Mother

Do These Things Happen to Anyone Else?

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Mother makes use of my cozy guest room frequently  Last night she awoke me complaining the bed was crawling with ants.  Sure enough, she had half-a-dozen bites.  We shook out her nightgown, treated her bites, made her a new bed down on the sofa in the living room, but I felt just terrible about it.  I’ve always made a point to keep the room just to her tastes, freshly aired and dusted, with nice linens, and a handmade quilt.  Having her jarred from sleep by ant bites was horrible.  When I got her settled, I turned the covers back and found dozens of big and small black ants, moving in trails across the expanse of the covers.  I sprayed the bed and floor with insect killer before I went back to bed.

This morning when I went in to strip the bed, I found the source of the problem.  When I opened the door late yesterday to ready Mother’s bed, Buzzy, my American Eskimo Dog came along to help.  He frequently hides treats.  Delighted to find new territory, he retrieved an old piece of cornbread he’d apparently just dug up from its hiding place in the yard.  Unbeknownst to us, he slipped it up under the pillow in preparation for Mother’s visit.  It attracted ants beautifully.  The bed was fully loaded for Mother.

If You Can Hear Us……..

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Our community, like all small communities, had its well-loved ghost, Sally Macon. Like all kids, my sisters and Bud’s sisters, loved to play seance. We grew up within three miles of each other, so they spent a lot of time together. All the girls had gotten hooked on the Gothic Soap, “Dark Shadows,” featuring ghosts, vampires, and spooky seances. The girls were hidden in Connie’s dark bedroom around a flickering candle, calling to Sallie. “Aunt Sallie, if you hear us, make yourself known.” they chanted in unison. Mother saw the flickering candle light under the door and listened in long enough to realize what was up. She eased outside, scratched on Connie’s window and moaned, “Woooooo!”

Terrified they’d actually raised the dead, the four girls nearly beat each other to death tearing out of the room. In their haste, they ran over Daddy, stretched out napping in his recliner. In his panic, he started yelling, “Get out! Get out! The house in on fire.” By this time, of course Mother was back in, surveying all the excitement. The four girls eventually walked back from wherever they’d run, to find out Aunt Sally hadn’t come calling after all.

good pic of Dad

Are You Hungry?

gravyThat was the first question Daddy asked every person who entered his house, should they be a friend, relative, or Kirby Vacuum Cleaner Salesman who happened to be hopelessly lost on the back roads of rural Bossier Parish.  Raised during The Great Depression, always hungry, he frequently did a day’s work for no more than food.  He swore if he ever got grown, no one would ever leave his house hungry.  “Are you hungry?  Kathleen will fix you something to eat!”   The burden of his good intentions Continue reading →

Jolly Funeral Policy

Connie and Marilyn's Toddler PicturesAgents selling funeral policies were a fixture in the rural South.  Our budget was too tight for such luxuries, so Mother tried hard to keep us alive.  Myrtle Harper sold policies for Jolly Funeral Home and Watkins products.  She was a nosy do-gooder who carried sunshine from house to house, dispensing information about people’s financial situations Continue reading →

Evil Incarnate on a Pink Tricycle

imageMother gets pretty hot about a few things.  One of these is problems with mail delivery.  One day, she got to her mailbox to find her mail tattered,torn, and lying on the ground.  Worst of all, a government check had been ripped.  Somebody was going to pay for this crime!  Rabid with rage, she cornered a couple of kids who gladly gave up the perpetrator to save their own sorry hides.  They’d seen a little blonde-haired girl with pig-tails standing on her pink tricycle rifling through Mother’s box.  Mother gave the little snitches a five dollar reward after they located the child’s tricycle parked in front of a house two streets over.

Armed with this information, Mother called the Sheriff’s Department to report the heinous crime. Regaling him every shocking detail, the criminal’s description, description of the getaway vehicle, and last known address.  The deputy laughed, asking if she’d had the check back.

“Yes, but that’s not the point.  I want this stopped!  Tampering with the mail is a Federal Crime!”

“Lady, what do you want me to do, put out an APB on a little three-year-old girl on a pink tricycle?

Big Mouth

When my brother Billy was a kid, my parents dreaded hearing whatever might come out of  his mouth.  Daddy took him to the store with him one day.  As Billy stood on the top step, Daddy and his friend Mr. Shorty stood on the ground talking.  Billy happily reached over, patted Mr. Shorty affectionately on his bald head, and said, “Well hello, little, short fat man.”

Not long afterward, Mother looked out the kitchen window to see Daddy’s friend with one leg, Mr. Charley headed to the front door.  She rushed to the living room, trying to get there before Billy, could ask what happened to his other leg.  She was too late.  As she walked into the room, Biily turned from Mr. Charley at the door to tell her, “Mama, a skeeter bit his leg off!”

My cousin kept hitting Billy.  Mother told Billy to “hit hit back.”  The next time that kid showed up, Billy kept asking Mother, “Can I hit him now, Mama?  Can I hit him now?”

Goofy in the Airport

imageMother accompanied me to visit a relative a few months ago.  It was a route I flew often enough to get expedited security.  I explained to security I did not want to be separated from my elderly mother.  They saw her in her wheelchair, which she always requests for convenience.  She immediately put on her goofiest look, which is quite convincing.  Starting her Alzheimer’s act, she started firing questions at me and security.  They rushed her through.  Frankly, I considered abandoning her, she was making such a pest of herself.  I was glad when we got out of security and she got back to her normal goofy self.

Hysteria in the Night

man and womanMother awoke to the chilling realization that someone was trying to break in the house. “Bill! Bill! Wake up Bill! Somebody’s trying to get in!!”   Daddy didn’t normally sleep: he went into a coma, but adrenaline jolted him into action. He grabbed his loaded shotgun and crept to the window.  In the darkness, a tiny light glowed in the darkness of the front porch.  It wasn’t just Mother’s imagination!  Someone was trying to get in! Continue reading →

Old Wives Tales and Periods

imageI knew there was some kind of big, stupid mystery even before my “sometimes” friend Margaret Green broke the news to me in the fourth grade.  My grandma had started badgering me not to go barefoot and had taken to sneaking peeks at my underwear when she was sorting laundry.

This is some interesting information and dire warnings I was given regarding health care of young ladies after the onset of puberty. My maternal grandmother hissed these warnings at me, though she was hazy on rationale  Girls should never go barefoot or get their feet wet after they go into puberty. (She made no mention of how I was to wash my feet or bathe.). I must never bathe or get my head wet or ride a horse during my period.  She offered as proof the fact that when my grandpa’s sister was only sixteen, she was riding a horse just before she got ready to take a job as a teacher in her first school.  She got caught in a rainstorm while she was having her period and was soaked to the skin.  She got galloping pneumonia and died before daybreak.  I was never sure if all these variables had to be included for the situation to be deadly.  Perhaps if she had been fifteen, walking to her job as a clerk in a store while she was having her period and broke out in chicken pox, she might have escaped with only a few scars on her face.

Also, Grandma warned me young girls shouldn’t ever go swimming.  “Never?”  I was appalled.

Then she told me of a stubborn cousin of hers who went swimming all the time.  “Even when she was expecting!  Everyone of her kids had epileptic fits!”

Mother had her own ridiculous rules about hygiene.  Hair could only be washed once a week, and never during you period.  That was a disaster for us with our oily hair.  I’d try to slip around and wash it more often, but she watched us.  She insisted on giving us hideous home perms.  They were awful!  I was so glad when Mother had to much on her mind to to to keep up with trying to enforce all her mindless rules.