They say . . .

Earliest memories

I remember being cold. And hungry. And upset enough to cry. And, sometimes, as happy as an Alaskan malamute with a frozen halibut. And I definitely remember a large dog. Or it might have been a winter coat. That part's a bit unclear.
That’s about it.

They say . . . .

They say that when I was born, my mother was sick for a spell, and had bad milk, making nursing out of the question. As was the custom in the mid-40s more than anyone will admit today, I was stuck lips-to-nipple with a Negro wet nurse named Mattie. When told the story years later, it seemed odd to me that I was wet-nursed by a woman named Mattie, since that was my grandmother’s name, and the name of my oldest daughter.

Mattie, the one not my grandmother or my daughter, had a new baby, and they say I would nurse on one breast while the black woman’s son mewled at the other. I don't remember anyone ever saying it was a cute picture, this Oreo Sampler, but it surely must have been. Being it was the 40’s and all, I assumed for years that it was a pleasure for black Mattie to say to all her friends that she kept the cutest white baby in the world alive. I never thought to ask about whether she was paid, but I hope so since I was an early teether and had the biting power of an alligator.

At some point not long after my birth, some doctor in Hope prescribed a special formula for milk substitute, which, if two of my aunts are to be believed, “took a bunch of folks a long time to make.” They say it took something like “eighty drops of lactic acid” in milk with ample stirring after each drop. I have taken it for granted for decades now, but suppose I should be thankful I came from a family that could count higher than twenty, that being the number of fingers and toes on most people.

They say I was born Julia Chester Hospital on No. 4 Highway South. In the same hospital that on the morning of Aug. 19, 1946 – ten months and thirteen days after my birth -- a baby was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother. The baby was William Jefferson Blythe III. At least that’s what Bill Clinton wrote in his autobiography. “Clear sky after a violent summer storm.” They say no one ever knew Clinton had a poetic streak, or that he knew a ghostwriter who did.

Looking back, the fact that Bill Clinton and I were born in the same hospital was no big deal, since it was the only hospital within thirty-five miles. My sister was born in the same hospital six years and two days after I was born. And, again, it was no big deal.

The hospital was later was converted into a nursing home. That building housed diaper-changing shifts for more than 700 consecutive months before it was torn down.

More ‘they say’ . . . .

They say that I was a special child, and gained attention in the most interesting ways. I drank kerosene when I was two. And, partook of a healthy glub of furniture polish some time later. Both required trips to the hospital but I didn’t suffer any long-term adverse effects. I never shied away from kerosene lamps and can polish furniture because of a case of the heebie-jeebies.
Of course, it’s hard to “drink” kerosene anymore since it’s more scarce than 99.9-cent-a-gallon gas, and most furniture polish comes in aerosol spray cans.

They say at two-and-a-half years old I read “The Night Before Christmas” at the Nondenominational Pentecostal Church in Sutton, Arkansas. I didn’t so much read it, they say, as memorize it and recite it to a full house. Some folks thought I was a genius; those were the ones that didn’t notice I was holding the book upside down. That was the way I saw the pictures when Momma read it to me.

They say I was smart enough to go to school early and they would be right; I started first grade in St. Louis when I just turned six. I could have been held out a year due to where my birthday fell.

What they didn’t say, but I will, is that if I hadn’t of started school early I would have graduated at age 18 instead of 17, and would have had another year of maturity and another year of basketball and would have assuredly secured a Division I basketball scholarship (instead of a single offer to a junior college) and then played in the National Basketball Association and made enough money to retire at thirty-five.

They say I think too much about what might have been rather than what is.

Hey, They! Mind your own damn business!