They say . . .

Have you ever stopped to realize that most of the history we know is because someone said something. You know, like in "They say . . . ."

I'm presently preoccupied with writing stories of growing up in Avery, Texas, population 332. It was, and is, a poke-and-plumb town: Poke your head out the window and you're plumb out of town.

There is not a better place on the planet in which to grow up. Especially if you were me and a certified idiot that needed an entire village to watch over you.

Here's a preview:

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 tit 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 my Aunt Betty Ann is to be believed, “took a bunch of folks a long time to make.” She said 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 sixteen 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 even 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, that was a smaller deal than Clinton's birth.

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.

I don't care what they say: That there is real history and the stuff about which history books are written.