memoir

Footloose and Fancy Free(Part 4)

 

Inez was good company, but didn’t worry much about germs. It kind of bothered Mother when she wiped the baby’s nose with the dish towel and then put it back in the dish pan. After that Mother told Inez not to bother with the dishes. She knew Inez was tired and needed a nap. Mother didn’t like it much when she let the twins run around without diapers, either. Inez did pick up the piles, most of the time, but left the little puddles. There were just so many of them. Mother was glad to see them go home. Inez just couldn’t keep up with all those kids.

When Inez’s Mama died, they moved into her house. I don’t think we ever saw them but about once more. The school board offered Inez her mama’s school bus route. Inez jumped at the chance, knowing she wouldn’t have Mama to depend on anymore. Bobo took the big kids fishing while Inez and the babies ran the bus route. It wasn’t too long before he got to slipping off without the kids. He’d gotten acquainted with the trashy little gal whose Daddy ran the bait stand. She was about fifteen and had giant bosoms, just like Inez had had, about six kids and eight years ago. Dazzled by all that breastiness, he took off with her, forgetting all about Inez and the kids. We never saw any of them again.

Mixed Nuts Part 1

imageThis is a repost of one of my favorite posts about my eccentric family. I posted it when my blog was new, so many of my readers haven’t seen it.  Enjoy!  If you’ve read it, please be patient.

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 my family.

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.Person 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 marrier. 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…

“Why in the world did Betty marry him? He was a jerk to her when she was married to his daddy.”

“Well, you know she’s a 5.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.” Or…

“You set the house on fire trying to dry your underwear in the oven?? What in the hell were you thinking?? And you call yourself a 6?”

“Look, you know darn well I’m a 6. It just seemed like a good idea. Appliances should be multifunctional. I’ve seen you pull a 2 lot of times and never threw it up to you. It could happen to anyone.” Or…

“You forgot and put the turnip greens through the spin cycle and now the washing machine drain is stopped up! I’m not even going to ask you what turnip greens were doing in the washing machine! You’re a 2 if I ever saw one. Your mama and sisters are 2′s, too!! Did you put the beans in the dishwasher, too, while you were at it?”

“No, I’m not an idiot. You cook beans on the stove. I put my rolls in the dishwasher to rise.”

Our family reunions are an eclectic mix of mostly 5′s who can tip into categories 4 and 6 when pressed.  Most are fairly regular folks, seasoned with a picante’ dash of street-corner preachers, nude airport racers, and folks who are just interesting in general. We have a couple of 7′s thrown in, reminders of what we could do if we tried. A person’s position on the social ladder is likely to be greatly influenced by his company or partner. For instance, if a submissive #5 marries a dominant #7, it is likely he or she will benefit. If the lower number Is dominant, not so much.

I was comfortable growing up in this eccentric milieu in the 1950’s. While I gave lip service to my parents’ goal of strict respectability, I enjoyed a ringside seat to periodic lunacy. It also justified my lapses. It ran it the family! And no matter how disappointed my parents might be when I messed up, at least I hadn’t been caught naked in traffic yet.

When considering parenthood, most people entertain hormone-tinged delusions, imagining their children as cute, well-behaved, athletic, and smart. We gaze fondly at our partners imagining a baby with his blue eyes, her sweet smile when’s we should have looked a little closer at Grandpa’s buck teeth or Grandma’s frizzy hair. Even better, this baby is just as likely to inherit genes from a great-great grandpa, the horse thief, as from Grandpa John, the Pulitzer Prize Winner. The baby might look a lot more like Aunt Fanny, the lady wrestler, than its pretty mama. A better plan would probably be to put all babies in a lottery at birth, so parents could credit their lumps to bad luck and the joys to good parenting for the next twenty-one years. The kids would definitely appreciate it.

(to be continued)

Now, Nobody Loves Me

My little niece Jenny got some quality time with scissors. She walked into the room holding a long lock of freshly shorn hair. She’d sheared her waist-length hair into a jagged mess right above the ear. Shocked, my sister burst into tears and fled the room. Following her mother’s lead, Chelsea, her little sister wailed and ran. Turning to her dad, Jenny wept and said, “I cut my hair and now, now nobody loves me!”

Don’t Play with …..

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Bud and I compared notes on our sex education back in the fifties.   “Oh yeah, I got one sentence.  ‘Quit playing with your goober.’ ”

I think I got sex uneducation instead.  Mother kept us under her eagle eye.  “You kids play here where I can see you.”  Should we get quiet while playing, she’d be on us in a heartbeat to breakup any attempts to investigate  or “play doctor.”  Believe me, we did not get play doctor kits.  Despite my best efforts, I rarely even got a chance to peak at a baby boy having his diaper changed.  When I finally did get my eyes on the prize, I came away thinking girls were plain and boys were fancy.  Mother was so modest that when my brother and I were toddlers we bathed together in our underwear.  I was probably in school before I bathed in the nude.

Pregnancy didn’t exist.  Women “were expecting” instead, but that was mentioned in whispers only to ladies.  I don’t know how men ever got the news.  The television snapped off instantly if a woman went into labor.   Had to get my sex education the way God intended, from my equally  ignorant friends.  I learned some amazing things from my friend Margaret Green.  She matured early, getting breasts and starting her menses at ten.  Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that the same calamity might befall me.

Margaret eagerly shared her amalgam of misinformation with me.  Women got pregnant (not expecting) when a man climbed on top of her in bed and peed on her.  The baby breathed through the mother’s belly button.  If she was submersed, the baby would suffocate.  A girl could get pregnant sleeping with another girl.  The baby had to be cut out of the mother.  I’m sure there was much more.  I just remember the important parts.

I must have been crazy.  I went straight to more with Margaret’s wild tales, sure she was lying.  Mother was so mad Margaret opened Pandora’s box.  She had no choice but to give me the very most basic explanation.  I was so disgusted upon learning the mysteries of life.  “That’s awful.  I am never getting married!”  That was fine with Mother.  However, I was relieved to find out that there would be no peeing.

I can’t imagine how my mother had five children as much as she disapproved of sex.

Footloose and Fancy-Free (Part 1)

overalls 2

Cousin Bobo was footloose and fancy-free, unperturbed by the economic responsibilities of four children in three years. He doted on his child-bride, Inez, living quite happily with her and their family in an old unpainted, farm house on her mama’s place. Despite his aversion to a regular work schedule, he and Inez managed fine. There was no power to the house, so no bills, the wood stove and fireplace sufficing for heat and cooking. The house was abandoned when they moved in, so he tacked wire over the open windows to keep varmints out, shuttering the windows for bad weather. Mama was real proud he did the right thing and married Inez, so she wasn’t about to stir up trouble, especially after the young’uns started coming. Bobo plowed and planted Mama’s garden, later helping get the peas picked and corn cut. Except for the few days he spent plowing, and cutting firewood, he fished and hunted every day. He happily peddled watermelons and turnip greens out of his old ’49 Ford Truck. They never ran short of game or fish. Sometimes he’d help a neighbor butcher a beef or hog, bringing in extra meat. He wasn’t averse to helping family with a little painting or carpentry work from time to time, as long as it was understood that his labor included a few days’s hospitality for his family. He kept Mama’s freezer full. That along with Mama’s chickens and eggs, the cow’s milk and butter kept them going just fine. Getting clothes for the kids wasn’t a challenge. Inez was the youngest of six spectacularly fertile sisters. Their cousin’s hand-me-downs were plentiful. All those little blonde tykes lined up in overalls year round was awe-inspiring. Most of the time, they wore shirts under their overalls in winter. Plenty of old tennis shoes lay casually around, should any of the kids decide they needed footwear. Some even had mates. Size wasn’t an issue. Should a shoe be too big, it worked fine to slide-style and let it flop. The kids weren’t partial to shoes anyway, unless they were picking around in a trash dump with old cans or broken glass. Shoestrings were scarce, but I never noticed anybody really looking for any.

I loved it when Bobo, Inez, and the kids showed up. Mother wasn’t always so enthusiastic, figuring they had run out of groceries and needed a place to roost for a few days. They did seem more likely to show up in bad weather, when a warm house was a comfort. Sometimes they’d stay a few days with this relative, a few with that one, moving one before the tension got too thick. 

Mother complained about relatives giving them gas money to help them down the road to their next hosts.  I know I saw her slip Inez a little of her grocery money once, after Daddy went to work.  They moved on.  We ate gravy and biscuits till Daddy got paid the next Thursday.

to be continued

“My Mama Said!”

One of the most terrifying phrases to come out of the mouth of a a child is. “My mama/daddy said.”

A mom told her kindergartner, “I didn’t put a lunch in your backpack. You are going to be picked up before lunch.”

When the little guy got to school, he told his teacher,”I don’t have a lunch. I can’t eat at school.”

Four-year-old Hayley listened in on Mom and Grandma. Grandma realized she was in the middle of a story she didn’t want getting out. “Hayley, I don’t want you to repeat anything you hear us say.”

Reassuring Grandma she understood discretion, Hayley replied. “Don’t worry Grandma . Mama talks about you all the time and I don’t tell you!”

From a three-year old boy learning to potty from his dad. “Cool penis dad!”


The same boy exiting the bathroom:  “There’s a lot of turds in there!”


My three-year-old son advising his father:  Don’t let Baby Sister in the bathroom with you.  She’ll pull your penis.  Ain’t she rude!”


The same boy to an older deaf neighbor:  “YOU CAN’T HEAR THUNDER!”  Of course he’d heard this from his father.


From my daughter standing behind a portly lady in line at the grocery story.  I gave her a look and shushed her when she tried to comment.  The lady turned to walk away and my little one chimed out,  “I sure was nice not to call her a big, old, fat lady, wasn’t I, Mommy?


My niece:  “Boogers taste like pickles.”  I told my daughter and my little grandson spoke to himself, “I like that girl.”


I told my first grade teacher, “My mama said she wouldn’t take a sick dog to Dr. Jones.  She bristled, “I’ll have you know my father is a very good doctor!”  I couldn’t wait to get home to tell Mother.
 

Monogramed Toilet Seat

My mother often said, “If you have kids, you can’t have anything else.”  Well, she was wrong.  We had a new toilet seat.  After installing it, Daddy looked around, stared us down, and threatened.  “I’d better not see anybody’s initials on this seat!”  Where did that come from?  I’d never heard of anybody putting initials on a toilet seat.

I went about my business, that toilet seat and  initials, foremost on my mind.  I wrote LDS in my “Night Before Christmas” book, LDS in the sand under the big shade tree, scooped up some mud and wrote LDS on the dog house. Still unsatisfied, I heated the ice pick on a stove burner and burned LDS on a green Tupperware tumbler.

Feeling strangely unfulfilled and restless, I couldn’t think of a thing to do.  Billy was off somewhere playing with Froggy.  Mother and the baby were taking a nap, so if I stayed in the house, I had to be quiet.  I slipped in the kitchen to see if there was any Kool Aid miraculously left in the pitcher.  No luck. Dejected, I went to the bathroom.

There it was calling to me, pristine in its unblemished beauty.  The new toilet seat!!!  I sat down, my bare bottom luxuriating in its cool smoothness. I got up, locked the door, and turned the seat up. Making sure no one was looking through the window, I got Mother’s eyebrow pencil out of the medicine cabinet and wrote LDS in tiny letters where no one would ever see it.  Terrified, I erased my crime.  The finish was dull from pencil smears. My heart pounded!  I was caught!  I got tissue and buffed it off.  Thank goodness the shine was back.  Relieved, I sat on the side of the bathtub to catch my breath.  A nail fell out of my pocket and clattered to the bottom of the tub.  Never has the devil so possessed a soul.  Grasping the nail, I scratched BRS, Billy’s initials, on the toilet seat.  Horrified, at the enormity of my crime, I tiptoed past the room where Mother and the baby still slept.  By this time, Billy and Froggy had gotten back.  We were throwing mud balls at each other when I heard a shriek from the house.  “BILLY RAY SWAIN!!  You come here this minute!”  I didn’t need to go in to know what was wrong.  I heard “Spat! Spat! Spat!” and in a few minutes he was out, still snuffling.

“What happened?”

“Mother whooped me for putting my initials on the toilet seat. I told her I didn’t know how to write but she said, ‘Who else would put your initials on the toilet seat?’ “

How long could it be before she found the Tupperware?

Kids

Camping Lessons: Spare Glasses Saved Me from Disaster

   image Dirty Dog

image

We just got back from camping on the Gulf Coast.  We had fun and I learned a couple of things. First of all, if you think you might fall and bust your fanny, carry your extra glasses.  I was standing behind the trailer trying to wave Bud in as he backed the trailer up and Buzzy wrapped me in his leash, plopping me flat on my keester. I fell flat, banging right on my glasses.   I hadn’t gotten in Bud’s line of vision yet, so he thought I’d wandered off, as I am prone to do.  He continued backing up, but fortunately I was able to get out of the way before he flattened me.

Although the fall did kill my glasses, I escaped.  I was worried whether I would have a black eye, but luckily I didn’t.  If I had, I would have to have blacked both Bud’s eyes or I would have been ashamed to be seen when we met friends later.  I was able to get the frames replaced, using the same lenses.  What a relief.  I had dreaded trying to get by with just reading glasses till I could get new ones made.  I will never go off without a spare again.

Buzzy had a fine time camping as always.  We patrolled the camp several times a day.  He got to meet new dogs, see an alligator, smell the Gulf, roll in some different flavors of mud, walk on the beach, and sleep in the camper.  His favorite part of camping is sitting on the bench seat between us at meals.  He doesn’t get a place at the table at home.

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.

Not Quite the Proverbial Turd in the Punchbowl

Pooping with Brian