I don’t exactly know when I started thinking bad thoughts about my sister. But I know it was close to when she was born.
I was five and ready for a little something to play with that didn’t have anything to do with sock puppets or a broken Slinky.
Having my own personal, living, breathing play-pretty would be fun. Momma and Daddy and sundry relatives told me so and back then I tended to believe adults whatever they said.
Aunt Betty Ann scratched my head and said in a loud, clear voice: “Won’t it be fun to have a little brother or sister?” I’m sure I nodded yes, because Aunt Betty was pretty and she constantly told folks I was “the smartest thing in this world.”
Nanny, my grandmother, who referred to me as her “special trial,” told folks – some who knew us right well and some who didn’t – that “I love Butch a lot. Somebody has to.” She also said, “A little brother or sister is the best gift God can give a child.” Nannie obviously believed her God-gift logic and followed it to the letter, having given each of her children eight separate God-gifts.
In the five-year-old mental Mixmaster called “conscious thought,” I extrapolated Nanny’s God-gift theory to puppies and kittens and wondered if cats and dogs were happier because they had litters. Human babies, mostly came along as onesies. I couldn’t understand why Momma couldn’t have a litter so I could have lots of brothers and sisters to play with.
I decided I wanted Momma to have a litter and that was the end of it.
My grandfather, Daddy George, was partial to girls and ordered my mother to bring forth the family’s first granddaughter. After six grandsons, he was ready for a grandchild with indoor plumbing.
One night at the supper table, Momma asked: “How’d you like to have a baby brother or sister?”
“Don’t know. Never had one. Can I go play?”
I took my plate to the kitchen, went out the front door and crawled under the house and sat there, thinking. Five minutes later I was at the Lassiter’s, waiting on Billy to get through with dinner.
Billy was two years older and went to school. Learned. Sophisticated.
As we walked to the schoolyard park down the street I told him I was getting a new brother or sister.
“Your dad done knock your maw, huh?”
“Daddy never hit Momma. You take that back!”
“He didn’t hit her. He ‘knock’ her. That’s what married couples do when they want to have kids.”
I knew that Daddy never knock nobody, much less Momma. I didn’t know much about ‘knocking’ but I knew that me getting a baby sister or brother didn’t have nothing to do with nobody hitting anybody.
Billy wouldn’t shut up. He told me that babies came from the daddy knocking the mommy and that it took a while to know if there was going to be a baby or not and if there was, then the mommy’s belly got big, then bigger. (“It look so big you’d swear it’s gonna pop.”) And after a year or two, the mommy went to the hospital or to the back of the house and came back skinny, toting a baby.
I went home and when I walked in the kitchen, Momma was standing by the sink, washing dishes. I looked at her stomach. Iron-face flat.
“It’ll get bigger over the next several months, Butch,” she said, reaching out and ruffling my hair. “The baby will be growing in my tummy.”
I went to bed that night worrying about my baby brother or sister growing inside Momma. I didn’t know if I was more worried about the baby or Momma. To me, it seemed like a bad bargain for both of them.
You hear all kinds of clap-trap when you’re a kid. I was told about 113 times by well-meaning adults that my brother or sister was going to be coming from the cabbage patch. Or that Momma would wander off one day and find the baby in a hollow stump. The stork thing was the stupidest. We were in Hope, Arkansas. No storks to speak of. A few cow birds that looked like miniature storks. But, certainly, no storks.
Over time, it seemed like Momma was taking her own sweet time hatching the baby. There had been the end of fall, a whole winter and spring, and still no baby. My sixth birthday was close by and I wanted a new fishing pole and some proper bobbers made from red-and-white plastic, not the old cork ones that were so drab and unassuming so as to practically shout “Dumb!” or “Poor!”
Knowing grownups in general like I did, I figured they might try and sneak the baby in as my birthday present and rob me of the new fishing equipment. I let Daddy know first-up that would not be sufficient after he surmised the baby might come on my birthday.
“Don’t plan on sharing my birthday with your’s and Mommy’s baby. It’s my birthday and it’s going to share my birthday, and that’s that!”
Daddy grinned and clapped me on the back. “I’ll just tell your mother she’s not to have the baby on your birthday.”
“Good. Go tell her.”
Daddy was good at his word. Andrea Dale was born two days after my birthday, on June 5, 1951. I think I started disliking her the first time I saw her in the hospital. She had a forest of solid black hair that stood straight up from her head. Her face was red and scrunchy. Slight slits were stuck where eyes should have been.
She looks like a monkey, I thought. Actually, I said it out loud and was quickly hushed by a bevy of relatives nose-pressed to the glass in the nursery at the Julia Chester Hospital on Highway No. 4 South.
“She’s the prettiest little thing I ever saw,” Nannie said.
Old woman’s lost it, I thought.
“I think she’s precious,” Daddy George opined.
Him, too.
I found myself at the back of the relative herd, looking at backs of knees and assorted sizes butts that ran from XS to Triple X.
Better view than looking at the monkey girl.
Despite my fervent hopes and single-thought prayers, three days later we brought Momma home from the hospital.
I didn’t like the baby much. She was too little for me to hold; she couldn’t play for shucks, and mainly just slept, cried, and ate. Actually, I didn’t know if she ate or not. The baby would start squirming and then started bawling and Momma would get up and say, “I’m going to feed the baby” and walk toward the back of the house where there was no refrigerator or plates, glasses, spoons or forks.
I would look quizzically at Daddy. He just said, “She’s going to feed the baby.”
I was six but not stupid. “Feed it what? There’s nothing back there to eat.”
Daddy started coughing “Hack, hack h-a-a-c-c-k.” He saw my worried look. “I’ve got something caught in my throat. Sit down, Butch, and let’s talk.”
I’ll reiterate: I was six but not stupid. I knew “Sit down” and “talk” in the same sentence uttered by an adult to a kid was never a good thing.
Daddy took a deep breath and started in: “Babies are special and have to be fed in a special way.” He stopped and looked at the ceiling. I looked there, too. Nothing.
“Babies eat, or drink actually, mothers’ milk. Do you understand?”
“Not really. But I guess Momma can get milk at the store if you don’t pick it up.”
“That’s not what I mean. Birth is a miracle. When a man and woman love each other, they sleep together . . . ahhh, I really hate this . . . ”
That was two of us.
“. . . and anyway the man gives the woman a present and it makes a baby. Do you understand?”
“Not really. What kinda present?”
“Aggggggh! A seed. The man gives the woman a seed, and it grows in her tummy and it becomes a baby. Now, do you understand?”
I knew he wanted me to say yes, but since I didn’t understand, I said, “Not really. The baby, that baby that Momma took to feed in a room where there’s no food, came from a seed?”
“Yes. Lord God, yes.” He ruffled my head. “I’m glad we had this talk.”
He patted me on the head and went out the front door, muttering something about going to the store to get cigarettes. I told him there were two packs on the end table, but he didn’t answer.
I thought about what he had said and then went to the bedroom door. “Momma, what are you feeding the baby?”
“I’m busy. Go ask your father.”
Between you and me, I didn’t care if the baby starved.
Showing posts with label Growing Up Mostly Happy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Growing Up Mostly Happy. Show all posts
Monday, October 3, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
God's special gift
I don’t exactly know when I started thinking bad thoughts about my sister. But I know it was close to when she was born.
I was five and ready for a little something to play with that didn’t have anything to do with sock puppets or a broken Slinky.
Having my own personal, living, breathing play-pretty would be fun. Momma and Daddy and sundry relatives told me so and back then I tended to believe adults whatever they said.
Aunt Betty Ann scratched my head and said in a loud, clear voice: “Won’t it be fun to have a little brother or sister?” I’m sure I nodded yes, because Aunt Betty was pretty and she constantly told folks I was “the smartest thing in this world.”
Nanny, my grandmother, who referred to me as her “special trial,” told folks – some who knew us right well and some who didn’t – that “I love Butch a lot. Somebody has to.” She also said, “A little brother or sister is the best gift God can give a child.” Nannie obviously believed her God-gift logic and followed it to the letter, having given each of her children eight separate God-gifts.
In the five-year-old mental Mixmaster called “conscious thought,” I extrapolated Nanny’s God-gift theory to puppies and kittens and wondered if cats and dogs were happier because they had litters. Human babies, mostly came along as onesies.
I decided I wanted Momma to have a litter so I would have lots of brothers and sisters to play with.
My grandfather, Daddy George, was partial to girls and ordered my mother to bring forth the family’s first granddaughter. After six grandsons, he was ready for a grandchild with indoor plumbing.
One night at the supper table, Momma asked: “How’d you like to have a baby brother or sister?”
“Don’t know. Never had one. Can I go play?”
I took my plate to the kitchen, went out the front door and crawled under the house and sat there, thinking. Five minutes later I was at the Lassiter’s, waiting on Billy to get through with dinner.
Billy was two years older and went to school. Scholarly. Sophisticated.
As we walked to the schoolyard park down the street I told him I was getting a new brother or sister.
“Your dad done knock your maw, huh?”
“Daddy never hit Momma. You take that back!”
“He didn’t hit her. He ‘knock’ her. That’s what married couples do when they want to have kids.”
I knew that Daddy never knock nobody, much less Momma. I didn’t know much about ‘knocking’ but I knew that me getting a baby sister or brother didn’t have nothing to do with nobody hitting anybody.
Billy wouldn’t shut up. He told me that babies came from the daddy knocking the mommy and that it took a while to know if there was going to be a baby or not. If there was, then the mommy’s belly got big, then bigger. (“It look so big you’d swear it’s gonna pop,” he said.) And after a year or two, the mommy went to the hospital or to the back of the house and came back skinny, toting a baby.
I went home and when I walked in the kitchen, Momma was standing by the sink, washing dishes. I looked at her stomach. Iron-face flat.
“It’ll get bigger over the next several months, Butch,” she said, reaching out and ruffling my hair. “The baby will be growing in my tummy.”
I went to bed that night worrying about my baby brother or sister growing inside Momma. I didn’t know if I was more worried about the baby or Momma. To me, it seemed like a bad bargain for both of them.
You hear all kinds of clap-trap when you’re a kid. I was told about 113 times by well-meaning adults that my brother or sister was going to be coming from the cabbage patch. Or that Momma would wander off one day and find the baby in a hollow stump. The stork thing was the stupidest. We were in Hope, Arkansas. No storks to speak of. A few cow birds that looked like miniature storks. But, certainly, no storks, and nothing big enough to carry a baby.
As the months passed, it seemed like Momma was taking her own sweet time hatching the baby. There had been the end of fall, a whole winter and spring, and still no baby. My sixth birthday was close by and I wanted a new fishing pole and some proper bobbers made from red-and-white plastic, not the old cork ones that were so drab and unassuming so as to practically shout “Dumb!” or “Poor!”
Knowing grownups in general like I did, I figured they might try and sneak the baby in as my birthday present and rob me of the new fishing equipment. I let Daddy know first-up that would not be sufficient after he surmised the baby might come on my birthday.
“Don’t plan on sharing my birthday with your’s and Mommy’s baby. It’s my birthday and it’s going to stay my birthday, and that’s that!”
Daddy grinned and clapped me on the back. “I’ll just tell your mother she’s not to have the baby on your birthday.”
“Good. Go tell her.”
Daddy was good at his word. Andrea Dale was born two days after my birthday, on June 5, 1951. I think I started disliking her the first time I saw her in the hospital. She had a forest of solid black hair that stood straight up from her head. Her face was red and scrunchy. Slight slits were stuck where eyes should have been.
She looks like a monkey, I thought. Actually, I said it out loud and was quickly hushed by a bevy of relatives nose-pressed to the glass in the nursery at the Julia Chester Hospital on Highway No. 4 South.
“She’s the prettiest little thing I ever saw,” Nannie said.
Old woman’s lost it, I thought.
“I think she’s precious,” Daddy George opined.
Him, too.
I found myself at the back of the relative herd, looking at backs of knees and assorted sizes rear-ends that ran from extra-small to Triple X.
Better view than looking at the monkey girl.
I was five and ready for a little something to play with that didn’t have anything to do with sock puppets or a broken Slinky.
Having my own personal, living, breathing play-pretty would be fun. Momma and Daddy and sundry relatives told me so and back then I tended to believe adults whatever they said.
Aunt Betty Ann scratched my head and said in a loud, clear voice: “Won’t it be fun to have a little brother or sister?” I’m sure I nodded yes, because Aunt Betty was pretty and she constantly told folks I was “the smartest thing in this world.”
Nanny, my grandmother, who referred to me as her “special trial,” told folks – some who knew us right well and some who didn’t – that “I love Butch a lot. Somebody has to.” She also said, “A little brother or sister is the best gift God can give a child.” Nannie obviously believed her God-gift logic and followed it to the letter, having given each of her children eight separate God-gifts.
In the five-year-old mental Mixmaster called “conscious thought,” I extrapolated Nanny’s God-gift theory to puppies and kittens and wondered if cats and dogs were happier because they had litters. Human babies, mostly came along as onesies.
I decided I wanted Momma to have a litter so I would have lots of brothers and sisters to play with.
My grandfather, Daddy George, was partial to girls and ordered my mother to bring forth the family’s first granddaughter. After six grandsons, he was ready for a grandchild with indoor plumbing.
One night at the supper table, Momma asked: “How’d you like to have a baby brother or sister?”
“Don’t know. Never had one. Can I go play?”
I took my plate to the kitchen, went out the front door and crawled under the house and sat there, thinking. Five minutes later I was at the Lassiter’s, waiting on Billy to get through with dinner.
Billy was two years older and went to school. Scholarly. Sophisticated.
As we walked to the schoolyard park down the street I told him I was getting a new brother or sister.
“Your dad done knock your maw, huh?”
“Daddy never hit Momma. You take that back!”
“He didn’t hit her. He ‘knock’ her. That’s what married couples do when they want to have kids.”
I knew that Daddy never knock nobody, much less Momma. I didn’t know much about ‘knocking’ but I knew that me getting a baby sister or brother didn’t have nothing to do with nobody hitting anybody.
Billy wouldn’t shut up. He told me that babies came from the daddy knocking the mommy and that it took a while to know if there was going to be a baby or not. If there was, then the mommy’s belly got big, then bigger. (“It look so big you’d swear it’s gonna pop,” he said.) And after a year or two, the mommy went to the hospital or to the back of the house and came back skinny, toting a baby.
I went home and when I walked in the kitchen, Momma was standing by the sink, washing dishes. I looked at her stomach. Iron-face flat.
“It’ll get bigger over the next several months, Butch,” she said, reaching out and ruffling my hair. “The baby will be growing in my tummy.”
I went to bed that night worrying about my baby brother or sister growing inside Momma. I didn’t know if I was more worried about the baby or Momma. To me, it seemed like a bad bargain for both of them.
You hear all kinds of clap-trap when you’re a kid. I was told about 113 times by well-meaning adults that my brother or sister was going to be coming from the cabbage patch. Or that Momma would wander off one day and find the baby in a hollow stump. The stork thing was the stupidest. We were in Hope, Arkansas. No storks to speak of. A few cow birds that looked like miniature storks. But, certainly, no storks, and nothing big enough to carry a baby.
As the months passed, it seemed like Momma was taking her own sweet time hatching the baby. There had been the end of fall, a whole winter and spring, and still no baby. My sixth birthday was close by and I wanted a new fishing pole and some proper bobbers made from red-and-white plastic, not the old cork ones that were so drab and unassuming so as to practically shout “Dumb!” or “Poor!”
Knowing grownups in general like I did, I figured they might try and sneak the baby in as my birthday present and rob me of the new fishing equipment. I let Daddy know first-up that would not be sufficient after he surmised the baby might come on my birthday.
“Don’t plan on sharing my birthday with your’s and Mommy’s baby. It’s my birthday and it’s going to stay my birthday, and that’s that!”
Daddy grinned and clapped me on the back. “I’ll just tell your mother she’s not to have the baby on your birthday.”
“Good. Go tell her.”
Daddy was good at his word. Andrea Dale was born two days after my birthday, on June 5, 1951. I think I started disliking her the first time I saw her in the hospital. She had a forest of solid black hair that stood straight up from her head. Her face was red and scrunchy. Slight slits were stuck where eyes should have been.
She looks like a monkey, I thought. Actually, I said it out loud and was quickly hushed by a bevy of relatives nose-pressed to the glass in the nursery at the Julia Chester Hospital on Highway No. 4 South.
“She’s the prettiest little thing I ever saw,” Nannie said.
Old woman’s lost it, I thought.
“I think she’s precious,” Daddy George opined.
Him, too.
I found myself at the back of the relative herd, looking at backs of knees and assorted sizes rear-ends that ran from extra-small to Triple X.
Better view than looking at the monkey girl.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Fine line between truth and rumor
(Excerpt from an in-progress novel: Growing Up Mostly Happy
There is a fine line between truth and rumor, and sometimes it’s so fine as to be invisible.
There is no truth to the rumor that the World History education of a couple of bunches of eighth grade students at Avery was sorely lacking in the area of an historical landmark, i.e., the Spanish Inquisition.
So what if in 1959 some unnamed nefarious no-do-gooder slipped into the school at night, wedged open the lock on the school supplies closet in the seventh grade classroom with a piece of flatware, took all forty of the World History books and exorcised the Spanish Inquisition chapter from the all with a razor blade?
So what if those students who later went to college and took history and were queried about the Inquisition trials and man’s inhumanity to man in the name of religion and responded in the only way they could: Say, huh?
So what if no one noticed – not even the eighth grade history teacher – that the Inquisition was not even included as a single line of type or as an historical footnote?
No one missed it when historical knowledge was being thrown around, how important could be it?
There is a fine line between truth and rumor, and sometimes it’s so fine as to be invisible.
There is no truth to the rumor that the World History education of a couple of bunches of eighth grade students at Avery was sorely lacking in the area of an historical landmark, i.e., the Spanish Inquisition.
So what if in 1959 some unnamed nefarious no-do-gooder slipped into the school at night, wedged open the lock on the school supplies closet in the seventh grade classroom with a piece of flatware, took all forty of the World History books and exorcised the Spanish Inquisition chapter from the all with a razor blade?
So what if those students who later went to college and took history and were queried about the Inquisition trials and man’s inhumanity to man in the name of religion and responded in the only way they could: Say, huh?
So what if no one noticed – not even the eighth grade history teacher – that the Inquisition was not even included as a single line of type or as an historical footnote?
No one missed it when historical knowledge was being thrown around, how important could be it?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Excerpt from an unpublished novel
When good turns to intolerable
My father hated his job. He had loved it one day. Then, the next, he was as miserable as he could be. It wasn’t a sad thing to see really, because no one saw it coming. The mood shift was like shutting the slats on a Venetian blind. Sunlight. Dimness. Bright? Good! Dark? Bad!
Momma explained away his unhappiness as the aftermath of his boss dying. But, as a grown-up senior in high school, I knew it was more than that. Pop loved his boss, even though they were opposites in practically every discernible way: Mister Gladdis was tall, thin, quiet, stolid; Pop was short, round as a basketball, loud, outrageous. Mister Gladdis didn’t bother to smile much; Pop’s hee-haw laugh – rising from deep inside and erupting with a gush – would put a donkey’s bray to shame.
The men made a good business couple in the small drug store in the small town in the small slice of East Texas called Avery. Pop entertained the customers in sundry ways; Mister Gladdis enjoyed being entertained, and worked hard to look as if he wasn’t involved in the audience participation part of the show.
One day in early winter, Mister Gladdis didn’t show up for work, which was as unusual as an eclipse. In the town of 332, everyone knew he has “passed” within thirty minutes of the event. Dialing three digits on a rotary phone was not a difficult undertaking. Pop heard the news from the wailing widow five minutes after she found her husband on the floor of the bedroom. He was dressed, the rumor mill assured all listeners, in his work clothes – dark pants, white shirt (light starch) and medium-width black tie. His shoes were shined to a nice gloss, his hair was in place, teeth brushed. It was a business day. No one expected anything less.
I got the news just as first period classes were winding down. James Lambert was late and had heard about the demisal at Buel’s Store where he went to buy an Annihilator (or Now and Later, as the candy was sometimes advertised).
James walked into the room just as Miz Grant said, “Today, we’re finishing up ‘Romeo and Juliet’ . . . ."
James interrupted: “But, hark, what light from yonder window shines? . . . Old Man Gladdis croaked this morning. Jerked to Jesus about ten minutes ago.”
Girls in the room sounded a chorus of “Awwwwwwww.” The boys mostly patted their patent leather hairdos and flattops with fenders and tried to look cool. I panicked. My whole life could be destroyed by this piece of flippantly delivered news!
It was like a soap opera, As The World Turns or Edge of Night. Would the Gladdis Drug Store stay open? Would Pop get to keep his job? Would the Smith family ever be happy again? Would I get to finish school at Avery? Would I have time to lose my virginity to Elsa Mahoney before leaving town?
Pop couldn’t lose his job and we couldn’t move. I had a basketball game Friday against Annona to decide the district championship!
Why’d did that old man have to go and die?
All day I waited for Mom and Pop to come driving up to the school in the family Chevy, pulling a trailer piled high with household goods looking for all the world like Henry Fonda’s Joad family hieing off to California to get away from having to live in Oklahoma. Thoughts fluttered through my head like broken-wing butterflies.
My God! Will they remember to bring my comic book collection?
What about the box of Post Cereal bicycle license plates buried under the southwest corner of the house?
Are we not even staying for the funeral?
That final thought was quickly batted away, like an attic bat with a Big Bill Tilden tennis racket. Funerals were a big deal in Avery. Next to Church of Christ singing schools, it was the premo social event. No way we weren’t staying for the funeral. Mister Gladdis was a Methodist and the Methodists knew how to send a member off right to Heaven – with a lot of singing, crying, and wailing, and a good graveside service. Chances are the widow would try and throw herself in the casket as they were trying to shut the lid. That was a growing trend at dead spouse funerals that was a hang-over from the war years. Black women performed the throw-themselves-in-a-coffin bit a lot at funerals in their churches. Whites did it less often as it was not considered “seemly.”
But when white women did do it, it was always a crowd-pleaser and talked about for weeks.
The Methodists also had their denomination’s reputation to uphold. Everybody knew Methodists always had the best indoor death picnic after a funeral. It was guaranteed they would set up a four- or five-table buffet that would have fed all the prisoners at Andersonville. Twice.
At lunch, instead of marching off to the cafeteria for Goulash Surprise and green bean casserole – it was Tuesday and that’s what the lunchroom ladies served on Tuesdays – I ran the half-mile to the drug store. Expecting to see a somber the-owner-is-real-dead atmosphere, I was not disappointed.
Mom was behind the soda fountain, leaning against the back marble counter, sipping a cup of black coffee. She saw me enter and head-nodded me to her, where she put her arm around me and . . . just hugged me tight. She meant that gesture to be comforting. It was anything but. It was worse than her screaming, bawling, and gnashing her teeth. The hug had a futility feel to it: Our lives have been tossed upside down and we’re leaving town by sundown.
Breaking the hug, I went to the pharmacy area, located behind a wall full of seldom-requested merchandise – enema bags (also called hot water bottles by the town’s widows), humidifiers, tubs of burn salve, household bluing, and the like. Pop was filling a prescription when I eased around the corner.
Intending to play the part of a stoic, worldly high school senior used to life’s tragedies, I blurted out, “Hey, Pop. What’s happenin’?”
He raised his head. I looked into his red-rimmed eyes. He had been crying. Pop didn’t cry.
I instantly turned into the Despair Triplets: Stutter, Blubber, and Cry. Pop was not a hugger, having been in World War II and all, but he held me and rubbed my back and I felt his body shake in sympathy for my pain.
After school, I went to the drug store before the bus left for Dimple for a conference basketball game. The game wasn’t cancelled despite the death of a leading citizen of the community. He was not a coach and his son wasn’t on the team.
No one mentioned Mister Gladdis. Pop told me to play hard. Mom told me to play hard. Both said they would see me at the game.
I think I remember playing hard, and I know we won the game. Dimple was a sucky town and had a sucky team and we could have beaten the Dumplings (they tried to call themselves the Tigers, but they were Dumplings) if all five Avery starters had croaked that day.
The funeral for Mister Gladdis was on Thursday and the Methodist Church was packed. In the middle of the talkathon about how great a man he was, I quit studying the weave of cotton in my dress pants and glanced up at Pop.
He had a spring thaw of water running down his cheeks.
In three days I had seen my father cry two times.
No child should have to experience that.
My father hated his job. He had loved it one day. Then, the next, he was as miserable as he could be. It wasn’t a sad thing to see really, because no one saw it coming. The mood shift was like shutting the slats on a Venetian blind. Sunlight. Dimness. Bright? Good! Dark? Bad!
Momma explained away his unhappiness as the aftermath of his boss dying. But, as a grown-up senior in high school, I knew it was more than that. Pop loved his boss, even though they were opposites in practically every discernible way: Mister Gladdis was tall, thin, quiet, stolid; Pop was short, round as a basketball, loud, outrageous. Mister Gladdis didn’t bother to smile much; Pop’s hee-haw laugh – rising from deep inside and erupting with a gush – would put a donkey’s bray to shame.
The men made a good business couple in the small drug store in the small town in the small slice of East Texas called Avery. Pop entertained the customers in sundry ways; Mister Gladdis enjoyed being entertained, and worked hard to look as if he wasn’t involved in the audience participation part of the show.
One day in early winter, Mister Gladdis didn’t show up for work, which was as unusual as an eclipse. In the town of 332, everyone knew he has “passed” within thirty minutes of the event. Dialing three digits on a rotary phone was not a difficult undertaking. Pop heard the news from the wailing widow five minutes after she found her husband on the floor of the bedroom. He was dressed, the rumor mill assured all listeners, in his work clothes – dark pants, white shirt (light starch) and medium-width black tie. His shoes were shined to a nice gloss, his hair was in place, teeth brushed. It was a business day. No one expected anything less.
I got the news just as first period classes were winding down. James Lambert was late and had heard about the demisal at Buel’s Store where he went to buy an Annihilator (or Now and Later, as the candy was sometimes advertised).
James walked into the room just as Miz Grant said, “Today, we’re finishing up ‘Romeo and Juliet’ . . . ."
James interrupted: “But, hark, what light from yonder window shines? . . . Old Man Gladdis croaked this morning. Jerked to Jesus about ten minutes ago.”
Girls in the room sounded a chorus of “Awwwwwwww.” The boys mostly patted their patent leather hairdos and flattops with fenders and tried to look cool. I panicked. My whole life could be destroyed by this piece of flippantly delivered news!
It was like a soap opera, As The World Turns or Edge of Night. Would the Gladdis Drug Store stay open? Would Pop get to keep his job? Would the Smith family ever be happy again? Would I get to finish school at Avery? Would I have time to lose my virginity to Elsa Mahoney before leaving town?
Pop couldn’t lose his job and we couldn’t move. I had a basketball game Friday against Annona to decide the district championship!
Why’d did that old man have to go and die?
All day I waited for Mom and Pop to come driving up to the school in the family Chevy, pulling a trailer piled high with household goods looking for all the world like Henry Fonda’s Joad family hieing off to California to get away from having to live in Oklahoma. Thoughts fluttered through my head like broken-wing butterflies.
My God! Will they remember to bring my comic book collection?
What about the box of Post Cereal bicycle license plates buried under the southwest corner of the house?
Are we not even staying for the funeral?
That final thought was quickly batted away, like an attic bat with a Big Bill Tilden tennis racket. Funerals were a big deal in Avery. Next to Church of Christ singing schools, it was the premo social event. No way we weren’t staying for the funeral. Mister Gladdis was a Methodist and the Methodists knew how to send a member off right to Heaven – with a lot of singing, crying, and wailing, and a good graveside service. Chances are the widow would try and throw herself in the casket as they were trying to shut the lid. That was a growing trend at dead spouse funerals that was a hang-over from the war years. Black women performed the throw-themselves-in-a-coffin bit a lot at funerals in their churches. Whites did it less often as it was not considered “seemly.”
But when white women did do it, it was always a crowd-pleaser and talked about for weeks.
The Methodists also had their denomination’s reputation to uphold. Everybody knew Methodists always had the best indoor death picnic after a funeral. It was guaranteed they would set up a four- or five-table buffet that would have fed all the prisoners at Andersonville. Twice.
At lunch, instead of marching off to the cafeteria for Goulash Surprise and green bean casserole – it was Tuesday and that’s what the lunchroom ladies served on Tuesdays – I ran the half-mile to the drug store. Expecting to see a somber the-owner-is-real-dead atmosphere, I was not disappointed.
Mom was behind the soda fountain, leaning against the back marble counter, sipping a cup of black coffee. She saw me enter and head-nodded me to her, where she put her arm around me and . . . just hugged me tight. She meant that gesture to be comforting. It was anything but. It was worse than her screaming, bawling, and gnashing her teeth. The hug had a futility feel to it: Our lives have been tossed upside down and we’re leaving town by sundown.
Breaking the hug, I went to the pharmacy area, located behind a wall full of seldom-requested merchandise – enema bags (also called hot water bottles by the town’s widows), humidifiers, tubs of burn salve, household bluing, and the like. Pop was filling a prescription when I eased around the corner.
Intending to play the part of a stoic, worldly high school senior used to life’s tragedies, I blurted out, “Hey, Pop. What’s happenin’?”
He raised his head. I looked into his red-rimmed eyes. He had been crying. Pop didn’t cry.
I instantly turned into the Despair Triplets: Stutter, Blubber, and Cry. Pop was not a hugger, having been in World War II and all, but he held me and rubbed my back and I felt his body shake in sympathy for my pain.
After school, I went to the drug store before the bus left for Dimple for a conference basketball game. The game wasn’t cancelled despite the death of a leading citizen of the community. He was not a coach and his son wasn’t on the team.
No one mentioned Mister Gladdis. Pop told me to play hard. Mom told me to play hard. Both said they would see me at the game.
I think I remember playing hard, and I know we won the game. Dimple was a sucky town and had a sucky team and we could have beaten the Dumplings (they tried to call themselves the Tigers, but they were Dumplings) if all five Avery starters had croaked that day.
The funeral for Mister Gladdis was on Thursday and the Methodist Church was packed. In the middle of the talkathon about how great a man he was, I quit studying the weave of cotton in my dress pants and glanced up at Pop.
He had a spring thaw of water running down his cheeks.
In three days I had seen my father cry two times.
No child should have to experience that.
Monday, March 2, 2009
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!
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!
Sunday, March 1, 2009
A memory not forgotten
Love is not blind. It’s like a spotlight in your eyes while walking down a dark lane.
I didn’t mean to fall in love with Beulah Faye Phelps. I blame it on a broken chain on a rat-trap Schwinn bicycle and a cold, blustery, winter wind. But mostly it was Beulah Faye’s fault. She taught me how to French kiss.
It was 1958 and it was cold. I remember it was cold because I was walking and was cold. My trusty Schwinn had taken me to a ballgame at the Avery gym, but halfway home, the chain broke on a downpush as I was trying to get more speed in order to get out the cold faster.
The bike was stashed behind Missionary Baptist Church. Not that anyone would steal it if I left it in the middle of the road. It was, as stated, 1958, and it was in Avery. Theft of property was mostly limited to the times when migrant workers invaded the town, and in a few cases of ancients with dementia who took a handful of gumballs at the drug store but didn’t remember doing it or even sucking on the multi-colored, long-lasting candies for the next week. Dad just made a note on their account and a relative paid the bill, no questions asked.
As I hoofed it down the street toward home, a small car pulled up alongside.
“Want a ride home, George?”
I wasn’t into girls much yet, but did notice the small car was full of them. There were three girls, all high-schoolers. The driver was Sarah Williams, a tall, lanky, blonde, athletic basketball player; Wynonna Warren, a snappy-eyed, brunette cheerleader who could look sexy simply by yawning, rode shotgun; Beulah Faye, an exotic, olive-skinned, eye-smiler with a pouty mouth and a captivating mole just to the left of her upper lip, was in the back seat.
I did want a ride home. It was cold. Wynonna opened the door, eased forward, pulling her seat up to give me room to get in the back seat. Even as skinny as I was – “built like a saw blade,” an uncle was fond of saying – it was a tight fit. The back seat was ultra-small. My left hip and leg burned where it touched Beulah Faye’s. I could have moved over slightly (and sat on the small ashtray ledge) but really didn’t see the need or have the inclination.
The girls were jabbering about the game with Dimple. Sarah accepted praise from Wynona for her twenty-something points; Sarah, in turn, pointed to Beulah Faye’s tight defense as a key to the lopsided score. I was ignored which was fine; concentrating on touching hips and thighs were occupying my thoughts.
“So, George,” Beulah Faye said, turning at the waist to face me, “ever been kissed by a real woman?”
My reaction was a normal one for a young teener among a bevy of good-looking high school girls: I swallowed my tongue and choked myself. If I had of known about testosterone back then, I would have thought: Wow! I am testosterone-ing to beat the band!
I tried to answer Beulah Faye’s question but all that came out were hairball-wracking sounds. The trio splattered laughter all over the VW’s interior, triggering an all-world case of the blushes. If there had been enough light, I know I would have looked like an upside down thermometer.
Beulah Faye put her arm around me and pulled me close. “It’s okay, George. We’re just joshin’ with you.” She gave me a little squeeze, which forced my left elbow funny-bone deep into her right breast.
Really, humiliation is not that big of a deal.
“So, you never answered my question. Have you ever been kissed by a woman?”
“No, if you don’t count relatives at funerals and homecomings, or Momma’s friends who come to the house on Canasta night.”
Deafening silence slammed around the car’s interior like a Super Ball.
Glancing over her right shoulder, Sarah said, “Would you like to?” Wynonna echoed: “Would you like to?”
Bravado emerged from somewhere. “This is a joke, right?”
Beulah Faye leaned more into me and made my elbow happier than it had ever been. “No, no joke? Would you like to be kissed by a real woman?”
Breaking into a lust-sweat, I screamed, “Yes, Lord! Oh, Yes!”
“Go ahead, Beulah Faye, kiss him,” Sarah said as she pulled the VW under one of Avery’s thirteen street lights and adjusted the rearview mirror.
Beulah Faye took my head in both hands, looked deeply into my eyes, moved her head slowly toward me, parted her lips slightly and closed her eyes. My eyes were riveted on her small beauty mark as her lips touched mine.
I expected a short peck, a quick release, and gales of laughter from the high school trio.
I was wrong, but not disappointed.
As Beulah Faye’s lips mashed mine against my teeth, I felt something alive crawling into my mouth! I jerked, but she held me firm. This was not okay.
Slowly, ever so slowly, my male sense overcame kid-fear and I realized the live thing was her tongue and the slithering was more pleasant than appalling. A kiss dessert. Apple pie compared to bad brownies. A Twinkie compared to fried prune pies.
Coming up for air, she said, “Now you try it, George.” She reconnected our lips (without my assistance, since I was paralyzed from my chin to my waist and from my thighs to my toes). Her tongue flickered in and out of my mouth like a spavined moth around a light bulb, licking my lips and touching the roof of my mouth and tongue in turns.
Deciding it was time to make my move, I thrust my tongue forward like a bottle rocket. A ladylike, quasi-casual recoil followed.
“Slow down, take it slow. It’s easier than it looks.”
Within the space of a minute, with her hands squeezing and pressing for emphasis or movement – not unlike I later thought the gentle ministrations of Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers – I controlled I-wanna impulses and just let my tongue do the heavy lifting.
She broke the kiss. “Not bad, George. Not bad at all. You’re a fast learner.”
No memories remain of the short ride home or what was said when I got out of the car or went into the house. Surely Mom or Dad asked about my bike, and surely I gave some answer. All I remember is going to bed and dreaming of being educated in the finer points of kissing by Beulah Faye Phelps.
I never got to thank her properly until well into my fifth decade of life when I wrote a note to my favorite high school teacher somewhere around her 90th birthday:
"My life was enriched by six wonderful people: My grandfather and
grandmother, my father and mother, Ms. Margie Grant, the world's greatest English teacher who refused to accept anything but the best from her students, and Beulah Faye Phelps, who taught me how to French kiss.
"I am a better person because of all of their efforts on my behalf."
I didn’t mean to fall in love with Beulah Faye Phelps. I blame it on a broken chain on a rat-trap Schwinn bicycle and a cold, blustery, winter wind. But mostly it was Beulah Faye’s fault. She taught me how to French kiss.
It was 1958 and it was cold. I remember it was cold because I was walking and was cold. My trusty Schwinn had taken me to a ballgame at the Avery gym, but halfway home, the chain broke on a downpush as I was trying to get more speed in order to get out the cold faster.
The bike was stashed behind Missionary Baptist Church. Not that anyone would steal it if I left it in the middle of the road. It was, as stated, 1958, and it was in Avery. Theft of property was mostly limited to the times when migrant workers invaded the town, and in a few cases of ancients with dementia who took a handful of gumballs at the drug store but didn’t remember doing it or even sucking on the multi-colored, long-lasting candies for the next week. Dad just made a note on their account and a relative paid the bill, no questions asked.
As I hoofed it down the street toward home, a small car pulled up alongside.
“Want a ride home, George?”
I wasn’t into girls much yet, but did notice the small car was full of them. There were three girls, all high-schoolers. The driver was Sarah Williams, a tall, lanky, blonde, athletic basketball player; Wynonna Warren, a snappy-eyed, brunette cheerleader who could look sexy simply by yawning, rode shotgun; Beulah Faye, an exotic, olive-skinned, eye-smiler with a pouty mouth and a captivating mole just to the left of her upper lip, was in the back seat.
I did want a ride home. It was cold. Wynonna opened the door, eased forward, pulling her seat up to give me room to get in the back seat. Even as skinny as I was – “built like a saw blade,” an uncle was fond of saying – it was a tight fit. The back seat was ultra-small. My left hip and leg burned where it touched Beulah Faye’s. I could have moved over slightly (and sat on the small ashtray ledge) but really didn’t see the need or have the inclination.
The girls were jabbering about the game with Dimple. Sarah accepted praise from Wynona for her twenty-something points; Sarah, in turn, pointed to Beulah Faye’s tight defense as a key to the lopsided score. I was ignored which was fine; concentrating on touching hips and thighs were occupying my thoughts.
“So, George,” Beulah Faye said, turning at the waist to face me, “ever been kissed by a real woman?”
My reaction was a normal one for a young teener among a bevy of good-looking high school girls: I swallowed my tongue and choked myself. If I had of known about testosterone back then, I would have thought: Wow! I am testosterone-ing to beat the band!
I tried to answer Beulah Faye’s question but all that came out were hairball-wracking sounds. The trio splattered laughter all over the VW’s interior, triggering an all-world case of the blushes. If there had been enough light, I know I would have looked like an upside down thermometer.
Beulah Faye put her arm around me and pulled me close. “It’s okay, George. We’re just joshin’ with you.” She gave me a little squeeze, which forced my left elbow funny-bone deep into her right breast.
Really, humiliation is not that big of a deal.
“So, you never answered my question. Have you ever been kissed by a woman?”
“No, if you don’t count relatives at funerals and homecomings, or Momma’s friends who come to the house on Canasta night.”
Deafening silence slammed around the car’s interior like a Super Ball.
Glancing over her right shoulder, Sarah said, “Would you like to?” Wynonna echoed: “Would you like to?”
Bravado emerged from somewhere. “This is a joke, right?”
Beulah Faye leaned more into me and made my elbow happier than it had ever been. “No, no joke? Would you like to be kissed by a real woman?”
Breaking into a lust-sweat, I screamed, “Yes, Lord! Oh, Yes!”
“Go ahead, Beulah Faye, kiss him,” Sarah said as she pulled the VW under one of Avery’s thirteen street lights and adjusted the rearview mirror.
Beulah Faye took my head in both hands, looked deeply into my eyes, moved her head slowly toward me, parted her lips slightly and closed her eyes. My eyes were riveted on her small beauty mark as her lips touched mine.
I expected a short peck, a quick release, and gales of laughter from the high school trio.
I was wrong, but not disappointed.
As Beulah Faye’s lips mashed mine against my teeth, I felt something alive crawling into my mouth! I jerked, but she held me firm. This was not okay.
Slowly, ever so slowly, my male sense overcame kid-fear and I realized the live thing was her tongue and the slithering was more pleasant than appalling. A kiss dessert. Apple pie compared to bad brownies. A Twinkie compared to fried prune pies.
Coming up for air, she said, “Now you try it, George.” She reconnected our lips (without my assistance, since I was paralyzed from my chin to my waist and from my thighs to my toes). Her tongue flickered in and out of my mouth like a spavined moth around a light bulb, licking my lips and touching the roof of my mouth and tongue in turns.
Deciding it was time to make my move, I thrust my tongue forward like a bottle rocket. A ladylike, quasi-casual recoil followed.
“Slow down, take it slow. It’s easier than it looks.”
Within the space of a minute, with her hands squeezing and pressing for emphasis or movement – not unlike I later thought the gentle ministrations of Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers – I controlled I-wanna impulses and just let my tongue do the heavy lifting.
She broke the kiss. “Not bad, George. Not bad at all. You’re a fast learner.”
No memories remain of the short ride home or what was said when I got out of the car or went into the house. Surely Mom or Dad asked about my bike, and surely I gave some answer. All I remember is going to bed and dreaming of being educated in the finer points of kissing by Beulah Faye Phelps.
I never got to thank her properly until well into my fifth decade of life when I wrote a note to my favorite high school teacher somewhere around her 90th birthday:
"My life was enriched by six wonderful people: My grandfather and
grandmother, my father and mother, Ms. Margie Grant, the world's greatest English teacher who refused to accept anything but the best from her students, and Beulah Faye Phelps, who taught me how to French kiss.
"I am a better person because of all of their efforts on my behalf."
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Visting Miz Pearl
(I grew up in Avery, Texas, population 332. Avery was a stable population town, and as a 1950s comedian could of said: "Every time a baby is born, some man leaves town. Avery was a poke-and-plumb town: Poke your head out the window and you're plumb out of town." As an industrial ADHDer, I always had a couple or five jobs. Newspaper carrier was one of them.)
Miz Pearl Williams was one the 92 paper customers who took both afternoon daily editions. She was one of the three stops I made on the route. On most days Miz Pearl offered me a couple of homemade cookies (sugar cookies or oatmeal raisin); when it was hot, there was lemonade or sugary ice tea; when it was cold, hot chocolate.
She always looked the same, dressed the same, near as I can remember: kind face with single-track, deep age-ravines down both cheeks; white hair pulled back tight, stoppered with a bun that was ordained not to come undone; dark dress with a white, crocheted collar.
Like most of the elderly women in Avery, she was lonely and seemed extraordinarily pleased that I would take a few minutes to stop and talk. (I liked her okay, but the cookies were the real drawing card.)
She was forgetful and when she couldn’t call my name, she’s look at me with her bird eyes -- pupils the size of lentils -- and nod and say, “Ed and Brownie’s boy.” It became a game we played.
The look and nod: “Ed and Brownie’s boy.”
Yes, ma’m,” I’d counter, “today and every day.”
And she’d throw back her head and laugh the silent laugh of the dentured elderly.
One wintery day, with a cold north wind ripping tears from my eyes as I pedaled as hard as I could to get through with the route, I fishtailed the Schwinn on her front lawn to parallel park it next to the warped, unpainted front porch.
Hot chocolate, here I come.
She pushed open the door before I could knock. “Hurry up, George. Don’t let all the warm out.”
Skittering through the opening sideways, I put the papers on the end table by her reading chair.
I eyed the plate of cookies sitting on the coffee table by the spavined couch.
“Get you a ginger cookie and I’ll get you something hot to drink. No problems on the route today, I reckon.” Without waiting for a response, she fluttered into the kitchen.
Ginger cookie? Ginger cookie? Where’s the oatmeal raisin?
A tentative nibble. Tart with a hint of sugar and an aftertaste of something tart-y. Not aversive, but not oatmeal raisin or sugar cookie either.
Miz Williams brought in a little tray and placed it on the coffee table. She handed me a cup with a finger hole only slightly larger than the eye of a needle. Afraid of not being able to hold the cup by the handled, I picked it up with both hands. Inside was a clearish, yellow-brown liquid with a small green leaf floating on the surface.
“Hot tea,” she said, I suppose in response to my facial expression. "Hot tea will warm you up better than hot chocolate on a day like this and it tastes better with ginger cookies.”
After blowing on it until I almost hyperventilated, I took a sip. Expecting something like iced tea only hot, the tea was . . . fruity with a hint of wood and a whop of something else.
“Mint,” Miz Williams said. “The leaf is a mint leaf.”
(Ginger cookies and hot tea. What’s she gonna come up with next . . . hot lemon juice and kerosene, served with turnip turnovers?)
As always, she asked about my day at school and told me what had occupied her time. (Always the same: Breakfast, clean the house, read yesterday’s papers again, clean, lunch, clean and wait on the delivery of the afternoon papers.)
After two cookies and draining the thimble of tea, I told her I had to get back to work, knowing she would go into her goodbye spiel. Hot or cold, the goodbye speech seldom varied.
As I was putting on my jacket and thin gloves, Miz Williams directed my attention to a yellowed show bill poster near the front door. “You know, this is my son Billy, the band leader.”
Billy Williams was the leader of an orchestra that was a headliner in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Daddy knew of him and had even seen him once in St. Louis when his band was known as the Billy Williams Orchestra. He was the band that backed tenor Stubby Kaye. The band’s show bill motto was: “Swing and Sway with Stubby Kaye.”
“My Billy is coming to visit in the summer.”
In a town the size of Avery, a person as famous as Billy Williams visiting would be big news. I never heard of him visiting. I hope he did and I hope it made his mama happy.
Miz Pearl Williams was one the 92 paper customers who took both afternoon daily editions. She was one of the three stops I made on the route. On most days Miz Pearl offered me a couple of homemade cookies (sugar cookies or oatmeal raisin); when it was hot, there was lemonade or sugary ice tea; when it was cold, hot chocolate.
She always looked the same, dressed the same, near as I can remember: kind face with single-track, deep age-ravines down both cheeks; white hair pulled back tight, stoppered with a bun that was ordained not to come undone; dark dress with a white, crocheted collar.
Like most of the elderly women in Avery, she was lonely and seemed extraordinarily pleased that I would take a few minutes to stop and talk. (I liked her okay, but the cookies were the real drawing card.)
She was forgetful and when she couldn’t call my name, she’s look at me with her bird eyes -- pupils the size of lentils -- and nod and say, “Ed and Brownie’s boy.” It became a game we played.
The look and nod: “Ed and Brownie’s boy.”
Yes, ma’m,” I’d counter, “today and every day.”
And she’d throw back her head and laugh the silent laugh of the dentured elderly.
One wintery day, with a cold north wind ripping tears from my eyes as I pedaled as hard as I could to get through with the route, I fishtailed the Schwinn on her front lawn to parallel park it next to the warped, unpainted front porch.
Hot chocolate, here I come.
She pushed open the door before I could knock. “Hurry up, George. Don’t let all the warm out.”
Skittering through the opening sideways, I put the papers on the end table by her reading chair.
I eyed the plate of cookies sitting on the coffee table by the spavined couch.
“Get you a ginger cookie and I’ll get you something hot to drink. No problems on the route today, I reckon.” Without waiting for a response, she fluttered into the kitchen.
Ginger cookie? Ginger cookie? Where’s the oatmeal raisin?
A tentative nibble. Tart with a hint of sugar and an aftertaste of something tart-y. Not aversive, but not oatmeal raisin or sugar cookie either.
Miz Williams brought in a little tray and placed it on the coffee table. She handed me a cup with a finger hole only slightly larger than the eye of a needle. Afraid of not being able to hold the cup by the handled, I picked it up with both hands. Inside was a clearish, yellow-brown liquid with a small green leaf floating on the surface.
“Hot tea,” she said, I suppose in response to my facial expression. "Hot tea will warm you up better than hot chocolate on a day like this and it tastes better with ginger cookies.”
After blowing on it until I almost hyperventilated, I took a sip. Expecting something like iced tea only hot, the tea was . . . fruity with a hint of wood and a whop of something else.
“Mint,” Miz Williams said. “The leaf is a mint leaf.”
(Ginger cookies and hot tea. What’s she gonna come up with next . . . hot lemon juice and kerosene, served with turnip turnovers?)
As always, she asked about my day at school and told me what had occupied her time. (Always the same: Breakfast, clean the house, read yesterday’s papers again, clean, lunch, clean and wait on the delivery of the afternoon papers.)
After two cookies and draining the thimble of tea, I told her I had to get back to work, knowing she would go into her goodbye spiel. Hot or cold, the goodbye speech seldom varied.
As I was putting on my jacket and thin gloves, Miz Williams directed my attention to a yellowed show bill poster near the front door. “You know, this is my son Billy, the band leader.”
Billy Williams was the leader of an orchestra that was a headliner in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Daddy knew of him and had even seen him once in St. Louis when his band was known as the Billy Williams Orchestra. He was the band that backed tenor Stubby Kaye. The band’s show bill motto was: “Swing and Sway with Stubby Kaye.”
“My Billy is coming to visit in the summer.”
In a town the size of Avery, a person as famous as Billy Williams visiting would be big news. I never heard of him visiting. I hope he did and I hope it made his mama happy.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Remembering the goodness
By the time I was twelve, I had read the Bible cover to cover – twice. Once was to win an award at the Baptist version of Bible Olympics in a conclave known as the Royal Ambassadors; the other was because I wanted to see if what I read the first time made sense with a second reading.
The Royal Ambassadors youth group was a requirement of small-town Baptist churches, being there was not much to do and going to church meeting and memorizing Bible verses kept a whole passel of us from going to kid prison.
I was what English teachers pleasantly called “a reader.” My recognition came in the sense of “You know he’s a mean, little s^*t, but . . . he IS a reader.
I would read practically anything that had words printed in it or on it. In addition to reading the ingredients on Mom’s lotions and feminine hygiene products, I read the Bible more than most folks, except preachers, one can suppose. I didn’t read just the sexy part about he-ing and she-ing and incest and murdering and bloody battles. Proverbs. Psalms and Song of Solomon had nice phrasing on occasion and were the only Old Testament books I gave a whit about. I took particular pleasure in finding discrepancies between various New Testament chapters, i.e., the burning bush scene as told by two different disciples, and the Last Supper seating arrangement mix-up in Matthew and Mark, which could have easily been eliminated with name cards.
I read Revelations one summer and was so shocked, I read the sucker again. Without a doubt, that chapter was a biblical afterthought. In my mind, it was the Scary Clown chapter of a pretty good book. After the second scan-through, I thought: Why? Why is it in the Bible, and if it’s got to be there, why isn’t it in the Old Testament? That’s where most of the faith’s worry-wart words found a home.
Based on the Revelations stories, I made my first free-thought religious decision and announced it during a Sunday School class full of high school students.
Missus Beatitude Flounce (pronounced Flounc-say) was getting heavy into the story about Samson and Delilah when, without thinking, I exclaimed: “Revelations is just plain dumb and ought to be torn out of every Bible there is. And that includes the St. James version.”
She stopped talking about Samson’s shorn locks and looked at me. If “chagrin” could be a face, she had it.
“Wha-what?”
I repeated the statement word for word, adding, “Who ever wrote it is a slap-dab idiot and if it’s got to stay in, then it needs to be moved up a couple of hundred pages somewhere south of Deuteronomy.”
Missus Flounce gave a squeak, a sound akin to a mouse that got caught under a rocking chair runner. “Why, why, why . . . that’s blasphemy!” She said the word like a cuss word, but I couldn’t quickly conjure up a single good cuss word that had three syllables. Most of the good ones jumped from one syllable to four. I finally thought of one with three syllable, but it made me think of the story of Sodom and I shuddered and cast the word right out of my consciousness.
Being 15 and a hormonal smartass, I bowed up. “When’s the last time you read it? I read it this week and it makes no sense for it to be in the New Testament. It should be tossed out or moved up there with the Old Testament where the hell and firestone and brimwhatever is.”
Without saying another word, she streaked out of the room.
“Why’d you go and say that for?” Titus Mitchell asked. “She was just getting to the good Samson and Delilah part, where she comes in and ‘lays’ with him. That’s my favorite part.”
“Have you read Revelations?”
He shook his head.
“Then shut the hell up!”
He squeaked and slapped hand muffs over his ears. The entire class leaned back from me. Cussing in church was expected to draw a vengeful lightning bolt and was reserved for visiting evangelists trying to make a point. You know, like in “GOD! Damn SIN!”
I was trying to explain my position to my mortified classmates – “If you read it, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s a bunch of crap.” Not getting turned into a fried crispy critter from a heavenly lightning bolt with the first cuss word emboldened me.
The teacher charged through the door, pulling the preacher in her wake, using his tie as a come-along. Reverend Josiah Ben Beecham didn’t look happy. He didn’t look particularly mad. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but in that Sunday School room.
Missus Flounce’s face was red, her neck and forehead veins pounded, saliva dripped from the right side of her mouth. She pointed an arthritic pointer finger at the space between my eyes and screeched: “Tell Reverend Beecham what you said! Tell him!”
All the other kids were looking for escape holes in case she exploded.
“What did I say? I just mentioned casually that Revelations is not my favorite book of the Bible and that, in my opinion, it could easily be a part of the Old Testament.”
Her red face flushed purple. “Liar! Blasphemer!” she screamed, propelling a wad of gooey spit on my new pants. She turned on the reverend. “Well?” Except it wasn’t a normal “Well?” This “well” came with four syllables: “We-aa-ll-ll?”
The preacher wrinkled his face up like he smelled a rotten egg. “George, get up and come with me.” He turned to Missus Flounce. “Beatitude, let me handle this. I know exactly what to do,” he said, while looking like he didn’t have a clue.
I thought he was going to take me to his office and beat the living devil right out of me. He could, you know. Preachers and school principals could beat just about anybody but girls in the days before beatings were outlawed for some strange reason or another. Instead he led me out the side door of the church, and around back to his car, a 1956 Ford Fairlane. Black and white with contrasting fender skirts, curb feelers and a miniature fuzzy Bible hanging from the rear-view mirror.
Motioning me to go to the passenger’s side, he got in, cranked up the car he called “Leviticus” and drove out of the grass parking lot.
Oh, God! I thought. He’s taking me to Avery Lake and going to drown me and make up a story about how I died during a baptizing practice!
He reached under his seat and I grabbed the door handle, ready to throw myself from the car if he came out with a gun or knife or tire tool. When he finally drew his hand from the shadowy floorboard area, it held only a partially crushed pack of Pall Malls. “Punch in the lighter, will ya?” he asked offhandedly as he popped one cigarette out with a practiced twirly-wrist maneuver. He retrieved the ready lighter, lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, held the smoke deep in his lungs, and exhaled a bilious cloud of blue-gray smoke. It hung on the ceiling like a cloudy apocalypse.
Two blocks later he turned onto Highway 82. “Revelations is not my favorite book of the Bible either. I agree with you about it being in the Old Testament or altogether rejected.”
He said other stuff about how the Bible must be taken in its entirety and how for everything there is a season, blah-blah-blah, and how some people get comfort from parts of Revelations although he personally didn’t understand that. But by that time I had quit listening.
I remember the important part: The preacher agreed with me.
I didn’t expect him to proclaim that fact from the pulpit. Then or ever.
And, he did not disappoint me.
He drove back to the church, hit around back and parked. As I started to get out, he put his hand on my shoulder. “Please try to not get on Missus Flounce’s single nerve. She might have a heart attack and before she died, I’ll have to listen to her talk about God saving a seat for her on the Train to Heaven. If you promise not to upset her I won’t preach a single sermon on the evils of self-gratification or juvenile fornication for a whole year.”
Reverend Beecham should’ve been in sales.
The Royal Ambassadors youth group was a requirement of small-town Baptist churches, being there was not much to do and going to church meeting and memorizing Bible verses kept a whole passel of us from going to kid prison.
I was what English teachers pleasantly called “a reader.” My recognition came in the sense of “You know he’s a mean, little s^*t, but . . . he IS a reader.
I would read practically anything that had words printed in it or on it. In addition to reading the ingredients on Mom’s lotions and feminine hygiene products, I read the Bible more than most folks, except preachers, one can suppose. I didn’t read just the sexy part about he-ing and she-ing and incest and murdering and bloody battles. Proverbs. Psalms and Song of Solomon had nice phrasing on occasion and were the only Old Testament books I gave a whit about. I took particular pleasure in finding discrepancies between various New Testament chapters, i.e., the burning bush scene as told by two different disciples, and the Last Supper seating arrangement mix-up in Matthew and Mark, which could have easily been eliminated with name cards.
I read Revelations one summer and was so shocked, I read the sucker again. Without a doubt, that chapter was a biblical afterthought. In my mind, it was the Scary Clown chapter of a pretty good book. After the second scan-through, I thought: Why? Why is it in the Bible, and if it’s got to be there, why isn’t it in the Old Testament? That’s where most of the faith’s worry-wart words found a home.
Based on the Revelations stories, I made my first free-thought religious decision and announced it during a Sunday School class full of high school students.
Missus Beatitude Flounce (pronounced Flounc-say) was getting heavy into the story about Samson and Delilah when, without thinking, I exclaimed: “Revelations is just plain dumb and ought to be torn out of every Bible there is. And that includes the St. James version.”
She stopped talking about Samson’s shorn locks and looked at me. If “chagrin” could be a face, she had it.
“Wha-what?”
I repeated the statement word for word, adding, “Who ever wrote it is a slap-dab idiot and if it’s got to stay in, then it needs to be moved up a couple of hundred pages somewhere south of Deuteronomy.”
Missus Flounce gave a squeak, a sound akin to a mouse that got caught under a rocking chair runner. “Why, why, why . . . that’s blasphemy!” She said the word like a cuss word, but I couldn’t quickly conjure up a single good cuss word that had three syllables. Most of the good ones jumped from one syllable to four. I finally thought of one with three syllable, but it made me think of the story of Sodom and I shuddered and cast the word right out of my consciousness.
Being 15 and a hormonal smartass, I bowed up. “When’s the last time you read it? I read it this week and it makes no sense for it to be in the New Testament. It should be tossed out or moved up there with the Old Testament where the hell and firestone and brimwhatever is.”
Without saying another word, she streaked out of the room.
“Why’d you go and say that for?” Titus Mitchell asked. “She was just getting to the good Samson and Delilah part, where she comes in and ‘lays’ with him. That’s my favorite part.”
“Have you read Revelations?”
He shook his head.
“Then shut the hell up!”
He squeaked and slapped hand muffs over his ears. The entire class leaned back from me. Cussing in church was expected to draw a vengeful lightning bolt and was reserved for visiting evangelists trying to make a point. You know, like in “GOD! Damn SIN!”
I was trying to explain my position to my mortified classmates – “If you read it, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s a bunch of crap.” Not getting turned into a fried crispy critter from a heavenly lightning bolt with the first cuss word emboldened me.
The teacher charged through the door, pulling the preacher in her wake, using his tie as a come-along. Reverend Josiah Ben Beecham didn’t look happy. He didn’t look particularly mad. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but in that Sunday School room.
Missus Flounce’s face was red, her neck and forehead veins pounded, saliva dripped from the right side of her mouth. She pointed an arthritic pointer finger at the space between my eyes and screeched: “Tell Reverend Beecham what you said! Tell him!”
All the other kids were looking for escape holes in case she exploded.
“What did I say? I just mentioned casually that Revelations is not my favorite book of the Bible and that, in my opinion, it could easily be a part of the Old Testament.”
Her red face flushed purple. “Liar! Blasphemer!” she screamed, propelling a wad of gooey spit on my new pants. She turned on the reverend. “Well?” Except it wasn’t a normal “Well?” This “well” came with four syllables: “We-aa-ll-ll?”
The preacher wrinkled his face up like he smelled a rotten egg. “George, get up and come with me.” He turned to Missus Flounce. “Beatitude, let me handle this. I know exactly what to do,” he said, while looking like he didn’t have a clue.
I thought he was going to take me to his office and beat the living devil right out of me. He could, you know. Preachers and school principals could beat just about anybody but girls in the days before beatings were outlawed for some strange reason or another. Instead he led me out the side door of the church, and around back to his car, a 1956 Ford Fairlane. Black and white with contrasting fender skirts, curb feelers and a miniature fuzzy Bible hanging from the rear-view mirror.
Motioning me to go to the passenger’s side, he got in, cranked up the car he called “Leviticus” and drove out of the grass parking lot.
Oh, God! I thought. He’s taking me to Avery Lake and going to drown me and make up a story about how I died during a baptizing practice!
He reached under his seat and I grabbed the door handle, ready to throw myself from the car if he came out with a gun or knife or tire tool. When he finally drew his hand from the shadowy floorboard area, it held only a partially crushed pack of Pall Malls. “Punch in the lighter, will ya?” he asked offhandedly as he popped one cigarette out with a practiced twirly-wrist maneuver. He retrieved the ready lighter, lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, held the smoke deep in his lungs, and exhaled a bilious cloud of blue-gray smoke. It hung on the ceiling like a cloudy apocalypse.
Two blocks later he turned onto Highway 82. “Revelations is not my favorite book of the Bible either. I agree with you about it being in the Old Testament or altogether rejected.”
He said other stuff about how the Bible must be taken in its entirety and how for everything there is a season, blah-blah-blah, and how some people get comfort from parts of Revelations although he personally didn’t understand that. But by that time I had quit listening.
I remember the important part: The preacher agreed with me.
I didn’t expect him to proclaim that fact from the pulpit. Then or ever.
And, he did not disappoint me.
He drove back to the church, hit around back and parked. As I started to get out, he put his hand on my shoulder. “Please try to not get on Missus Flounce’s single nerve. She might have a heart attack and before she died, I’ll have to listen to her talk about God saving a seat for her on the Train to Heaven. If you promise not to upset her I won’t preach a single sermon on the evils of self-gratification or juvenile fornication for a whole year.”
Reverend Beecham should’ve been in sales.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Begone, fear!
As a small child, I was deadly afraid of thunderstorms. Lightning, thunder, hard rain ... they all would force me under the covers and I would get in a fetal position and shake until the storm passed.
I was about eight or 10 when a big thunderstorm approached Sutton and my grandfather, Daddy George, could see that I was getting antsy. He went out the back of the house to the barn and came back with an old oil canvas or tarp and put it on the front porch. The storm got closer and closer and as it was starting to tear up jack close by, he took my hand and said, “Come on.”
Of course, I went. Daddy George said to.
He grabbed the tarp, which was about 12 x 12, and we went off the east side of the porch. He spread the tarp on the clear ground just north of the garden, folded it over even and motioned me to crawl under it. I balked ... so he crawled under it first. A big lightning bolt split the sky and I remember diving under the tarp.
That storm rolled in and Daddy George pulled the tarp tight around. With him holding up the front of the tarp like a canvas porch roof, we watched that storm together. He talked about lightning and thunder and how such a storm was a good way to clean the air and the ground.
From that day on, I have loved thunderstorms and even built a tin roof over a deck outside the bedroom so I can be one with the rain.
And with every rain storm, I spend a little time with Daddy George.
I was about eight or 10 when a big thunderstorm approached Sutton and my grandfather, Daddy George, could see that I was getting antsy. He went out the back of the house to the barn and came back with an old oil canvas or tarp and put it on the front porch. The storm got closer and closer and as it was starting to tear up jack close by, he took my hand and said, “Come on.”
Of course, I went. Daddy George said to.
He grabbed the tarp, which was about 12 x 12, and we went off the east side of the porch. He spread the tarp on the clear ground just north of the garden, folded it over even and motioned me to crawl under it. I balked ... so he crawled under it first. A big lightning bolt split the sky and I remember diving under the tarp.
That storm rolled in and Daddy George pulled the tarp tight around. With him holding up the front of the tarp like a canvas porch roof, we watched that storm together. He talked about lightning and thunder and how such a storm was a good way to clean the air and the ground.
From that day on, I have loved thunderstorms and even built a tin roof over a deck outside the bedroom so I can be one with the rain.
And with every rain storm, I spend a little time with Daddy George.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Virginity is dangerous
Missy Gilmore was sixteen and a virgin. Every boy in the county had tried to rid her of that stigma. And every strikeout was duly noted on God’s scorecard.
Science was to blame for Missy’s virginhood. Like many girls in the early ‘60s, she wore a girdle but not to just flatten and shape; her girdle protected her virginity like chastity belts did for medieval maidens. I started dating Missy because of the mystique of virginity. I wanted to get rid of mine; my friend Cowboy told me to do that I needed a partner.
Missy was no prude. She liked kissing and upper-body touching and her hand found its way into my pants by our second date. And she didn’t mind having her lower body parts rubbed through the girdle. In fact, she insisted upon it. Rubbing between the belly button and knees was, is and always will be fun. But rubbing those places through sticky plastic-like material is like rubbing a shaved pig’s ass. You rub something. You feel something. But … what?
It was a moonless night in May when I was girdling to beat the band with Missy in the front seat of my '56 Ford. I had secured an entrance to the top part of the girdle with my right hand and was in that sucker about wrist deep when she inhaled sharply – out of lust or as a defense move, I never knew which – and my hand cramped. The pain was akin to circumcision with a rusty butter knife. The inside of her girdle was like an oven; her stomach was sweatier than a tomato picker in August.
Later that night I made a pact with God never to go girdling again. I was a basketball player and almost lost my shooting hand to a piece of woman’s undergarment.
(From "Uncertain Times" -- published in 2008. Available at Amazon.com, barnesandnobles.com and other fine Web site.)
Science was to blame for Missy’s virginhood. Like many girls in the early ‘60s, she wore a girdle but not to just flatten and shape; her girdle protected her virginity like chastity belts did for medieval maidens. I started dating Missy because of the mystique of virginity. I wanted to get rid of mine; my friend Cowboy told me to do that I needed a partner.
Missy was no prude. She liked kissing and upper-body touching and her hand found its way into my pants by our second date. And she didn’t mind having her lower body parts rubbed through the girdle. In fact, she insisted upon it. Rubbing between the belly button and knees was, is and always will be fun. But rubbing those places through sticky plastic-like material is like rubbing a shaved pig’s ass. You rub something. You feel something. But … what?
It was a moonless night in May when I was girdling to beat the band with Missy in the front seat of my '56 Ford. I had secured an entrance to the top part of the girdle with my right hand and was in that sucker about wrist deep when she inhaled sharply – out of lust or as a defense move, I never knew which – and my hand cramped. The pain was akin to circumcision with a rusty butter knife. The inside of her girdle was like an oven; her stomach was sweatier than a tomato picker in August.
Later that night I made a pact with God never to go girdling again. I was a basketball player and almost lost my shooting hand to a piece of woman’s undergarment.
(From "Uncertain Times" -- published in 2008. Available at Amazon.com, barnesandnobles.com and other fine Web site.)
Falling in Love With an Older Woman
It was 1958 and it was cold. I remember it was cold because I was walking and was cold. My trusty Schwinn had taken me to a ballgame at the Avery gym, but halfway home, the chain broke on a downpush as I was trying to get more speed in order to get out the cold faster.
The bike was stashed behind Missionary Baptist Church. Not that anyone would steal it if I left it in the middle of the road. It was, as stated, 1958, and it was in Avery. Theft of property was mostly limited to the times when migrant workers invaded the town, and in a few cases of ancients with dementia who took a handful of gumballs at the drug store but didn’t remember doing it or sucking on the multi-colored candies. Dad just made a note on their account and a relative paid the bill no questions asked.
As I hoofed it down the street toward home, a car pulled up alongside.
“Want a ride home, George?”
I wasn’t into girls much yet, but did notice the car was full of them. There were three girls, all high-schoolers. The driver was Sarah Williams, a tall, lanky, blonde, athletic basketball player; Wynonna Warren, a snappy-eyed, brunette cheerleader who could look sexy simply by yawning, rode shotgun; Beulah Faye, an exotic, olive-skinned, eye-smiler with a pouty mouth and a captivating mole just to the left of her upper lip, was in the back seat.
I did want a ride home. It was cold. Wynonna opened the door, eased forward, pulling her seat up to give me room to get in the back seat. Even as skinny as I was – “built like a saw blade,” an uncle was fond of saying – it was a tight fit. The back seat was Beetle small. My left hip and leg burned where it touched Beulah Faye’s. I could have moved over slightly (and sat on the small ashtray ledge) but really didn’t see the need or have the inclination.
The girls were jabbering about the game with Dimple. Sarah accepted praise from Wynona for her twenty-something points; Sarah, in turn, pointed to Beulah Faye’s tight defense as a key to the lopsided score. I was ignored which was fine; concentrating on touching hips and thighs were occupying my thoughts.
“So, George,” Beulah Faye said, turning at the waist to face me, “ever been kissed by a real woman?”
My reaction was a normal one for a young teener among a bevy of good-looking high school girls: I swallowed my tongue. If I had of known about testosterone back then, I would have thought: Wow! I am testosterone-ing to beat the band!
I tried to answer Beulah Faye’s question but all that came out were hairball-wracking sounds. The trio splattered laughter all over the car's interior, triggering an all-world case of the blushes.
If there had been enough light, I know I would have looked like an upside down thermometer.
Beulah Faye put her arm around me and pulled me close. “It’s okay, George. We’re just joshin’ with you.” She gave me a little squeeze, which forced my left elbow funny-bone deep into a part of the female anatomy I had never before touched.
Humiliation is not that big of a deal. Really.
“So, you never answered my question. Have you ever been kissed by a woman?”
“No, if you don’t count relatives at funerals and homecomings, or Momma’s friends who come to the house on Canasta night.”
Deafening silence slammed around the car’s interior like a Super Ball.
Glancing over her right shoulder, Sarah said, “Would you like to?” Wynonna echoed: “Would you like to?”
Bravado emerged from somewhere. “This is a joke, right?”
Beulah Faye leaned more into me and made my elbow happier than it had ever been. “No, no joke? Would you like to be kissed by a real woman?”
Breaking into a lust-sweat, I screamed, “Yes, Lord! Oh, Yes!”
“Go ahead, Beulah Faye, kiss him,” Sarah said as she pulled the VW under one of Avery’s thirteen street lights and adjusted the rear view mirror.
Beulah Faye took my head in both hands, looked deeply into my eyes, moved her head slowly toward me, parted her lips slightly and closed her eyes. My eyes were riveted on her small beauty mark as her lips touched mine.
I expected a short peck, a quick release, and gales of laughter.
I was wrong, but not disappointed.
As Beulah Faye’s lips mashed mine against my teeth, I felt something alive crawling into my mouth! I jerked, but she held me firm. This was not okay.
Slowly, ever so slowly, my male sense overcame kid-fear and I realized the live thing was her tongue and the slithering was more pleasant than appalling. A kiss dessert. Apple pie compared to bad brownies. A Twinkie compared to fried prune pies.
Coming up for air, she said, “Now you try it, George.” She reconnected our lips (without my assistance, since I was paralyzed from my chin to my waist and from my thighs to my toes). Her tongue flickered in and out of my mouth like a spavined moth around a light bulb, licking my lips and touching the roof of my mouth and tongue in turns.
Deciding it was time to make my move, I thrust my tongue forward like a bottle rocket. A ladylike, quasi-casual recoil followed.
“Slow down, take it slow. It’s easier than it looks.”
Within the space of a minute, with her hands squeezing and pressing for emphasis or movement – not unlike I later thought the gentle ministrations of Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers – I controlled I-wanna impulses and just let my tongue do the heavy lifting.
She broke the kiss. “Not bad, George. Not bad at all. You’re a fast learner.”
No memories remain of the short ride home or what was said when I got out of the car or went into the house. Surely Mom or Dad asked about my bike, and surely I gave some answer. All I remember is going to bed and dreaming of being educated in the finer points of kissing by Beulah Faye Phelps.
I never got to thank her properly until well into my fifth decade of life when I wrote a note to my favorite high school teacher somewhere around her 90th birthday:
"My life was enriched by six wonderful people: My grandfather and
grandmother, my father and mother, Ms. Margie Grant, who refused to accept
anything but the best from her students, and Beulah Faye Phelps, who taught me
how to French kiss.
"I am a better person because of all of their efforts on my behalf."
The bike was stashed behind Missionary Baptist Church. Not that anyone would steal it if I left it in the middle of the road. It was, as stated, 1958, and it was in Avery. Theft of property was mostly limited to the times when migrant workers invaded the town, and in a few cases of ancients with dementia who took a handful of gumballs at the drug store but didn’t remember doing it or sucking on the multi-colored candies. Dad just made a note on their account and a relative paid the bill no questions asked.
As I hoofed it down the street toward home, a car pulled up alongside.
“Want a ride home, George?”
I wasn’t into girls much yet, but did notice the car was full of them. There were three girls, all high-schoolers. The driver was Sarah Williams, a tall, lanky, blonde, athletic basketball player; Wynonna Warren, a snappy-eyed, brunette cheerleader who could look sexy simply by yawning, rode shotgun; Beulah Faye, an exotic, olive-skinned, eye-smiler with a pouty mouth and a captivating mole just to the left of her upper lip, was in the back seat.
I did want a ride home. It was cold. Wynonna opened the door, eased forward, pulling her seat up to give me room to get in the back seat. Even as skinny as I was – “built like a saw blade,” an uncle was fond of saying – it was a tight fit. The back seat was Beetle small. My left hip and leg burned where it touched Beulah Faye’s. I could have moved over slightly (and sat on the small ashtray ledge) but really didn’t see the need or have the inclination.
The girls were jabbering about the game with Dimple. Sarah accepted praise from Wynona for her twenty-something points; Sarah, in turn, pointed to Beulah Faye’s tight defense as a key to the lopsided score. I was ignored which was fine; concentrating on touching hips and thighs were occupying my thoughts.
“So, George,” Beulah Faye said, turning at the waist to face me, “ever been kissed by a real woman?”
My reaction was a normal one for a young teener among a bevy of good-looking high school girls: I swallowed my tongue. If I had of known about testosterone back then, I would have thought: Wow! I am testosterone-ing to beat the band!
I tried to answer Beulah Faye’s question but all that came out were hairball-wracking sounds. The trio splattered laughter all over the car's interior, triggering an all-world case of the blushes.
If there had been enough light, I know I would have looked like an upside down thermometer.
Beulah Faye put her arm around me and pulled me close. “It’s okay, George. We’re just joshin’ with you.” She gave me a little squeeze, which forced my left elbow funny-bone deep into a part of the female anatomy I had never before touched.
Humiliation is not that big of a deal. Really.
“So, you never answered my question. Have you ever been kissed by a woman?”
“No, if you don’t count relatives at funerals and homecomings, or Momma’s friends who come to the house on Canasta night.”
Deafening silence slammed around the car’s interior like a Super Ball.
Glancing over her right shoulder, Sarah said, “Would you like to?” Wynonna echoed: “Would you like to?”
Bravado emerged from somewhere. “This is a joke, right?”
Beulah Faye leaned more into me and made my elbow happier than it had ever been. “No, no joke? Would you like to be kissed by a real woman?”
Breaking into a lust-sweat, I screamed, “Yes, Lord! Oh, Yes!”
“Go ahead, Beulah Faye, kiss him,” Sarah said as she pulled the VW under one of Avery’s thirteen street lights and adjusted the rear view mirror.
Beulah Faye took my head in both hands, looked deeply into my eyes, moved her head slowly toward me, parted her lips slightly and closed her eyes. My eyes were riveted on her small beauty mark as her lips touched mine.
I expected a short peck, a quick release, and gales of laughter.
I was wrong, but not disappointed.
As Beulah Faye’s lips mashed mine against my teeth, I felt something alive crawling into my mouth! I jerked, but she held me firm. This was not okay.
Slowly, ever so slowly, my male sense overcame kid-fear and I realized the live thing was her tongue and the slithering was more pleasant than appalling. A kiss dessert. Apple pie compared to bad brownies. A Twinkie compared to fried prune pies.
Coming up for air, she said, “Now you try it, George.” She reconnected our lips (without my assistance, since I was paralyzed from my chin to my waist and from my thighs to my toes). Her tongue flickered in and out of my mouth like a spavined moth around a light bulb, licking my lips and touching the roof of my mouth and tongue in turns.
Deciding it was time to make my move, I thrust my tongue forward like a bottle rocket. A ladylike, quasi-casual recoil followed.
“Slow down, take it slow. It’s easier than it looks.”
Within the space of a minute, with her hands squeezing and pressing for emphasis or movement – not unlike I later thought the gentle ministrations of Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers – I controlled I-wanna impulses and just let my tongue do the heavy lifting.
She broke the kiss. “Not bad, George. Not bad at all. You’re a fast learner.”
No memories remain of the short ride home or what was said when I got out of the car or went into the house. Surely Mom or Dad asked about my bike, and surely I gave some answer. All I remember is going to bed and dreaming of being educated in the finer points of kissing by Beulah Faye Phelps.
I never got to thank her properly until well into my fifth decade of life when I wrote a note to my favorite high school teacher somewhere around her 90th birthday:
"My life was enriched by six wonderful people: My grandfather and
grandmother, my father and mother, Ms. Margie Grant, who refused to accept
anything but the best from her students, and Beulah Faye Phelps, who taught me
how to French kiss.
"I am a better person because of all of their efforts on my behalf."
Memories of Sutton
Early memories are pretty much confined to two things: Train rides and spending time on my grandparents’ farm in South Arkansas. Daddy was going to pharmacy school in St. Louis on the G.I. bill and Mom was spending time going back and forth: Forth to St. Louis when Daddy saved up the money for train tickets; back to Arkansas when all he had left was train fare for Momma and me to take the Missouri-Pacific train back to Hope.
I don’t have many dysfunctional thoughts about Sutton. It was the perfect place for a hyperactive youngster to spend time during the formative years. My grandparents – George Logan Andres Sr., and Mattie Bright Hamilton Andres – were tolerant to a fault.
The Andres household – a shotgun affair with modular rooms built here and there – had eight full-time residents: Nanny and Daddy George, Daddy George’s older brother Francis Marion, and five at-home children. Momma’s two younger sisters, two younger brothers, and an older sister were still bedding down at the six-room house. That total didn’t include me and Momma, who were part-time residents.
There were beds in every single room except the kitchen and the outhouse, which was ... well, out.
It was like a commune only the food was better.
I don’t have many dysfunctional thoughts about Sutton. It was the perfect place for a hyperactive youngster to spend time during the formative years. My grandparents – George Logan Andres Sr., and Mattie Bright Hamilton Andres – were tolerant to a fault.
The Andres household – a shotgun affair with modular rooms built here and there – had eight full-time residents: Nanny and Daddy George, Daddy George’s older brother Francis Marion, and five at-home children. Momma’s two younger sisters, two younger brothers, and an older sister were still bedding down at the six-room house. That total didn’t include me and Momma, who were part-time residents.
There were beds in every single room except the kitchen and the outhouse, which was ... well, out.
It was like a commune only the food was better.
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