memoir

Kids Will Be Kids

imageWhen I was a child on the farm, we frequently had goats, enormously vivacious and entertaining creatures. Even when grown, they still maintain their curiosity and energy, climbing and bounding around.  The kids are irrestible, never tiring of butting, play fighting, and romping until they exhaust themselves, then falling in a heap to sleep.  It always amazed me, the way they butted their mothers so rudely while nursing. The wonder of it was, as the kids aged, we always had adorable new kids to play with.

Once, we had a nanny who lost her kid at the same time another kid was orphaned.  The obvious answer was to have her adopt the orphan.  Daddy rubbed the orphan with her dead kid, then forced  her to let the adopted kid nurse.  It was difficult going for a few feedings, but once she accepted the kid, she didn’t want it out of her sight.  She followed it at play, bleating, unlike the other nannies who enjoyed the herd’s company, glad to let their mischievous offspring romp.  She continued to nurse that kid up until after she had another, when they had to be separated, to keep from starving the new kid.

Curtis, the Church Lady, and Pecan Pie

imageWith thirty years in nursing, you can well imagine I have my share of strange stories.  I worked in acute dialysis in the hospital, so knew my patients very well.  We talked about their lives, familis, dogs, whatever was on their minds.  One of my favorite patients was Curtis, a huge man, perfectly delightful, but developmentally challenged.  His thinking was about on the level of a eight-year-old.  Curtis had somehow gotten credit at a furniture store, bought a houseful of furniture, and not made a single payment.  He was being hounded for payment, so decided the best course of action was to go in the hospital, where he wouldn’t be bothered. When he told the nurse at the outpatient dialysis clinic he needed to go to the hospital, she explained he couldn’t be admitted unless sick.  He did some thinking and called her back to his chair telling her he had something for her.  (I can’t imagine how she fell for that.). He dropped an impressive lump of excrement into her outstretched hand and was admitted into the psychiatric unit of the hospital in short order.

He was happily ensconced at the hospital, soon moved to the medical floor.  One day he walked into my unit asking for a large patient gown.  He went on his way.  Curtis was not on my mind when I heard a lady out in the hall exclaim. “Oh my God! Take it!”  It seems she had been bringing a pecan pie to her hospitalized friend from church when she encountered seven-foot-tall Curtis, walking naked down the hall, looking for hospital staff to help him with his gown.  Curtis, hadn’t seen a pecan pie in way too long.  He dropped the gown, grabbed the pie and raised a clumsy fist when the poor woman resisted.  She gave up on the pie and fled shrieking.  Eventually, the whole thing smoothed over.  Curtis had his pie and his gown.  The hospital gave the lady another pecan pie and an apology.  By the time Curtis got home, his furniture had been repossessed, so he wasn’t harassed any more.  They all lived happily ever after, except of course for the nurse who got a handful of doo-doo.

Twenty-five Dollars

imageTwenty-five dollars doesn’t sound like enough to change a life, but for me it was.  I was the second of five children and desperately wanted to go to college.  Fully understanding my family’s financial situation, I knew they couldn’t help me.  My older sister was in her fourth year, an exemplary student and model of decorum, she’d Continue reading →

Nosey Old Biddies

imageMy two grandmothers were a lovely pair.  Saccharin sweet to each other, they sat with veiled claws, looking for a chance to swipe at the other.

Grandma:  “Well , you looking healthy.  I believe you put on a few pounds.”

Maw Maw: “No ma’am.  My weight’s been falling off some.  I got some old dresses I was gonna offer you, but ‘pears now they might be too little for you.”

GM:  “Your’s would be way to big, but I don’t need ’em anyhow.  My son took me shopping and bought me six dresses when I was out at his house.  He could have just bought me a bus ticket, but he wanted to come get me in his new car.  It sure is good to see your kids doing good, isn’t it?  Did your girl, Bettie’s, husband ever get a job after he lost that one last time I was down here?  Now isn’t he the one who drinks a little?””

MM:  “None of my kids drinks.  You must be think in’ a’some o’ yore folks.  Jack’s moved to a job makin’ twenty more a week.  My young’uns might not’a gone to college like yourn, but they all got good jobs. I brought a cake.  I know Pore Ol’ Bill loves a cake an’ Kathaleen don’t have him something sweet ever’day like I always did!”

If not interrupted, this could go on indefinitely, trading swipe after swipe.  Mother tried to intercede if she heard Grandma might be about to hit the motherlode, ferreting out just how long Cousin Yvonne was married before the baby came or discover that Cousin Ross was in the pen for robbing a filling station.  Should all else fail, Grandma could hit us kids up for tidbits of information that could be stitched together to satisfy her curiosity.

MM:  b

Where Babies Come From

imageI have two younger sisters born seventeen months apart.  I was about eight when Connie came along.  Mother had told us she was expecting, but since I wasn’t interested in babies, I quickly put it out of my mind, not think thinking much more about it.  I even socked one of my cousins for saying my mother was pregnant.  I thought it was an insult like “trashy” or “low class.”  I was shamed to no end when my aunt confirmed that my mother was indeed “pregnant” and the word meant “expecting.”  Not only was Mother “pregnant!” She’d put me in a position to humiliate myself.

Connie and Marilyn's Toddler PicturesI found Connie very cute and entertaining once she got old enough to play.  Always happy to play with her, I’d forsake her as soon as she cried or needed a diaper.  Phyllis was a “little mother” and could care for Connie as well as Mother.  When Connie was a year old, Mother and Daddy announced a second baby was en route.  By now, I’d picked up a little misinformation and knew baby production involved the two of them.  They’d “done it” though what “it” involved was very foggy.  They’d alway said if I had any questions, come to them, so one day when Mother had her friends over for coffee,  I asked if they’d had to do “it” more than five times to get five children.  This clearly wasn’t the type question she meant.  I guess questions about Sunday School were more to her taste.  She invited me to mind my own business and not ask any more questions.

 

 

 

Oops, Did I Say That?

imageFor a while when I was a kid we had the Sailor Bill Show, a low budget afternoon kid’s show featuring Sailor Bill and his sidekick Polly Parrot.  Everyday Sailor Bill showed a couple of cartoons, interviewed some kids in the audience, talked to Polly Parrot, told a few jokes and made some effort to entertain us. Continue reading →

Welcome Home, Baby

imageMother had said she was having a baby when I was about eight but I wasn’t particularly interested in babies, So didn’t think a lot about it.   I didn’t make the connection when when Daddy took us to spend the night with Miss Myra, one night.  I think we were supposed to spend the night with Aunt Julie, but she’d gotten sick and couldn’t keep us, Continue reading →

The Model T and Potholes

image

Mama held me tight on her lap in the backseat of Uncle Herb’s old Model T Ford as we bounced toward Clarksville, bound to spend the Fourth of July with Grandma and Grandpa Perkins.  She was worried I’d fall out the window, though how I’d have managed it was a mystery to me with the death grip she me in.  John sat next to the other window, a box with several quarts of Mama’s pickles and fresh tomatoes rattling between us.  Daddy stayed behind to milk and take care of the garden.  I don’t think he minded not going to Grandma’s at all.

In 1934, only a red-dirt road ran four miles between Cuthand Creek and Cuthand.  Rutted and often impassable in winter. It was riddled with huge potholes in summer, a real obstacle course for the battered old Model T Uncle Herb had just acquired.  We were delighted to see him and it, since he was the first in the family to own a car.  Dust fogged up about a half-mile from home when the car bumped into a pot-hole and rattled to a stop.  When it wouldnt start again, he lifted the hood, finding aimage

part had rattled off.  Looking behind us, he found the part, replaced it, and off we went.  This obviously wasn’t the first time it had worked loose.  The threads were stripped nearly bare.  After the next big bump, the same thing happened.  He found the part and screwed it back on, though he knew it wouldn’t hold long.  It didn’t.  Not thirty feet down the road, it fell off again on a moderately smooth section of road.  He left the left side of the hood up, had Uncle Dave sit on  the right fender and hold the part in place as he slowly navigated between potholes the rest of the way in to Cuthand, where he could make some repairs.  Mama kept a watch behind as Dave clung perilously to the fender while trying to keep the car running.  It was a long four miles into Cuthand.

Wonderful Old Fourth of July

imageThe Fourth of July seemed to be my father’s favorite holiday, maybe because it was celebrated outdoors, or perhaps because it didn’t involve the stress of decorating, the expense of gift-giving, or having a holiday meal indoors with a host of rowdy relatives.  We always celebrated with his relatives, a spectacularly fertile family.  Everyone of them had four to six children, exponentially more horrible as the families grew.  Though no one ever drank at our gatherings, the wild shrieking of the kids and rowdy hijinks of the adults certainly gave that impression.

There was always barbecue, usually a goat or pig, sometimes slow cooked in a pit over night, accompanied by mountains of potato salad, slaw, sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, baked beans, cakes, watermelons, and several freezers of homemade ice-cream. At any time a squalling kid or two bowled over by one of the bigger ones might be sitting atop a freezer holding a washcloth to a knot on his head while his daddy cranked it.  There were plenty of cousins for two baseball teams, made even better if some aunts and uncles joined in.  It was a job keeping the little guys out of the baselines , but most of them survived it.

Long before the days of paper plates, clean up was a nightmare.  Lots of women thought “the girls” ought to do dishes.  Thank God, Mother stuck up for us, but if we were at someone else’s house with teenage daughter’s, their mothers might insist.  Cleanup for thirty or forty people could take a couple of hours.  that was a nightmare for just two or three.

i loved to slip up on the women in the family and hear gossip.  Should I be foolish enough to ask a question, I was busted outdoors.  I usually couldn’t keep my mouth shut long enough to hear the good stuff.

In the dusk, we chased fireflies until time to light fireworks, thrilling to the Roman Candles and Sparklers.  I never learned to love firecrackers again after exploding one in my hand.  As the darkness closed in, Mothers spread quilts on the ground as the storytelling began, delightful tales of long ago childhood pranks, old family stories, and finally after the younger ones drifted off, ghost stories, made all the more delicious because Maw Maw believed every world she told.  There is no better story tha one told by a true believer.  How I would love to revisit one of those nights!