memoir

Segway

Segway, the motorized scooter, is not for the clumsy. We visited Sarasota, Florida many years ago with my daughter who’d been yearning for a Segway adventure. I wasn’t. I’ve always been uncoordinated. I knew what was in store for me.

In case you don’t know, the Segway has a motion sensor. When you lean forward, it goes forward. I hated it on site. Had I heard this ironic story about the Segway owner on NPR before my little outing, I’d have never gone.

“Owner Of Segway Dies On Segway

SEPTEMBER 27, 20109:58 AM ET

By 

JJ Sutherland

Jimi Heselden, the owner of Segway, apparently drove one of the personal transport devices off a cliff and into a river. He was killed. Police say they do not suspect foul play.”

We received a whisper of instruction before our Segway ride began. My performance was even worse than I expected. I looked like I was trying to dance with the wretched thing. I never actually fell but I looked like a bobble-head doll. While everyone else in the group coasted along smoothly, I struggled to retain my upright position. I hated it!

Photo from Google

Ten Commandments Especially for Us

The Gospel According to Daddy

ten

Daddy was “the Boss.” God put him in charge, so we didn’t have to worry about what God wanted.  If we had any questions, we could go straight to Daddy.  He always had a Bible verse at the ready to back him up, if needed.  Most of them sounded suspiciously freshly-coined and self-serving, lacking book, chapter, and verse. Not having memorized the entire Bible, it was hard to prove they didn’t exist, like the one that forbade men to milk cows, “You cannot take what you cannot give.” Please. You didn’t have to be a heathen to see through that one.  Actually, Daddy anticipated our needs, requiring no effort on our part.  Permission to visit a friend, attend a school activity, or socialize had to come from Daddy.

Well, this is not strictly true.  Mother was free to say, “No” any time she chose.  The answer for visiting or socializing was easy.  “No. You don’t need to go.  Tell so and so they can come here.”   “No you can’t go to that party.  You don’t know who will be there.”  Or even more emphatically, “NO!  ………..will be there!”

School activities were usually okay in theory…… 1. If we weren’t grounded.  2. If one of the other kids in the family wasn’t grounded.   3. If nobody in the family had C or lower on their report card.  How often would a family with five kids not have at least one doofus with a C or lower on their report card?  This ruled out most opportunities to attend school activities, and “It’s your own fault.  You shouldn’t have even have had to ask.”  Of course, the answer was “No.”

School dances were off limits.  We were Baptists, and at that time, in addition to preaching the Ten Commandments, Baptists preached against dancing, drinking, and wearing shorts.  Even asking to go to a dance was a sin.  The sermons didn’t hold the other Baptists back, Daddy always made sure we didn’t do those things expressly preached against.  I didn’t have too much trouble with the Ten Commandments, never having coveted my neighbor’s wife, committed adultery, and so far hadn’t killed anyone, but I wanted to go to dances.   There was no commandment forbidding dancing, but dancing would have incited lust.  If Daddy had bothered to check out the kids we went to school with, he wouldn’t have worried too much about lust. Most kids were hayseeds, skinny, pimply, and inbred.  In the early sixties, we had no access to mind-altering substances to make us look better to each other.

In the unlikely event everyone had perfect grades, the activity didn’t break a commandment, and our plans could still wash out at the last minute if Daddy was in a bad mood, or one of the neighbor’s kids had behaved outrageously, causing Daddy to require us to be a perfect example.  In addition to the opportunity to provide a perfect example, we got to stay home and luxuriate in the added bonus of their lecture by proxy.

As all parents do, Daddy invoked his miserable upbringing, replete with selective memories, to reinforce whatever point he was making at the time.  If he needed to point out we were being selfish, “Once we went three days with nothing to eat!”  If Mother didn’t want to make ice cream, “One thing we could always count on.  Mama always made ice cream on the Fourth of July.”  He looked injured and almost tearful.  He wanted dessert after every meal.  “My mother made a cake every day.”  He may have thought I wasn’t listening, but I pondered every word in my heart.  The next time he rolled out, “Once we went three days without eating.” I shot back, “Why didn’t you eat one of those cakes your mama made every day.”  I got a quick lesson in the difference in smart and smart-aleck and secondly “silence would have been golden.”  My life would have been so much easier if I had just followed these commandments.

Commandments 

I. Thou shalt not do anything without my approval.  This includes failing to anticipate what I might want you to do or having to be told twice.  God help you if you anticipated wrong.  There is no recovering from that.  About fifty-percent of the time, I’d say, “I thought you would want………”  with the resulting reply, “That’s what you get for thinking.” Growl, growl , growl, growl, growl.

Approximately forty-nine percent of the time, I’d defend myself by saying, “I didn’t think…….” To which the response w.as

“If you aren’t going to think, you might as well be alike on both ends.  Growl, growl, growl, growl, growl.”

If there appeared to be no retribution headed my way, my eyes glazed over with the first growl.

About one percent of the time I didn’t mess up.

II. Thou shalt not sass.  Sassing includes anything from actual speech to questioning authority.  

Sassing meant failing to say, “Yes sir” or “No sir,” eye-rolling, or being sullen.  One should snap into a jolly mood as soon as punishment was complete show appreciation for discipline.  Sometimes, I had a little trouble with this one.

Obstinance could be anything from pouting (sticking one’s lip out and refusing to speak), eye-rolling(God help you), to disputing his word.  (But I didn’t leave the gate open, whether you had or hadn’t.)

III. Thou shalt not think bad thoughts.  Bad thoughts included harboring anger toward parents, thinking of doing something wrong, or keeping secrets.  If I knew one of my siblings had done something wrong, I was as guilty as they were if I didn’t tell.  If he knew I knew Billy stole a gumball, I got my rear whipped, too, when the truth came out.

IV. Thou shalt not ask to do things.  School dances, wearing shorts, causing boys to lust (this was never a big problem for me) or asking to stay over with friends could get you quite a lecture.  If other kids got in trouble and he learned of it, they got lectured by proxy.  I guess we were free to pass it on if we wanted.  He assumed every kid who got in trouble was our dearest friend.

V. Thou shalt not be lazy.  There were cows to be milked and hogs, chicken, and other livestock  to be fed daily.  Then there was the seasonal work; haymaking, clearing land, piling and burning brush.  Daddy was generous toward his women-folk.  There was no work they couldn’t do.  Daddy and my brother couldn’t do “women’s work.”  It was demeaning, fit only for women.  Doing men’s work improved women and kept them humble.

VI. Men shall not milk cows.  Thou canst not take what thee cannot give.  The Chapter, Book, and Verse of this injunction was never sited.  Daddy just knew it was in the Bible somewhere.  He couldn’t risk messing up on this one.

VII. Thou shalt not be trashy.  This one was directed to women and girls who without his guidance, have flaunted themselves.  They must wear knee-length dresses and not flirt or do anything to make the neighbors think ill of Daddy.  The worst insult he could hurl at a girl was “fix your clothes.”  God forbid, at best, a girl’s dress was over her head, or at worst a girl might have humiliated him by intentionally soiling her skirt, a premeditated insult to his dignity.

VII. Thou shalt never utter sexual innuendoes or dress in a way that would lead any man or boy in considering you in a sexual context.  This would be the ultimate insult to his dignity and authority.

VIII. Thou shalt not be trashy.  This embarrassment is the worst a man can suffer, trashy women in his family.

IX. Thou shalt be grateful thee has a father to raise thee right.  Thee would be in the street if he weren’t here to guidetelling ten commandments thee.

X.  Thee should always come to me with thy problems.  (Fat chance)

Cat Tales

We’ve had a few pets over the years, cats, dogs, birds, and one rat. It’s a good deal being our pet. Once residence is established, all their worries are over. They’re set for life.

We don’t have a cat now but we’ve had many, usually a ginger male. They always start out with a real name like Tom or Kitty Boy that disintegrates into Fat Yellow by the time they get grown. Our cat memories have all run together. We did have one cat who had the peculiar habit of hitching rides.

That’s probably how we happened on him in the first place. The kids and I stopped at a local country store and a sweet ginger cat climbed on top of a tire and tried to work his way under the hood. John grabbed him while I went in the store to report to the owner that we saved her cat.

“He’s not my cat.” She said. “He’s been hanging around yowling for a couple of days. I don’t know where he came from. Do you want him?”

Naturally, we did. He fit right in. He enjoyed the best of both words. He was an indoor/outdoor cat, clearly accustomed to taking care of himself. He had excellent manners, never making a mess. He liked to stay indoors in stormy or cold weather but spent a lot of time outdoors in summer. He frequently brought us gifts of dead mice and moles. We did have to watch him around visitor’s cars or he’d try to hitch a ride.

Once, John went to visit a friend several miles away. Fat Yellow had secreted himself in John’s car and beat him to the friend’s front door. One evening, after a twelve hour day at the hospital, I got to my car only to find Fat Yellow pacing around my front tire like he was irritated at my being so late. He had a grease mark down his side, so I’m sure he’d hitched a ride under the hood.

One day he abruptly disappeared. Though we asked everyone who’d visited, no one had seen him. He must have gone looking for a new home.

Growing Up in the Sixties: The Greedy-Gut Chronicles

Kids in the sixties reveled in hurling epithets that seem positively sanctified by today’s standards: tattletale, crybaby, sissy, titty-baby, chicken, dumbo and greedy-gut. Calling out anyone of these could get you in plenty of trouble at home or on the playground.  As one of five children, I have been known to be a greedy-gut, along with my gluttonous siblings.  As I went over this list with Bud, he said he was always glad to be called greedy-gut, since that meant he’d gotten more of the good stuff.

My cousins were “finicky.”  Their mama complained. “My kids won’t eat anything.”  I thought that sounded good.  Mother proudly answered, “I don’t have to worry about that.  My kids eat whatever I put in front of them.” It didn’t take a genius to see that we did. It was humiliating.  I yearned to be picky, but my appetite always got the best of me.

 

We never had cookies, chips, sodas, or snacks of any type lying around our house.  Should a bag of cookies or chips  find its way in, we’d all pounce on it, eat all we could hold, wait till we felt better, then check back to see if any was left.  There rarely was.  For after-school snacks, we had biscuits with peanut butter if we were lucky, or pear or fig preserves if we weren’t.  I  was never tempted to indulge  in Mother’s homemade fig or pear preserves.  Daddy insisted she sugar them heavily and cook them down till they candied with syrup the consistency of tar.  I’d sooner have eaten tar.  If Mother was flush with cash on grocery day, she’d buy a big bag of apples or oranges, which we’d fall upon and finish off in a day or two.  Sometimes the stores ran specials on canned peaches or big purple plums, which served as dessert for dinner.

 

Dessert was for special times, usually a yellow cake, baked in a Bundt pan.  Mother taught each of her girls to bake a yellow cake when they turned five, a proud accomplishment for the girl.  None of us was great on detail, so not uncommonly, we’d start a cake before checking if all the ingredients were available.  Sometimes we’d do without if we’d gotten the cake started first. It wasn’t unusual to substitute shortening for butter, or bake without milk, vanilla or eggs.  Sometimes a cake with one substitution is tolerable, but two or three render it inedible.  I have been known to use plain flour and not add baking powder powder, soda, or salt.  A cake like that makes a pretty good pot lid.  

Our greed set the stage for Mother’s humiliation. Daddy was a hypochondriac. At least yearly, he’d come up with a malady requiring hospitalization. His ailments ranged from flu to stomach ailments to a stiff knee. When a new doctor opened a clinic nearby, he realized he had a sore back. Naturally, the new doctor admitted him for tests, something doctors were able to do in the days before insurance oversight. He shared a room with Mr. Ivan Garvey, an affable fellow.  During a visit, Mother met his wife, Doris, and inferred they’d become friendly.  Mrs. Garvey  invited her to come by for coffee.

Some days later, Mother took Doris up on her casual invitation, dropping by by just as Doris was taking peanut butter cookies out of the oven.  They smelled heavenly.  Not realizing the calamity she faced, Doris set the plate before us.  Over Mother’s horrified protests, we decimated those cookies.  Mother tried to slow us down, but Doris said, “Oh no!  Let them have them.  I like to see kids eat.”  Naturally, we believed she meant it and wanted her to be happy, polishing off the batch.  It must have been the happiest day of her life.

Humiliated, Mother got us out of there as soon as she decently could, lighting  into us the instant we cleared the Garvey drive.  “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.  Y’all ate like hogs.  She didn’t want y’all to eat all the cookies….” Her rant lasted longer than the cookies.  We scattered as soon as we got home. We never went by Doris Garvey’s house for coffee again.  Too bad.

 

DMV

As a driver eventually has to, I had to visit the Division of Motor Vehicles. The attendant was surprisingly chatty. We got started talking about awful driver’s license pictures. I loved it when she told me they post the really bad ones in their break room. Wouldn’t you love to see the worst of the worst?


Little Kid Logic

Bud’s four-year-old nephew was a cute kid with a mouth! We were fortunate enough to be on hand when he initiated a conversation with his aunt, a proper church lady. She jokingly referred to her husband Mack as Macky Wacky Packy Sacky. Young Andrew had clearly been warned about his language prior to the visit. The warning was clearly heavy on his mind.

He rebuked her. “ Don’t say that. Macky Wacky Packy Sacky is an bad word.”

“No it’s not.” She said. “It’s a nickname.”

He studied her solemnly. “I know a bad word.”

She didn’t encourage him.

After a minute, he picked up where he’d left off. “You can’t say s—-. If you do, your mama will whip your a—!

Video

Sauce for the Goose

noteIt’s been more than fifty years and my brother Bill still has nose out of joint over a little goose bite that he suffered way back in first grade.  Hard to imagine holding a grudge against poultry that long.  Billy was Daddy’s shadow, making every step he made.  Though I was normally with them, somehow I missed this day.  Had I not discovered a note  very much like this he wrote to his friend, Donnie, I’d never have learned of his misfortune.

On this particular day, Daddy and Uncle Dunc swapped lies over coffee on the high front porch of Uncle Dunc’s place while Billy played with the twins, Fats and Little Boy on the hard-packed clay underneath. Despite the descriptive names, I couldn’t tell the boys apart.  The decrepit, unpainted house might have been sound at some point in the distant past, but it wouldn’t have withstood much of a windstorm now.  The corners perched crazily on stacked piles of iron-ore rocks, oxidizing to dust in the weather.  Chickens, ducks, and geese roamed freely over the yard and under the porch.  We were warned to watch for snakes in the shadows under the porch, but a far greater danger was the ever-present foulness left behind by the numerous fowl pursuing insects into the shade.

Daddy called out to Billy, “Son, go get me a pack of Camels off the dash of my truck.”

Unhappily for Billy, as he trotted toward the truck on his mission, he made an attractive target for an aggressive gander patrolling the yard.  Honking, the monster pursued Billy, chomping down on the backside of his jeans.  As poor Billy fled, the goose hung on tightly and flogged him roundly.  Of course, Daddy rescued him, but it must have seemed like it took forever, as the kids and adults all around him laughed at his misery.   He came home sporting a big bruise and a lifelong dislike of geese.

Mice Tales

I confess I once committed a grave sin. When my son was in the sixth grade, he had a science fair project. For once we planned ahead. His premise was “Sugar makes mice hyperactive.” We purchased eight white mice, dividing them into two cages. One group got sugar. The other didn’t. John monitored each groups activities for a few minutes daily.

There wasn’t much to watch. During the day, the mice mostly burrowed under the shredded paper in the cage. Some days later, it became abundantly clear there had been plenty going on under that shredded paper. Little mice started slipping through the wires of the cages to cavort around.

Horrified at the population explosion, I shut the experiment down. “These mice have to go! Hurriedly, we gathered up both cages of mice to put them outdoors till we came up with a solution. Fortunately, the babies scurried back to their mamas.

Providentially, a neighbor kid stopped by as we were pondering what to do. By this time John was thoroughly tired of the whole problem. “What are you gonna do with ’em?” he asked.

I don’t know but we can’t keep them in the house.” I answered.

Heaven smiled. “Can I have’em?” he asked.

I didn’t think twice. I didn’t tell him to call his mom. “John, help Stevie take these mice home.”

I hope I can one day be forgiven.

Broken Arm

Grandma lived near the Gulf Coast with my Aunt Cookie, Uncle Riley and Cousin Barbie. The long drive to their house was covered in crushed shells rather than gravel. Apparently, it had just been resurfaced, making it a bit challenging to maintain your footing, especially in areas where shell filled deep holes.

Barbie was one lucky kid. An only child, she never had to share. Her parents had never introduced the concept. Any time one of us approached a toy, she threw a screaming fit. Aunt Cookie and Uncle Riley backed her up, wishing we weren’t so selfish as to make precious little Barbie scream.

I’d never seen so many toys as Barbie had in her toy room. There was no furniture, nor toy box, just wall-to-wall toys, piling up along every wall and extending up a couple of feet in all four corners. There wasn’t a bare spot on the floor. After we’d tossed things around a few minutes, we’d even have the door blocked. A great deal of the time, we’d just be on a treasure hunt, digging up one amazing find after another. Billy would hold an incredible toy he’d just excavated and Barbie would run shrieking to try wrench it from his grip. Meanwhile, I’d unearth another jewel, causing her to abandon her earlier quest. We usually kept her running and screaming till she exhausted herself. Cookie would give us “the look” and hustle poor caterwauling Barbie off for some cuddling and consolation time. Cookie was always trying to stave off Barbie’s athsma, While Barbie slept it off, we partied.

On this particular day, while our nemesis slept her fit off, we prowled around and found a tiny, red bike with training wheels stowed in the garden shed. The hard rubber wheels were barely six-inches in diameter. It still sported training wheels. It was barely used. Cookie and Uncle Riley were wildly overprotective of their little angel and likely hid it after Barbie tipped over a time or two.

Billy, an overgrown eight-year-old, was far too big for the minuscule bike, but he gave it his best shot. He knees nearly bumped his chin as he tried to pedal through the deep shells in the drive.He bogged down as he struggled to move. Grandpa sat on porch dourly watching. “Boy, you’ gonna fall off an’ break yore alarm!”

Billy didn’t bother to answer, just struggled on. Bless Pat, if he didn’t dip into a hidden hole, take a dive, and lay howling on the ground. Sure enough, his arm was broken. To this day, he’s disgusted.