Sometimes ain't nothing colder than the truth

Ain't no cold suffers a person quite like wet, rainy cold, specially when you sick. I was walking back to the house with the early November rain driven by a brisk wind beatin me down till I had to actually bend over to make headway. I plum had the deep bone chills, burning with fever and too sick to even eat. My tonsils was swolt slam shut till I couldn't swaller, but I hain't told nobody yet cause it cost ten dollars every time we went to the Doctor and as much as the shot hurt, the talk about "spent money" hurt me even more I reckon. Dr. Saunders kept the big old hypodermic needle soaking in some kind of pink or blue liquid. I don't rightly remember cause I couldn't look at it long, knowin it was coming my way. Seems like the big end was made in a circle and he run his finger through that circle there at  the top of the plunger. Always asked me if I wanted it in my butt or in my arm. Truth be known the butt felt better, and you didn't have to watch the circumstances but I didn't like dropping my blue jeans in front of nobody...so I always managed to somehow squeak out the word "arm." Thinking bout the Doctor musta shortened the trip cause I finally made the front steps and Grandma said "Leave them muddy shoes on the porch." I shook and shivered almost like ol Bob our Bird Dog did when he was wet. "Come here" Grandma said. "Child you burning up with fever, tomorrow you got to go to the Doctor". "Open your mouth and say aaahh"....I did as told, she was only four foot six and weighed about eighty four pounds and yet we all did what she said without question. "Umpph swolled shut" she said. When Daddy stopped in that night from Claude Daniels on the way home, she told him bout it. "Won't be no Christmas this year, too many Doctor bills" he said. I was still shivering under a mounded pile of Grandmas handmade quilts, "nothing new there" I thought. Won't never no Christmas, no year. No tree, no decorations, no Santa Claus....we got a Christmas card or two and sometimes Apples and Oranges and mixed nuts and Christmas candy. Money went to clothes and food and the Doctor. Childhood without Christmas ain't right but none of the family ever had it and they lived, and I can live it too I reasoned. Ain't no cold suffers a person quite like a wet cold I thought, and finally drifted off....

Fear...for old men

It's funny, I never knew true fear until I moved away from home. Fear didn't exist in country life, not real fear. Sure there was the day to day fear that poverty brings, but real cognizant fear...no. I never felt it in South Hill. School brought the closest thing to fear that I had known but true fear....that came later. Not long after after graduation actually....after a short Greyhound Bus Ride. The streets of Richmond in fact, center city I guess, downtown. I don't mean that to be a dig on Richmond in any way, I loved Richmond. It was in fact the only time I had ever been on any streets alone....and especially late at night. I was only seventeen, just graduated from High School and I was earning a living with a Pool Cue, living in hotels and boarding houses and working a full time day job as well. I think part of the fear was really just missing home. This wasn't anything like the simple country life I had led and I mixed and mingled with dangerous folks. I played anyone that was willing, age, or money didn't make a difference. I played nine ball with some of the best there was for $20 on every odd ball, the 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9....you could lose a hundred dollars a game and this was 1970! I lived on the edge, often playing in games with not a single penny in my pocket. I wouldn't even be able to pay for the game if I lost. Losing would mean a beating....or much likely a lot worse, so I didn't lose. It's amazing the nerves of youth...I wrote stories for the book "Streak of Lean" (still in progress) and I realized that what I did scares me more today than it did back then...maybe true fear is only for old men...maybe age makes you realize and accept the fact that there is fear within you....even if you don't want to own up to it.

Time....

I apologize for the lapse of Blog...somehow that just don't sound right does it? All I can say is I'm sorry....and there ain't enough hours in the day! I love to write, and I love to remember even more, but life and the bill collector are two things I barely cling to...and now a days stay ahead of..... pretty much in that order! That said...Barn day, always was good eatin in it's Sunday best. Since we "Sharecropped" we usually traded labor with "Family' and if someone got in a bind also with "Neighbors and Friends." You ate hearty at home, and usually when you got to where you was "fillin barns" that day, (Tobacco) there was hot coffee and biscuits to be filled with fatback, tomato, molasses, sausage, slathered in gravy, honey, butter, and best of all talk.....strange how talk and laughter can soothe over the hard times and the bad times....but it's that way with family and friends. Long bout ten in the morning at Uncle Pages, he would go to Hines Store for a soft drink....everyone got polled for what they wanted...all requests wrote down on a paper sack, and "if they had it they had it" which wasn't all that often. Coke you could be sure of, maybe Pepsi and RC, but Nehi Orange and Grape , and Sun Drop was never for sure. Aunt Juanita would make biscuits filled with potatoes fried in lard and topped with crispy fatback....there was homemade butter handy...and I would slip to the garden for a tomato off the vine sliced by my rusty ( yep rusty, not trusty) pocket knife and it was better than a slice of cake..can't say how...but it was. People, regardless of their status....for ten to fifteen minutes at a time, live a wonderful life...it sounds far too simple but I guess, life for the most part is lived ten to fifteen minutes at a time....

Death of the biscuit..

I don't know how it come about..seems like everything was fine and then one day something happened and we got store bought biscuits from Hines Supermaket in South Hill. Nobody really liked em that much but Grandma was gettin older and it was quite a bit easier on her. Now she didn't have to git up at 4 Am everyday...so we all made out like they was OK and really won't that much difference anyway..but it was like a death in the family almost. Lessen you ever had a homemade biscuit fresh from a wood stove, drippin in fresh churned butter with a slice of home grown mater n a big pattie of hot sausage laying on it I don't reckon it matters....If you ever took fried chicken off the bone and put it in a biscuit and drizzled honey on it though then you know it does. Fatback don't look nor taste right on nothing but a country kitchen biscuit. Store bought biscuits was sticky n chewy and put a sausage pattie o some crisped up mddlin meat in one and they just looked embarrassed to be sittin in that little thing. Store biscuits just never browned up right...it was like puttin lipstick on a pig...it might look good but still.....Grandma would fix real biscuits on the weekend, sometimes Saturday, sometimes Sunday and it was like eatin one for the first time, I loved to mix crunchy peanut butter, Kings syrup, and real butter together and sop it with a biscuit...ain't no store biscuit ever made could sop that mixture and do it a proper job.....   

Was it Betty or Betsy?

Folks shared stuff in South Hill...Mrs. Baisey our closest neighbor probably a quarter mile away and "Granmaw" traded eggs, butter, sometimes sausage, and middlin meat, just about anything really. Mrs. Baisey had some Damson trees and Crab Apple trees. She couldn't use all the Damsons so once she had gotten her fill she let us go over and pick all we wanted. Grandma canned a right plenty of Damson Preserves and a little Damson Jam. Ain't much better than Damson Jam on a hot out the woodstove homemade biscuit with a big ol chunk of fresh churned butter "ceptin" one thing! And the bad thing is I either never knew, or "cain't member" what it was called. Let's just go with never knew...I like that better. Mrs Baisey didn't like Crab Apples not none, so she let us git what we wanted. Grandma didn't want em till they fell off the tree of their own free will, so we competed with the critters for em! What it was... that was bettern a Damson Jam n Butter biscuit...well it was either Apple Betty, or Apple Betsy, I kinda think it was Betsy....mighta been Betty....don't matter either way it was the one dessert I only got a couple of times a year and yet 55 years later I still cain't git it out of my mind. All I remember is cinnamon, sliced apples, and dumplins and "boy you better leave some of that for the rest of us less you want a little backside adjustment" from Uncle Bo. Grandma made a big bowl and everybody got some and even had seconds...and I ate whatever was left...every time....even at the risk of a belly ache....some things is just worth it!

The Cuban Missile Crisis

Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? I remember eating supper at Grandmas, and Daddy came in from Claude Daniels saying "Kruchef gonna bum us, I rekon" "That's what all is sayin" "Evabody at Claudes was talkin bout it" Someone replied "It will be something you can tell your Grandkids about if he do" and we all laughed. I remembered the Atomic Bomb Drills from School...getting under the desk and covering your head with your hands. All the kids would laugh and say "it would be better just to bend over so you can kiss your butt goodbye" Laughing I guess was all we could do. I had heard of Fallout Shelters, in fact I had dug up the back yard with the intent of fixin us one until Daddy whittled the leaves off a Sweet Gum Branch and eyeballed me over the rims of his glasses. "Yo choice" he said matter of factly, and the Reese Fallout Shelter officially was closed and sealed over with some bare foot stompin. I guess our stress level won't as high as many folks because a "tube" had burnt out in our TV and we would be without until bacca come in the next Fall...unless money fell our way from somewhere else. If it was the "pictcha tube" the TV would be gone forever. I don't know if any of us at the time knew just how close the world was to unknown destruction if all out war had evolved. Can you imagine what would happen now, with both sides having thousands of nuclear devices..."It will be something you can tell your Grandkids about....and the bend over thing....in retrospect that was probably the best advice after all.....

Skinny Dipping and Snakes...

You would be surprised at the amount of water you use in a day, the faucet doesn't do it justice. You get a much better perspective of just how much is used for drinking, bathing, washing clothes, washing dishes, watering the livestock, chickens and dogs, when you have to tote it in bucket by bucket. We had no source of indoor water, just a hand dug well outside, outfitted with two buckets attached to a chain. As you raised one bucket you lowered another....thus water was always on the way up as long as you were pulling the well chain. The water was always ice cold even in Summer and had a most pleasant taste. We kept a dipper on a nail at the well so you could enjoy a drink just after the bucket was raised up. There were two natural Springs nearby, and I frequented them often. I won't the only one, folks had used it in bygone days too. I often found Arrowheads in the fields not far from the Springs after a hard downpour exposed the rocks in the plowed furrows. The water at the Springs was so good as to not be described. That was one reason I went, and the other was I won't supposed to go that far from the house. I judged everything by whether I was "sposed' to do it or not, if "not" then I had to do it. It was my job.... Back then you could pretty much wander anywhere and do anything you were stupid enough to do, and I was stupid enough to do it all. I caught many a snake by laying a bacca stick across his head and holding it down with my foot till I could grab his tail and then found a sandy spot so the Snake could fan back and forth as it tried to slither off and make the neat little swirly lines. I always let em go after a few minutes of "play time." I never listened to the "snakes is poison" speech. All snakes were Black Snakes as far as I was concerned. If it could bite, sting or scratch you, I was bit stung or scratched by it. Luckily my nine lives held out I guess. Never was Snake bit...thought I was twice and may have been...hard to say. There was Snakes present and I bled both times but I still cain't say. Most times I never had to lie either...."Jimmy did you just leave that Spring over at Widilee's house." "No Maam'.....and I hadn't. I had been at the Spring earlier, but I had "just left" the deep end of Gayles Pond where I had been skinny dipping....cause I won't "sposed' to do either. Go to Gayles Pond alone OR skinny dip....got me a "twofer"....booyah!

Life is short

There comes a time in life when you need to "own up', I think the old song by Jimmy Dean titled "IOU" sums it up really well. I read a thing on Facebook today that was based on "Mom" but it could apply to anyone who raised you, and really anyone in your life. In my case it would apply more to my Grandma I guess. Basically it stated that at age six you said "Mom I love you"....at age ten it was "Mom Whatever"....by age sixteen it was now "My Mom is annoying"....at age eighteen you progress to...."I wanna leave this house"....but by twenty five some sense starts to sink in, and it's...."Mom, you were right"....by thirty it's now...."Me, I want to go to Mom's house"....Somewhere around age fifty, if you are lucky enough for life to have been so kind it's...."I don't want to lose Mom"....then around age seventy....actually for me it was about twenty years sooner, it's...."I would give an anything to be with Mom just one more time." I can honestly say the same things for my Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandaddy, Uncle Bo, Uncle Page, Aunt Rachel, Aunt Juanita, Uncle Paul, Uncle Bob, and a lot of other people in my life. I guess what I'm trying to say in a round a bout way is, it's too bad life don't come with instructions...then we could be better parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. We all make mistakes in life, we all make choices that right or wrong often affect other people in ways we never intended. But we can't live life dwelling on what we did in the past. This is a great quote: “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” by Maria Robinson. It reminds me of yet another quote I read years ago that was and always will be true: Anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. The road of life is a tough one, and a mighty short one....live, love and laugh....no need to take it all too seriously you ain't going to get out alive anyway....make your peace early....and spend your life living....