, Mother and Cookie went back to their visit, leaving the two four-year-olds to play. As you might expect, before long, they heard the screaming. Barbie held poor Easter Duck by his head; Billy had him by the feet. Between them, they had stretched the poor duck’s neck way past anything God ever intended, even for a swan. Neither exhibited the Wisdom of Solomon and was determined to maintain possession, at all costs. Poor Easter Duck paid the price! Though he was rescued, sadly his neck was not elastic and did not “snap back.” He didn’t get to spend the Easter holidays with his new friends, Barbie and Billy.

Charley’s Tale Part 8

Charley had complained of vague abdominal pain for about three days before she awoke to excruciating right-sided belly  pain on her sixteenth birthday.  She refused to allow Charles examine her, so he asked a surgical colleague to see her.  Dr. Farmer did a quick exam of her belly and felt Charles’s diagnosis was spot on.  Scheduling his daughter for immediate surgery, Charles was concerned, but not unduly alarmed as he waited.  He expected to see her back in recovery in about an hour.  The surgeon looked grave when he sought Charles right after takng her into surgery.

“Is she okay?  Had the appendix ruptured?”  he asked.

“She’s fine but it’s not her appendix.   I haven’t started surgery yet,  but there’s something we need to talk about.  Let’s go to a private area.”  They moved into Charley’s assigned room.  Sit down, Charles.  It wasn’t appendicitis.    I saw  no reason to do a pelvic exam prior to surgery, but when Charley was moved to the table, some  abnormalities were noted. Charley has ambiguous genitalia, some male, some female.  She has a fully developed vagina with a very large clitoris or a small penis.  When erect, it might be three and a half inches. Her right labia has a partially descended testicle which is likely incarcerated. I have manually rotated it and returned the blood flow for the present, but it is likely the cord will twist again.  That is the cause of her pain and must be explored.  There is no obvious testicle on the left, but there could be one that hasn’t descended.  We need to let her wake up and  inform her before going ahead with surgery in this life-altering situation.”

“Dear God, that’s why she was so secretive.  She doesn’t know, but at birth, she had what I thought was an abnormally large clitoris and I removed it, thinking that would take care of the problem.  She looked like a perfect female in every other way.  What have I done to my child?”  Charles cried out his grief.

Dr. Farmer tried to comfort him.  “I might have done the same thing.  How could you know it would turn out this way?  That fact is, Charley needs to know the situation.  The penile tissue that’s left is healthy, just shorter.  She may choose to live as a man.  She should be awake in a few minutes  and we can talk to her.”

“Oh my God.  This will be the hardest talk I’ve ever had.”

Charley’s Tale Part 7

Charles was worried about Charley.  Her fifteenth summer, she topped six feet.  Though,  muscular, just like him and his sons, she was full-busted like her mother.  As he sat across her from dinner one evening, he noticed a fine blonde mushtache beginning to show.  Her voice was also deepening to tenor.  Not the only one to notice, the kids at school had started calling her girly-man.

Of course Charley was confused, having no frame of reference for the changes.  Fortunately, she enjoyed a warm friendship with Marzell who often stayed over at the Evan’s house, though she never invited Charley to visit her home.  Marzell clearly enjoyed time with the whole family.  “I can’t stand my stepfather. He just looks at me weird.  Mama married him six months after Daddy died.  He gives me the creeps.  I try to leave Mama alone with her new family as much as I can.  If I around, I have to help with Little Melvin, anyway.  Isn’t that a stupid name?  Melvin doesn’t fit a baby, does it?  I can’t wait till I graduate so I can move back to Dallas with Grandma where all my friends and cousins are.  I don’ know why Mama had to marry Old Melvin.  We were doing fine at Grandma’s.”

Marzell was a petite, very feminine girl, a marked contrast to Charley.  She was pursued by Roger, the grease monkey who worked at her stepfather’s filling station.  Though she flirted with him a bit, she refused to go out with him.  His sullen eyes followed her around whenever she had to go to the station.  Over fried chicken that Sunday,  Charley teased her about her sweetheart.  “You ought to marry Roger.  Y’all could raise a tree full of little grease monkeys.”

“I wouldn’t have him on a birthday cake!  You take him.” She snapped back. “I ain’t never gonna marry!”

“Ha!  You say that now!”  Charley laughed.

“I mean it!  I ain’t ever gonna marry.”

“I ain’t never gonna marry, either. I hate boys!” Charley snorted.

Hearing this exchange over dinner that day, Charles felt a little more  unsettled and hoped it was no more than teasing.