With eons of sermons stretching out before me, life looked grim. Occasionally, there was a bright spot. Sometimes the preacher told a joke, though they were rarely really funny. I truly enjoyed church music, especially if it was something lively, like “Onward Christian Soldiers.” I sung along enthusically, though lots of the words didn’t make sense. For the life of me, I couldn’t fathom why we sang about laundry, as in “Bringing in the Sheets (Sheaves).” There was also a Christmas carol about laundry. “While shepherds washed their socks by night (watched their flocks by night.) I thought it odd, but so much adults did seemed odd.
One special Sunday, God had a startling surprise in store for me. Mrs. Simmons, the pianist, brought her brother Eddie, a handsome young man, along to play the organ. His boogie-woogie style hymns were a vast improvement over sedate hymns. I could see some of the old ladies exchanging shocked looks, but I was entranced.
I was practically bouncing in the pew when suddenly he dropped to the floor in a seizure. Mrs. Simmons shrieked and rushed to his side. He rallied and they trooped out, along with the rest of her family. I was so jealous. The preacher made an anemic attempt to salvage the service, but his flock was clearly anxious to get out and enjoy a good gossip. I genuinely enjoyed church that day.
Phyllis and I had been at it all weekend. It was her first weekend home from college in 1965 and she was on top of Daddy’s good list. Daddy liked his kids a lot better when he hadn’t seen us lately, so Phyllis was basking in the warmth of his rare approval. Since I still lived at home and was a smart-aleck, I was definitely was not on his good list. His ingratiating treatment really grated on my nerves, since he was gracious by proxy, ordering me to, “Do this for Phyllis. Get Phyllis some more cake. Stop what you’re doing and kiss Phyllis’s behind again.” Of course, Phyllis was soaking all this up since only two weeks before, she had been one of the peons who had to “Get so and so some more cake, Kiss so and so’s behind.”
We took a few hours off to sleep and let Phyllis’s behind get a little rest from all that kissing and picked up the fight where we left off. Sunday morning found me in a particularly bad mood knowing Phyllis would switch into her “sweet and precious persona” as soon as she stepped into the sanctuary, while “mean Phyllis ” recharged to be unleashed on me as soon as we got home. For good measure, I insulted her again just before going in to take a shower. She pounded on the bathroom door, demanding the girdle she had hung to dry on a towel rod. I got out of the tub, stripped the girdle from the rod, and flung it out the bathroom door, and yelled at her, “Here’s your darned old girdle! It’s wet anyway!”
This was all it took. Phyllis flew to Mother, squalling so hard, she couldn’t even tell Mother anything except how horrible I had been to her. Mother finally calmed her enough to find out what was wrong, and Phyllis blubbered out, “She said my girdle’s wet. Boo hoo hoo!”
Not understanding the nature of inebriation, I assumed Uncle Dunc, a great name for a drunk, was just playful when he laughed at all our jokes and fell off the high porch chasing us. No one bothered to explain for years that Dunc was a drunk. He was one of my mawmaw’s youngest siblings, younger than some of her own children. Her mother, Cynthia, was a scandal, having been twice divorced before she married John Miller. John only lasted long enough to father a daughter and twin boys in quick succession before dying of lead poisoning. He was shot in a bar fight, likely saving him from the heartbreak of his fickle wife’s habit of spousal abandonment. Presumably, his son Duncan was the bad apple that didn’t fall too far from either parental tree.
Aunt Lucille’s demeanor didn’t match Uncle Dunc’s. She was a dour, strait-laced woman not given to smiling, though it’s not likely she had much to smile about, considering her life with Dunc. She looked a lot like Smokey the Bear in a dress. I have not seen a woman more hirsute before or since. Her unibrow and mustache dominated her round face and coarse, black hair, resembling pubic hair covered her legs, though I had no knowledge of pubic hair at the time. After a visit there, Daddy always warned against us girls against shaving our legs or we’d end up with legs like Lucille. I was far too young at the time to be aware of leg-shaving anyway, but I certainly didn’t want Smokey the Bear legs.
Most of the time when we visited Uncle Dunc’s place, many other aunts, uncles, and cousins were there. Huge dinners of fried fish, barbecue, or fried chicken were served up, the first shift to ravenous children who ate scattered about the floor or maybe on the porch. This was in the days before paper plates, so dishes were quickly washed before setting the second table for adults. By this time knee babies were nodding off in their father’s arms and younger babies put to the breast. After dark, a propane lantern hanging on the big front porch cast a cone of light where dozens of cousins chased each other hysterically in and out of the shadows. Parents visited in the cool of the front porch. Mamas rocked babies and put them down to sleep on pallets just inside the house where they could be heard if they cried out.
Sometimes times there would be home-made vanilla, peach, or banana ice-cream made in hand-cranked freezers. The evening usually ended when exhausted kids were called in for ice-cream, but on the best nights, the old folks launched into deliciously terrifying ghost stories, made all the better because the teller believed them.
Aunt BeulahAh, the fun of screeching around with cousins big and small as dusk falls and our parents talked and laughed on the porch or in the house. I’ll never forget it. And don’t you think everybody has an Uncle Dunc of one failing or another in their family tree? I know we did. Great post, one that opened me to many memories.Liked by youREPLYEDIT
http://www.salpa58.wordpress.comOh Linda, this is hysterical. I can relate to most of it and I am sitting here laughing out loud. Your aunt with all the bear hair sounds like she might have had some Italian in her. Very hairy group, I can attest to that. On the bright side you don’t see too many bald Italians. :o) Loving this one and looking forward to reading more.Liked by youREPLYEDIT
Let’s CUT the Crap!So nice to have family around you. :-D Forty cousins. Wow. Your stories are every entertaining. Woe is me. I come from a family of women once my dad passed away. Thank goodness one of my four sisters had a boy.Liked by youREPLYEDIT
lbeth1950We saw my dad’s people at least every weekend. There were seven kids and more than forty first cousins.Liked by 1 personREPLYEDIT
lbeth1950Not until I reached the moody teenage years when it was required.LikeREPLYEDIT
Annette Rochelle AbenHook me up with the ice cream… Crazy but my mom had an older brother named Duncan. He passed very young, in fact she never met him.Liked by youREPLYEDIT
Soul GiftsThe image of the hirsute Smokey the Bear is now stuck in my head !! Thank God I stopped shaving my legs :)Liked by you and 1 other personREPLYEDIT
Judy MartinThis is great Linda. It must have been such fun for you at the time. I am so glad you have such a good memory and are sharing your stories of your colourful relatives with us! :-)Liked by you and 1 other personREPLYEDIT
Aunt Ader’s House was reminiscent of the two pictured here. I am reposting a serial from 2016. Most of my followers have not seen this
I had no idea who Aunt Ader was, or that her name should actually have been pronounced Ada, but her old farm house was a wonder.Uncle C H, my Aunt Jenny’s on-again off-again husband apparently enjoyed some claim to it, because over the course of my childhood, several of my relatives rented it, probably when they’d fallen on hard times.It stood high on a hill surrounded by several huge oaks. A rutted red-dirt drive curved its way up toward the house, dusty in summer and rutted deeply in rainy weather.In the spring and early summer weeds sprigged up between the tire tracks, kept short courtesy of the undercarriage of the vehicles making their way up the hill.Though Aunt Ader’s forebears had been prosperous landowners a couple of generations back, the land had been subdivided and sold off long before I came to know it.To the eyes of a small child, it was welcoming with its deep front and back porches and wide, breezy dogtrot. An enormous living room and kitchen opened off one side with three bedrooms on the other.Fireplaces on either side furnished the only heat.Bare lightbulbs dangling on cords sufficed to light the big, high-ceilinged rooms, welcoming ghosts to the shadowy corners. Rain on the tin-roof could be pleasant or deafening, depending on the intensity of the storm. I was never tempted to stray far from the light, though the sunshine from the huge windows flooded those rooms in the daytime.
A water heater stood in the corner of the enormous kitchen next to the galvanized bathtub hanging on the wall.The old wood stove was still in use, though the only indoor plumbing was water piped in to the sink in the one piece enamel sink and cabinet combination standing beneath the window, looking out over a large field with several pear and fig trees.Several unpainted shelves served as storage for everything that couldn’t fit into the sink cabinet and pie safe.A cord exiting the round-topped refrigerator was plugged into an extension cord connected to bare light bulb dangling from the center of the kitchen ceiling.The light was turned off and on by a long string.Strips of well-populated fly-paper hung near the windows.An unpainted toilet stood slightly downhill about three hundred yards off to the left of an old barn. We were warned away from the hand-dug well, enclosed in a wooden frame with a heavy wooden trap cover that stood a few feet from the back porch.Mother was so adamant we not go near, I was sure it was surrounded by quicksand, just waiting to suck a foolish child in.A bucket hung from a chain from the roof of the creaky structure.Pigs were pinned up near the barn, though not far enough away to miss their smell, explaining the fly problem.
(Continuation of story of Jamey Awful’s birthday party, without a doubt, the most fun I ever had in my life. If he gave a party today, I’d be there!)
Jamey’s birthday party was incredible. There was no sappy “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”, no party hats, just fun, fun, fun. Mama Awful didn’t concern herself with us, leaving us on our own. Of course, we ran wild, ripping through mud puddles, jumping out the barn loft, and robbing chicken nests. We splatted eggs against the side of the barn and climbed into fig trees breaking off a branch or two. My sandals were long gone and the skirt of my dress ripped from the waist band. The sash ties were mud-caked. From the look on Mother’s face when she walked over to get me, I could see she was not happy, not even going in for coffee like she usually did at neighbor lady’s houses. “I ought to tear you up for running wild like that, losing your shoes and tearing up your new dress.”
“But Mama, we was just playing. We didn’t mess up nothing in the house!” I protested. I usually got in trouble for meddling with people’s whatnots when we went to visit, a terrible wrong.
“ Don’t dispute my word!” she hissed through clenched teeth. “”You’re never going over there again!” My heart fell. Surely she didn’t mean it!
I figured Mother would forget after a few days, but no……….No visits to the Awfuls. If they noticed they were being snubbed you couldn’t tell. We were always ready to play with them if they rambled through our yard on the way to bigger and better things. During this time Daddy brought home a huge, mean turkey, to fatten for Thanksgiving. He was a monster jumping, spurring, and flogging us with when we had to feed the chickens and gather eggs. He even got bolder and started flying over the fence to attack us in our own territory. We stayed as far away as we could, but he ambushed us if he caught us off guard.
My personal favorite among the Awfuls was Junior who enjoyed a special claim to fame. He ate bugs and other strange items. He ate his first bug on a dare and liked it, saying it tasted like peanuts. From that time forward, he was generally known as Bugeater. The kids in the neighborhood took pride in finding the biggest, strangest bugs for him to eat. Bugeater did have standards, refusing to eat worms.
Before too many days, we were lucky enough to have Jamey, Bugeater, and Davey pay us a call. “Where’s that bad turkey? I wanta see it.” demanded Jamey.
“He’s out in the chicken yard but you better leave him alone! He’s real mean!” I pointed out. I watched them head for the chicken yard, wanting no part of that turkey.
Sure enough, that old devil turkey flew at them, ready to do battle. They screamed and ran like crazy, but not in the cowardly way we had. “Whoo whoo! Turn turkey run!” they shrieked, chasing him all over the chicken yard, flogging him with their caps and sticks. The terrorized turkey finally escaped up into the trees and stayed there till they sauntered off.
“That ol’turkey ain’t so bad,” Jamey said as they banged the gate shut on the way out.
”Wait, where are you going? Don’t you want to play?” I liked them even better now.
”Nah, We’re going crawfishing over in Donnie Parker’s ditch.” Jamey replied, ruining my day.
That turkey’s spirit was broken. He never bothered us again. I liked those kids even better than ever after that.
I gave Mother a little time to forget before asking to go to the Awfuls. One golden day, she had a headache and wanted to rest on the sofa until her head felt better. We played quietly for a few minutes till she went to sleep. “Mother, can I go play with the Awful’s?” I whispered. She didn’t say no, so off I went.
The Awfuls had the best place in the neighborhood. Overgrown bushes tangled into the fence so the yard was a jungle, a great place for adventures. Tall grass and junk in the yard made it easy to hide. We chased the sleeping hound dogs out of the abandoned cars and played cops and robbers. We pulled broken boards off the barn for fort-building. Best of all, there was a big tree with low-hanging branches by the front door. “Look at this!” Jamey shouted. I followed the boys up the tree and through a window into the attic. From there, we dropped through a hole into the living room ceiling and sneaked behind the furniture into a back bedroom where daft, old grandma was in the bed.
“Aigheeeeeeee!” she screeched, clutching her blankets like she’d seen a ghost.
“Y’all git out’a there! Don’t git your Granny stirred up. I got a headache” yelled Mama Awful over the TV.
They showed us a secret way out through a hole in the floor of her closet. Pelting each other with dirt clods from their bare yard, I’d never felt so free.
Eventually, Mother came stomping over. “What are you doing over here? Don’t you ever go off without asking!” she said. “I’m gonna tear you up!”
“But Mama, you said I could go!” I whined. dreading a switching. “ I asked when you was layin’ on the couch.” I told her.
I could see she remembered. “You knew I was asleep. Don’t you ever pull that again.” she threatened. Sadly, that was my last visit to the Awful’s house.
Not too long afterward, the Awfuls showed up with little Becky Awful in tow. She was about three and overdue to join their traveling show. Daddy was unhappily cleaning out a clogged septic line, bailing nasty stuff into a wheelbarrow. Not in a great mood, he sent the Awfuls on their way, not noting that Becky had remained behind playing quietly off to the side. She was making mud pies with clean white sand and septic drain sludge. As soon as he saw her, he howled for Mother. “Kathleen, get this kid out of here! She’s playing in this excrement(paraphrased) and nasty as a pig! Do I have to do everything?”
“Bill, I didn’t know she was out there.” Mother washed Becky a little under the hose and led her home. Becky was so filthy and smelly it would probably have been easier to get another little girl than to try to clean her up. As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem. Becky showed up two days later in the same malodorous outfit.
Since we couldn’t visit the Awfuls anymore, we had to make do with whatever crumbs of joy they tossed our way. My parents had their noses out of joint because Mr. Awful had shut his pigs up in a small lot between our house and theirs. Not surprisingly, it really, really stunk. Mother had us helping her hang laundry on the line when we heard a huge ruckus next door. It seems Mr. Awful had noticed Jamey’s missing birthday shoes. “You boys get out there and find them shoes or I’m gonna tear you up. We ain’t got money to waste on shoes.” he roared. I could have told him where one of them was, but Mother shushed me up. The boys made for the pigpen, wading around, looking in the muddy black hog-wallows seeking the lost shoes. Of course, it wasn’t long before Bugeater slipped and fell, then Davey, then Jamey. They forgot about the shoes and were streaking through the pig mud. Mud showered everywhere. The beleaguered pigs cowered in the corners, trying to save their bacon. Eventually, Mr. Awful came out in the yard to check the progress of the shoe search. Finding them in the pigpen meant big trouble. He pulled a spring of grass and threatened to switch them if they didn’t find the shoes.
“No don’t whoop me,” whined Jamey. Then the other boys chimed in.
“He backed down. “ Well, I won’t whoop you, but you gonna have to git a bath before bedtime.
It did my heart good to see they could get in trouble. It’s hard to live next door to kids with a perfect life.
My favorite comfort food is biscuits, buttered hot from the oven. Mother made twenty-seven biscuits every morning. I’d wake to the squeal of the oven door and the scraping of the pan just before she called out, “Biscuits are in the oven.” That was our cue to hustle out of bed. The bedrooms were frigid in winter, so we’d jostle for space to dress in front of the kitchen space heater. When I was little, it was solid comfort to slide into clothes Mother had just warmed before the flames. Once dressed, we’d tie into breakfast with that pile of biscuits, the little guys draped in towels.
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 cup COLD butter
1 cup evaporated milk
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
The secret to excellent biscuits is COLD BUTTER. Really cold. Many times the biscuit dough gets worked so much that the butter softens before the biscuits even go in the oven. Try cutting the butter into small pieces and stick back in the fridge pulling out only when ready to incorporate into the dough.
Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Cut cold butter into flour mixture. Mix will be a bit lumpy.
Add in the milk and mix just until the ingredients are combined. The dough will be sticky but don’t keep working it. You should be able to see the butter pieces in the dough.
To roll out, turn mix on to floured surface. Sprinkle with flour and turn two or three times. Cut with biscuit cutter.
To hand roll, dust with flour and roll in flour dusted hand two or three quick turn to smooth a bit.
Brush tops with melted butter and bake 10 to twelve minutes till tops brown. Yields 12 Wrap in damp paper towel to reheat 15 seconds in microwave.
Freedom at the Awful’s Illustration by Kathleen Holdaway Swain
Mother was a cruel beast of a woman who rarely allowed us out of our own yard.I felt so deprived when free-range children passed our house in pursuit of adventure.Sometimes we were able to tempt them in with our tire swing, zip line, or huge barn, but invariably greener pastures called and we were left morosely watching them amble off to Donnie’s or Joey’s house.Sadly, we’d pine as the motley crew and their retinue of dogs disappeared down the dusty road.It wasn’t that we didn’t have wondrous opportunities on our own place;t we just hated being left behind.
Once we accepted our sad abandonment, we didn’t waste time whining to Mother that “We don’t have anything to do.”I only made that mistake once and Mother set me to hanging out diapers, dusting, and washing woodwork.In fact, she was mean enough to assign jobs to break up fights.It’s terrible growing up with a mother who turns human nature against innocent children.
At any rate, a family neighboring us raised their fortunate children with a complete lack of supervision.Those kids roamed long after dark, before daylight, dropped in for meals all over the neighborhood, drank out of from the neighbor’s faucets, rode the neighbor’s cows, and generally led a charmed life. Though their name was Offut, I misunderstood it as Awful.In her frequent dealings with these children Mother reached the conclusion Awful was an excellent name.She was particularly offended when we came home from town and found them in the house making Kool-aid.The Awful’s had little understanding of private property and had often had Kool-aid with us, so of course they felt free to help themselves, even if Mother had been careless enough not to leave it in the refrigerator.Her attitude baffled our uninvited guests.I think the syrupy floor and Jerry’s standing on the counter helping himself to a pack of Daddy’s cigarettes off the top shelf also ruffled her feathers, but she was the crabby type, after all.The loss of cigarettes were of particular concern.A carton cost two dollars and eighty cents, a significant portion of her fifteen dollar grocery budget.At any rate, she took an unreasonable stance and forbade them to enter the house again when we were gone.I don’t think they found it particularly disturbing since a couple more packs of cigarettes went missing before Daddy found a better hiding place for his stash.
When my Grandpa Roscoe and his brothers were young, they never missed the rare opportunity to attend a dance or church social, no matter how hard they’d been working on the farm. They’d work like mad all week to get through in time to ride out to any barn-dance,corn-husking, or hoe-down set for Saturday night. One fine evening, his brother George was laid up with a broken leg, so Grandpa slipped off in George’s brand new boots, reckoning he’d cut a much finer figure in them than in his old brogans. After all, there was no reason the boots should miss all the fun. The rest of the boys piled in the wagon, riding off into the night, bound for a rollicking good time. This left the sorrowful George at home with Ma, Pa, and the young’uns.
Roscoe danced every dance, not leaving out a girl between eight and eighty, who’d allow herself to be jollied around the floor. His good time was reinforced by the jug he and his brothers had thoughtfully hidden beneath the hay in their wagon. After all, the horses knew the way home and they didn’t have to work tomorrow. George’s boots were feeling tight, but so was he, so he wasn’t in too much pain right then. It was two-thirty before they left, long after the last ear of corn was husked, the last girl rounded up by her pa, and the last note of banjo and fiddle music drifted to the rafters. The boys piled into the wagon, gave the horses their head and slept their way home.
By the time they got the horses settled in and were headed for their own beds, Roscoe’s toe, freed of the agonizing tight boot, was screaming its complaints. Likely, his decision-making wasn’t the best that night, but he got out his pocket-knife and whittled his in-grown toenail, making the problem exponentially worse. He wrapped the agonized toe in a rag soaked in high-alcohol liniment Ma had bought from a traveling snake-oil peddler the week before. Then he propped his foot on a chairback high above his head, and lay on the hearth, before the fire to soothe its throbbing. Finally comfortable, he nodded off.
Aware of the smell of smoke, and fearing he had died and gone to his reward for dancing and drinking, he awoke to find a spark from the fireplace had ignited the rag on his toe. Dancing a wild jig, he struggled to rip the flaming bandage from his torch of a toe. Never mind about music or a partner!
Soul GiftsThe image of the hirsute Smokey the Bear is now stuck in my head !! Thank God I stopped shaving my legs :)
Nutsrok 
