family stories

Sew and Sew

In the years after my big 4-H apron failure, I had little interest in sewing. Mother did take time to show me how to use her “new” second-hand electric machine enough to sew up rips. She was a barely adequate seamstress with only the basic skills to show me, even though she made most of our clothes. She avoided challenges steering away from fussy details.

Mother rarely took time for mending, so if I got a rip, I was on my own. Of course, I mastered sewing on buttons. I think one afternoon she guided me through making a simple gathered skirt on a waist band. The button at the waist had a wide overlap, making it ok without a zipper. The waistband had no interfacing to make it hold its shape. My stitching wavered. All in all, it was tacky and amateurish. It screamed homemade!

In the eighth grade, all girls had to take home economics. I made a flannel robe with a snap front. All went well till I had to sew braid down the front panel, covering the snaps. I had trouble keeping the braid lined up over the snaps. I broke several sewing machine needles by sewing too close to the edge of the snaps. I think the department was running out of needles, so my teacher did the last few inches. The robe was an improvement over the skirt I’d made at home with Mother’s help.

I was delighted to get a B on it, but I think the teacher had had enough! I wore that robe till it shredded. I felt like I’d learned quite a bit.

Miss Laura Mae’s House Part 12

My grandma was in the hospital. We had a houseful of company and we didn’t go to Miss Laura Mae’s house for several days. I was happy to be sitting on her top step with a biscuit again.

“Well, I ain’t seen y’all in a month of Sundays,” she said “Where you been?”

“Right there at the house,” answered Mother. “I’m so tired I can hardly wiggle. Bill’s mama thought she was having a heart attack and they kept her in the hospital overnight. It turns out it was just a hernia. She was doing fine but they still kept her overnight for tests. They were supposed to let her out the next morning. You know how Dr. Hawkins is. You can’t go to see him without him wanting to keep you overnight for tests. Anyway, she was sleeping and the nurse came to check on her. Miz Swain thought she was seeing a ghost and got all upset, convinced she was dying. She had the nurse call Bill to call all the kids in. You know she has seven. 

Anyway, all the kids and in-laws came flocking in to the house along with all their kids. There was no need to all pile in at the house and stay all that time. They all live within ten miles of us. I don’t know what good they thought they were doing, anyway. Next thing, her two brothers and their wives showed up. Somebody called her step-brother from way down in South Louisana and told him it might be his last chance to see her. They couldn’t have been close. They hadn’t seen each other in more than twenty years.” Mother complained.

“Lordy, was she really that sick? That sounds like a mess.” Miss Laura Mae offered.

“No, nothing was bad wrong. She’s just the superstitious type and was convinced it was a sign she was going to die. Anyway, the whole bunch hung around the rest of the night and visited the next day, like it was their last chance to see each other. They made a bunch of long distance phone calls, which I know they’ll never pay for, ate up my week’s supply of groceries, drank up all my coffee, and even used up all the toilet paper. Even after she got out of the hospital, they kept right on visiting. The kids were running in and out banging the doors, screaming and yelling like a bunch of heathens. I stayed behind them with the broom and mop, but it was hopeless. It was horrible. I thought they never would go home. I am so tired, I could sleep for a week. We are out groceries. I don’t even have any dry beans left. We’ll be eating biscuits and gravy till payday.” Mother sighed. 

“You know, my mother had a stroke last summer. They didn’t know if she’d make it. She lives out in Texas. I wanted to go, but we talked about it and Bill decided we really didn’t have the money. I didn’t get to go for three months. It’s strange how when it’s the man, it is so different. It makes me mad all over we didn’t go when Mama was sick. I could have missed my last chance then. Why are men so selfish?”

“Honey, that’s why I never married agin after Floyd died. Most men think they own their women, an’ women don’t need to do nuthin’ but tend to them, the younguns, an’ the house an’ garden. I wasn’t much past forty and still had a couple of younguns to raise when Floyd died, but it was a lot easier for me to take in ironin’, sew for the public, babysit, or sit with the elderly or the sick than have to answer to another man. Now, don’t get me wrong. They’s a’plenty o’ good men out there, but they do that one bad thing. They just keep on a’breathing in an’ breathin’ out.”

They both laughed till tears were running down their faces.

Miss Laura Mae’s House Part 5

bacon

I dawdled a bit to talk to Miss Laura Mae one morning as she put plum butter and a piece of bacon on the hot biscuit she’d split for me. “Floyd died twenty years ago today. It shore don’t seem like it?”

That caught my attention. “Who shot him?”

She and Mother both burst out laughing. “Why nobody shot him, honey. He just got sick and died.” 

“Looks like she’s been watching too much ‘Gunsmoke’.” Mother said, but I could tell she wasn’t really mad. “Linda, don’t be asking stuff that’s none of your business. Get your biscuit and go stand on the top step!” Mother sputtered. I certainly knew better than to ask nosey questions, but sometimes my curiosity got the best of me.

“She didn’t mean no harm,” Miss Laura chuckled, “But I tell you who I could’a shot.”

I lingered on the top step to listen in. I needed to know who Miss Laura Mae could’a shot.

“Floyd come in awful sick after work one Friday evenin’. He had a pain in his groin an’ it was all swole up. I couldn’t get him to let me call the doctor, but he was ready to go long before daylight. Betty Lou and the baby come to stay with the kids while me an’ her ol’ man Roy took Floyd in to the doctor in his truck. They done surgery soon as we got there, but Floyd had done got gangrene in his intestines. They wasn’t a thing they could do. I stayed with Floyd and Roy went on home to tend to stuff. I told him not to let on to the kids that Floyd was a’dyin’. I figured they’d find out soon enough when I was there to tell ‘em. Glomie was a’goin’ with Mack Thompson to the pitcher show that night like she’d been a’doin’ Saturdays for a while. They’d been a wantin’ to git married, but she wasn’t but sixteen and I told her she was too young. I got married at fifteen. I knowed what it meant to be tied down too young.

Well, Floyd died along about ten-thirty Saturday night. It was up in the morning before I got home. I let the kids sleep, and had biscuits in the oven before I went to wake ‘em up. When I went in the girl’s room, Glomie hadn’ ever come in. Myrt said she slept so hard she didn’ even know. I was scart to death. I didn’ know if her an’ Ray had had a wreck or what. Seems like we would have heard somethin’ though. Well, I had to go ahead an’ tell the other kids. O’ course they took it somethin’ awful. I was worried about Betty Lou. She was about four months along with a new baby, but she done alright. There wasn’t nothing to do but wait. After a while, Myrt came in a squallin’ an’ tol’ me she thought Glomie and Mack might’a run off and got married. Glomie had been talkin’ about it. I could’a shot her and Mack Thompson fer pullin’ such a trick.

Sure enough, about eleven-thirty that morning, just as neighbors was a’startin’ to bring food in for the mourners, here come Glomie and Mack, all nervous-like. Glomie thought all them folks was there to look for her. She was hurt that while her daddy was a’dyin’ she had slipped off and got married. I told her, ‘Well, you done made your bed. Now you got to lie in it.’ 

Mack turned out to be a purty good feller. He works and goes to church with ‘er ever Sunday and breaks up my garden ever’ spring. They been together ever’ since an’ had three kids. The oldest one is ‘bout to graduate, valedictorian of his class. You just can’t never tell how things is gonna turn out. Sometimes, it’s good God don’t let us run things.”

Gnawful Cousin

My brother weighed ten pounds at birth. He was born in the car on the way to the hospital but that’s a story for another day. My cousin Eddie, a colicky, pint-sized baby, was about four months younger. One afternoon when Billy was about five months old and Eddie about one month, Mother and Aunt Bonnie put both babies on a blanket on the living room floor while they had coffee in the kitchen. Billy cooed and played happily while Eddie wailed incessantly, as usual. When they finished their coffee, the mothers went to check on the babies. It turns out Poor Eddie was crying for a good reason. Husky Billy who was teething had maneuvered himself around where he could gnaw on Eddie’s skinny little leg. The poor baby’s leg was red from ankle to above the knee.

Conquering Corwin (Part 1)

Pooped pantsIn my family of “Mixed Nuts” Cousin Corwin was the winner, hands down.  When he was about twelve, he and his twin Kelvin got in a little “dust up” with the police, so it seemed like a good time to get out of town.  Aunt Essie called Daddy, asking if the twins could come spend a few days.  Now if the image “twins” brings to mind thoughts of “barefoot boys with cheeks of tan,” think again.  Kelvin to all intents and purposes, could have passed for normal, but Corwin was nuts.  At five foot eight and two hundred and sixty pounds, he was physically intimidating.  His pale blue eyes blazed with madness.  He ripped through a fried chicken like a chain saw.  Mother had to double the amount she normally cooked the minute he arrived.

Aunt Essie’s call for relief was well-timed.  Mother and Daddy were just about to leave on a much-anticipated vacation.  Though Mother could only hear Daddy’s end of the conversation, it was clear he was assuring Aunt Essie “taking the boys will be no problem.  I’ll straighten them out. We’ll come get them as soon as we get back.  They can stay as long as they want.  They’ll always have a home with us.”  He hung up, turning to Mother.  She was murderous!  Like any right thinking human with twelve years’ experience with Corwin, she despised him.  She’d spent most of those years defending her girls from his attacks.

“Are you crazy?  I don’t want that maniac out here!  He is not coming!”

“Yes, he is!  I’ve already told Essie we’ll come get them as soon as we get back from vacation. I’m going to bring those boys out here, put ‘em to work and straighten ‘em out.  There’s not a kid in the world I can’t conquer!”

“You can’t straighten them out.  You deserve what you get!  Go get them whenever you want to.  We’re not going on vacation!”

Conceding that point, Daddy left, returning several hours later returning with two sullen, hostile boys.  Since neither Mother nor the girls had anything to say to him either, it was a quiet house except for chicken bones crunching when Corwin ate.  Corwin was exhausted after his big supper and brush with the police so Mother showed him to his bed right after supper.  As soon as she cleaned up the kitchen, she went on to bed, leaving Daddy up by himself.  He was horrified to find Corwin in his bed when he got ready to turn in.  He went to find Mother.  She bunked in with the girls, partly to protect them.

“Corwin’s in my bed!” Daddy roared.

“Yep.  You may as well go ahead and get started straightening him out tonight.”  She turned over, the bed shaking with her giggling.  Daddy knew when he was whipped.

He got up, blasting the boys out of bed the next morning about six.  They were sullen, rubbing their eyes.  He was full of false cheer, enjoying the prospect of teaching them to work, turning them into productive humans.  They dragged away from the table, out into the dawn’s early light.  They were back at noon, to eat and rest in the heat of the day.  The boys were unhappy.  I don’t think their morning had gone well.  Daddy was trying to force a good mood on everybody.  After an hour and a half’s rest, he had them back at it.  They ate, bathed, and fell in bed that night.  The next morning, he had to drag them out of bed, openly hostile.  They took potshots at him at breakfasts before he dragged them off.  By noon, things clearly had heated up.

By the fifth day, Daddy was sick of them, but stuck in the nightmare he’d created.  He had alienated everybody.  In one camp, Mother and the girls hated him.  In the other, he was spending his vacation trying “straighten out” two juvenile delinquents who openly despised him and made his life a misery on every turn. It was a challenge having to having work like a dog trying to teach them to work when he’d planned to be on vacation.

There was no escaping the nightmare as he spent his nights with the corpulent, malodorous, psychopathic Corwin, snuggled up against him.  One morning Daddy got up to find he had no clean underwear in his drawer.  While he was searching, the putrid scent of feces drifted from the general area of his closet.  He investigated, finding that Corwin had suffered digestive issues, soiled his dainties and concealed them deep in Daddy’s closet, rather than admit to his weak sphincter.  Exhausting his underwear wardrobe, he’d helped himself to Daddy’s, which he also soiled and concealed.  Daddy had had enough.  He made Corwin take the whole disgusting pile outdoors and wash it. Corwin found he didn’t care for washing aged crap out of his (and Daddy’s) drawers, retching the whole time.  He felt Daddy ought to wash out his own, even though Corwin had crapped them all and was doubly insulted when Daddy insisted he scoop up the piles of poop and haul the filthy wash water far from the house to dump it.  He would have had absolutely no problem leaving the slimy, stinking mess lying on the ground next to the faucet. To everyone’s relief, Corwin called Aunt Essie, begging to go home.  That saga had ended with Daddy finding a kid he couldn’t conquer.

To be continued

https://nutsrok.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/mixed-nuts/

Conquering Corwin (Part 1)

Pooped pantsIn my family of “Mixed Nuts” Cousin Corwin was the winner, hands down.  When he was about twelve, he and his twin Kelvin got in a little “dust up” with the police, so it seemed like a good time to get out of town.  Aunt Essie called Daddy, asking if the twins could come spend a few days.  Now if the image “twins” brings to mind thoughts of “barefoot boys with cheeks of tan,” think again.  Kelvin to all intents and purposes, could have passed for normal, but Corwin was nuts.  At five foot eight and two hundred and sixty pounds, he was physically intimidating.  His pale blue eyes blazed with madness.  He ripped through a fried chicken like a chain saw.  Mother had to double the amount she normally cooked the minute he arrived.

Aunt Essie’s call for relief was well-timed.  Mother and Daddy were just about to leave on a much-anticipated vacation.  Though Mother could only hear Daddy’s end of the conversation, it was clear he was assuring Aunt Essie “taking the boys will be no problem.  I’ll straighten them out. We’ll come get them as soon as we get back.  They can stay as long as they want.  They’ll always have a home with us.”  He hung up, turning to Mother.  She was murderous!  Like any right thinking human with twelve years’ experience with Corwin, she despised him.  She’d spent most of those years defending her girls from his attacks.

“Are you crazy?  I don’t want that maniac out here!  He is not coming!”

“Yes, he is!  I’ve already told Essie we’ll come get them as soon as we get back from vacation. I’m going to bring those boys out here, put ‘em to work and straighten ‘em out.  There’s not a kid in the world I can’t conquer!”

“You can’t straighten them out.  You deserve what you get!  Go get them whenever you want to.  We’re not going on vacation!”

Conceding that point, Daddy left, returning several hours later returning with two sullen, hostile boys.  Since neither Mother nor the girls had anything to say to him either, it was a quiet house except for chicken bones crunching when Corwin ate.  Corwin was exhausted after his big supper and brush with the police so Mother showed him to his bed right after supper.  As soon as she cleaned up the kitchen, she went on to bed, leaving Daddy up by himself.  He was horrified to find Corwin in his bed when he got ready to turn in.  He went to find Mother.  She bunked in with the girls, partly to protect them.

“Corwin’s in my bed!” Daddy roared.

“Yep.  You may as well go ahead and get started straightening him out tonight.”  She turned over, the bed shaking with her giggling.  Daddy knew when he was whipped.

He got up, blasting the boys out of bed the next morning about six.  They were sullen, rubbing their eyes.  He was full of false cheer, enjoying the prospect of teaching them to work, turning them into productive humans.  They dragged away from the table, out into the dawn’s early light.  They were back at noon, to eat and rest in the heat of the day.  The boys were unhappy.  I don’t think their morning had gone well.  Daddy was trying to force a good mood on everybody.  After an hour and a half’s rest, he had them back at it.  They ate, bathed, and fell in bed that night.  The next morning, he had to drag them out of bed, openly hostile.  They took potshots at him at breakfasts before he dragged them off.  By noon, things clearly had heated up.

By the fifth day, Daddy was sick of them, but stuck in the nightmare he’d created.  He had alienated everybody.  In one camp, Mother and the girls hated him.  In the other, he was spending his vacation trying “straighten out” two juvenile delinquents who openly despised him and made his life a misery on every turn. It was a challenge having to having work like a dog trying to teach them to work when he’d planned to be on vacation.

There was no escaping the nightmare as he spent his nights with the corpulent, malodorous, psychopathic Corwin, snuggled up against him.  One morning Daddy got up to find he had no clean underwear in his drawer.  While he was searching, the putrid scent of feces drifted from the general area of his closet.  He investigated, finding that Corwin had suffered digestive issues, soiled his dainties and concealed them deep in Daddy’s closet, rather than admit to his weak sphincter.  Exhausting his underwear wardrobe, he’d helped himself to Daddy’s, which he also soiled and concealed.  Daddy had had enough.  He made Corwin take the whole disgusting pile outdoors and wash it. Corwin found he didn’t care for washing aged crap out of his (and Daddy’s) drawers, retching the whole time.  He felt Daddy ought to wash out his own, even though Corwin had crapped them all and was doubly insulted when Daddy insisted he scoop up the piles of poop and haul the filthy wash water far from the house to dump it.  He would have had absolutely no problem leaving the slimy, stinking mess lying on the ground next to the faucet. To everyone’s relief, Corwin called Aunt Essie, begging to go home.  That saga had ended with Daddy finding a kid he couldn’t conquer.

To be continued

https://nutsrok.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/mixed-nuts/

Christmas Revelations

We’d put away all the Christmas decorations weeks before.   We’d finally gotten our eighteen month old, John, to bed after several unsuccessful attempts and had collapsed, totally whipped.  Meanwhile, he’d  been entertaining himself rummaging quietly through a dresser drawer we’d thought inaccessible.  After a few minutes, he toddled into the living room victorious dragging garland, an ornament in each hand, announcing, “Santa Claus is coming to town.  I’ll be damned!”

The Most Fun You’ll Never Have, Kathleen’s Amazing Bathroom Tour!

image

Kathleen Swain and her daughters

Upper Left, Linda Swain Bethea, Right, Phyllis Swain Barrington

First Row Left, Kathleen Holdaway Swain (see how deceptively nice she looks)  Connie Swain Miller, Marilyn Grisham
It’s discouraging writing about my mother, Kathleen Holdaway Swain.  Despite my long, rich history of complaining endlessly about the trials of dealing with her, she keeps getting the best of me.  It’s made worse because I tower over her, outweigh her, and am much more physically imposing, but then, who isn’t?  I do my best to take care of her, and should I exhibit the slightest impatience, onlookers treat me like I am maligning a saint.  Granted, she is tiny, far less than five feet tall, has a squeaky Minnie Mouse voice, and looks like a delightful little old church-lady.  Though she smiles and greets every soul she meets, inwardly she is malicious and conniving, constantly plotting to make me look bad.  Sometimes it doesn’t take much.

Not so long ago, my sisters and I took Mother on a girl-trip.  We were laughing just before we got out of the car about the way she’d lecture us against potential bad behavior before she had to drag the five of us hyenas (her word) into a store or business. When we inevitably started to ask for stuff, anyway, despite her stern warning, she’d fix us with a look from Hell and warn, “Don’t start!  Just don’t start!”  That dried us right up.   

First of all, Mother is the slowest person in the history of Motherdom, in case I never mentioned it before.  As she walks along, she keeps a look out for lost coins in the parking lot and frequently finds them, additionally stopping to greet all passersby.  This was the first stop of the trip. I was hurrying ahead leaving her to drag up the rear, since I had to buy gas, thinking my sisters could keep her out of trouble.  Rather than dawdling with them as they got out of the car, she came running behind me like her life depended on not getting left, and believe me, it was not because she intended to buy gas.  She has four daughters to take care of that.  As a joke, she picked it where our conversation left off, calling behind me, “Linda, wait for me!  I want you to buy me…….” 

            Not realizing we had an audience of a couple in their late sixties, I called out behind me, without bothering to look, knowing she was just continuing our conversation from the car.  “Don’t start!  Just don’t start!”  Men in their fifties and sixties just love Mother, assuming she is just a sweet, little old lady, just like their dear mother.  They have no idea of the trouble she is capable of.  The man glared at me, striding into the store, leaving my poor, mistreated, little, old mother alone and uncared for, abandoned in the parking lot.  He took her by the arm and helped her into the store, making sure she had all the attention she needed.  He fixed her up with a sandwich and coffee, after fixing me with a scathing look of hatred.  I had no idea what I might have done till she rubbed my nose in it later.  I only wish he’d hung around long enough to know she was on her way to destroy the bathroom, literally, but more on that tomorrow.

To be continued…….

More Travels with Mother

hotmama.https://nutsrok.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/the-low-down-on-lunch-with-mother/
Travels With Mother (Part 2)

The Most Fun You’ll Never Have, Kathleen’s Amazing Bathroom Tour!

It’s Not What You Tank!

 

God was with us.  We got to our destination, Hot Springs, Arkansas without a lot more drama.  We checked into our room, a nice suite with two king-sized beds and an extra bed for the fifth in our party.  For some reason, though it was 104 degrees, we freshened up a bit before going out to see the town, allowing us to start out with a less vintage sweat.  Within minutes, we were rank.  Not to be deterred by a little thing like heat exhaustion, we explored every shop on Main Street, till Mother found a little shop selling belly-dancing costumes. She wouldn’t be budged.  Now, as I’ve said before, Mother is tight.  She had no intention of making such a frivolous purchase, but had to admire herself in one. Every inch of the stifling shop was crammed with exotic outfits with no space devoted to dressing rooms. The proprietor obviously didn’t expect belly-dancers to be overly modest. Not to be denied, Mother just slipped her favorite on over her clothes, despite the heavy customer traffic. She is a little old church lady, after all.  I would never have expected so much business in a store selling belly-dancing costumes. 

Mother had us hold her things while she tottered and struggled into her racy choice, bumping customers at every turn.  They had to have thought her mind was gone and we should have looked out for her better, or that we were in geriatric sex-trade, pimping her out to some perverted creature with a fetish for demented, antique belly-dancers.  Neither choice made us look good.  Eventually, she pranced a bit and had us take a picture or two for her Sunday School Class, before being convinced to leave.  The store clerk was not amused by any of this, but I figured if she thought she was big enough to straighten Mother out, she could go for it.  I know when I am whipped. 

Bigsmilemotorcyclemama

An amused motorcycle guy and his girlfriend were taking all this in and invited Mother to meet their friends waiting on their bikes just outside. I think the burly guys exact words were, “She reminds me so much of my mama!” With him as Mother’s escort, we escaped the wrath of the store owner who was obviously thought it was past time we left.

Mother charmed his friends.  Her new friend invited her for a ride, which she refused, but she did climb behind him on his bike to get her picture made.  Regretfully, he helped her off, after telling her, “Ma’am, you don’t have to go home with these girls if you don’t want to.  We coaxed her away after she exchanged phone numbers and addresses with them, insisting they all come visit.  
Later that evening, we made it back to our hotel, only to find the air-conditioning and bathroom both out of order in our room.  Mother took charge, went to see the manager, and got us transferred to the only room they had left, the Presidential Suite, complete with a hot-spring bath.  I suspect the manager thought, “She reminds me of my mama.”  For once, a bathroom drama with Mother worked in our favor.

We enjoyed the rest of our visit.  On the way home, my sister Connie hung her purse strap on a toilet handle and broke the toilet in a station.  She takes after Mother.