The Lord really knew how we are when He assigned a day of rest to mankind. We need rhythm in life. We really stagnate when we just do the same thing day after day with no change-up. Sometimes our rest doesn't come on the traditional day of rest, which I've always been told is Sunday. Today is Wednesday, and circumstances dictate this is a resting day for me.
Friday was a traveling day. I flew from San Diego to Portland, and have been visiting with my youngest daughter, Beth, and her extended family on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I babysat my youngest grandson, Martyn, Monday and Tuesday. That was a precious experience that I will always cherish. What a sweet and good baby. But for an old lady like me who hasn't had a baby all day since his mama was a baby, (and she's twenty-nine today), it was fun-but-tiring.
Today I'm in Independence, Oregon, resting at my older daughter Rachel's home while she and her husband are away at work. It's going to be a day of Rest, Reading, and Relaxation. Quiet. Un-pressured. Peaceful. I hope.
I've known people who don't like Alone Time, but I've always enjoyed periods of solitude. Being the middle of a "passel of youngun's" as Daddy called us, I didn't have a lot of alone time when I was a kid. I learned then to appreciate it when I did have the option to do whatever I wanted. As an adult, I worked at home and on outside jobs, and even on Sundays I "worked" at Church. I used to wonder why Sundays were called the Day of Rest, because they weren't, for me.
I loved to read, but was always being interrupted.
I loved to sew, but we were told, "You ain't s'posed to sew on Sunday." I always wondered about that... Why not? Perhaps to some, sewing was work, but to me it was relaxation.
I loved to take naps, but then really didn't feel good after waking up. Throughout my younger life we went to Church not only on Sunday mornings, but evenings as well. To me, Sunday was a working day.
Saturday is the real Sabbath Day, but in the tradition that I grew up that was house-cleaning day. Since cleaning is not my favorite thing, I really consider it hard work. Sometimes on Saturdays, I worked harder at avoiding the cleaning than I would have worked had I cleaned.
Anyway, today, Wednesday the 29th of June, Beth's 29th birthday (though I'm not with her today), I'm planning to kick back and read or do whatever else I may find to do that I consider "resting..." When God did all the work of creating everything, He rested. He stopped creating new stuff that hadn't been made in the previous six days.
Now, that didn't mean He never worked again. He is always at work, and it sure is a good thing. But He just rested from all the stuff He had been doing during the creation time. He looked around and said, "All this stuff is really good. I like it..."
I think I'm going to like today.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Hot Summers...and a Hard Day's Work
In the San Joaquin Valley, summers are very hot. It's not a humid kind of heat, as in the Southeast part of the U.S. It is a blazing bright and burning battle in the outdoors. There are hardly any clouds to provide some gentle shade, nor wind to blow on your sweat and cool you down.
Everyone used to have a cooler on their house. I haven't been around there in a long time, so maybe today they have more air conditioning. Back in the '50's and '60's houses were cooled by "coolers" which were big fans that pushed the air through wet straw into the house through a window. In that dry air, it was a very efficient way of cooling off.
When we lived on Cecil Avenue in Delano, the cooler was in our dining room window. The spring loaded "vents" on the front of the window unit could be manually maneuvered to direct the air toward the floor where it nearly froze our bare legs and sandal-ed feet.
During summer vacations the boys often had to go work in Daddy's mattress shop. (Sometimes they wielded the Idiot Stick. See "The Idiot Stick...") Me? I either stayed home and cleaned house, or worked at McFarland Mattress Company as a seamstress. I preferred the latter, because I could never clean to Mama's satisfaction, and even though it was hotter there, it was great fun to run Daddy's power sewing machine and make mattress ticks.
After we moved to Bakersfield and had the shop behind the house, I really got into sewing on that machine. Daddy showed me how to unroll the ticking from huge bolts that he had bought, fasten the corners to the protruding nails on the measuring board he had constructed on the wall. We then would use an Exacto-like knife to cut several layers of ticking at once. In five minutes I could cut enough ticks for ten or fifteen mattresses.
The fun part, to me, was sewing the boxing on the ticks. I would turn on the "motor" on the power sewing machine, and starting at a corner, place that boxing (long narrow strip of ticking that forms the "sides" of the mattress) along one side and put it in the machine. The foot pedal was operated with both feet at a time, and with just a little pressure that machine would sew so fast it would literally throw the material out the back side away from me. I could go all the way around the mattress top in a couple of minutes, maybe less. It was fun!
I don't remember being paid money to work in the shop. Maybe my brothers were paid, but their work (with the Idiot Stick and carrying mattresses on and off the truck(s), and later furniture) was much heavier. They probably didn't consider it fun at all. I felt more of a sense of accomplishment working for Daddy than cleaning house. After a day of sewing ticks, I could say, "I made (this many) twins, (this many) fulls, and (this many) box springs today..." When you try to quantify house work, it never sounds impressive, especially to males who can't even imagine what kind of problems you might run into just simply sweeping the kitchen floor, while trying to keep Baby Sister Diane out of the dustpan.
It's not fair. But then, Life never is. And we were never promised it would be.
Everyone used to have a cooler on their house. I haven't been around there in a long time, so maybe today they have more air conditioning. Back in the '50's and '60's houses were cooled by "coolers" which were big fans that pushed the air through wet straw into the house through a window. In that dry air, it was a very efficient way of cooling off.
When we lived on Cecil Avenue in Delano, the cooler was in our dining room window. The spring loaded "vents" on the front of the window unit could be manually maneuvered to direct the air toward the floor where it nearly froze our bare legs and sandal-ed feet.
During summer vacations the boys often had to go work in Daddy's mattress shop. (Sometimes they wielded the Idiot Stick. See "The Idiot Stick...") Me? I either stayed home and cleaned house, or worked at McFarland Mattress Company as a seamstress. I preferred the latter, because I could never clean to Mama's satisfaction, and even though it was hotter there, it was great fun to run Daddy's power sewing machine and make mattress ticks.
After we moved to Bakersfield and had the shop behind the house, I really got into sewing on that machine. Daddy showed me how to unroll the ticking from huge bolts that he had bought, fasten the corners to the protruding nails on the measuring board he had constructed on the wall. We then would use an Exacto-like knife to cut several layers of ticking at once. In five minutes I could cut enough ticks for ten or fifteen mattresses.
The fun part, to me, was sewing the boxing on the ticks. I would turn on the "motor" on the power sewing machine, and starting at a corner, place that boxing (long narrow strip of ticking that forms the "sides" of the mattress) along one side and put it in the machine. The foot pedal was operated with both feet at a time, and with just a little pressure that machine would sew so fast it would literally throw the material out the back side away from me. I could go all the way around the mattress top in a couple of minutes, maybe less. It was fun!
I don't remember being paid money to work in the shop. Maybe my brothers were paid, but their work (with the Idiot Stick and carrying mattresses on and off the truck(s), and later furniture) was much heavier. They probably didn't consider it fun at all. I felt more of a sense of accomplishment working for Daddy than cleaning house. After a day of sewing ticks, I could say, "I made (this many) twins, (this many) fulls, and (this many) box springs today..." When you try to quantify house work, it never sounds impressive, especially to males who can't even imagine what kind of problems you might run into just simply sweeping the kitchen floor, while trying to keep Baby Sister Diane out of the dustpan.
It's not fair. But then, Life never is. And we were never promised it would be.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Pianos, Past and Present...
I had the opportunity to visit Beth's In-Laws yesterday, Baby Martyn's other grandparents. They are Walter and Mary Jane Loehrke; they live in a wonderful place in Washington State just north of the Oregon border, more than an hour's drive from Portland.
We enjoyed a delicious lunch, and the Loehrke's enjoyed some fun time with Baby Martyn, who is at the perfect age to delight grandparents' hearts. We walked up through their evergreen-forested mountain to see the spring that provides water to their house, which was originally a tiny log cabin built around the turn of the century. It has been expanded to a spacious two-story log home, surrounded by lovely flowers and meadows, and in the shadow of the forest.
Before we returned to Beth's home in Portland, we opened their piano, which they have offered for Martyn's use as soon as Beth and Eli are willing to move it. Eli and his brothers had lessons in years past, but none of them ever took a special interest in learning to play, so Walt and Mary Jane would love to have Martyn try.
I played it for a few minutes. I'm so glad Martyn will have the opportunity to learn if he wants to. As a child, I didn't have that opportunity. But when I was in the fourth grade, the Lord provided a fourth grade teacher to give me lessons during the last months I lived in Arkansas before our newly blended family moved to California. (See Adjusting To New Family Dynamics... published in May.) After that I put what I had learned about reading music (which wasn't much) together with some chords I "picked up" from music written for guitar accompaniment, and gradually over the years learned to play accompaniment for hymns sung at church.
We never had a piano in our home until I left home and married Dave Goins in 1964. Most of the time after that, I have had a piano in my home. And I have provided pianos, regular or electronic, to my children as they grew into adulthood, just in case they have a desire to play. Now the Lord is providing one for Beth and her children.
The real story, though, is about Mama's first piano, back when she was a teenager. She wanted so much to play the piano. The Coalter family were so poor they could barely keep the twelve children fed. At school Mama had a friend whose family was "well off" enough to buy lessons for their daughter. That girl brought her books to school, and she and Mama sneaked upstairs to the piano in the school auditorium where she "taught" Mama whatever she had learned that week from the piano teacher. Then Mama would "practice" on an old stump in the woods where she had drawn a keyboard with a pencil. But there was no piano at home. She didn't think there ever would be one.
One summer the wife of one of Mama's older brothers died, and Mama was sent to their home to help take care of the surviving children, two girls just younger than Mama. When they returned home, they walked ten miles across cotton fields, and entered Pap'aw's farm from the back corner. They could see the back of their house, and the dogs came out barking to greet them while they were still far away. But Pap'aw and Mam'aw came out right behind the dogs and ran across the field to hug them.
Pap'aw was excited, Mama could just tell. He put his arm around her shoulder, and said, "Etta, I got you a piano..."
She couldn't believe it. "How? Where?"
"Just come see it." They went in through the kitchen to the front room. There it was. Pap'aw had traded two heifers for it. It had been through the 1927 flood. The ivory was off a lot of the keys. Some of the keys didn't play at all. But it was a piano. You could mash the keys. She didn't have to play the keyboard she had drawn on the stump. She had her a piano.
She learned to play, too. Her story taught me that if you really want to do something, you do the best you can, and God will make a way for the rest.
We enjoyed a delicious lunch, and the Loehrke's enjoyed some fun time with Baby Martyn, who is at the perfect age to delight grandparents' hearts. We walked up through their evergreen-forested mountain to see the spring that provides water to their house, which was originally a tiny log cabin built around the turn of the century. It has been expanded to a spacious two-story log home, surrounded by lovely flowers and meadows, and in the shadow of the forest.
Before we returned to Beth's home in Portland, we opened their piano, which they have offered for Martyn's use as soon as Beth and Eli are willing to move it. Eli and his brothers had lessons in years past, but none of them ever took a special interest in learning to play, so Walt and Mary Jane would love to have Martyn try.
I played it for a few minutes. I'm so glad Martyn will have the opportunity to learn if he wants to. As a child, I didn't have that opportunity. But when I was in the fourth grade, the Lord provided a fourth grade teacher to give me lessons during the last months I lived in Arkansas before our newly blended family moved to California. (See Adjusting To New Family Dynamics... published in May.) After that I put what I had learned about reading music (which wasn't much) together with some chords I "picked up" from music written for guitar accompaniment, and gradually over the years learned to play accompaniment for hymns sung at church.
We never had a piano in our home until I left home and married Dave Goins in 1964. Most of the time after that, I have had a piano in my home. And I have provided pianos, regular or electronic, to my children as they grew into adulthood, just in case they have a desire to play. Now the Lord is providing one for Beth and her children.
The real story, though, is about Mama's first piano, back when she was a teenager. She wanted so much to play the piano. The Coalter family were so poor they could barely keep the twelve children fed. At school Mama had a friend whose family was "well off" enough to buy lessons for their daughter. That girl brought her books to school, and she and Mama sneaked upstairs to the piano in the school auditorium where she "taught" Mama whatever she had learned that week from the piano teacher. Then Mama would "practice" on an old stump in the woods where she had drawn a keyboard with a pencil. But there was no piano at home. She didn't think there ever would be one.
One summer the wife of one of Mama's older brothers died, and Mama was sent to their home to help take care of the surviving children, two girls just younger than Mama. When they returned home, they walked ten miles across cotton fields, and entered Pap'aw's farm from the back corner. They could see the back of their house, and the dogs came out barking to greet them while they were still far away. But Pap'aw and Mam'aw came out right behind the dogs and ran across the field to hug them.
Pap'aw was excited, Mama could just tell. He put his arm around her shoulder, and said, "Etta, I got you a piano..."
She couldn't believe it. "How? Where?"
"Just come see it." They went in through the kitchen to the front room. There it was. Pap'aw had traded two heifers for it. It had been through the 1927 flood. The ivory was off a lot of the keys. Some of the keys didn't play at all. But it was a piano. You could mash the keys. She didn't have to play the keyboard she had drawn on the stump. She had her a piano.
She learned to play, too. Her story taught me that if you really want to do something, you do the best you can, and God will make a way for the rest.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
The Idiot Stick... Not Really a Story
When I first talked about Daddy's dream of owning and running his own mattress "shop" or "company," I described the little store front building in McFarland and most of the equipment Daddy bought to set up a mattress business. I think there are some of you, dear Readers of this blog, who may be related to some of the people who worked in that mattress business, and you may have heard about the Idiot Stick, which I haven't described before.
Wielding the Idiot Stick was the most unpleasant job in the whole business. My brothers and other young (or old) guys who worked for Daddy and had to do that job hated it with a passion. It was the lowest job on the roster. It was almost considered at best a rite of passage, and at worst a punishment for all your evil doings. Daddy looked at it as a necessary evil, a job that had to be done by someone and if he couldn't hire someone to do it, he would do it himself. (But only if he couldn't hire someone to do it...)
There must not have been any OSHA agencies, or whatever they are called, in those days. Certainly, had OSHA been around, they would have required some kind of masks to supply oxygen to the wielder of the Stick. My brothers were the first ones to be stuck with that job.
In the post called "Daddy's Dream... McFarland Mattress Company" I listed most of the equipment he procured to start the business. The Idiot Stick was left out of that list, and since several people who, as young men or boys, wielded the stick, who may now read this blog, I feel I owe it to them for their valiant efforts to describe how difficult and unpleasant that job was.
Note that most mattresses back then did not have metal springs inside, nor foam padding. Here is the process of making a cotton mattress in those days:
1. Cut and sew a fabric "tick" shaped like a large mattress-sized bag.
2. Leave an unsewn section in one end of it.
3. Tie the opening of the tick around the mouth of the cotton gin's "exit" opening.
4. Turn on the gin.
5. Throw cotton into the gin's receiving opening. This cotton could come from bales of cotton, but most often was from dirty old discarded mattresses.
6. Once the mattress tick was full, turn off the gin, and sew up the opening.
7. Pick up the Idiot Stick and beat the tar out of the big round fat bag of cotton until it flattened out to sort of resemble a mattress.
8. With foot-long needles threaded in the middle with twine, sew the "rolled" edge around the top side of the mattress. Flip it over, and sew the rolled edge around the other side.
9. Sew and tie the "tufts" in even rows in the middle of the mattress.
10. It's done. Now sell it.
Note: If you don't like doing the Idiot Stick part, too bad. It has to be done. Never mind that dust boils up into the air so thick that you can hardly breathe. Keep beating. A big round sack of dirty cotton cannot become a mattress until it's flattened into the shaped of a flat rectangle about six or eight inches thick. Never mind that you're coughing so hard that your eyes are squeezed closed and you can't see where you're hitting that nasty mattress. We know it's a hard job, but you can do it. It's gotta be done... Okay. You can wear a wet mask, and after you're done with the Idiot Stick, you can peel that muddy mask off your face, rinse it out in the lavatory and wash the dust out of your eyes...
Note 2: I personally never had to wield the Idiot Stick. I couldn't even stand to watch it be done. I had the privileged job of sewing the mattress ticks with the power machine. But don't worry. I won't even tell you that story...
Wielding the Idiot Stick was the most unpleasant job in the whole business. My brothers and other young (or old) guys who worked for Daddy and had to do that job hated it with a passion. It was the lowest job on the roster. It was almost considered at best a rite of passage, and at worst a punishment for all your evil doings. Daddy looked at it as a necessary evil, a job that had to be done by someone and if he couldn't hire someone to do it, he would do it himself. (But only if he couldn't hire someone to do it...)
There must not have been any OSHA agencies, or whatever they are called, in those days. Certainly, had OSHA been around, they would have required some kind of masks to supply oxygen to the wielder of the Stick. My brothers were the first ones to be stuck with that job.
In the post called "Daddy's Dream... McFarland Mattress Company" I listed most of the equipment he procured to start the business. The Idiot Stick was left out of that list, and since several people who, as young men or boys, wielded the stick, who may now read this blog, I feel I owe it to them for their valiant efforts to describe how difficult and unpleasant that job was.
Note that most mattresses back then did not have metal springs inside, nor foam padding. Here is the process of making a cotton mattress in those days:
1. Cut and sew a fabric "tick" shaped like a large mattress-sized bag.
2. Leave an unsewn section in one end of it.
3. Tie the opening of the tick around the mouth of the cotton gin's "exit" opening.
4. Turn on the gin.
5. Throw cotton into the gin's receiving opening. This cotton could come from bales of cotton, but most often was from dirty old discarded mattresses.
6. Once the mattress tick was full, turn off the gin, and sew up the opening.
7. Pick up the Idiot Stick and beat the tar out of the big round fat bag of cotton until it flattened out to sort of resemble a mattress.
8. With foot-long needles threaded in the middle with twine, sew the "rolled" edge around the top side of the mattress. Flip it over, and sew the rolled edge around the other side.
9. Sew and tie the "tufts" in even rows in the middle of the mattress.
10. It's done. Now sell it.
Note: If you don't like doing the Idiot Stick part, too bad. It has to be done. Never mind that dust boils up into the air so thick that you can hardly breathe. Keep beating. A big round sack of dirty cotton cannot become a mattress until it's flattened into the shaped of a flat rectangle about six or eight inches thick. Never mind that you're coughing so hard that your eyes are squeezed closed and you can't see where you're hitting that nasty mattress. We know it's a hard job, but you can do it. It's gotta be done... Okay. You can wear a wet mask, and after you're done with the Idiot Stick, you can peel that muddy mask off your face, rinse it out in the lavatory and wash the dust out of your eyes...
Note 2: I personally never had to wield the Idiot Stick. I couldn't even stand to watch it be done. I had the privileged job of sewing the mattress ticks with the power machine. But don't worry. I won't even tell you that story...
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Love That Baby...
Why do grannies love grandbabies? Well, of course “grandchild” is the very essence of love. It’s Grand! Sometimes it’s even Great and Grand. The love is grand, but it isn’t the “grind” of daily life that parents have to deal with, the getting up in the middle of the night, the suffering through teething and illness and having to correct bad habits or prevent them in the first place…
By the same token, grandparents often miss the milestones, the first steps, the first words, the first potty victory. Grandparents get to enjoy over the telephone these things, and can rejoice with their children and remember… twenty or thirty years ago when the baby’s mom or dad did those things for the first time.
Generation to generation, life goes on. Sometimes we get old enough to enjoy children down to the third or fourth generation. I have great grandchildren. I never thought I would be in this position. Where did the years go?
Today, I’m in Portland, Oregon enjoying Martyn Lyle Loehrke, my youngest grandson. He is a happy baby, wide-eyed innocence, checking out the world with his mouth, and expressing joy with flailing hands and kicking feet. He is learning every waking second, reaching out for the world with his whole body. He rewards most all eye contact with huge smiles and even giggles sometimes. He is a real people person, looking around for eyes, fixing on faces, and clearly recognizing familiar ones while rejecting none, not even the dog…
Today I get to see how he will be in a crowd. Everyone is coming to my two daughters’ birthday party today. There will be a crowd of people here at Beth’s home in Portland, Oregon. They’ll be celebrating Beth’s twenty-ninth and Rachel’s forty-second birthdays. My guess is Martyn will enjoy the people and the attention. And then he will be done, and just go to sleep, and sleep soundly without being disturbed by the noise and laughter. What a good baby! (Of course, that’s Grannie talking.)
While I’m enjoying the grandchild, I’m also watching my child, my youngest, my Baby, Bethany Joy. She came along rather late in my child-bearing years. She is thirteen years younger than Rachel, and six years younger than Jon. I was thirty-seven and her dad, Dave Goins, was forty-six when she was born. At first I was a bit apprehensive about raising another child; I felt “too old” and remembered how Mama had expressed those feelings at forty-two when she had my baby sister, Diane. I had always had difficult first halves of pregnancies, and that was so with that last pregnancy.
When Beth was ready to be born, we hadn’t decided on a name for her. We had Biblical names for the others long before they were born, but we couldn’t think of a name for a girl. The Bible is short on female names. Finally Rachel came up with the name Bethany, which is not a person in the Bible but a place. I liked it. Dave agreed. I added Joy because though that pregnancy had not brought me a lot of joy, I hoped the child would. And she has.
And Bethany Joy is now taking great joy in her little boy. And so am I.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, We'll Start the Day Tomorrow...
Do you see the little baby boy in the picture to your right? He's Martyn Lyle Loehrke, my youngest grandchild. His Mom is Beth, my youngest child. Tomorrow I hope I will be up by five a.m. so I can make it to the airport and get on that plane that leaves at seven a.m. I'm going to Portland, Oregon to see him and the rest of my family who live up there.
I've been looking forward to the trip for quite awhile. Both my daughters who live there are having birthdays next week. Beth will be 29 on the 29th, and Rachel will be... well, 42 on the 30th (of June). We'll be celebrating them together this year. This is the first year I have celebrated birthdays with either of them in a long, long time.
As I've mentioned in this blog in the past, we didn't celebrate birthdays very much when I was a youngster. I find the Thomas family does not make a huge deal out of anyone's birthday, but most every month all the birthdays are celebrated usually all at one time with potluck hosted by one or another of Jack's daughters, and of course birthday cake.
Two of Jack's six children live out of state, but all three of my children live either in Oregon or Georgia. Right now my son Jon is in Afghanistan, but his wife and six children are in Georgia. So it is a rare occasion that I get to be with my children, especially for their birthdays.
My first grandchild, Zeke Wittie, Rachel's firstborn, and then his sister, Stacie, were born in Anchorage, Alaska when I was about the same age Rachel is now. I got to be with them all the time. I babysat them, celebrated their first and second birthdays, maybe their third and fourth, right in my living room. They came over to "Grannie's house" all the time. However, later after their grandfather had a heart attack and died suddenly, Beth and I moved to San Diego. Some time after that, the Wittie family moved to Las Vegas, several hours drive from Grannie's house.
So Grannie and Beth would quite often visit them in Las Vegas, but sometimes they would come here. Either way, it was a long, hot, expensive drive, but worth it...
Zeke and Stacie have grown up now, and Stacie has Tucker and Raiden (the latter in utero still) who are my great grandsons. I wish I could visit them, but it is pretty much out of the question, as expensive as gas or airplane travel is these days.
I was thinking about a couple of times I visited with my grandparents in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Daddy (Lusk) came to get Mama, Jim and me in Pine Bluff and drove us to the old boarding house our Lusk grandparents owned. It was a huge old house with very high ceilings, a great foyer and big staircase. It was cold in the foyer but not in the side front room where our grandparents "lived." In the back it had a huge dining hall with a very long table that would seat... oh, probably twenty people. My grandmother cooked a huge Christmas dinner for all those people and served it elegantly.
The trouble was that Jim and I had a hard time finding something fun to do while we were there. There were no other children our age; our cousins who were there were in their late teens. It was difficult to relate to them. At one point we sneaked up the huge, beautiful stairs; our Grandfather had not wanted us to do that for fear we would disturb the tenants who lived up there. There was nothing interesting up there, though, just a long hallway with closed doors all the way back into the gloomy end of it. No fun at all. We went back down.
We tried sitting on the swing on the front porch, but that was... "sterile" too. Nothing was happening. It was cold, and, well, just "no fun." It was the first time I ever remember being "bored."
Thinking back on it, I wonder what my Grandmother thought. She wanted, I learned later, to have a relationship with us, to know us and spend time with us. But she didn't seem to know how to relate to us. I don't know; maybe she felt some strain in the atmosphere between Mama and Daddy (Lusk). It seemed to me that the whole atmosphere in the whole big house full of adults was, well, "strained." I think children pick up on those sorts of feelings among adults around them.
I never got to know my grandmother until many years later when I was twenty, married, and pregnant with my first child. Dave and I moved to Dallas, Texas where, after Grandfather's death, she had moved to live with her other son, Leroy. We lived there three months before returning to California. During that time I visited with her several times. She was in her eighties, frail, but very bright. She had been devastated when Mama had remarried and taken us "to the other side of the world" from her. I think she had always hoped her son would get back together with Mama, bring us near her where she could be a part of our lives.
Anyway, I tried to stay in contact with her until her death at age ninety-nine, even after we moved back to California and later to Alaska. I think I would have benefitted from a better relationship with my Grandmother, but that is hard to accomplish from a distance, especially without the media of today.
In this blog I have often mentioned how much the media available to all affects the children of this day and age, including my many grandchildren. On the up-side of that, though, is that it is much easier to stay connected with friends and family. I have unlimited long distance, and try to call all my children often, and grandchildren, too. (I wonder if they say, "Oh, no, it's Grannie..." when they hear the phone ring.) Skype is wonderful in that they can see me and know what I look like, not just a shaky old voice on the phone. (I'm smiling.)
I'm writing this blog so they will get to know their grandmother in ways that I didn't get to know mine.
I've been looking forward to the trip for quite awhile. Both my daughters who live there are having birthdays next week. Beth will be 29 on the 29th, and Rachel will be... well, 42 on the 30th (of June). We'll be celebrating them together this year. This is the first year I have celebrated birthdays with either of them in a long, long time.
As I've mentioned in this blog in the past, we didn't celebrate birthdays very much when I was a youngster. I find the Thomas family does not make a huge deal out of anyone's birthday, but most every month all the birthdays are celebrated usually all at one time with potluck hosted by one or another of Jack's daughters, and of course birthday cake.
Two of Jack's six children live out of state, but all three of my children live either in Oregon or Georgia. Right now my son Jon is in Afghanistan, but his wife and six children are in Georgia. So it is a rare occasion that I get to be with my children, especially for their birthdays.
My first grandchild, Zeke Wittie, Rachel's firstborn, and then his sister, Stacie, were born in Anchorage, Alaska when I was about the same age Rachel is now. I got to be with them all the time. I babysat them, celebrated their first and second birthdays, maybe their third and fourth, right in my living room. They came over to "Grannie's house" all the time. However, later after their grandfather had a heart attack and died suddenly, Beth and I moved to San Diego. Some time after that, the Wittie family moved to Las Vegas, several hours drive from Grannie's house.
So Grannie and Beth would quite often visit them in Las Vegas, but sometimes they would come here. Either way, it was a long, hot, expensive drive, but worth it...
Zeke and Stacie have grown up now, and Stacie has Tucker and Raiden (the latter in utero still) who are my great grandsons. I wish I could visit them, but it is pretty much out of the question, as expensive as gas or airplane travel is these days.
I was thinking about a couple of times I visited with my grandparents in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Daddy (Lusk) came to get Mama, Jim and me in Pine Bluff and drove us to the old boarding house our Lusk grandparents owned. It was a huge old house with very high ceilings, a great foyer and big staircase. It was cold in the foyer but not in the side front room where our grandparents "lived." In the back it had a huge dining hall with a very long table that would seat... oh, probably twenty people. My grandmother cooked a huge Christmas dinner for all those people and served it elegantly.
The trouble was that Jim and I had a hard time finding something fun to do while we were there. There were no other children our age; our cousins who were there were in their late teens. It was difficult to relate to them. At one point we sneaked up the huge, beautiful stairs; our Grandfather had not wanted us to do that for fear we would disturb the tenants who lived up there. There was nothing interesting up there, though, just a long hallway with closed doors all the way back into the gloomy end of it. No fun at all. We went back down.
We tried sitting on the swing on the front porch, but that was... "sterile" too. Nothing was happening. It was cold, and, well, just "no fun." It was the first time I ever remember being "bored."
Thinking back on it, I wonder what my Grandmother thought. She wanted, I learned later, to have a relationship with us, to know us and spend time with us. But she didn't seem to know how to relate to us. I don't know; maybe she felt some strain in the atmosphere between Mama and Daddy (Lusk). It seemed to me that the whole atmosphere in the whole big house full of adults was, well, "strained." I think children pick up on those sorts of feelings among adults around them.
I never got to know my grandmother until many years later when I was twenty, married, and pregnant with my first child. Dave and I moved to Dallas, Texas where, after Grandfather's death, she had moved to live with her other son, Leroy. We lived there three months before returning to California. During that time I visited with her several times. She was in her eighties, frail, but very bright. She had been devastated when Mama had remarried and taken us "to the other side of the world" from her. I think she had always hoped her son would get back together with Mama, bring us near her where she could be a part of our lives.
Anyway, I tried to stay in contact with her until her death at age ninety-nine, even after we moved back to California and later to Alaska. I think I would have benefitted from a better relationship with my Grandmother, but that is hard to accomplish from a distance, especially without the media of today.
In this blog I have often mentioned how much the media available to all affects the children of this day and age, including my many grandchildren. On the up-side of that, though, is that it is much easier to stay connected with friends and family. I have unlimited long distance, and try to call all my children often, and grandchildren, too. (I wonder if they say, "Oh, no, it's Grannie..." when they hear the phone ring.) Skype is wonderful in that they can see me and know what I look like, not just a shaky old voice on the phone. (I'm smiling.)
I'm writing this blog so they will get to know their grandmother in ways that I didn't get to know mine.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Roaches... and a New School
In the middle of my sophomore year in Delano High School, while Daddy was selling mattresses all over the southern San Joaquin Valley, he discovered in Bakersfield a house that had a big shop behind the garage, and was for rent. He had been thinking the big city of Bakersfield would be a better base for his mattress business than the tiny town of McFarland. It was soon settled that we would move to Bakersfield, and he rented the house and shop. There were far less zoning restrictions in those days than now.
I really liked the house, though I was very sad to leave my school friends in Delano, and my church friends in Earlimart. The first time I ever viewed the inside of the house, I was astonished; I had never seen so many roaches. The house had just been fumigated before we moved in. Those nasty bugs lay in still, brown piles all over the place. They had to be swept out of the kitchen cabinets, drawers, off the counters, the window sills, the light fixtures; every available surface that wasn't perpendicular was two to six inches deep in ugly brown roach-bugs. I shiver to remember it. And that was only inside the house. The big shop out back was worse, I was told. I didn't even go out there until the boys had cleaned it out.
By the time the Christmas vacation was ended, we had settled in and Mama had transformed the formerly roach-ridden house into a neat and cozy home that worked very well for our family. And Daddy was very happy with his new shop; he was making mattresses and selling them like mad.
Bakersfield was a big town, a city even. It was a long way to school, so we had to ride the school bus for the first time since we lived on Fourth Avenue in Delano when I was in the fifth grade. By this time my brother Jim was in his senior year in high school, so he stayed in Delano with friends and relatives, and graduated in the spring. Ray was a freshman; I was a sophomore, and Richard was to walk to his fifth grade class in a near-by elementary school. Little sister Diane was not even yet in kindergarten. I think she was about three years old.
The first day in Bakersfield High School was such a nightmare for me that when I finally got home I ran past my Mama and flung myself on the bed, weeping. Mama came in and sat on the side of the bed, patting me and repeating, "What's the matter, Jean? What's the matter? What happened? Are you sick? Where does it hurt? Huh?..."
Really, I tried to gain control, but it had been such a horrible day that I felt if I kept crying maybe they wouldn't make me go back to that school again. But as Mama began to lose patience with me, I realized that was not going to happen.
She firmed up her voice. "Awright, Jean. You get ahold of yourself. Right now. You quit that crying and tell me what's the matter. You were all right when Daddy left you and Ray at the school office this morning. And Ray's been home for a long time... Why didn't you come home on the bus with him? I been worried sick about you, girl..."
I took a deep breath, and tried to speak. It didn't work. Every word I tried to say my voice cracked, and my throat hurt, and my mind raced... Eventually, I was able to settle down and tell her the main problems of the day.
Bakersfield High School was several times bigger than Delano High School. It was the oldest school in town located quite a distance from our home on Virginia Avenue. It had a huge and confusing campus and more than thirty buses. I had been in the office all morning getting signed up for my classes, and in the afternoon, had found my way around to my different classes. I was late to several of the classes but forgiven due to being a new student and everyone knew it was difficult to learn one's way around the campus. When you're a teenager, though, and have to walk into a classroom where everyone is already seated, and all those eyes turn to look you over, well... that is excruciating.
But I made it. I got through the afternoon well enough until it came to finding which of those thirty buses was the one I was supposed to get on. I think I had our address, bla bla bla Virginia Avenue, but I wasn't sure, and worst of all, I couldn't find Ray anywhere. Eventually, I had boarded a bus that someone said went out to Virginia Avenue. "In fact," said the driver, "we cross Virginia Avenue, so this is probably the right bus..."
He told me he would tell me when we got to Virginia Avenue, and he did. I got off the bus and it pulled away. Then I looked around. What now? Which way? I was at a cross roads, and since the bus had gone across one of them, I figured that must be Virginia Avenue. I started walking down the street. I didn't see anything familiar. We had only been living there maybe a couple of weeks and I hadn't explored around the area. I was carrying a huge load of books, with homework marked in each book associated with the afternoon classes. We didn't have back packs in those days.
Some girls ahead of me turned around and asked me where I lived. I felt really dumb, but said helplessly, "I don't know. Somewhere on Virginia Avenue..."
The girls were really friendly. "What does your house look like?"
"We just moved in. It's ... a big green house with a big shop out behind it. My Daddy has a mattress shop there..." My face was getting red; I could feel the burn. "I... can't remember the address."
The girls said their mom would help me find it, and she did. She took me there in her car. I found out I had gone the wrong way when I got off the bus at Virginia Avenue. By the time I thanked them and went inside the house, I was done. I had that major melt-down once I shut the door behind me.
I never did really like Bakersfield High School, although I never got lost again. I made a few friends but it was never the same as Delano. Most of my friends were friends from church.
The following summer, I attended a Bible Training Camp held by our church in Fresno, California. There I learned about a high school our church headquarters in Tennessee sponsored, and through the help of many friends and loved ones, I "temporarily moved" to Cleveland, Tennessee and attended Tomlinson Memorial School in the eleventh and twelfth grades. The Thornton family allowed me to live with them while attending school those two years, and helping around the house and being with their youngest daughter while they worked.
But all that is another story... without all the histrionics.
I really liked the house, though I was very sad to leave my school friends in Delano, and my church friends in Earlimart. The first time I ever viewed the inside of the house, I was astonished; I had never seen so many roaches. The house had just been fumigated before we moved in. Those nasty bugs lay in still, brown piles all over the place. They had to be swept out of the kitchen cabinets, drawers, off the counters, the window sills, the light fixtures; every available surface that wasn't perpendicular was two to six inches deep in ugly brown roach-bugs. I shiver to remember it. And that was only inside the house. The big shop out back was worse, I was told. I didn't even go out there until the boys had cleaned it out.
By the time the Christmas vacation was ended, we had settled in and Mama had transformed the formerly roach-ridden house into a neat and cozy home that worked very well for our family. And Daddy was very happy with his new shop; he was making mattresses and selling them like mad.
Bakersfield was a big town, a city even. It was a long way to school, so we had to ride the school bus for the first time since we lived on Fourth Avenue in Delano when I was in the fifth grade. By this time my brother Jim was in his senior year in high school, so he stayed in Delano with friends and relatives, and graduated in the spring. Ray was a freshman; I was a sophomore, and Richard was to walk to his fifth grade class in a near-by elementary school. Little sister Diane was not even yet in kindergarten. I think she was about three years old.
The first day in Bakersfield High School was such a nightmare for me that when I finally got home I ran past my Mama and flung myself on the bed, weeping. Mama came in and sat on the side of the bed, patting me and repeating, "What's the matter, Jean? What's the matter? What happened? Are you sick? Where does it hurt? Huh?..."
Really, I tried to gain control, but it had been such a horrible day that I felt if I kept crying maybe they wouldn't make me go back to that school again. But as Mama began to lose patience with me, I realized that was not going to happen.
She firmed up her voice. "Awright, Jean. You get ahold of yourself. Right now. You quit that crying and tell me what's the matter. You were all right when Daddy left you and Ray at the school office this morning. And Ray's been home for a long time... Why didn't you come home on the bus with him? I been worried sick about you, girl..."
I took a deep breath, and tried to speak. It didn't work. Every word I tried to say my voice cracked, and my throat hurt, and my mind raced... Eventually, I was able to settle down and tell her the main problems of the day.
Bakersfield High School was several times bigger than Delano High School. It was the oldest school in town located quite a distance from our home on Virginia Avenue. It had a huge and confusing campus and more than thirty buses. I had been in the office all morning getting signed up for my classes, and in the afternoon, had found my way around to my different classes. I was late to several of the classes but forgiven due to being a new student and everyone knew it was difficult to learn one's way around the campus. When you're a teenager, though, and have to walk into a classroom where everyone is already seated, and all those eyes turn to look you over, well... that is excruciating.
But I made it. I got through the afternoon well enough until it came to finding which of those thirty buses was the one I was supposed to get on. I think I had our address, bla bla bla Virginia Avenue, but I wasn't sure, and worst of all, I couldn't find Ray anywhere. Eventually, I had boarded a bus that someone said went out to Virginia Avenue. "In fact," said the driver, "we cross Virginia Avenue, so this is probably the right bus..."
He told me he would tell me when we got to Virginia Avenue, and he did. I got off the bus and it pulled away. Then I looked around. What now? Which way? I was at a cross roads, and since the bus had gone across one of them, I figured that must be Virginia Avenue. I started walking down the street. I didn't see anything familiar. We had only been living there maybe a couple of weeks and I hadn't explored around the area. I was carrying a huge load of books, with homework marked in each book associated with the afternoon classes. We didn't have back packs in those days.
Some girls ahead of me turned around and asked me where I lived. I felt really dumb, but said helplessly, "I don't know. Somewhere on Virginia Avenue..."
The girls were really friendly. "What does your house look like?"
"We just moved in. It's ... a big green house with a big shop out behind it. My Daddy has a mattress shop there..." My face was getting red; I could feel the burn. "I... can't remember the address."
The girls said their mom would help me find it, and she did. She took me there in her car. I found out I had gone the wrong way when I got off the bus at Virginia Avenue. By the time I thanked them and went inside the house, I was done. I had that major melt-down once I shut the door behind me.
I never did really like Bakersfield High School, although I never got lost again. I made a few friends but it was never the same as Delano. Most of my friends were friends from church.
The following summer, I attended a Bible Training Camp held by our church in Fresno, California. There I learned about a high school our church headquarters in Tennessee sponsored, and through the help of many friends and loved ones, I "temporarily moved" to Cleveland, Tennessee and attended Tomlinson Memorial School in the eleventh and twelfth grades. The Thornton family allowed me to live with them while attending school those two years, and helping around the house and being with their youngest daughter while they worked.
But all that is another story... without all the histrionics.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Football ... Then and Now
I was never into sports as a young person. I wasn't good at anything physical except exercising my fingers on a typewriter. (But that's another story.) I do remember, though, the one and only Delano High School football game I attended. I don't remember why I went there; it was entirely outside of my "rat-trails." None of my family were sports fans. It must have been that my friends were excited about it and talked me into coming, too.
Up in the stands where I sat, it was cold and dark. I had no idea what was going on down on the field. I could barely see the players down there running around. I didn't know who was on "our" team and since I was surrounded by screaming fans, I couldn't ask questions. No one wants to explain the complicated game of football to a high school freshman girl, who 1) can't hear over the noise, and 2) really isn't all that interested anyway. I don't even remember if we won or lost. I have to admit, though, that it was "fun" to just be in the excited crowd and yell when those beside me were yelling, and feel like a part of the fun and excitement.
Walking home to our house on Cecil Avenue, about four blocks from the high school, in the dark with my brother Jim and his friends, I who have always been a talker, couldn't talk.That night my throat was so sore, I couldn't speak above a whisper for a day or two. And I never attended another football game since then.
That was my only experience with football back then. I didn't know any of the boys on the team, nor their girlfriends. I didn't have a desire to learn the rules of the game. It seemed a bit silly to me. It looked like they lined up facing each other, squatted down nose to nose, paused, and then, for no reason I could see, they all fell in a heap, or scattered and ran all over the field while the crowd was yelling furiously. It just didn't make sense in the winter of 1959-1960.
Fast forward to the winter of 1994-1995. My first husband, Dave Goins, had died two years before, and I had brought our twelve-year-old daughter Beth to San Diego to experience her dad's large extended family. She had been born and raised in Alaska, where football is pretty much only a television experience. Up there, people who like football watch it on TV and root for their favorite team. Most do not mind if their friends have different favorite teams and the rooting is light hearted. There is no National Football League or home team anywhere in Alaska.
Before we moved to San Diego, Beth had decided the Miami Dolphins was her team. Therefore, she rooted loudly for them when watching games on TV. Big surprise, she found that her new friends in the condo complex in Lakeside were life-long Charger fans and did not take it lightly when she boo'd the Chargers. They had all been watching a TV out in the common area one Sunday afternoon. Beth came inside to watch the game after awhile. I could see she was upset. She felt she had been banned from her circle of friends because of disagreeing with them over whom to cheer.
I should thank them. Today I enjoy watching football because to comfort Beth I watched football games with her, asking a lot of dumb questions. Beth explained to me the rules of the game and what was going on when they "fell in a heap" or ran wild all over the field. Of course it helped to have a home team for which to root. Note 1995 was the year the San Diego Chargers went to the Super Bowl. Winning over the Miami Dolphins (Beth's team) was a key in sending the Chargers to the Super Bowl that year. Even though the Chargers lost that Super Bowl game, I became a football fan, thanks to Beth and many other patient people who explained to me what was going on in games from time to time. (I'm smiling...)
The difference between football in Delano High School in the late fifties and high school, college, or national football of today is technology, especially television in high definition. I am not sure when they began to broadcast sports on television. It could have been in the fifties or sixties. In those times, though, TV was mostly black and white, and there were not a host of channels to watch. Most families had TV's with rabbit ears that picked up three fuzzy channels in black and white. If in color, it was still quite fuzzy. There was no cable. There was no satellite.
Baseball was the American sport. It was broadcast on the radio. Or, people would sit in the sunny ball field and watch the games. It was the kind of game where everyone could see what was going on, with hardly any possibility of a dozen guys falling in a heap. It was much simpler. If you missed the game, the results were recounted in the local newspapers sports sections.
Today, widescreens and high definition lends itself to images of the coaches pacing up and down and cursing, and the helpers squirting Gatorade or something in sweating football players' mouths. Cameras focus on the action, and usually if you miss something, it will be something that happened in the part of the field where the ball wasn't, or it will be immediately replayed several times from different camera angles.
Which is the best? Definitely, watching football on television today is better than shivering in the stands surrounding the Delano High School football field. On the other hand, what goes on in the lives of those who are watched today, the players, coaches, even cheerleaders, is probably a lot more pressured and complicated than in the olden days.
What do you think?
Up in the stands where I sat, it was cold and dark. I had no idea what was going on down on the field. I could barely see the players down there running around. I didn't know who was on "our" team and since I was surrounded by screaming fans, I couldn't ask questions. No one wants to explain the complicated game of football to a high school freshman girl, who 1) can't hear over the noise, and 2) really isn't all that interested anyway. I don't even remember if we won or lost. I have to admit, though, that it was "fun" to just be in the excited crowd and yell when those beside me were yelling, and feel like a part of the fun and excitement.
Walking home to our house on Cecil Avenue, about four blocks from the high school, in the dark with my brother Jim and his friends, I who have always been a talker, couldn't talk.That night my throat was so sore, I couldn't speak above a whisper for a day or two. And I never attended another football game since then.
That was my only experience with football back then. I didn't know any of the boys on the team, nor their girlfriends. I didn't have a desire to learn the rules of the game. It seemed a bit silly to me. It looked like they lined up facing each other, squatted down nose to nose, paused, and then, for no reason I could see, they all fell in a heap, or scattered and ran all over the field while the crowd was yelling furiously. It just didn't make sense in the winter of 1959-1960.
Fast forward to the winter of 1994-1995. My first husband, Dave Goins, had died two years before, and I had brought our twelve-year-old daughter Beth to San Diego to experience her dad's large extended family. She had been born and raised in Alaska, where football is pretty much only a television experience. Up there, people who like football watch it on TV and root for their favorite team. Most do not mind if their friends have different favorite teams and the rooting is light hearted. There is no National Football League or home team anywhere in Alaska.
Before we moved to San Diego, Beth had decided the Miami Dolphins was her team. Therefore, she rooted loudly for them when watching games on TV. Big surprise, she found that her new friends in the condo complex in Lakeside were life-long Charger fans and did not take it lightly when she boo'd the Chargers. They had all been watching a TV out in the common area one Sunday afternoon. Beth came inside to watch the game after awhile. I could see she was upset. She felt she had been banned from her circle of friends because of disagreeing with them over whom to cheer.
I should thank them. Today I enjoy watching football because to comfort Beth I watched football games with her, asking a lot of dumb questions. Beth explained to me the rules of the game and what was going on when they "fell in a heap" or ran wild all over the field. Of course it helped to have a home team for which to root. Note 1995 was the year the San Diego Chargers went to the Super Bowl. Winning over the Miami Dolphins (Beth's team) was a key in sending the Chargers to the Super Bowl that year. Even though the Chargers lost that Super Bowl game, I became a football fan, thanks to Beth and many other patient people who explained to me what was going on in games from time to time. (I'm smiling...)
The difference between football in Delano High School in the late fifties and high school, college, or national football of today is technology, especially television in high definition. I am not sure when they began to broadcast sports on television. It could have been in the fifties or sixties. In those times, though, TV was mostly black and white, and there were not a host of channels to watch. Most families had TV's with rabbit ears that picked up three fuzzy channels in black and white. If in color, it was still quite fuzzy. There was no cable. There was no satellite.
Baseball was the American sport. It was broadcast on the radio. Or, people would sit in the sunny ball field and watch the games. It was the kind of game where everyone could see what was going on, with hardly any possibility of a dozen guys falling in a heap. It was much simpler. If you missed the game, the results were recounted in the local newspapers sports sections.
Today, widescreens and high definition lends itself to images of the coaches pacing up and down and cursing, and the helpers squirting Gatorade or something in sweating football players' mouths. Cameras focus on the action, and usually if you miss something, it will be something that happened in the part of the field where the ball wasn't, or it will be immediately replayed several times from different camera angles.
Which is the best? Definitely, watching football on television today is better than shivering in the stands surrounding the Delano High School football field. On the other hand, what goes on in the lives of those who are watched today, the players, coaches, even cheerleaders, is probably a lot more pressured and complicated than in the olden days.
What do you think?
Monday, June 20, 2011
I Wonder Why We Wandered...
Some friends have expressed puzzlement as to why our family moved so often. It was normal to us, but now looking back, I wonder why... Were we wanderers and gatherers? Nomads? Roamers? Rovers? Birds of passage...? I wonder why we wandered...
Were we poor? It depends on one's definitions of rich and poor. Both our parents came from large families and had been raised "barely making it" on small farms in Arkansas and Mississippi. Daddy only finished the fourth grade in school. He wasn't very good at school, didn't really learn to read. Perhaps he was a bit dyslexic, and no one back then knew how to help him see the letters right.
He was the youngest of ten children, and had worked since childhood. His first "paying" job was picking up laths in a sawmill when he was ten years old. He was paid a dime a week, and his father took that to help with family expenses. That would have been in 1923, when, as Daddy used to say, "A dime was as big as a wagon wheel."
By the early '30's he married his first wife, Minnie, who was only fourteen. I don't know what kind of work he did in those years between his marriage and World War II in the early 'Forties, but he moved around to various places and had three children. One son, Calvin, died in childhood. He was drafted in the Army at the age of 30, and served as a foot soldier in Italy. When he came home, he took his family to California and worked in Bakersfield in a mattress company.
They returned to Arkansas to be near their families, and settled in North Little Rock. He worked in another mattress company there, and stayed in that job until after Minnie died and he married Mama. I don't know how many times he moved between World War II and when he took his newly blended family to California in 1955, but I'm pretty sure he worked in the same job in the North Little Rock mattress company all that time.
Mama's history had a lot of similarities, as far as living on poor dirt farms and moving around a lot. Her father's ancestors had imigrated from Ireland in the late 1700's and had eventually migrated to the south and bought land where they built a plantation in Mississippi near Vicksburg. They owned slaves, and were fairly well-to-do before the Civil War, but of course when the slaves were freed they were unable to produce much without the free labor. Both my grandfather's parents died (of some kind of sickness) right after the Civil War, and their children were divided up between relatives. Pap'aw was seven years old when that happened. He was unruly and was moved around between relatives, finally settling down for a couple of years with an uncle in Texas.
At age fourteen, he ran away from that uncle's home. He walked across Texas and Arkansas, and eventually found the old "home place" in Mississippi. There he found an old ex-slave woman who had cared for him when he was a very young child. He stayed with her a little while but she was unable to take care of him. Soon he got into trouble with the law. He was in court about to be sentenced to jail when an old man who had no children offered to adopt him and "make a man out of him." So with that old man and his wife, he learned to work and "live right" and so he eventually married Mama's mother and had a "whole passel of younguns".
After working for other people for many years, Mama's father finally bought land, a small poor dirt farm. That was the farm that was flooded in 1927 (see Mama's Flood...). After that, they moved to Arkansas, but was barely making it when he died in 1939. His wife also died a few months later.
So my mother wandered from job to job in cotton fields, dime stores, and eventually to a meat-packing house (in Greenville, Mississippi) where she met and married Russell Lusk, my father. After he ran off with another woman, leaving her with two babies, Jim and me, she wandered from cotton mill to cotton mill trying to support us.
We were very poor but I never knew it. I never felt anxious about it. I just wished I had a Daddy. After Mama married Clarence Ballentine, I was big enough to see at least the shadows of their financial struggles, but we always had somewhere to live and plenty of beans and potatoes to eat, and iced tea, and lots of fruit and other good things once we moved to the San Joaquin Valley.
We never had a fancy house, at least not while I was still at home. After the bulk of the kids grew up and left home, Mama and Daddy lived in a couple of nice houses in good neighborhoods. They had pretty good cars. Daddy had a truck, and later several trucks in the mattress business he started in McFarland. But he was always in debt.
He tried to retire a couple of times, but always returned to the mattress business. That involved several more moves, to Missouri and back, then later to Mountain View, Arkansas, where is his final resting place. Mama also is buried there beside him. After his death she moved around several more times before she finally returned to California, where she died in 2009 at the age of 93.
So we were wanderers. We children of the Coalters and Ballentines have all moved around a lot, too, in our life-times... Someday, like Mama and Daddy, we are going home. Home. Home.
Were we poor? It depends on one's definitions of rich and poor. Both our parents came from large families and had been raised "barely making it" on small farms in Arkansas and Mississippi. Daddy only finished the fourth grade in school. He wasn't very good at school, didn't really learn to read. Perhaps he was a bit dyslexic, and no one back then knew how to help him see the letters right.
He was the youngest of ten children, and had worked since childhood. His first "paying" job was picking up laths in a sawmill when he was ten years old. He was paid a dime a week, and his father took that to help with family expenses. That would have been in 1923, when, as Daddy used to say, "A dime was as big as a wagon wheel."
By the early '30's he married his first wife, Minnie, who was only fourteen. I don't know what kind of work he did in those years between his marriage and World War II in the early 'Forties, but he moved around to various places and had three children. One son, Calvin, died in childhood. He was drafted in the Army at the age of 30, and served as a foot soldier in Italy. When he came home, he took his family to California and worked in Bakersfield in a mattress company.
They returned to Arkansas to be near their families, and settled in North Little Rock. He worked in another mattress company there, and stayed in that job until after Minnie died and he married Mama. I don't know how many times he moved between World War II and when he took his newly blended family to California in 1955, but I'm pretty sure he worked in the same job in the North Little Rock mattress company all that time.
Mama's history had a lot of similarities, as far as living on poor dirt farms and moving around a lot. Her father's ancestors had imigrated from Ireland in the late 1700's and had eventually migrated to the south and bought land where they built a plantation in Mississippi near Vicksburg. They owned slaves, and were fairly well-to-do before the Civil War, but of course when the slaves were freed they were unable to produce much without the free labor. Both my grandfather's parents died (of some kind of sickness) right after the Civil War, and their children were divided up between relatives. Pap'aw was seven years old when that happened. He was unruly and was moved around between relatives, finally settling down for a couple of years with an uncle in Texas.
At age fourteen, he ran away from that uncle's home. He walked across Texas and Arkansas, and eventually found the old "home place" in Mississippi. There he found an old ex-slave woman who had cared for him when he was a very young child. He stayed with her a little while but she was unable to take care of him. Soon he got into trouble with the law. He was in court about to be sentenced to jail when an old man who had no children offered to adopt him and "make a man out of him." So with that old man and his wife, he learned to work and "live right" and so he eventually married Mama's mother and had a "whole passel of younguns".
After working for other people for many years, Mama's father finally bought land, a small poor dirt farm. That was the farm that was flooded in 1927 (see Mama's Flood...). After that, they moved to Arkansas, but was barely making it when he died in 1939. His wife also died a few months later.
So my mother wandered from job to job in cotton fields, dime stores, and eventually to a meat-packing house (in Greenville, Mississippi) where she met and married Russell Lusk, my father. After he ran off with another woman, leaving her with two babies, Jim and me, she wandered from cotton mill to cotton mill trying to support us.
We were very poor but I never knew it. I never felt anxious about it. I just wished I had a Daddy. After Mama married Clarence Ballentine, I was big enough to see at least the shadows of their financial struggles, but we always had somewhere to live and plenty of beans and potatoes to eat, and iced tea, and lots of fruit and other good things once we moved to the San Joaquin Valley.
We never had a fancy house, at least not while I was still at home. After the bulk of the kids grew up and left home, Mama and Daddy lived in a couple of nice houses in good neighborhoods. They had pretty good cars. Daddy had a truck, and later several trucks in the mattress business he started in McFarland. But he was always in debt.
He tried to retire a couple of times, but always returned to the mattress business. That involved several more moves, to Missouri and back, then later to Mountain View, Arkansas, where is his final resting place. Mama also is buried there beside him. After his death she moved around several more times before she finally returned to California, where she died in 2009 at the age of 93.
So we were wanderers. We children of the Coalters and Ballentines have all moved around a lot, too, in our life-times... Someday, like Mama and Daddy, we are going home. Home. Home.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Honoring My Daddy
1913-1982
Already I've said a lot about my Daddy in this blog since I started it early in May. He came into my life when I was ten years old. Before that, I felt as if I didn't have a Daddy. Sadly, when I was about six months old, "Daddy Lusk"had driven home from work with a woman in the car. He gathered his clothes, told Mama he was leaving, and took off. They divorced, and he gave Mama $100 a month for a year or so, and then no more.
Mama had four sisters and seven brothers; many of them helped her by taking care of Jim and me for periods of time while she sought a job, or, when we were out of school for the summer, we stayed with our aunts or uncles on their farms. Most of the time Aunt Berl, the maiden aunt, lived with us and provided child care while Mama worked.
When I went to school in Pine Bluff, I noticed that most other kids had Daddy's; they bragged about them. I wished I had one. I didn't understand why I didn't.
Once Jim and I walked a few blocks to downtown Pine Bluff and viewed a movie. When we got home, the front door was locked, which was unusual. So we knocked loudly. A man came to the door, a man I didn't recognize. It was my Daddy, whom I didn't know. We sat in the middle room with him and Mama. He took me up on his lap, and talked to us. He smelled funny. He kept kissing me, right on the lips, all wet and smushy. I didn't like it. To this day I shudder to think of it. When I grew up I realized he did that because he 1) was drunk, and 2) had never had the experience of showing affection to a child as a dad. He didn't know how.
After that impromptu and brief visit, he made arrangements two times to take us to his parents' home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi for the Christmas holidays. We enjoyed our grandparents, and they were ecstatic about our visit. I remember them and the house, and other relatives who were there at the same time. But I really can recall only shadowy images in my mind of Daddy Lusk during those Christmas visits. If he was trying to convince Mama that they should get back together, he failed miserably.
Then in 1954 while I was still nine years old (before Christmas), along came Clarence Ballentine. He fell in love with my Mama, and asked her to marry him. I remember her talking to nine-year-old me before she said yes. I think she talked to Jim and me at the same time, because I remember his response, too: "I just want a television..." My response was "I want a Daddy..." So she said yes to him, and that resulted in my oft repeated sentence in this blog... We had us a Daddy.
I have talked about my Daddy a lot in these posts. He was the pillar in our lives. We didn't always agree with him. We didn't always realize why he did the things he did, until we were adults and had to deal with some of the same problems he dealt with while he was raising us. We didn't always agree with his ways of dealing with life. I cannot speak for my whole-, half-, or step-siblings, each of whom may have still have issues with our parents. But I can say with all my heart that my Daddy never mistreated me, always loved, led and blessed me, rushed to my aid on a moment's notice when he lived near enough, would always do anything he could to help me and mine... He was the best Daddy in the world. I loved him so much, and still do.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Toys... Then vs. Now
Mama used to tell me I had a lot of "bought'n" toys in comparison to what she had as a child. She and Aunt Tot were the youngest of twelve children on their farm near Delta City, Mississippi. They made their own dolls. They learned at an early age to sew with needle and thread. Mam'aw would let them have small scraps of old, holey, worn-out garments, and they would make dresses for their stick or brick dolls. Sometimes they tried to dress kittens from the mama cats in the barn, but the kittens didn't like it and would scratch and claw their way out of the clothes and then run away fast as lightning.
Now that I'm an old grannie, I see children's toys with the perspective of time. Occasionally I get to "work" in the nursery at church, where we have a big assortment of "bought'n" toys. Many of them are really great toys, and I think the little ones like to play with them, for a few seconds at a time... For the most part, their attention span is so short, and there are so many toys to choose from, that they are a bit overwhelmed. When you stop to think about it, these days we all live in a rather overwhelming world.
On the other hand, when Mama was a child, the "play" involved making their own toys and thinking up fun things to do. They were entertained for hours with the process of dressing those bricks or kittens. They learned to work, to focus, to solve problems, and it was fun.
When I was little, I had a mixture of home-made and store-bought toys. I had a couple of store-bought dolls. In Kosciusko when I was very small, a kind neighbor man came with rope and plank and made me a swing. Occasionally, Mama or Aunt Berl would lend me a big spoon to dig with but I had to bring it back to the kitchen when I was "through" digging. I "cooked" with jar lids and leaves. I cut out paper dolls from last year's Sears Catalogue.
When we lived in the apartment on Barraque Street I received a little set of tin dishes, pots and pans for Christmas. I hardly ever played with them. I think it was because they didn't really require any "work" from me. They were empty and still, and required little imagination. They were not nearly as much fun as playing with Aunt Myrtle's biscuit dough (see We Had Us a Bunch of Uncles), or stirring the white powders together during the hour I was supposed to be napping. (See Old Timey Childcare...)
As a small child, I didn't have many playmates. Sometimes Jim played with me, but he was more interested in cowboys and Indians or toy cars and trucks, or other boy-games. Sometimes I would try to play with him but the only fun thing to me about the cars and trucks was watching Jim make the motor sounds. He would slightly stick out his wet tongue and blow his breath out, his lips making a "pl-l-l-l" sound. (Sorry, I don't know how to spell it...)
When we lived on Second Street in Pine Bluff, Jim and I would play "Chinese School" on the front porch steps. The "teacher" holds a little rock or coin in one hand or the other behind their back, and then, fists closed, holds out both hands to the "student" sitting on the top step. The student then chooses which hand they think the rock is in; if they are correct, they get to move one grade (step) ahead. When they finally graduate, they trade places and the student becomes the teacher. Back then it seemed to me there were many steps, at least eight, on the front porch. However, in the picture of that old house taken last year as my husband and I traveled through Pine Bluff, there are only four steps. The world just looks bigger to a child.
At that house, Jim and I also made up games. One was to run out almost to the street and watch up and down the street for a car to come our way. When a car was coming, we would wait until it was almost to our house, then race back to the "safe" concrete area by the steps. The goal was to reach the safe area before the car passed by our house. What a simple game! and what fun we had doing that.
I learned at school to play "Jacks" which was a very simple and cheap store-bought toy enjoyed by girls in about the fourth grade. It consisted of a little usually red ball about an inch or so big, and a handful of little metal jacks, and a gradually built up skill of tossing the ball up with the right hand, picking up a jack and then catching the ball after it bounced. That was the onesies. If you didn't "miss" as you picked up all the jacks one by one, you got to go on to "twosies" where you picked up two jacks at a time. And so on, however many jacks you had. I think it was six or ten jacks, though some fortunate little girls might have twelve, or fifteen. (That got too hard, though.) As you became skilled, there were several other games with the jacks, such as "Ups" and "Downs" and "Eggs In the Basket."
...
These days there are so many toys available to kids, and some of them are really great learning tools. How is it, then, that we often hear children saying, "I'm bored..."? I think it's because their imagination is not challenged. They don't have to work and learn, or stretch their minds...
The only time I remember being bored as a child was when I would start to play with those "bought'n" tin dishes. They looked empty and small and ... unreal. My imagination coupled with the lids and cans holding a bit of mud pie produced much more realistic and fun play.
Well, we can't go back to the way it was in the olden, golden days. And we shouldn't. Kids today could learn to have fun and not be bored, though, if they were occasionally required to lay aside the media and do the fun work of imagining and accomplishing and working their minds and bodies. Even us old grannies could benefit from working out that way.
I'm smiling.
(Disclaimer: I realize kids do learn from media. It's just that so often they learn "wrong" things and bad words and attitudes. But media is also good for helping to teach kids God's Word.)
Now that I'm an old grannie, I see children's toys with the perspective of time. Occasionally I get to "work" in the nursery at church, where we have a big assortment of "bought'n" toys. Many of them are really great toys, and I think the little ones like to play with them, for a few seconds at a time... For the most part, their attention span is so short, and there are so many toys to choose from, that they are a bit overwhelmed. When you stop to think about it, these days we all live in a rather overwhelming world.
On the other hand, when Mama was a child, the "play" involved making their own toys and thinking up fun things to do. They were entertained for hours with the process of dressing those bricks or kittens. They learned to work, to focus, to solve problems, and it was fun.
When I was little, I had a mixture of home-made and store-bought toys. I had a couple of store-bought dolls. In Kosciusko when I was very small, a kind neighbor man came with rope and plank and made me a swing. Occasionally, Mama or Aunt Berl would lend me a big spoon to dig with but I had to bring it back to the kitchen when I was "through" digging. I "cooked" with jar lids and leaves. I cut out paper dolls from last year's Sears Catalogue.
When we lived in the apartment on Barraque Street I received a little set of tin dishes, pots and pans for Christmas. I hardly ever played with them. I think it was because they didn't really require any "work" from me. They were empty and still, and required little imagination. They were not nearly as much fun as playing with Aunt Myrtle's biscuit dough (see We Had Us a Bunch of Uncles), or stirring the white powders together during the hour I was supposed to be napping. (See Old Timey Childcare...)
As a small child, I didn't have many playmates. Sometimes Jim played with me, but he was more interested in cowboys and Indians or toy cars and trucks, or other boy-games. Sometimes I would try to play with him but the only fun thing to me about the cars and trucks was watching Jim make the motor sounds. He would slightly stick out his wet tongue and blow his breath out, his lips making a "pl-l-l-l" sound. (Sorry, I don't know how to spell it...)
When we lived on Second Street in Pine Bluff, Jim and I would play "Chinese School" on the front porch steps. The "teacher" holds a little rock or coin in one hand or the other behind their back, and then, fists closed, holds out both hands to the "student" sitting on the top step. The student then chooses which hand they think the rock is in; if they are correct, they get to move one grade (step) ahead. When they finally graduate, they trade places and the student becomes the teacher. Back then it seemed to me there were many steps, at least eight, on the front porch. However, in the picture of that old house taken last year as my husband and I traveled through Pine Bluff, there are only four steps. The world just looks bigger to a child.
At that house, Jim and I also made up games. One was to run out almost to the street and watch up and down the street for a car to come our way. When a car was coming, we would wait until it was almost to our house, then race back to the "safe" concrete area by the steps. The goal was to reach the safe area before the car passed by our house. What a simple game! and what fun we had doing that.
I learned at school to play "Jacks" which was a very simple and cheap store-bought toy enjoyed by girls in about the fourth grade. It consisted of a little usually red ball about an inch or so big, and a handful of little metal jacks, and a gradually built up skill of tossing the ball up with the right hand, picking up a jack and then catching the ball after it bounced. That was the onesies. If you didn't "miss" as you picked up all the jacks one by one, you got to go on to "twosies" where you picked up two jacks at a time. And so on, however many jacks you had. I think it was six or ten jacks, though some fortunate little girls might have twelve, or fifteen. (That got too hard, though.) As you became skilled, there were several other games with the jacks, such as "Ups" and "Downs" and "Eggs In the Basket."
...
These days there are so many toys available to kids, and some of them are really great learning tools. How is it, then, that we often hear children saying, "I'm bored..."? I think it's because their imagination is not challenged. They don't have to work and learn, or stretch their minds...
The only time I remember being bored as a child was when I would start to play with those "bought'n" tin dishes. They looked empty and small and ... unreal. My imagination coupled with the lids and cans holding a bit of mud pie produced much more realistic and fun play.
Well, we can't go back to the way it was in the olden, golden days. And we shouldn't. Kids today could learn to have fun and not be bored, though, if they were occasionally required to lay aside the media and do the fun work of imagining and accomplishing and working their minds and bodies. Even us old grannies could benefit from working out that way.
I'm smiling.
(Disclaimer: I realize kids do learn from media. It's just that so often they learn "wrong" things and bad words and attitudes. But media is also good for helping to teach kids God's Word.)
Friday, June 17, 2011
Old-Timey Childcare ... on Barraque Street
My Mama was a single mom for the first ten years of my life. As far back as I can remember, she worked. My first memories are of living in Kosciusko, Mississippi where Mama worked at the cotton mill. She was a weaver, and in those first years she worked for less than a dollar an hour. Of course, a dollar would buy a lot more then than now. It was a hard, loud, dangerous job, with room-sized looms loudly clacking and banging all day. The air was full of cotton shreds and fragments; she would come home in the evening with white hair and clothes.
Who took care of Jim and me? Aunt Berl did. She was our maiden aunt who had lived with several of her siblings over the years and cared for their children while the parents worked. In my early years, I remember far more time spent with Aunt Berl than with Mama. In Kosciusko I remember playing under the quilting frame while Aunt Berl quilted quietly. I remember her holding me in her lap in church while Mama played the piano. If I wanted to get down and run around or talk (which was usually the case), Aunt Berl would place me firmly in her lap facing her and flick my lips with her fingers. "Don't you cry, Girl," she would barely whisper. And I wouldn't dare.
When we moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Mama got a job in the cotton mill there, again as a weaver. We lived at first on Barraque Street, in an apartment that shared a bathroom with another apartment. I was five years old by then, not quite old enough to start first grade.
The "apartment" was in a big old house that had been converted into three apartments, one of which shared a bathroom with us. Our apartment consisted of two great big rooms, or so they seemed to me. The kitchen was on one side of one room and consisted of a kitchen sink with no counter top, just a sink. There was one small cabinet over the sink, but I could climb up and get into it. The table and chairs was in the middle of the room, and served as counter top for preparing food, as well as dining table. The other side of the room had the bed Aunt Berl and I shared, and the treadle sewing machine.
The other room was a huge bedroom that had Mama's/Jim's bed and a dresser, and a large glass-paned door that opened to the front porch. It would have been the living room, but we had no couch or chairs in there.
Aunt Berl got a job at the cotton mill, in the quieter area where the thread was made. She was a spinner. She worked on the "Second Shift" and left for work in the middle of the day, an hour before Mama came home from the "First Shift."
So who was supposed to care for me? I still took a nap during the day, so it was decided that I would be put down for my nap before Aunt Berl left for work and I could get up when Mama came home. The neighbors in the other apartment, a young mom with children younger than I, agreed to "listen" for me and take care of me if I awakened during that hour. It was not necessarily a good solution but the best Mama and Aunt Berl could come up with. They could barely make ends meet even with both of them working. There was no extra money for child care.
The neighbor lady listened to the radio during that hour. I remember hearing through the wall the music strains of her radio soap opera, "The Young Widow Brown." I can still hum it to this day. I have no idea what the story was, but I'm guessing it was extremely tame compared to television soaps of today.
Eventually, I stopped sleeping at all during that hour. I would pretend to be going to sleep, and Aunt Berl would go sit on the porch steps watchng for her ride. As soon as I was sure she was gone, I would get up and start "cooking."
Fortunately, I didn't know how to light the stove burners, or wasn't really interested in that part of cooking. To me, the stirring of ingredients together was the fun part, so I would fill a cup with some white powder out of several boxes in the cupboard (probably sugar, soda, baking powder, and salt), add some pepper because it was always fun to liberally sprinkle salt and pepper on food. Then I would climb up on the sink and turn on the faucet. The plumbing was very old in the house, and so corroded that you couldn't get a big or hard stream of water, so it didn't wash my ingredients out of the cup. When it was all wet enough to stir I would take it back to the kitchen table, which was the only counter top in the kitchen, and stir to my heart's content. It was really fun.
Then when I thought I heard someone coming, I would rush back over to the sink, pour it all down the drain, turn on the water and swish my hand under it and try to brush away the evidence of my adventure in cooking. From this vantage point of sixty-one years later, I can clearly see the hand of God, keeping me from desiring to taste what I "cooked" or getting in to something poisonous, or messing with sharp knives, or turning on the gas without knowing you had to strike a match, or any number of potentially fatal activities right there in the kitchen on Baraque Street.
Once I found the toothpaste where it was parked by the kitchen sink. Such fun to squirt it out all in the sink. But shoot! it didn't easily rinse down the drain like the other stuff I had stirred together. So I mashed it with my fingers and did the best I could to get rid of it.
Later when Mama came home, she saw it in the kitchen sink and started rinsing it away, griping, "Why is all this toothpaste in the kitchen sink?"
"Well, Aunt Berl brushed her teeth there," I offered, innocently. She seemed to believe that, and didn't pursue the subject further.
Eventually, my adventurous little spirit took me from the kitchen into the living room where I eventually got caught. First, Mama told me never to go answer the door if someone knocked. Of course, I promised not to do that, and I kept my promise, sort of. The front door was mostly glass inside a dark wood frame. A curtain was gathered thickly on a rod on the inside for privacy. One day I heard someone knock, and I got up, sneaked into the living room and peeked around the furniture. There were two or three people out there; I could hear them talking and see their feet through the edges of the ruffles at the bottom of the privacy curtain.
I wanted to see their faces, so I sneaked up to the door and pulled the curtain back just a little, just enough to see the two women and one man standing there holding papers in their hands. I didn't make eye contact with any of them, but quickly dropped the curtain back in place and backed away. I heard one of them say, "Someone is in there. I saw the curtain move..."
Then another one said, "Me, too. I wonder why they aren't answering the door..." Eventually, they left. I was glad; I never considered they might hurt me, but I was afraid they would tell on me for getting out of bed, which would probably get me a "whuppin'."
Oh, well. Since I was already in the living room where I wasn't supposed to be, I might as well look around in there for something to play with. Hmmm... There was Mama's Noxema in the dark blue jar. I loved the smell of it, but she would never let me put some on me. I decided to see what it felt like... I unscrewed the jar lid, and breathed deeply, savoring the pungent smell. I felt gingerly of the top of the creme. Sooo smooth and silky. I dug my pointer finger all the way down to the bottom of the jar, and came up with a handful of the creme. I then thought I heard someone coming, so I quickly put the handful of creme back in the jar as best I could and screwed on the lid. I made a dash for the bed in the kitchen, and pretended to be asleep when Mama came in the front door.
I could hear her putting her stuff down in the living room. I waited what seemed like a long time to me (probably ten seconds) and then got up casually and went in the living room to meet her. She was just standing there, looking around, sniffing.
"Hi, Mama. You're home."
She looked at me, and sniffed the air again. "What is that I smell?"
"I don't smell anything..." I was hoping she would come on in the kitchen away from the dresser in the living room.
"It smells like... something... Hey! What's this?" Uh oh. She eyed the dark blue Noxema jar. She walked over and picked it up.
"Aunt Berl was using that," I lied, straight faced.
"She sure got it all over the place," she opened the jar and looked inside at the deep cavern in the middle of the creme, closed the lid, shaking her head. She picked up her purse and started toward the kitchen.
Whew! I thought I was off the hook. But no, as soon as she passed me, she stopped short and turned around. She bent down as if to hug me, and then her eyes widened. "What is that I smell?" She took my face in her hands, smelled my hair, drew back a little and said quietly, "What have you been into, Jean?"
I shook my head. I still hoped I could fool her. I didn't want a whuppin'.
To my surprise, she didn't make me answer her question. She said, "I know. You been messin' with the Noxema. Haven't you?"
I considered lying some more, but realized it was no use. Mama saw the answer in my face, and to my surprise, she took me in her arms and squeezed me... When she released me, there were tears on her face and a crack in her voice as she said, "You could get hurt, Jean, by getting into stuff. Don't get into my Noxema any more. I know you like the smell of it. But if you get it in your eyes or mouth, it could burn real bad. It could make you real sick. Don't do that no more..."
So I didn't. After that she must have put away whatever she thought might hurt me.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Back to Delano... Eighth Grade Graduation
I just attended a ceremony for "Eighth Grade Promotion" for Ashley. It was a very nice celebration for this milestone. A small school, a "charter" school, where both teachers and students appear to be focusing on the future rather than the past. I like that.
In 1959, Cecil Avenue Elementary School's eighth grade graduation was held in the high school stadium. I'm estimating there were about 150 graduating from eighth grade that year.
I can't find it now, but somewhere in this house I have a picture of me in the front row because I was receiving an award, the Rotary Award for Scholarship. I'm pretty sure my Daddy came down on that field and took that picture. I always noticed the contrast of my dress to all the other girls' extremely wide full skirts. You can see other girls in the background basically shaped like an up-side-down "V" with skirts so wide at the bottom that you didn't notice much what was above it. Our dresses were all pastel colored. Most had lots of ruffles and ribbons.
Mine was plain. It was pale lavender, filmy but not bouffant like the others'. I loved that dress. Mama and I went shopping in Bakersfield, the "big city" thirty miles away. Maybe the dress was on sale because it wasn't like the most popular ones of that time. It was perfect for me. I was already taller than most girls in my class, with long, skinny legs and arms, and flat chested.
At Ashley's eighth grade promotion, I noticed that most of the girls wore high heels. (Very high heels.) I held my breath as they walked across the stage. Thank God no one lost their balance and fell. Eighth grade graduation was my first experience in wearing shoes with high heels. They were strappy sandals with three-inch heels, and they emphasized the skinny length of my legs and feet. I thought those shoes were the most fabulous ones ever made. I felt absolutely Grown Up while wearing them.
Ashley's Promotion Ceremony brought back a lot of memories, mostly about how children are looking forward to adulthood. At that age, young teens, they are looking forward with hope for a bright future where they will be choosing what they want to do in life after they've jumped the hurdles of high school and college. I am happy for Ashley; I think she has a positive attitude about doing the hard work of learning and growing in school. She has goals. She is looking forward...
I'm looking back... Sometimes I wish I could go back there again, but no. Only in memories can I do that...
In 1959, Cecil Avenue Elementary School's eighth grade graduation was held in the high school stadium. I'm estimating there were about 150 graduating from eighth grade that year.
I can't find it now, but somewhere in this house I have a picture of me in the front row because I was receiving an award, the Rotary Award for Scholarship. I'm pretty sure my Daddy came down on that field and took that picture. I always noticed the contrast of my dress to all the other girls' extremely wide full skirts. You can see other girls in the background basically shaped like an up-side-down "V" with skirts so wide at the bottom that you didn't notice much what was above it. Our dresses were all pastel colored. Most had lots of ruffles and ribbons.
Mine was plain. It was pale lavender, filmy but not bouffant like the others'. I loved that dress. Mama and I went shopping in Bakersfield, the "big city" thirty miles away. Maybe the dress was on sale because it wasn't like the most popular ones of that time. It was perfect for me. I was already taller than most girls in my class, with long, skinny legs and arms, and flat chested.
At Ashley's eighth grade promotion, I noticed that most of the girls wore high heels. (Very high heels.) I held my breath as they walked across the stage. Thank God no one lost their balance and fell. Eighth grade graduation was my first experience in wearing shoes with high heels. They were strappy sandals with three-inch heels, and they emphasized the skinny length of my legs and feet. I thought those shoes were the most fabulous ones ever made. I felt absolutely Grown Up while wearing them.
Ashley's Promotion Ceremony brought back a lot of memories, mostly about how children are looking forward to adulthood. At that age, young teens, they are looking forward with hope for a bright future where they will be choosing what they want to do in life after they've jumped the hurdles of high school and college. I am happy for Ashley; I think she has a positive attitude about doing the hard work of learning and growing in school. She has goals. She is looking forward...
I'm looking back... Sometimes I wish I could go back there again, but no. Only in memories can I do that...
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
"Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?"
Well, I was. In eighth grade, I played Hermia in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
At first we read Shakespeare in class. We giggled about the weird fifteenth century language, and yawned as the hour dragged on and on while we read words and phrases we didn't understand at all. I had a certain advantage in that I had read the King James Version of the Bible all my life up to that point. I was familiar with the thee's and thou's and other diction of the times. I dug it. But a lot of Shakespeare's humor was lost on me...
After reading for a few weeks, we went to the auditorium and read the lines on the stage to be chosen for the various parts. I put everything I had into the reading, although I confess not much of it made sense to me. Anyway, I was chosen as the character Hermia, who was in love with Lysander, who spurned her because of some fairy concoction he drank which made him think he loved Helena... Well, it's complicated. Shakespeare was good at that.
We practiced for months and finally presented the play in the spring. The auditorium was full. My parents were there, though later they confessed they didn't understand any of it but were glad I played my part and got a good grade on it and and were also glad it was over. So was I.
Since then I have occasionally run into the old guy (Shakespeare) and enjoyed him again. The older I grow, the better I understand his wit. However, without having had the experience of playing in one of his plays when I was in eighth grade, I would not have made the effort to read Shakespeare after I was grown up.
These days, with all the media available to my grandchildren, I would be surprised if any of them are willing to put forth the effort necessary to enjoy Shakespeare. I'm a little sad about that. But on the bright side, the media makes God's word more readily available to everyone, including young people. I'd much rather my grandchildren have God's Word instilled in them by whatever means, even if it would mean they never heard of Shakespeare.
What do you think?
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
There's a Snake In My ... Chicken House...
I apologize for skipping around so much. Last week my stories were of my grandparents' times, and then we skipped forward to my childhood before the Wedding in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and then almost twenty years forward to our move to Alaska in 1969.
So let's go back again, but not as far as my Mam'aw's days. Let's talk about Aunt Tot's little cabin on "Deep Ellum" as she called it. But first I need to explain about Aunt Tot. I already told you about having summer fun on her place in Kosciusko, Mississippi in 1954, where she milked five cows for Uncle E.G. Deep Ellum was not the same place, nor the same time.
Aunt Tot had married Uncle Guy, the Love of her Life. They had a son we called Sonny. He was one of our favorite cousins. But in the late 1930's Uncle Guy came down with appendicitis and died. This was when Sonny was about five years old. If they had antibiotics then, they didn't treat him with them. So Aunt Tot was raising Sonny all by herself.
She tried to do that on a little "Place" which wasn't really big enough to be called a farm, but it had an old log cabin which they used as a kitchen, and they had moved a plank house up next to the cabin to give a bit more room in which to live. They had built a little enclosed "bridge" between the house and the log cabin kitchen, which Jim and I called a "dog-trot." (Don't ask... I have no explanation... other than perhaps you could pass through there without getting your feet wet in the Mississippi mud as the floor of it was about a foot off the ground.)
Mom had lost her job at the cotton mill in Kosciusko, and was looking for a job in Pine Bluff at another cotton mill. Meanwhile, Aunt Berl was taking care of Jim and me out at Aunt Tot's "place" at Deep Ellum. This was in the spring of 1948, when I was about four years old. Sonny was in maybe the fifth grade and Jim was in the second grade. The boys went to school but I was not old enough yet.
It's funny to me now, how that these days I can't remember what happened five minutes ago, but I can see clearly the pictures stamped in my mind out on Deep Ellum. I remember first of all what an ordeal it was to get there. That spring the road was so deep in mud that you couldn't drive all the way to the Place. I think Aunt Tot picked us up with a car, but the car was abandoned at a bridge and Sonny met us with a horse. The Aunts placed Jim and me up on the horse, Jim behind Sonny and me in front. That put me right up on the horse's bare withers. I think I was wearing a dress, but also a coat as it was early spring and quite wet.
We proceeded to walk down the muddy road, kids on the horse and aunts walking behind. I cried. Those wither-bones were hurting my bottom so much. But no one would allow me to get down and walk, too. They didn't want my shoes to be ruined in the mud.
Finally we made it to the cabin.
...
I remember Aunt Tot using that same horse to pull a plow. She was turning up the earth in the little field you could see from the house. Like most all the Coalters, she was tall and skinny legged, with long arms, hands, and fingers. She had developed a little skill at pressing down on the plow to make it dig in deep, and at the same time loudly coaxing the horse to "Gee" or "Haw", depending on which way she wanted it to pull that plow. As I remember, the horse would cooperate a little while, but then when it decided enough was enough, it would balk. Somehow, though, Aunt Tot got that field plowed.
She sowed the seed without the help of the horse. I watched, fascinated, as she took long-legged, deliberately even steps, her left arm holding a wooden box in front of her, that somehow sprayed the seeds as she walked and turned the attached handle. I never saw the harvest. By autumn Mama had taken us all back to Pine Bluff, because she had started working again in the cottom mill there...
...
Sonny was a very entertaining cousin. And enterprising. He found some planks and built me a playhouse. He drew a large square in the dirt with a stick. Then he found planks, probably three or four feet long, somehow nailed them together to form a fence-like wall around the square he had drawn. That's all. I thought it was a mansion. The aunts supplied me a few fruit jar lids and sticks and I had me a kitchen. Who cared if it didn't have a roof? I had more fun there than with any play house in my whole life.
...
Sonny found a huge tire and persuaded Jim to get inside and let him roll him around the yard in it. I suppose Jim was a glutton for punishment, as I think he did that several times. Me? Once. Only once. Well, maybe it was just a boy kind of thing.
...
There was a hen house in the back. It was Sonny's job to collect the eggs in the afternoon. Once he sent Jim running into the cabin to announce there was a snake in the hen house. We all ran out to investigate. Sonny had a hoe, and was playing with a long rattlesnake. As Aunt Tot insisted, he chopped its head off. (I don't know why he didn't do that in the first place.) After that I didn't enjoy my playhouse or anywhere outside any more. I figured there were snakes anywhere you might look.
Then I found out there were other dangers, too. One morning I sat down in the wooden rocking chair and something suddenly inflicted a fiery burning pain on my little bottom. I came up out of that rocking chair screaming and dancing around. Aunt Berl grabbed me up and pulled down my panties and discovered the culprit, a wasp. How did he get in my britches? Beats me. Sure did hurt, though.
...
Aunt Tot got her water from a well that had a hand pump attached to the top. There was a glass jar she always filled with the last of the water at a pumping and set it down at the base of the pump. "We need that to prime the pump next time," she told me. I saw "next time" how she picked up that jar, and poured the water right back down the pump and then began to pump it up and down vigorously...
I always wondered what we would do if someone accidentally knocked the jar over and all the water spilled out, and then there would be none when you came back to pump some more. What if I came there so thirsty I couldn't stand it, and so I drank the water...? Or... would I have the courage to pour that water down the pipe not knowing if it was the last water in the well and the pump wouldn't work...? I never got the answer to that question, but in later life I've remembered that and thought there is probably a spiritual application there somewhere...
...
We had more fun with less toys in Deep Ellum than anywhere I can remember in my whole life. "We have fun when we use our noggins," is what our Mama and our aunts told us. So in that case, even work can be fun...
So let's go back again, but not as far as my Mam'aw's days. Let's talk about Aunt Tot's little cabin on "Deep Ellum" as she called it. But first I need to explain about Aunt Tot. I already told you about having summer fun on her place in Kosciusko, Mississippi in 1954, where she milked five cows for Uncle E.G. Deep Ellum was not the same place, nor the same time.
Aunt Tot had married Uncle Guy, the Love of her Life. They had a son we called Sonny. He was one of our favorite cousins. But in the late 1930's Uncle Guy came down with appendicitis and died. This was when Sonny was about five years old. If they had antibiotics then, they didn't treat him with them. So Aunt Tot was raising Sonny all by herself.
She tried to do that on a little "Place" which wasn't really big enough to be called a farm, but it had an old log cabin which they used as a kitchen, and they had moved a plank house up next to the cabin to give a bit more room in which to live. They had built a little enclosed "bridge" between the house and the log cabin kitchen, which Jim and I called a "dog-trot." (Don't ask... I have no explanation... other than perhaps you could pass through there without getting your feet wet in the Mississippi mud as the floor of it was about a foot off the ground.)
Mom had lost her job at the cotton mill in Kosciusko, and was looking for a job in Pine Bluff at another cotton mill. Meanwhile, Aunt Berl was taking care of Jim and me out at Aunt Tot's "place" at Deep Ellum. This was in the spring of 1948, when I was about four years old. Sonny was in maybe the fifth grade and Jim was in the second grade. The boys went to school but I was not old enough yet.
It's funny to me now, how that these days I can't remember what happened five minutes ago, but I can see clearly the pictures stamped in my mind out on Deep Ellum. I remember first of all what an ordeal it was to get there. That spring the road was so deep in mud that you couldn't drive all the way to the Place. I think Aunt Tot picked us up with a car, but the car was abandoned at a bridge and Sonny met us with a horse. The Aunts placed Jim and me up on the horse, Jim behind Sonny and me in front. That put me right up on the horse's bare withers. I think I was wearing a dress, but also a coat as it was early spring and quite wet.
We proceeded to walk down the muddy road, kids on the horse and aunts walking behind. I cried. Those wither-bones were hurting my bottom so much. But no one would allow me to get down and walk, too. They didn't want my shoes to be ruined in the mud.
Finally we made it to the cabin.
...
I remember Aunt Tot using that same horse to pull a plow. She was turning up the earth in the little field you could see from the house. Like most all the Coalters, she was tall and skinny legged, with long arms, hands, and fingers. She had developed a little skill at pressing down on the plow to make it dig in deep, and at the same time loudly coaxing the horse to "Gee" or "Haw", depending on which way she wanted it to pull that plow. As I remember, the horse would cooperate a little while, but then when it decided enough was enough, it would balk. Somehow, though, Aunt Tot got that field plowed.
She sowed the seed without the help of the horse. I watched, fascinated, as she took long-legged, deliberately even steps, her left arm holding a wooden box in front of her, that somehow sprayed the seeds as she walked and turned the attached handle. I never saw the harvest. By autumn Mama had taken us all back to Pine Bluff, because she had started working again in the cottom mill there...
...
Sonny was a very entertaining cousin. And enterprising. He found some planks and built me a playhouse. He drew a large square in the dirt with a stick. Then he found planks, probably three or four feet long, somehow nailed them together to form a fence-like wall around the square he had drawn. That's all. I thought it was a mansion. The aunts supplied me a few fruit jar lids and sticks and I had me a kitchen. Who cared if it didn't have a roof? I had more fun there than with any play house in my whole life.
...
Sonny found a huge tire and persuaded Jim to get inside and let him roll him around the yard in it. I suppose Jim was a glutton for punishment, as I think he did that several times. Me? Once. Only once. Well, maybe it was just a boy kind of thing.
...
There was a hen house in the back. It was Sonny's job to collect the eggs in the afternoon. Once he sent Jim running into the cabin to announce there was a snake in the hen house. We all ran out to investigate. Sonny had a hoe, and was playing with a long rattlesnake. As Aunt Tot insisted, he chopped its head off. (I don't know why he didn't do that in the first place.) After that I didn't enjoy my playhouse or anywhere outside any more. I figured there were snakes anywhere you might look.
Then I found out there were other dangers, too. One morning I sat down in the wooden rocking chair and something suddenly inflicted a fiery burning pain on my little bottom. I came up out of that rocking chair screaming and dancing around. Aunt Berl grabbed me up and pulled down my panties and discovered the culprit, a wasp. How did he get in my britches? Beats me. Sure did hurt, though.
...
Aunt Tot got her water from a well that had a hand pump attached to the top. There was a glass jar she always filled with the last of the water at a pumping and set it down at the base of the pump. "We need that to prime the pump next time," she told me. I saw "next time" how she picked up that jar, and poured the water right back down the pump and then began to pump it up and down vigorously...
I always wondered what we would do if someone accidentally knocked the jar over and all the water spilled out, and then there would be none when you came back to pump some more. What if I came there so thirsty I couldn't stand it, and so I drank the water...? Or... would I have the courage to pour that water down the pipe not knowing if it was the last water in the well and the pump wouldn't work...? I never got the answer to that question, but in later life I've remembered that and thought there is probably a spiritual application there somewhere...
...
We had more fun with less toys in Deep Ellum than anywhere I can remember in my whole life. "We have fun when we use our noggins," is what our Mama and our aunts told us. So in that case, even work can be fun...
Monday, June 13, 2011
My First Airplane Ride... A Miracle From the Lord
Kids these days fly everywhere. Teenagers don't even remember their first airplane ride because they were babies when it happened. That applies not only to teenagers, but also to forty-somethings; it applies to my almost forty-two-year-old daughter, Rachel. When Rachel was four months old and I was twenty-five, I took her for our first plane ride.
It happened right before Thanksgiving, 1969. We were in the middle of a monumental move to Alaska, where my husband Dave Goins intended to work on the Pipeline (which was still in the planning stage, not yet being built). We left San Diego November 12, and had already had a lot of adventure, most all of which is necessarily another story...
Basically, we were driving a 1951 Chevy truck that was meant for hauling small house trailers short distances on warm highways. We were hauling a 15 by 40-foot, three-axle mobile home that folded up to eight feet wide, with heavy furniture stacked to the ceiling, all the way from San Diego (actually Chula Vista which is farther south, right on the border) to Anchorage, Alaska. We had already been on the road almost two weeks, and had made it to Fort St. John in British Columbia, Canada on Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
That night we experienced the first snowfall on the whole trip as we pulled the long and heavy rig up a steep and winding mountain that was fast becoming icy. We knew there would be ice and snow on the road to Alaska at that time of year, but had no idea what we were in for. Dave should have known. He had lived in Michigan as a teenager. Well, maybe they don't have mountains in Michigan; I don't know. I've never been there, but I know they have lots of snow. So he should have known. He should have been prepared, but he had only one length of chain which he tied around one of the four back wheels of the truck. It didn't help.
We found ourselves almost cross-wise of the highway with the back axle of the trailer hanging off the steep precipice into the dark void. This was on a two-way highway, a long and very icy hill, late at night and very dark. All traffic stopped, both ways. People got out in the blowing snow and helped. Most of all, God helped. I was talking hard and fast to Him. Sure is a good thing He is so merciful to ignorant young people who take on cold slick mountains with a heavy load, not realizing what they are getting into.
It took us about an hour and a half to go about five miles to the top of the hill where there was a level area and a gas station. We managed to park there for the night, buy some real chains, and get some rest.
We decided that the next day when we reached Fort St. John, we would find the airport and send Rachel and me ahead to Anchorage on a plane. I had never been in an airplane, but I was sure it couldn't be as scary as more icy mountains like those of the night before.
At the airport, we bought a ticket for the next flight to Anchorage. We learned that I had just missed a connecting flight in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory that would take me to Juneau, Alaska and then on to Anchorage.
"But wait," the ticket agent said, "we'll call them and see if they can delay twenty minutes..." He talked on the phone a few minutes and then told us, "They're holding that plane for you. We'll instruct our crew to call ahead when you get close and see if they can wait until you can board..."
We were elated. Sounded like a plan to me. I was blissfully ignorant of the in's and out's of flying in Canada and Alaska. I was blissfully ignorant of flying. This was going to be my first time on an airplane.
Dave kissed us goodbye and left. It was necessarily going to take him a lot more days on the road to get to Anchorage with the truck and trailer. I remember standing at the window holding my four-month-old baby, watching that old truck pull away with its enormous load, creeping slowly down the side road from the airfield toward the Alaska-Canadian highway, the "twelve hundred miles of dirt road" which had turned out to be an ice road. I prayed, "Oh, God, please take care of him... and us."
When I left the terminal building to walk out and climb into the airplane, I was too concerned about making the connection in Whitehorse to pay much attention to my surroundings in the plane. I found it not uncomfortable at all taking off into the white sky. The flight attendant had been informed of our need to make the "illegal" connection in Whitehorse, and they had radio'd ahead to Whitehorse about my situation when we approached that airport. They knew that if I didn't make that connection, I would have to stay maybe a few days in Whitehorse.
The attendant came to my seat, smiling as we started to land. She told me, "The other plane is on the ground waiting for you. Someone will meet you at the terminal..." I breathed a sigh of relief and thanks to the Lord.
As it turned out, someone did walk out to meet me, but the information they gave me was not what I wanted to hear. The fact was that the airplane headed for Juneau had actually left for Juneau a couple of hours before. In fact it had already left when we were buying my ticket in Fort St. John. It was a prop plane. Then, about fifteen minutes into their flight, one of the engines had just stopped running. They had to turn around and return to Whitehorse with just one engine running.
They had put up all the passengers in a hotel, and called for another plane to come down to Whitehorse from Fairbanks, Alaska to take the failed engine along with all twelve Juneau passengers back to Fairbanks, then to Anchorage, then to Juneau. That plane would not arrive until the wee hours of the next morning. Legally they could not put me up in a hotel in Whitehorse because my flight to Anchorage was just beginning there. But they allowed me to stay in the terminal all night, if I wanted to, and they would tell the maintenance people to watch out for me and the baby. Then they would fly me to Fairbanks, put me up in a hotel there for whatever number of hours until their flight left Fairbanks for Anchorage.
Sounded like round and round the mulberry bush for me, but it sounded like I was going to make it to Anchorage. On the flight to Fairbanks, I sat beside a man who had been on the failed flight to Juneau, had actually been watching the engine propeller stop running. He told me all of the people on that flight were angry and upset with the airlines, thinking they had sent them out without checking that engine. I didn't tell that man, but I thought, "I bet they'd be mad at me if they knew that, in answer to my prayer, the Lord had made that engine fail so they would have to come back to get me in Whitehorse and I wouldn't have to stay there a few days."
Hmm. For all I know, though, maybe God was working a lot of other things out for all those people, too. He is always in control. We can totally trust Him.
Thanks to my friends in Anchorage, Warren, Theresa, and Kathy Covey (Welch) for taking me and baby Rachel in and keeping us until Dave made it to Anchorage a week or two later. He had to make two more trips back to get the truck and trailer all the way to Anchorage.
But that is another story...
It happened right before Thanksgiving, 1969. We were in the middle of a monumental move to Alaska, where my husband Dave Goins intended to work on the Pipeline (which was still in the planning stage, not yet being built). We left San Diego November 12, and had already had a lot of adventure, most all of which is necessarily another story...
Basically, we were driving a 1951 Chevy truck that was meant for hauling small house trailers short distances on warm highways. We were hauling a 15 by 40-foot, three-axle mobile home that folded up to eight feet wide, with heavy furniture stacked to the ceiling, all the way from San Diego (actually Chula Vista which is farther south, right on the border) to Anchorage, Alaska. We had already been on the road almost two weeks, and had made it to Fort St. John in British Columbia, Canada on Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
That night we experienced the first snowfall on the whole trip as we pulled the long and heavy rig up a steep and winding mountain that was fast becoming icy. We knew there would be ice and snow on the road to Alaska at that time of year, but had no idea what we were in for. Dave should have known. He had lived in Michigan as a teenager. Well, maybe they don't have mountains in Michigan; I don't know. I've never been there, but I know they have lots of snow. So he should have known. He should have been prepared, but he had only one length of chain which he tied around one of the four back wheels of the truck. It didn't help.
We found ourselves almost cross-wise of the highway with the back axle of the trailer hanging off the steep precipice into the dark void. This was on a two-way highway, a long and very icy hill, late at night and very dark. All traffic stopped, both ways. People got out in the blowing snow and helped. Most of all, God helped. I was talking hard and fast to Him. Sure is a good thing He is so merciful to ignorant young people who take on cold slick mountains with a heavy load, not realizing what they are getting into.
It took us about an hour and a half to go about five miles to the top of the hill where there was a level area and a gas station. We managed to park there for the night, buy some real chains, and get some rest.
We decided that the next day when we reached Fort St. John, we would find the airport and send Rachel and me ahead to Anchorage on a plane. I had never been in an airplane, but I was sure it couldn't be as scary as more icy mountains like those of the night before.
At the airport, we bought a ticket for the next flight to Anchorage. We learned that I had just missed a connecting flight in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory that would take me to Juneau, Alaska and then on to Anchorage.
"But wait," the ticket agent said, "we'll call them and see if they can delay twenty minutes..." He talked on the phone a few minutes and then told us, "They're holding that plane for you. We'll instruct our crew to call ahead when you get close and see if they can wait until you can board..."
We were elated. Sounded like a plan to me. I was blissfully ignorant of the in's and out's of flying in Canada and Alaska. I was blissfully ignorant of flying. This was going to be my first time on an airplane.
Dave kissed us goodbye and left. It was necessarily going to take him a lot more days on the road to get to Anchorage with the truck and trailer. I remember standing at the window holding my four-month-old baby, watching that old truck pull away with its enormous load, creeping slowly down the side road from the airfield toward the Alaska-Canadian highway, the "twelve hundred miles of dirt road" which had turned out to be an ice road. I prayed, "Oh, God, please take care of him... and us."
When I left the terminal building to walk out and climb into the airplane, I was too concerned about making the connection in Whitehorse to pay much attention to my surroundings in the plane. I found it not uncomfortable at all taking off into the white sky. The flight attendant had been informed of our need to make the "illegal" connection in Whitehorse, and they had radio'd ahead to Whitehorse about my situation when we approached that airport. They knew that if I didn't make that connection, I would have to stay maybe a few days in Whitehorse.
The attendant came to my seat, smiling as we started to land. She told me, "The other plane is on the ground waiting for you. Someone will meet you at the terminal..." I breathed a sigh of relief and thanks to the Lord.
As it turned out, someone did walk out to meet me, but the information they gave me was not what I wanted to hear. The fact was that the airplane headed for Juneau had actually left for Juneau a couple of hours before. In fact it had already left when we were buying my ticket in Fort St. John. It was a prop plane. Then, about fifteen minutes into their flight, one of the engines had just stopped running. They had to turn around and return to Whitehorse with just one engine running.
They had put up all the passengers in a hotel, and called for another plane to come down to Whitehorse from Fairbanks, Alaska to take the failed engine along with all twelve Juneau passengers back to Fairbanks, then to Anchorage, then to Juneau. That plane would not arrive until the wee hours of the next morning. Legally they could not put me up in a hotel in Whitehorse because my flight to Anchorage was just beginning there. But they allowed me to stay in the terminal all night, if I wanted to, and they would tell the maintenance people to watch out for me and the baby. Then they would fly me to Fairbanks, put me up in a hotel there for whatever number of hours until their flight left Fairbanks for Anchorage.
Sounded like round and round the mulberry bush for me, but it sounded like I was going to make it to Anchorage. On the flight to Fairbanks, I sat beside a man who had been on the failed flight to Juneau, had actually been watching the engine propeller stop running. He told me all of the people on that flight were angry and upset with the airlines, thinking they had sent them out without checking that engine. I didn't tell that man, but I thought, "I bet they'd be mad at me if they knew that, in answer to my prayer, the Lord had made that engine fail so they would have to come back to get me in Whitehorse and I wouldn't have to stay there a few days."
Hmm. For all I know, though, maybe God was working a lot of other things out for all those people, too. He is always in control. We can totally trust Him.
Thanks to my friends in Anchorage, Warren, Theresa, and Kathy Covey (Welch) for taking me and baby Rachel in and keeping us until Dave made it to Anchorage a week or two later. He had to make two more trips back to get the truck and trailer all the way to Anchorage.
But that is another story...
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Pow! Crash! Smack! Big Explosion...
Let's go back to Pine Bluff, Arkansas a couple of years before The Wedding. Ummm, maybe three years before The Wedding, when I was seven years old.
Mama, Aunt Berl, Jim and I lived in the big old duplex on Second Street. See the recent picture of the house on "Homesickness..." in May. At that time, the house looked a bit different than in this picture that we took while passing through Pine Bluff on a vacation trip last winter. In the '50's this house had many windows in the two front rooms, instead of solid plywood on each side. When we took this picture, it appeared the house was under reconstruction or remodeling.
When we lived there in the early '50's, the house had a lot of character. It had high ceilings, built in bookshelves, many windows and many nooks and crannies, such as the slanted linen closet under the back stairs that led up to the attic. (Remember? The attic where the Rats lived?) The inside walls were covered by thick plaster. In the living room ceiling were criss-crossing giant beams, painted black, while the plaster that showed between them was painted white.
Aunt Berl and I slept in the front room, the room nearest to me in the picture. Aunt Berl worked at the cotton mill, too, and since she worked on a swing shift, I always went to bed alone, and she came home around midnight, by which time I was fast asleep.
Between that front room and the "bedroom" where Mama and my brother Jim slept, was the living room with the high ceiling and black beams. Their bedroom was right in the middle of the house.
The house was a duplex and while we lived in one side for a number of years, the other side changed tenants several times. The outgoing tenants would turn off the gas at their meter (we had a separate one) and then disconnect their gas appliances, recap the gas pipe which was sticking up through a hole in the floor, and move their heaters and stove out. After that tenant had moved everything away, their side of the duplex would be rented out to another family. The new family would move in their stove and heaters, and while the gas was still off they would connect the appliances to the gas lines by un-screwing the caps on the gas lines and fastening on their appliances, turn the gas on at the meter, and "light" the appliances to see if the gas was on and the appliances were working properly. Most people knew how to do this and didn't have to have an official "gas man" to come and inspect it.
One night we were all asleep in our side of the house except Aunt Berl who wasn't home from work yet. I think it was probably about ten or eleven o'clock. Tenants on the other side of the house had recently moved out and another set of tenants were moving in. Suddenly... BAM! CRASH! There was a deafening explosion. I was thrown out of bed onto the floor, and immediately, it seemed, Mama and Jim were running through the living room in their pajamas, calling me, "C'mon, Jean! Hurry! Let's get out of here..."
I jumped up and went outside with them. I remember it had been raining and the grass in the front yard was wet. I felt it cold on my bare feet. People were running around, hollering, screaming, talking excitedly. People began gathering from all up and down the street. I was shivering and crying because I was cold and confused and no one was paying any attention to me or telling me what had happened. We heard sirens coming closer and closer and soon the firetruck was there, though I didn't see any fire.
Neighbors that we knew down the street came and took me down to their house and dried me off and wrapped me in a blanket and lent me socks and shoes of their child. They just ignored all the activity and noise down at our house and took care of me for quite a while. When Aunt Berl arrived home from work at the cotton mill about midnight, she came and got me.
It was only then that I learned what had happened: The outgoing tenants had turned off the gas and removed their appliances. They finished moving and returned to clean out the house. At that time they capped the gas lines and left. They didn't realize that one of the gas lines had slipped down, uncapped, below the floor. Probably the person capping those lines was someone who had not known (or at least remembered) that there was a heater in the middle room.
So when the new tenants moved in, since the weather was cold, they had first brought in their stove and heaters and hooked them up and turned the gas back on. Pretty soon they were smelling gas. This family had no children, but there were several grownups, and one of the women decided to find where that gas smell was coming from. She lit a match and started "testing" everywhere to find where the gas was coming from. Eventually, she noticed the hole in the floor and knelt down in front of it. She lit another match and stuck it down in the hole.
She did not know or realize that the gas pipe that had been supplying gas to a heater in that room had fallen down on the ground and had been spewing gas all under the house for a while before she put the lighted match in the hole. The space under the whole house was completely filled with natural gas. The explosion that ensued was huge! It lifted the house off the brick foundation, blowing the bricks outward in certain places, and throwing me out of bed in the process. It cracked the inch-thick plaster all over the house, dislodging gigantic chunks of plaster in the middle rooms. It blew up floor boards in the back porch. The woman who stuck the lighted match in the hole was not hurt, but her bangs were singed slightly.
It took hours for the firemen to be sure the house was safe for us all to return and go to sleep. Of course, the first thing done was to shut off the gas and electricity. The firemen stayed around a long time, though, to be sure every connection was not leaking any gas. They had to crawl under that great big house, all over the area it covered.
I remember wondering how the rats fared in that explosion. What do you think?
Mama, Aunt Berl, Jim and I lived in the big old duplex on Second Street. See the recent picture of the house on "Homesickness..." in May. At that time, the house looked a bit different than in this picture that we took while passing through Pine Bluff on a vacation trip last winter. In the '50's this house had many windows in the two front rooms, instead of solid plywood on each side. When we took this picture, it appeared the house was under reconstruction or remodeling.
When we lived there in the early '50's, the house had a lot of character. It had high ceilings, built in bookshelves, many windows and many nooks and crannies, such as the slanted linen closet under the back stairs that led up to the attic. (Remember? The attic where the Rats lived?) The inside walls were covered by thick plaster. In the living room ceiling were criss-crossing giant beams, painted black, while the plaster that showed between them was painted white.
Aunt Berl and I slept in the front room, the room nearest to me in the picture. Aunt Berl worked at the cotton mill, too, and since she worked on a swing shift, I always went to bed alone, and she came home around midnight, by which time I was fast asleep.
Between that front room and the "bedroom" where Mama and my brother Jim slept, was the living room with the high ceiling and black beams. Their bedroom was right in the middle of the house.
The house was a duplex and while we lived in one side for a number of years, the other side changed tenants several times. The outgoing tenants would turn off the gas at their meter (we had a separate one) and then disconnect their gas appliances, recap the gas pipe which was sticking up through a hole in the floor, and move their heaters and stove out. After that tenant had moved everything away, their side of the duplex would be rented out to another family. The new family would move in their stove and heaters, and while the gas was still off they would connect the appliances to the gas lines by un-screwing the caps on the gas lines and fastening on their appliances, turn the gas on at the meter, and "light" the appliances to see if the gas was on and the appliances were working properly. Most people knew how to do this and didn't have to have an official "gas man" to come and inspect it.
One night we were all asleep in our side of the house except Aunt Berl who wasn't home from work yet. I think it was probably about ten or eleven o'clock. Tenants on the other side of the house had recently moved out and another set of tenants were moving in. Suddenly... BAM! CRASH! There was a deafening explosion. I was thrown out of bed onto the floor, and immediately, it seemed, Mama and Jim were running through the living room in their pajamas, calling me, "C'mon, Jean! Hurry! Let's get out of here..."
I jumped up and went outside with them. I remember it had been raining and the grass in the front yard was wet. I felt it cold on my bare feet. People were running around, hollering, screaming, talking excitedly. People began gathering from all up and down the street. I was shivering and crying because I was cold and confused and no one was paying any attention to me or telling me what had happened. We heard sirens coming closer and closer and soon the firetruck was there, though I didn't see any fire.
Neighbors that we knew down the street came and took me down to their house and dried me off and wrapped me in a blanket and lent me socks and shoes of their child. They just ignored all the activity and noise down at our house and took care of me for quite a while. When Aunt Berl arrived home from work at the cotton mill about midnight, she came and got me.
It was only then that I learned what had happened: The outgoing tenants had turned off the gas and removed their appliances. They finished moving and returned to clean out the house. At that time they capped the gas lines and left. They didn't realize that one of the gas lines had slipped down, uncapped, below the floor. Probably the person capping those lines was someone who had not known (or at least remembered) that there was a heater in the middle room.
So when the new tenants moved in, since the weather was cold, they had first brought in their stove and heaters and hooked them up and turned the gas back on. Pretty soon they were smelling gas. This family had no children, but there were several grownups, and one of the women decided to find where that gas smell was coming from. She lit a match and started "testing" everywhere to find where the gas was coming from. Eventually, she noticed the hole in the floor and knelt down in front of it. She lit another match and stuck it down in the hole.
She did not know or realize that the gas pipe that had been supplying gas to a heater in that room had fallen down on the ground and had been spewing gas all under the house for a while before she put the lighted match in the hole. The space under the whole house was completely filled with natural gas. The explosion that ensued was huge! It lifted the house off the brick foundation, blowing the bricks outward in certain places, and throwing me out of bed in the process. It cracked the inch-thick plaster all over the house, dislodging gigantic chunks of plaster in the middle rooms. It blew up floor boards in the back porch. The woman who stuck the lighted match in the hole was not hurt, but her bangs were singed slightly.
It took hours for the firemen to be sure the house was safe for us all to return and go to sleep. Of course, the first thing done was to shut off the gas and electricity. The firemen stayed around a long time, though, to be sure every connection was not leaking any gas. They had to crawl under that great big house, all over the area it covered.
I remember wondering how the rats fared in that explosion. What do you think?
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Mama's Flood... A Story
With there having been so many blizzards, floods, and tornadoes this year in our country, I heard a newscaster say we will break the records set in 1926. I wondered, "What's wrong with him? That flood was in 1927." It was an historic flood in America, setting records for high water in the Mississippi Delta. I'm hearing on the news that with all the snow melt from this blizzard-infested winter, we are likely to break the high water records set in 1926-27.
Mama was 12 years old when the Mississippi River levee broke near Greenville, and the flood waters filled the delta area around there for miles to the east. Pap'aw heard about the levee break and climbed up on his roof to see if he could see the water coming their way. Apparently, it wasn't a rushing flood, just a steady filling up of the delta valley where their farm was located. When he could see the shimmer of the muddy water in the distance to the west, he decided it was time to go.
He packed the wagon with all the food they had, plus bedding and clothes, linens, dishes, pots and pans, hitched the mules to the front and tied the cows behind the wagon. Off they went, all of the big Coalter family, east beyond Rolling Fork to higher ground. They found a big two-story house on a rise of land. Pap'aw rented the house and the barn which was slightly down hill from the house. They shared this house for several months with some neighbors, another big family. There were 26 people in that house for a long time, about two months.
They put the animals in the UPSTAIRS of the barn. They hoisted the cows and mules up into the hayloft with ropes and pulleys. As the water came ever nearer and eventually deeply flooded the lower story of the barn, they paddled Cypress dugout canoes from the house out to the barn to tend to those animals every day.
There was another rise of land off a ways separated from the house by the floodwaters. A herd of pigs made it to that rise and milled around there for a few days, crying and screaming for food. There was nothing there for them to eat, and the Coalters and their friends had nothing to feed them. Mama said she wanted to stop her ears from the pitiful sounds coming from those pigs. Eventually, the sounds grew fainter. The pigs died.
As time went by, the smell of death surrounded them. Mama and several others in the two families crowded together in the house got sick with mumps, and fever, and other things. It was a terrible time.
Eventually, the waters receded and they were able to return to their farm near Delta City. Their house there had been completely inundated by the flood waters, and cleaning it up enough to live in it was a daunting task. The Coalters, though, were accustomed to hardship and hard work, so they spent the whole summer getting back on their feet. However, they were not able to put in a crop that year, and eventually had to move away from their beloved farm.
That flood of 1927 forever changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the Mississippi Delta in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Afterwards, a great many people moved north to the big cities like Chicago and Detroit where manufacturing jobs were available.
The weather-casters are predicting that floods from the melting snows of the north this year will surpass the record set in 1927. I pray that doesn't happen.
Mama was 12 years old when the Mississippi River levee broke near Greenville, and the flood waters filled the delta area around there for miles to the east. Pap'aw heard about the levee break and climbed up on his roof to see if he could see the water coming their way. Apparently, it wasn't a rushing flood, just a steady filling up of the delta valley where their farm was located. When he could see the shimmer of the muddy water in the distance to the west, he decided it was time to go.
He packed the wagon with all the food they had, plus bedding and clothes, linens, dishes, pots and pans, hitched the mules to the front and tied the cows behind the wagon. Off they went, all of the big Coalter family, east beyond Rolling Fork to higher ground. They found a big two-story house on a rise of land. Pap'aw rented the house and the barn which was slightly down hill from the house. They shared this house for several months with some neighbors, another big family. There were 26 people in that house for a long time, about two months.
They put the animals in the UPSTAIRS of the barn. They hoisted the cows and mules up into the hayloft with ropes and pulleys. As the water came ever nearer and eventually deeply flooded the lower story of the barn, they paddled Cypress dugout canoes from the house out to the barn to tend to those animals every day.
There was another rise of land off a ways separated from the house by the floodwaters. A herd of pigs made it to that rise and milled around there for a few days, crying and screaming for food. There was nothing there for them to eat, and the Coalters and their friends had nothing to feed them. Mama said she wanted to stop her ears from the pitiful sounds coming from those pigs. Eventually, the sounds grew fainter. The pigs died.
As time went by, the smell of death surrounded them. Mama and several others in the two families crowded together in the house got sick with mumps, and fever, and other things. It was a terrible time.
Eventually, the waters receded and they were able to return to their farm near Delta City. Their house there had been completely inundated by the flood waters, and cleaning it up enough to live in it was a daunting task. The Coalters, though, were accustomed to hardship and hard work, so they spent the whole summer getting back on their feet. However, they were not able to put in a crop that year, and eventually had to move away from their beloved farm.
That flood of 1927 forever changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the Mississippi Delta in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Afterwards, a great many people moved north to the big cities like Chicago and Detroit where manufacturing jobs were available.
The weather-casters are predicting that floods from the melting snows of the north this year will surpass the record set in 1927. I pray that doesn't happen.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? ... A Story
Some years ago there was a lot of jokes made up about why the chicken crossed the road. I don't remember any of them. Sorry. I do remember going on a road trip from California to Mississippi, and seeing a lot, really a lot, of armadillos on the sides of the road, in the middle of the road, or all of the above. These armadillos were not dead like the chickens in the jokes were. They just moved slowly, laboriously across the highway and never did I see a dead one.
So while visiting my cousin in Vicksburg, Mississippi, I asked, "What's with the armadillos everywhere on the highway? We've seen dozens."
She replied, "You know the jokes about why did the chicken crossed the road? Around here the question is why did the armadillo cross the road, and the answer is 'to show the chicken that it could be done...' "
I never did learn where all those armadillos were headed, but those jokes reminded me of a story Mama told me about hard times on the farm in Mississippi. This was after the great flood of 1926-27 (that is another story) when it had been impossible to put in a crop of cotton during the summer. They had a few chickens, but wouldn't dare eat them because they needed the eggs for cornbread more than they needed meat like fried chicken.
The bacon and fat-back from the previous year was nearly gone. They had been eating vegetables only, sparingly, for weeks. They were even running low on corn meal for cornbread. They had a big long table with a lot of feet under it, several boys and five girls. All the boys were over six feet tall, and some were six feet seven inches. Pap'aw and the boys were awfully hungry for meat.
The front of the house faced the road and the fields across from it. The flood that had, during previous months, turned the fields into black muddy lakes had drained into the deep trenches dug on either side of the road for that purpose. The cotton was planted but it was yet a long time before any money would be coming in from the crop.
Most of the family was perched on the front porch steps or in straight chairs gazing out across the brown fields on the other side of the road. The Saturday afternoon sun traveled slowly in a westerly direction, bringing the shade of a tree to cover them. No one had anything to say.
Everyone was hungry, not with the gnawing, life-threatening kind of hunger we see on faces of people in Third World countries today, but with the kind of hunger you have when you have for months been fed a steady diet of cornbread and beans, cooked with bacon grease and fatback... Hunger that knaws at your mind, as you imagine... well, fried chicken, for instance.
Mama said everyone was being still, just slumping in their chairs, or leaning against their porch post. They sat that way quite awhile. Mama thought she was dreaming when she saw a bit of white movement in the ditch across the road. It was a friar size chicken, she realized, just slowly wandering up and down the steep sides of the ditch, pecking at bugs in the mud, oblivious to the hungry Coalter family perched up on the wide front porch.
As chickens do, that white one would take a few steps along the bottom of the ditch, peck at the ground, then raise his head, turning this way and that, looking for... trouble? more bugs? Who knows? Anyway, he very slowly kept moving in the direction of the Coalter house. Mama just watched. Everyone stayed quiet...
In a little while Mama was aware of Mam'aw stirring ever so slowly. She got up like a ghost and faded into the house. One by one the boys stood up, very quietly and slowly, and followed their mother into the house. They went out the back of the house, out of sight of the unfortunate chicken in the ditch, and separated to the north and south. Staying out of the chicken's line of vision until they could surround him, they caught that friar, and killed him and had him for Sunday Dinner the next day. They couldn't have fried chicken, though. No, they had to boil him for Chicken 'n Dumplin's. Had they fried him, he would only have been enough for two or three people to get a bite or two.
Remember, in those days, the meals were Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper; not Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Dinner is the big meal of the day, and on the farm it was eaten in the middle of the day, and the leftovers for Supper were eaten as just a light meal before going to bed when it was too dark to do anything else. No electric lights to stay up and read.
Today, we have Breakfast, then a light Lunch at midday, and Dinner is the big meal at night, sometimes late at night with light and heat from electricity or gas or both.
When I first heard this story, I already knew that killing a live chicken and preparing a chicken dinner, whether fried chicken or a big fat stewing hen was a lot more trouble than the process today, of going to the grocery store, buying your chicken in a styrofoam+plastic wrap probably already cut in pieces... Today, you can wrap any parts of the poor chicken that you don't want and toss it in the garbage (take it OUTSIDE, please) and cook the parts you want. OR, you can just go to KFC or Chick-a-fil, or whatever and eat in or take out, whatever suits your fancy...
In the olden days, you had to chase and catch the chicken, certainly a challenging job.
Then you had to somehow make a dead chicken out of a live, screeching, wiggling, clawing, pecking, totally frightened and frightening live bird. And that process was necessarily difficult, bloody, and totally distasteful.
Even after you had a quiet, still, though probably quite bloody dead bird, you couldn't just start cutting him up into pieces like wings and thighs and drumsticks. No, you had to get rid of those feathers. Big job. Back in those days they got some wood, built a fire under a huge wash pot in the yard, filled it with water, boiled the water, put in the whole feathered bird, let the boiling water loosen up the feathers, and only then (after they got him out of the water and let him cool enough to handle) could they pull all those feathers out by hand, and at last he would be ready to cut up and cook.
Poor chicken. He shouldn't have crossed the road.
I've often wondered where he came from and who he belonged to. I wonder if they went hungry because they lost him. I hope not.
I also wondered if the Lord viewed my family as doing wrong because they killed and ate someone else's chicken. What do you think?
So while visiting my cousin in Vicksburg, Mississippi, I asked, "What's with the armadillos everywhere on the highway? We've seen dozens."
She replied, "You know the jokes about why did the chicken crossed the road? Around here the question is why did the armadillo cross the road, and the answer is 'to show the chicken that it could be done...' "
I never did learn where all those armadillos were headed, but those jokes reminded me of a story Mama told me about hard times on the farm in Mississippi. This was after the great flood of 1926-27 (that is another story) when it had been impossible to put in a crop of cotton during the summer. They had a few chickens, but wouldn't dare eat them because they needed the eggs for cornbread more than they needed meat like fried chicken.
The bacon and fat-back from the previous year was nearly gone. They had been eating vegetables only, sparingly, for weeks. They were even running low on corn meal for cornbread. They had a big long table with a lot of feet under it, several boys and five girls. All the boys were over six feet tall, and some were six feet seven inches. Pap'aw and the boys were awfully hungry for meat.
The front of the house faced the road and the fields across from it. The flood that had, during previous months, turned the fields into black muddy lakes had drained into the deep trenches dug on either side of the road for that purpose. The cotton was planted but it was yet a long time before any money would be coming in from the crop.
Most of the family was perched on the front porch steps or in straight chairs gazing out across the brown fields on the other side of the road. The Saturday afternoon sun traveled slowly in a westerly direction, bringing the shade of a tree to cover them. No one had anything to say.
Everyone was hungry, not with the gnawing, life-threatening kind of hunger we see on faces of people in Third World countries today, but with the kind of hunger you have when you have for months been fed a steady diet of cornbread and beans, cooked with bacon grease and fatback... Hunger that knaws at your mind, as you imagine... well, fried chicken, for instance.
Mama said everyone was being still, just slumping in their chairs, or leaning against their porch post. They sat that way quite awhile. Mama thought she was dreaming when she saw a bit of white movement in the ditch across the road. It was a friar size chicken, she realized, just slowly wandering up and down the steep sides of the ditch, pecking at bugs in the mud, oblivious to the hungry Coalter family perched up on the wide front porch.
As chickens do, that white one would take a few steps along the bottom of the ditch, peck at the ground, then raise his head, turning this way and that, looking for... trouble? more bugs? Who knows? Anyway, he very slowly kept moving in the direction of the Coalter house. Mama just watched. Everyone stayed quiet...
In a little while Mama was aware of Mam'aw stirring ever so slowly. She got up like a ghost and faded into the house. One by one the boys stood up, very quietly and slowly, and followed their mother into the house. They went out the back of the house, out of sight of the unfortunate chicken in the ditch, and separated to the north and south. Staying out of the chicken's line of vision until they could surround him, they caught that friar, and killed him and had him for Sunday Dinner the next day. They couldn't have fried chicken, though. No, they had to boil him for Chicken 'n Dumplin's. Had they fried him, he would only have been enough for two or three people to get a bite or two.
Remember, in those days, the meals were Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper; not Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Dinner is the big meal of the day, and on the farm it was eaten in the middle of the day, and the leftovers for Supper were eaten as just a light meal before going to bed when it was too dark to do anything else. No electric lights to stay up and read.
Today, we have Breakfast, then a light Lunch at midday, and Dinner is the big meal at night, sometimes late at night with light and heat from electricity or gas or both.
When I first heard this story, I already knew that killing a live chicken and preparing a chicken dinner, whether fried chicken or a big fat stewing hen was a lot more trouble than the process today, of going to the grocery store, buying your chicken in a styrofoam+plastic wrap probably already cut in pieces... Today, you can wrap any parts of the poor chicken that you don't want and toss it in the garbage (take it OUTSIDE, please) and cook the parts you want. OR, you can just go to KFC or Chick-a-fil, or whatever and eat in or take out, whatever suits your fancy...
In the olden days, you had to chase and catch the chicken, certainly a challenging job.
Then you had to somehow make a dead chicken out of a live, screeching, wiggling, clawing, pecking, totally frightened and frightening live bird. And that process was necessarily difficult, bloody, and totally distasteful.
Even after you had a quiet, still, though probably quite bloody dead bird, you couldn't just start cutting him up into pieces like wings and thighs and drumsticks. No, you had to get rid of those feathers. Big job. Back in those days they got some wood, built a fire under a huge wash pot in the yard, filled it with water, boiled the water, put in the whole feathered bird, let the boiling water loosen up the feathers, and only then (after they got him out of the water and let him cool enough to handle) could they pull all those feathers out by hand, and at last he would be ready to cut up and cook.
Poor chicken. He shouldn't have crossed the road.
I've often wondered where he came from and who he belonged to. I wonder if they went hungry because they lost him. I hope not.
I also wondered if the Lord viewed my family as doing wrong because they killed and ate someone else's chicken. What do you think?
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
The School Bus Wagon... A Story
Mama used to ride to school in a wagon pulled by mules.
The Coalter family lived on about forty acres of farm land near Delta City, a few miles northeast of Nitta Yuma, Mississippi. Mama attended a one room school. Students from first through twelfth grades were all in the same room with one teacher. The students had no paper or pencils in the lower grades. For paper they used slates, which are thin, flat, gray slices of rock. You could scratch on it with a sharp rock to write, and when finished, you could "erase" your work with your fingers or a soft cloth. After learning the basics of reading and writing, using a slate, kids would continue school using books, paper and pencils purchased by parents.
Since the Coalter farm was way out in the country, a school wagon pulled by mules picked up the children early in the morning and returned them home in the evening. Mama and her sisters got up before the early morning light, completed their milking chores, sometimes slopping the hogs, sometimes frying up bacon and eggs for the big farm family breakfast at about five o'clock, and then got ready for school.
Getting ready was a chore in itself. Each one braided her sister's hair and looped/pinned it up where it wouldn't be a bother while doing school work or wouldn't be a temptation to pesky boys to yank the "pigtails" as braids were called in those days (the early to mid-1920's). Mama had very long, beautiful black hair. Unbraided, it hung all the way down to her hips in the back. Her sister, Bertha who was a couple of years older, was Mama's hair-braider, and she would loop up the long braid several times at the nape of Mama's neck and tie it with a colored ribbon, leaving the ends of the ribbon hanging down below the braided loops. It was very neat and pretty.
The driver of the school bus wagon was famous throughout the region for being talented with a horsewhip. He could kill a horse fly buzzing around the mules’ ears ten feet in front of him without touching the animals. Sometimes the mules didn't like to expend the energy necessary to bring the heavy wagon load of children through the huge Mississippi mud-bogs that dotted the country roads lined by cotton fields. The mules would balk... They would stop dead still, and just stand there, apparently oblivious to the driver's verbal insults or coaxing words. But when it was necessary to convince the stubborn mules they could pull the wagon out of the deep ruts of mud, that driver knew how to touch them with the whip so they would go. He never brought blood. He simply convinced the mules that with the next snap... he might.
That driver always turned his body around and paid special attention to where Mama sat on the wagon seats, and who was behind her. (Wagons don't have rear-view mirrors.) Then they would take off from the Coalter farm and jolt along to the next stop. To the boys already on the wagon, it was a game to sneak up behind Mama and watch for an opportunity to snatch that ribbon and make her braids come down. Whoever could yank them down first won. But Mama would start screaming and crying. Without even looking back, the driver would flick that whip around with his left hand and it would snap so close to the boy's head as to make his ears wiggle. Everyone would get really quiet then, and the driver would drawl, “Awright, y'all, leave that gal alone.”
And they would, for the time being.
Mama loved school and learned so fast that she was promoted from the second to the fourth grade in one year. She surpassed her older sisters and they eventually dropped out of school. Mama continued through the ninth grade, the only one in her family to do so.
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