Connie and Marilyn and two of their friends had been talking about sleeping in the barn for quite a while. They’d built themselves a lovely hideaway over the feed room where they spent many hours together. On one of the coldest nights of the year, they convinced themselves the time had come. Mother and Daddy weren’t concerned about Continue reading
Storytelling
Swapping Lunches (from Kathleen’s Memoirs of The Great Depression)
I was fascinated with the twins, Velda and Melba Peterson, from a family of eleven kids on a poor farm way down in the low country. Their daddy “drank.” They often came to school beaten and bruised. They carried their lunch in a silver-colored syrup bucket and ate it under a big oak on the Continue reading
Advice for the Easter Season: No Baby Chicks!
repost for Easter: Illustrations by Kathleen Swain
No little kid should ever be allowed a small, defenseless duck, chick, or bunny for a pet. One of those four hundred pound tortoises would be a far better choice. It could protect itself and the kid couldn’t pick it up. Porcupines or crocodiles should be fine, too. They could probably hold their own against a four year old. Case in point, when I was four, Continue reading
Easter with Mixed Nuts
Easter egg hunts with my cousins were a lot more like cage boxing than gentle competitions. I had more than forty first cousins, mostly wild animals. By the time my aunts and uncles herded them to the scene of the crime, they just opened the car doors and all Hell broke loose. Exhausted from defending themselves and the babies on the ride over, it was every man for himself. God help anybody in the way. Continue reading
Bungarendeen
When warning the children not to eat potato salad that had been sitting on the counter for a week, or the need to clean and dress a cut, generally instructing them in infection avoidance instead of going into the specifics Bud would say, for example, “Don’t eat that. You’ll get bungarendeen.” He was a nurse, after all, and didn’t know better.
My daughter was in high school; her teacher was discussing various dread bacteria. Never hearing the one she’d been waiting for, she raised her hand. “What about bungarendeen?”
She was rewarded was generalized hysteria. When the teacher quit laughing, she said. “You must be John’s sister. He asked that same question three years ago.”
Picky, Picky, Picky
About ten years after I got out of high-school, I got a call from an old friend I. Hadn’t seen since we graduated. We had a lot to catch up on. She had married her sister’s discarded boyfriend. Sally wasn’t the sharpest girl around. A couple of years after they got married, he was arrested for exposing himself to some kids on a playground. Sally was waiting for him when he got out of jail. She was sure the kids had lied on him. After all that waiting, he left her for another man. Sally thought maybe it was because she got fat while he was in jail. She kept hoping he’d come back, but he died.
A year or two later, she met a guy at a bar. They had a one-night stand. A few months later, Sally went to help her Daddy cut corn. She got dehydrated and passed out. Three days later, she woke up in the hospital and found out she’d had a baby. She hadn’t even known she was pregnant.
After that, she met a guy who was just crazy about her. He worked on a road crew for the state. She was kind of thinking about marrying him, but he his feet smelled so bad, she just didn’t know if she could stand him. What did I think she ought to do? I thought it might work if they slept with the windows open.
Annie and the Hinsons
Pictured is Annie Lee Holdaway 1941
Excerpt from Kathleen’s Memoirs of The Great Depression
To my great sorrow, Annie had finished all ten grades in Cuthand. On Mr. Kinnebrew’s recommendation, she’d gotten a position as mother’s helper to Mrs. Hinson, his wealthy aunt who lived almost adjoining the Clarksville High School. Judge and Mrs. Hinson were one of the most prominent families in Clarksville. They’d had only one child, Laura, who was “sweet but simple.” They’d always doted on Laura, giving her a privileged, though very protected life. Unfortunately, Mrs. Hinson was hospitalized for a while when Laura was about fifteen, leaving Laura in the care of the housekeeper by day and her father at night. The gardener who clearly saw how they doted on Laura was able to woo and win her without her mama’s interference. Naturally, she fell for the first man to ever allowed to pay attention to her, even though he was nearly fifty. When he caught the housekeeper was too busy to notice, the old goat slipped her off to marry one afternoon.
He convinced Laura to keep the secret of their marriage until it was obvious a baby was on the way. Not surprisingly, for the sake of decency and their daughter’s happiness, the Hinsons did their best for Laura and her family. Laura wanted her useless husband. He had enough sense to know which side his bread was buttered on, so was always good to her and the children, though he never worked again. The Hinsons built her a nice house, adjoining theirs. Over the next few years, Laura had a large brood, but was never capable of keeping house or caring for the children, so Mrs. Hinson had a housekeeper to take care of the house and help with the children. Annie’s job was feed and dress the school kids off in the morning and make sure they got their homework in the evening. For this she got room, board, a small salary and generous bonuses. She had to be there Monday afternoon through Friday morning. It was a wonderful job for a high-school student. It broke my heart to see her catching a ride in with the mail carrier at six am on Monday morning, but was the high point of the week when he dropped her back off Friday afternoon, full of tales of the Hinsons, high-school, or life in Clarksville. She always managed to bring me a tiny gift or two, such or a damaged book or toy one of the kids no longer wanted. Best of all, was a piece of Laura’s candy.
Any story Annie brought me from her time at the Hinson’s was golden. Though Laura was simple, she had a gift for making candy. Hotels, stores, and high end business competed for the confections she she’d learned early to make candy at the hand of the housekeeper who raised her. Her husband was only too happy to serve as delivery man for her, selling all the candies Laura cared to make. What a stroke of luck for him! He’d married the goose who laid the golden egg!
Never Gonna Keep Up
Repost
Having attended a tiny rural high school, fearing I could never compete with those from large urban high schools, I was sensitive about my educational shortcomings. Expecting to be labeled a bumpkin and hustled back to the farm “with my own kind,” in my mind, I had gotten to college with little to recommend me but a good vocabulary, a love of Continue reading
From God’s Lips to Daddy’s Ear
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, Continue reading
Nutsrok 