A well-worn path led down the hill to the toilet located far enough to cut the odor and avoid contamination of our well. Mama was vigilant about sanitation and shoveled lime into the pit to aid decomposition and screened the open back to foil her chickens who considered the flies and maggots a tempting buffet. Chickens are not known for their Continue reading
humor
Farm Life: Gotta Have Guts
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Daddy loved home remedies and dosed his kids and livestock readily. Mother did run interference for us 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 much we didn’t tempt mosquitoes. I do appreciate Mother for putting her foot down when his ideas got too toxic. No telling what kind of chromosome damage she saved us. Continue reading
You Catch More Flies
The school was buzzing about the play. The community was putting on a play at the school. The adults, not the kids! According to Sarah Nell, the snottiest girl in school, her mama was the teacher’s best friend. Her mama was going to be in the play! Maybe my mama could be in the play. I flew home at noon to tell the news. Mama was shocked! She squashed that idea like a bug. “No, I’m not going to be in a play. I am not interested in that kind of foolishness! I have more to do than get up and parade myself around in front of folks like I think I’m something special. Now wash your hands and eat. You’ve got to get back to school on time.”
I was very interested in that kind of foolishness. “Well, can we go to the play? It only costs a quarter for adults and a dime for kids. They’ll have an ice cream social afterwards.
“No. That would be close to a dollar for all five of us. Our rent is three dollars a month. I am already doing Miss Lonie’s wash to pay that. We don’t have money to waste on a play. It’s going to take me all day today to finish Miz Watson’s dress. I need the dollar I get from that to put on the bill at Miss Lonie’s store. I’m hopin’ there will be enough scraps left from Miz Watson’s dress to trim that dress I’m makin’ for you. I have two matchin’ feedsacks saved back for it.” She went on with her budgeting plans as my spirits plunged, knowing I wasn’t going to the play. I dawdled my way back to school not wanting to admit to Sarah Nell I wasn’t going to the play. I needn’t have worried. She wasn’t interested in me, anyway.
The evening of the play, I watched the comings and goings at the schoolhouse enviously, as long as Mama let me stay outside. For once, living almost on the school yard was not an advantage, giving me a prime view of all I was missing. Had I even suspected what I was missing, I’d have grieved even harder. It seems Sarah Nell’s mother was in the middle of the performance when Sarah Nell swallowed a fly, along with her ice cream. Panicking, she raced to her mother on the stage. Just as Sarah Nell reached the heroine, she vomited copiously all over her, bringing the performance to an end. There was no encore.
Annie’s Fish Hookectomy
We have a nice little wet-weather creek that runs along our property line, cutting through the middle of the wooded lot next door. My kids played in the creek and in the woods all the time. They were a few years older than Greg, our neighbor’s boy, so by the time he played there, he had Annie, our Dalmatian and other kids from the neighborhood with him. Sometimes, I think Greg was the only person Annie really liked.
Greg got in from school and made his way straight to the pantry, just like always. He filled up, chatted a while, and took Annie out to play. Before long, he and Annie were back. “How do you get a fish hook out of a dog’s mouth?”
I thought it was it was the lead in to a joke. “”I don’t know. How?”
“I don’t know. But I was crawfishing with a piece of bacon for bait on my line and somehow, Annie jumped and swallowed the hook, bacon, and all. I just can’t imagine how it happened!”
I could. Annie pranced right behind Greg, proud of the long string hanging from her mouth. Tentatively, I pulled it. It was stuck. Off to the vet. As you can see from the xray above, the fish hook was imbedded in her stomach. It had to be surgically removed, along with about five hundred dollars from my wallet. Annie moped around for three or four days, with nothing to do but brag about her surgery. Greg made himself scarce, not even checking on her.
Unmentionable, Thrilling Sex
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Anything regarding sex was dark and unmentionable in mixed company. Children were not to embarrass adults by noticing any veiled reference made in their presence, never asking why any adult was in the hospital, and vacating the room if the words complications, hormones, or nature came up in conversation. Above all, women should never refer to their “period.” Continue reading
Bitches About Britches
My mother practiced an excellent form of birth control for her daughters. She only bought cheap cotton panties because “nobody is supposed to see your underwear anyway.” I don’t know how I would have behaved otherwise, but I wasn’t about to get frisky in those horrible britches. Sometimes Mother was lucky enough to find some so cheap they didn’t have elastic in the legs, just the waist. The fit wasn’t too bad in the morning, but by midmorning, these Continue reading
The Case of the Mysterious Spotted Dog Murder
Our life with Annie, our surly, farting Dalmatian was complicated by her partner in crime, Greg, the ever-present kid from across the street. I use ever-present in the strictest sense. Greg’s mom worked nights. In a casual relationship never addressed by any of us, Greg made a beeline to our house as soon as he got home every day, hit the pantry for a snack, and let Annie out of prison. Greg was well known for investigating our premises, keeping himself abreast of what all that was going on at our house, while he dawdled about, picking things up, questioning, “What’s this? When did you get this?” We’d chat about his day. Afterwards, he and Annie would go off on a ramble, since we lived in a rural neighborhood with many large wooded areas. They were a common sight, known all over the neighborhood.
At any rate, one afternoon he and Annie stumbled on a construction site, just as a human skull was unearthed. Naturally, the ensuing hub bub was tremendous. With law enforcement and news crews arriving, Greg and Annie managed to be front and center, part of the big story. Greg was ecstatic, carrying the news all over the neighborhood, taking full credit for the entire situation. Anxious to milk the situation for all it was worth, Greg made a hasty trip back to our house to retrieve a gag item of my daughter’s, a dummy arm and hand intended to hang from the trunk of a vehicle, giving the impression of a body is in the trunk.
Returning to the wooded area near the site of all the excitement, Greg tossed the “arm” to Annie, initiating her favorite game of “keepaway.” Annie burst from the woods, arm in her mouth, ripping through the yellow crime scene tape. Greg was right behind her, yelling his head off. It was like a scene out of a Monty Python movie. Annie, no novice, at being chased by shouting strangers, headed home, dragging the incriminating arm. Winded, she scratched at the back door, still clinging to her prize. Shortly, she was followed by Greg and a bevy of law enforcement officers, asking to see the arm. She’d hidden in the bedroom, reluctant to part with such a desirable prize, but I brought it out for their examination. I was so glad not to be Greg’s parent that day.
Oh, the skull turned out to be that of a Native American who’d probably died more than one hundred years before.
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Not Quite the Proverbial Turd in the Punchbowl
Annie, our surly Dalmatian with gastrointestinal issues was not only a pooping housebreaker (see link below), she was a wedding crasher. We knew the Craig’s across the street were hosting a wedding, so made a point to give Annie had plenty of time to spend in our yard to conduct business before their guests started arriving at one-thirty in the afternoon. In the interest of being good neighbors, we’d even made a last minute inspection of their yard before the guests arrived, just to make sure she hadn’t left an unwelcome “wedding gift.”
Alerting the family to keep her incarcerated, the whole family was on alert. Annie was a lazy dog, normally content to sleep the afternoon away, snoring stertorously. Apparently, the party traffic was disturbing. She spent her afternoon whining at the back door, dancing with her legs crossed, claiming she had to pee. We took her out on her leash a time or two, but she came up dry while attempting to escape to the party across the street. All went well until a neighbor kid came bursting in our back door, releasing Annie just as the wedding party exited the house across the street. Bowels urgently loaded, she streaked over to join the fun. In all the excitement of tossing the bouquet, she escaped the crowd’s notice as she laid a prize-winning turd a few feet behind the gaggle of bridesmaids vying for the bouquet. One of the more top-heavy ones slipped in her offering, bringing the rest down like a bunch of bowling pins. Annie scored a perfect strike! I could have sworn I heard shouts of “Dog-S–T!” rising above that bevy of pastel Southern beauties. I guess their mama’s didn’t raise them right!
Coming up next: Annie is accused of murder. Human skull found in our neighborhood and Annie found with detached arm!
https://atomic-temporary-73629786.wpcomstaging.com/2015/01/21/pooping-with-brian/
Pantiless Party Performance
Connie and Marilyn were adorable little girls, born a little over a year apart. Born fouth and fifth of five children, we all doted on them, with the exception of my brother Billy, who was displaced by all that cuteness. Mother dressed them in pastel shades of the same style dresses as much as she could. Connie was fair and blue-eyed with cotton white Continue reading
Nutsrok 