TADPOLES AND PINE BARK STEW

You’ve heard the stories from some parents about how they had to walk through snow and ice for miles to get to school?   Well, I didn’t have to walk miles and miles and in southeastern Georgia, a snowflake is a rarity.  But I did have to walk a little less than a mile.  I lived just inside the limit for the school bus route. 

Walking to school wasn’t so bad most of the time, however.   Walking home was even better.  If I was running late going to school, sometimes my Momma or Daddy would take me.  Daddy had an old beat up truck with wooden sides that would make the Clampett’s truck look like a Cadillac.   He loved taking me to school in that ugly truck.  I would have to be really late or it would have to be pouring rain for me to let him take me to school in that truck and then he would laugh and take me right up as close as he could to the school building.  I’d beg him to let me out at the corner.  But nooooooo, he’d drive right on up to the front.  He was such a teaser!  But I loved my Daddy!  Momma would have to borrow Biggie’s old Ford before we finally got a car of our own.  It was Mercury and I thought we were pretty rich to have Mercury.

Walking home from school allowed me the opportunity to lollygag.  If I went a certain way, I could cut through the backyards of some folks and follow a stream that had some neat tadpoles.  That way, if I had time, I could stop and play and catch a few.  Sometimes I’d catch some and put them in a canning jar.  Come to think of it, that wasn’t too smart.  Wonder what happened to the tadpoles.  Guess becoming a frog wasn’t in their future.

My Granny Elkins lived along the route to school so I could stop and visit her when I was very young.  Granny raised chickens and ducks.  The story goes that I would go out and pick up the little baby ducklings and love them to death.  Literally.  I thought they were so sweet that I just squeezed them so hard it smothered them.  I remember helping Granny gather the eggs from the nests too.   I wasn’t much of a farm girl.  I was a bit heavy handed and broke quite a few eggs. 

Granny was a super snow cone maker.  She could crush ice with a hammer and flour sack better than a commercial blender any day.  She’s chip off ice from a block of ice out of her ice box, put it in a flour sack, put a rubber band around the end of it and beat the heck out of it with her hammer out on the back porch shelf.  Then she’d take the fine “snow” and put it in a glass, pour some cool aid out of a little glass bottle on it (I liked grape) and top it off with some sugar.  Man that was something good on a hot summer day.  If I was lucky, she would have a left over piece of “Mary Ella” toast or a biscuit which I would poke my finger in and fill with syrup.  (“Mary Ella” toast is what I called her toast for some reason.  It was made in her wood stove and buttery crisp through and through.)

After Granddaddy died, my Granny moved to Atlanta, so I didn’t get to visit her on the way home from school anymore.  I missed that.  I loved Granny.  She was fun.

Daddy had some big heavy earth moving equipment like a tractor and other big things that I didn’t know anything about but he rode me on his Caterpillar tractor when he was doing the grading work for the new local golf course.  He scared me half to death when he was crossing a creek because I just knew the thing was going to turn over and we would be drowned and lost forever.  I trusted my Dad, but not that much.   I begged him to let me off, but he kept right on going through that creek instead of on the bridge.   Turns out we made it home ok.  Daddy took care of me just like he always did.   I was his “baby”.

Daddy and Uncle Aubrey fished a lot and they cooked a lot of fish and ate a lot of fish.  Many a time, we would get in Uncle Aubrey's car and drive all the way to Savannah, late in the afternoon, just so they could eat some fish or shrimp at the little fish camp they loved, on one of the creeks on the road to Tybee.  That’s a long way just to eat some fish and shrimp!

They also had this secret recipe for something they called Pine Bark stew.  It was a concoction of fish, rice, and catsup and various other secret ingredients unknown to man and they would get together in our kitchen at all hours. and cook up a mess of this stuff and eat their fill.  I wasn’t too keen on Pine Bark stew.  Uncle Aubrey had some weird ideas about some things and I wasn’t too sure I wanted to partake of that even with my Daddy.  I remembered several times Uncle Aubrey slipping some barbecued goat on the table with our real barbeque at our family reunions, so I was a little leery of his cuisine.

My Daddy lovingly teased me all of my growing up years.  But I know he loved me more than life itself.  My Daddy was my hero.  You see, I never saw anything but the good in my Daddy.  That’s the way it should be with children.  You love your parents, you respect them and you honor them.  None of us are perfect.   

Miss Nell - Pimento Cheese and Culture

We all probably have someone in our lives we remember as being one that helped make us who we are today.  It could have been a teacher, preacher, extended family member or a friend.  In my case, it was Miss Nell.  Oh, what a piece of divine work this lady was.

Miss Nell can best be described as the epitome of a refined Christian lady with dyed carrot red hair.  She wore powder blue and lace dresses with pearls, white stockings and shoes in the summer, and black wool suits, white blouses and pearls,  and black wool tams in the winter.  She attended the movies almost every weekday and sat in the last row in the back, hat and all, winter or summer.  Mr. Harry, her husband passed away not long after we moved to town,  so she lived alone in her lovely early 20th century home on West Main Street.   Ms. Nell rarely, if ever, cooked.  She ate all of her meals at local restaurants, always vigorously wiping the eating utensils with her cloth napkins. 

Now, my Momma was a lover of music.  She started her “career” when she was three years old tip toeing up to somebody’s piano picking out the beloved hymn, “O Holy Day”.  She never had money for music lessons, but her fingers didn’t need lessons.  She continued to pick and play until she formed chords and could play for anybody to sing.   The Scott family loved to sing, so there was always somebody to sing to her music.   Occasionally, she would fill in for the church pianist.   Enter Miss Nell.

Miss Nell was a skilled musician and knew her stuff.  Sometimes she would gently take Momma aside and show her the correct notes in places where Momma might need help.  Momma didn’t mess up much, mind you, but she might need some help playing the notes accurately according to the music.  Or, she would help Momma with the correct time, which is always important to music.  So, Miss Nell became a mentor of sorts for Momma and helped her immensely through the years.  They became life long friends.

I guess it was natural for Miss Nell to take me under her wing early on.  She decided I needed some “culture” training, I guess, so she asked if I would come over after school every Thursday after school to her house.  She lived just a block from my elementary school so I could walk through her neighbor’s backyard right to her house.  

When I arrived at Miss Nell’s house, she would always have waiting for me, a homemade pimento cheese sandwich and a glass of Coca Cola.  She invited me into her living room where I balanced the plate with the sandwich on my lap and sat my glass on the marble top table and gracefully as I could, managed to gulp that delicious sandwich down.  After polite conversation, Miss Nell would then proceed to read from her Bible to me passages she had previously marked for the day’s reading.  She would explain the meanings, ask me if I understood, and answer any questions I might have.  We’d talk a little and I’d look at the beautiful colorful pictures in her huge King James Version Bible.  I remember looking around her beautiful home at the beautiful furnishing and feeling so special to be there.   

My Momma had made sure that I had the opportunity to take the piano lessons that she never was able to have.  So I began music at the age and practiced daily the finger exercises and runs that were imperative to be the concert pianist that I was no doubt destined to be.  Well, Miss Nell was going to pitch in and help in that area too.  After the Bible reading, she ushered me over to her upright, and for twenty minutes, we did some practice runs and exercises and major and minor chords until she thought I had the hang of it for the week.  By that time, Momma was there to pick me up and off I go after thanking Miss Nell for the pimento and cheese and coke.

After I grew up, so many little things would flash in my mind that Miss Nell would gently remind me about social graces or “lady-like” little things that I should or should not do.  I remember thinking at the time, how foolish they were, and sometimes I would be silently critical of some of her quirky little social rules.  Oh, how I wish my little eleven year old granddaughter could be Miss Nell’s protégé.  I wish every little girl could grow up with the kind of love and attention that a stranger, basically, gave me and my Momma  just because she had the knowledge and the love for us.  Wouldn’t that be grand?  We need more Miss Nell’s in this world!

Floppy Hats and Funeral Home Fans

All of my family went to the First Methodist Church.  I remember Big Daddy would always kneel down right where he was sitting and pray when the time came for prayer.  Many a time he was called on to pray and pray he did.  It was prayer from the heart of a simple, hard working man who loved God.  It showed.  Tom Scott was a fine man.  Ask anybody who knew him.

I remember Momma and I would always go to Sunday school and church on Sunday morning and Sunday night.  Daddy seldom went to church with us, but if he did go, it would be to the evening service.  He and Uncle Aubrey usually went fishing on Sunday.  (I got the distinct feeling that Momma didn’t like that.)  She would make me sit on the seat beside her in church for the whole service and be still.  That wasn’t easy for me.  I’d squirm and turn around and look at the folks behind us and she’d pinch me hard right on the leg.  Big tears would well up in my eyes but I didn’t cry out.  I knew better.  That hair brush was waiting at home if I so much as moved a muscle again. 

I can see “Ms. Nan” now,  playing “Onward Christian Soldiers” with such a flourish!  Her floppy hat would just bounce up and down on her head and she would bounce up and down on  that piano bench in perfect time!  We all marched in from Sunday school with our little weekly picture lesson leaflet in hand and took our places in the front rows for Assembly and announcements. Then we'd go find our parents and wait for real church.  

Of course, there was no air conditioning in the summer.  Everybody had the funeral home fans and if you were lucky, you’d get a seat near the window.  But we usually wound up in the center of the row in the center of the church.  Bees, yellow jackets, and flies found their way inside and I had one eye out for the nearest exit if one of the stinging kinds came my way.  All the ladies wore big wide brimmed straw hats with flowers on them which probably attracted the insects inside.  They should have thought of that before coming to church endangering little girls like me who were scared to death of bees.

All the ladies that sang in the choir had the floppy hats too.  You know how older ladies sing and their heads kind of bob as they sing?  Well, you get the picture.  Bobbing heads, floppy hats, flowered gauzy dresses, makeup streaked with sweat,  Funeral Home fans swatting away -  well, those were the sights I remember from my seat out in the congregation sitting beside my Momma just wiggling and squirming, dying to get out of there and go swimming or splurging with Uncle Waitus.

Sundays were mostly a day for visiting with folks.  They either came to visit you or you went to visit them.  Sometimes the Preacher came home after church to Biggie's house to eat one of those awesome fried chicken dinners with all the Scott family extensions.  But other than that, on Sunday there was not a whole lot of action going on.   As I grew older, the rules relaxed quite a bit for everybody.  Things began to change and I guess that was the beginning of things to come as we know it today.  In retrospect, I’m not sure that was a good thing.  Maybe we should have left things as they were…….

Turnip Patch, Honey Bees and Bicycles

Next door to Uncle Aubrey’s house was Big Momma and Big Daddy’s house.  It was the same house where my Momma lived when she was going to school.  Just down the street in front of their house, was Big Daddy’s blacksmith shop.  On the next street, sort of behind the blacksmith shop, was Uncle Waitus and Aunt Margie’s house.  I remember both houses having privies out back,  complete with Sears Roebuck Catalogs. I also remember the joy of the added indoor bathrooms.    

Big Daddy died when I was eight years old so I didn’t get to go to his shop too many times but I do remember watching the bright red iron as he hammered it and being afraid he was going to get burned.  He was a giant of a man, and always had a sweet smile on his face.  Tommie and I would go over to their house and sit around the little wood heater in their bedroom where they had two wooden rockers and a couple of straight chairs for us.  We would put our feet on the heater until the soles of our shoes would almost burn!   We’d listen to Amos and Andy on the radio.  Big Daddy loved Amos and Andy! 

Now when the Scott clan got together for anything – weddings, funerals, Sunday dinner, Preacher visits, or just because, they did it with a flourish.  I’m talking about a food flourish.  Big Daddy raised some chickens in the back yard just for such occasions.  I remember peeking out there when he would somehow manage to shake a chicken just the right way and that sucker was out.  Then down on the chopping block and without a second thought he’d axe that head right off.  Yep.  There was our dinner.

Now, Big Momma was an artist at cutting that chicken up.  I didn’t know there were that many parts to a chicken!  I still can’t find one in a store today with a pulley bone!  We kids would ALWAYS fight over that pulley bone.  Sometimes, there would magically be more than one!  But there were never enough pulley bones for all the Scott children.

Big Momma, we called her “Biggie”, made fruit cakes in dishpans.  She made huge nut cakes.  That was Uncle Aubrey’s favorite.  She always had a nut cake available for him.  Pecan pies, check.  Sweet potato pies, the best.  Potato salad, butter beans, tomatoes, squash, turnip greens, whatever vegetables in season, she had on the table, and plenty of it.  Oh, and a big pan of homemade biscuits and tea to drink.  Don’t say “sweet tea”?  There’s no such thing as unsweetened tea! 

Big Momma had a brass bell which she rang from the back door to announce that dinner was ready.   We kids always begged to be the one to ring the bell.  She probably based her choice on whichever one of us had the loudest mouth at the time.  I don’t think there was a pecking order.  I was the lucky recipient in the family of the bell and have passed it on to my daughter, who has a collection of bells.  It was among my most prized possessions.

I used to love to go down to Uncle Waitus and Aunt Margie’s house.  Their niece, Gail who was near my age lived with them and we were “almost” cousins.  Gail joined me in many a wash tub swimming and in many a sand lot ball game.  In turn, I spent many a night at their house.  Uncle Waitus was actually the one who “taught” me how to swim.  He threw me in the water at Brown Springs and I had to swim.  Brown Springs was a local swimming hole out in the country with water so cold your lips would turn blue and it literally bubbled up out of the ground so fast that you wouldn’t sink.  I guess Uncle Waitus knew what he was doing but it scared me to death.  I’ll never forget that experience but I learned to swim that day.  In a hurry.

Uncle Waitus was also good for a Dixie Cup on a lot of Sundays.  He would pile us in the back seat of his Ford and we would go “splurging”.  That was a phrase he coined for taking us for a ride on Sunday afternoon and spending some extra money.   So, I always tried to be around when he felt like splurging. 

To get to their house, you had to go through his turnip patch and pass the bee hives.  More than once, I had a swarm of bees chase me through the turnip patch with me screaming my head off.  Uncle Waitus would say, “just don’t run and they won’t bother you”.  Yeah, right. 

I got my first bicycle when I was about eight years old.  I didn’t know how to ride it without holding on to somebody though and that wasn’t very cool.  Tommie already knew how to ride a bike.  My cousin Donnie, who was a couple of years older and lived in town, also could ride.  So I was forced to learn how to ride my bike.   Big Momma’s car was always parked in her back yard right outside her back door.  It had a running board.  Perfect.  I would get my shiny green bike up to the car, stand up on the running board, throw my leg across the seat, get on, push off, and wheee, away I’d go -  about six feet.  Then fall over.  Then back up and start over,  and over,  and over.  Each time I’d get a little further and a little further.  Finally, I made it and around and around Biggie’s house I’d go.  I was so bad!  I could ride my bike!

Ouija Board and Stick Frog

Uncle Aubrey was divorced and had two children who came to visit us every other week-end.  When they came, Momma would pick me up at school on Friday and we would drive about twenty miles to the little town where they lived with their Mother,  and pick them up.  We would always stop at the service station on the way out of town to get an ice cream sandwich to eat on the way.  That was a real treat in my day!

Tommie Faye was the oldest.  She was a year older than I and Buddy was about four years younger.   The sleeping arrangements were slightly crowded when they came since Tommie Faye and I slept in one bed (in the room with Momma and Daddy) and Buddy slept in the bed with Uncle Aubrey.  There was one bathroom.  But we had such fun!  Tommie was the sister that I never had.  We giggled and snuggled down under the cover and told ghost stories.   We played jackstones, paper dolls, and when we got older, went to the movies and went roller skating.  She was to later be Maid of Honor in my wedding.  We did everything together when she came to visit for the week-end or sometimes longer in the summers. 

Uncle Aubrey had a real little play house built in the back yard for Tommie and me.  Momma made little curtains and fixed it up so cute.  We had such fun playing in it!    When the weather was hot, we’d fill up a big old galvanized #3 wash tub full of water and put on our bathing suits and get in it cooling ourselves under the big pecan trees.  There was also a concrete goldfish pond next to the play house full of goldfish.  We weren’t supposed to get in the fish pond.  But we’d try to catch the goldfish.

Uncle Aubrey was a real gardener.  He had azaleas, camellias, roses, gardenias, and always cut the grass himself.    I can’t remember ever seeing him wear anything but dress clothes.  I mean this man always cut the grass in his white shirt and tie!  He was a curiosity, this man!  .   The lawn mower was a push mower.  Not electric, not gas, just push.    He also went fishing in the white shirt and tie!  Wherever he went, he would have on a white shirt with a tie.  The sleeves may be rolled up and the tie may be tucked in between the buttons, but he had it on with dress slacks.  In the winter, of course, it was a full suit.  He worked in a department store and sold menswear.  Obviously. 

Once, he bought a couple of horses and put them in a barn out back for Tommie, Buddy and me.  She was braver than me but I did get on the horse with her and we rode them together.  Man, I remember how sore my behind was after riding that horse.  I never would have made it as a cowgirl.  I think we decided that  wasn’t as much fun as we thought it would be.  Uncle Aubrey sold the horses.  

There was a small coal fireplace in our bedroom.  Messy thing, but it was nice to have a place to play jackstones on the hearth in the winter.  Tommie and I would get down on the floor and play jacks on a cold Saturday afternoon.  We had a Ouija Board too.  It ruled our lives for a while.  It told us what was going to happen to us and who we were going to marry and everything everybody else was going to do and marry!   I can’t believe we actually played with what would probably be considered witchcraft today!  It was a child's board game back then.

Summertime we would be found in the front yard late in the afternoon playing “Ain’t No Booger’s Out Tonight”.  Now if you’re from South Georgia, you know what that game is.  If you’re not, you’ll just have to use you’re imagination.  Of course, Simon Says, Mother May I,  Hop Scotch and marbles were big favorites.  Tommie could play a mean game of marbles.  She could whip me every time  It was no wonder she had such  great big "box car" marbles and a real nice bunch of beautiful colored glass balls of all sizes which she kept in a paper sack with her at all times.  She never left them at Uncle Aubrey’s house.  Guess she didn’t trust me with her prize collection.  

Sometimes, all the neighborhood kids got together for a game of baseball.  Now there’s an art to how you decide who was going to bat first.  You had to hold the bat a certain way on the end, swing it around your head three or four times by your fingertips without dropping it, or some such nonsense, etc.  But it was serious business and those were the rules and that’s the way the game was begun.  We’d play until dark and our Momma’s would be yelling for us to come inside.  The bathtubs would have a black ring around them that night!   Of course, Tommie and I could get in the bathtub together as long as it would hold us but that couldn't have been too many years since we both were rather leggy girls and bathtubs of that era were the clawfoot size.

I remember one time, sneaking the ice pick from the kitchen so we could play “stick frog”.  That’s another South Georgia game of skill.  I wasn’t too skilled at it because the ice pick landed straight up in my upper leg.   Not a pretty sight,  but I suffered through it and put the ice pick back before I got caught.  Then there was the time I swung on the limb of the tree that my Dad had told me not to swing on,  and broke the limb.  That one got me the only actual spanking I ever remember getting from my Dad.  It was just a stupid little pecan tree!

Of course, my Momma never heard of the word child abuse.  She knew how to use a hair brush and I’m not talking about brushing her hair.  Her hand was her weapon of choice but her hair brush made it’s way to my rear end a few times and I don’t even remember what for.  I probably deserved it.  I had a right sassy mouth.  A big sassy mouth.  Tommie and Buddy were safe.  They were never sassy to Momma. 

Poor But Didn't Know It.

I consider it my great fortune to have grown up in small town America.  My folks decided I should not go to school in the big city of Savannah, so we moved to their small hometown where I started my first grade of school at the age of six, learning to read from my blue “Dick and Jane” reading book and to scrawl my name in big letters in my first grade writing tablet.

I remember my teacher, Miss Thompson, was very nice, wore glasses on her nose, and had a few whiskers on her chin.  I was careful to be good.  Her method of discipline was paddling the offender in the palm of the hand with the Coca Cola ruler that we all were given at the beginning of the year.     The lunch room was a separate wooden building where we could eat lunch for a dime.  There was a “little store” that sold candy bars for 5 cents and pencils and paper.  Chewing gum was not allowed in school.   Bazooka bubble gum came along a few years later and it was treasured like gold so you did not dare chance trying it at school! 

When I was about eight years old, we moved into the house with my Uncle Aubrey.  I slept in the same bedroom with my Momma and Daddy until I was 15 years old when my Mother got pregnant and we moved into a house all to ourselves to await the birth of my first and only sibling. 

Now, my grown up sense tells me that we were poor, because moving into the house with my uncle in a two bedroom house and sleeping in the same bedroom with my parents until I was 15 years old just lends itself to that fact.  But, the fact is, I never knew I was poor back then.  I thought everybody lived like we did.  Nobody ever treated me like I was different.  I went to the same school and church as my best friends and the whole town was sort of like a “family”.   I don’t think there was much of a social or status class structure as there was a respectable and honest and moral system.  

But I know now, we were poor and everybody didn't live like we did.  I know now that Momma and Daddy struggled so that I could have everything that was important to a girl growing up in my day.  I always had Christmas presents under the tree from Santa Claus.  I always had a birthday present.  I always had a new Easter dress and bonnet, shoes, socks, and gloves.  Just like all of my friends in town.  No difference. 

As I look back now, I have a particular memory that I would like to get off my chest.  One Christmas morning, I could hardly wait to run to the living room and look under the tree to see what Santa had brought.  I tore into the boxes looking eagerly for that doll that I was hoping for.  When I finally found the doll box and opened it, my face fell.  Inside was a beautiful BIG doll.  I remember how disappointed I was to see such a big doll!  I threw the doll down and cried out to Momma and Daddy, “I wanted a little baby doll!”  I am so ashamed even now to think how they must have felt.  Oh, if I could only take those words back…..

You see, for me, being poor and not knowing it, meant that my Momma and Daddy sacrificed so much so I could enjoy my life as carefree as possible.  My husband likes to chide me saying, "I was poor, and I knew it!"   I didn’t have a clue how very special I was.  

Bullying - Death Too Soon

Today I read a story that broke my heart.  It concerned the death of a beautiful 15 year old girl who had tragically taken her life because of the senseless bullying she had been subjected to from her peers on Facebook.  This young girl had been photographed while being gang raped at a party with her “friends” who then mocked and exploited her on the social network.  After months of depression, she hung herself.  I cannot imagine what sorrow the parents of this young girl must feel.  Anyone of us could say, but for the grace of God, there go I. 

If I had to guess, I’d bet that the young people who are involved in the bullying and mocking and resulting death of this teenage girl will live the rest of their lives wishing they had done things differently.  They will wonder how they could have been so foolish and cruel as to cause a classmate to be so lonely and depressed that she would give up her life.  I wouldn’t want to walk in their shoes. 

We are all guilty of things that we wish we had not said or done.  Some things we can apologize for, some we can fix, repair, or correct.  Some are irreversible and our lives are changed forever.  I’m reminded of something my daughter recently told her children that I had taught her and her brothers.  Everything we do has a good consequence or a bad consequence.  We have to always be ready to accept the consequence of our actions. 

Each Tall Street

It’s hard for young people these days to understand what it must be like for our nation to be at war as it was in the 1940’s when I was a child.  Seeing men in uniform and Uncle Sam’s picture pointing saying “I Want You” was quite normal.  Theaters had news clips of our soldiers and allies.  It pictured war scenes with tanks, ships, airplanes, and guns and everyone was glued to the screen in hopes of seeing someone they knew on screen or hearing news of some of their family.  It wasn’t pretty, but it was real and it was necessary, and we were a proud nation.  When our flag was shown, we applauded.  We stood and pledged allegiance to the flag and sang God Bless America.   Going to the theater was great entertainment and it only cost a dime!   I went every Saturday when I was older to see Gene Autry or Roy Rogers.  But that’s another story for another day.

Sometime about 1943, my Daddy was working at the shipyard in Savannah, GA. We lived in a “row house” on East Hall Street that was paved with cobblestone.  We lived upstairs in an apartment which had a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, which we shared with another tenant upstairs.  It was down a long hall from our bedroom.  The “row houses” were so close together you could raise the windows and almost reach across to the next door neighbor.  There was a narrow alley between.

Momma, being the over-cautious Momma that she was, made sure that she held onto my hand everywhere we went.  And we went everywhere.  The streetcar was the mode of transportation. It was a real treat to get on that streetcar and go shopping with Momma.  Now that lady was a shopper!  We would go from one end of Broughton Street to the other.  I can smell those boiled peanuts and fresh donuts now that the vendors made on the street.  Ummmm!  She drug me from shoe store to shoe store, trying on dozens of pairs of shoes.  We’d go to the Farmers Market which stunk like fish.  I’ll never forget that smell either.  Woolworths was always a great place to look at toys and spin around on the seats at the lunch counter.  I remember getting lost there, one time.  (That was why she held onto my hand after that.)  Then, when it was time to go home, she took me to Leopold’s Drug Store for lime sherbet.  Man, I was living!  Then, back on the streetcar we’d go and return before Daddy got home. 

I remember peeking out the windows early foggy summer mornings and looking down at the street when I’d hear the cloppety clop of the mules pulling the milk wagon which delivered milk and butter.  Soon there would be a large black woman pushing a wheelbarrow which was loaded down with vegetables.  She’d been calling out in her low, but sturdy voice, “green beans, butterbeans” just loud enough to be heard.  Neighbors would be scurrying out to her to get their fresh vegetables for their dinner.  It was an eerie sight in the fog.  Almost like a dream….

I decided my playmate next door needed a hair cut, so I found some scissors and gave her a nice new hair do.  Her Momma gave my Momma a piece of her mind.  So much for loving thy neighbors. 

Daddy bought me a pair of roller skates.  This was the kind of skates with a strap over the top and that you screwed to your shoe soles with a key.   It was impossible to skate on cobblestone, so Daddy and Momma would take me a couple of blocks down to the park where there was a covered gazebo and they would sit while I skated to my heart’s content.  Then we would walk hand in hand back home to our apartment.    

Sometimes on Sunday, we’d ride the street car as far as it goes  - Isle of Hope –  just the three of us spending the day together.    Some Sundays we’d go to the movies.  I told my Daddy I wish he was Gene Autry and he pretended to cry.  I’ll never forget how ashamed I felt after I did that.  I was five years old.  I loved my Daddy more than Gene Autry for sure.

I have a vivid memory of Momma sobbing in front of the fireplace with a letter in her hand.  I was worried and didn’t understand what was wrong.  I later learned that the letter was from the Dept. of Defense calling my Daddy into service.  He was deferred because of his employment at the shipyard.   He served his country with his skills as did many other men and women who were needed to provide the necessary equipment essential for war.

  

I wanted so badly to be able to walk by myself around the corner to the corner store where Momma would do some grocery shopping when she had some money or ration stamps to use.  She was afraid to let me out of her sight, however.  The story goes that somebody asked me if I were to get lost, would I be able to tell anyone my address.  I said “Of course, I live at 309 Each Tall Street”.  I knew exactly where I lived.   And I did.

Ah, sweet memories….

Sheep’s In the Meadow……..

Our farm experiences in Southside Virginia were so much fun for us.  I opened my antique business in the basement and spent my days refinishing furniture, polishing silver, or mending, cleaning, or ironing the beautiful antique linens which were my particular specialty.  Business and life was good.

My husband had a workshop out back and a “lean-to” of sorts that he had his prize 65 mustang that he was restoring in his “spare” time.  He guarded that whole area with his life.  It was entombed in plastic – out of sight – and NOBODY messed with his stuff where the mustang was. This is where things get a little nasty. 

I always did my refinishing furniture outside where I could hose off the furniture refinishing chemicals and kept buckets of water for my rags and my brushes, etc.  I had saw horses, etc. set up under some trees to keep out of the sun.  I usually just left my things where I worked.  My mess.  I’d clean it up when I finished. 

Sheep are kind of dumb animals.  But they’re smart enough to find a little tiny place in a fence to get out and when one gets out, he says, “OK gang, we’re free”.  So the whole flock of sheep goes ambling down the middle of the country road not bothering to move for any moving vehicle.  The moving vehicle has to move for them or blow the horn.  Then, they might move.

Well, just about every day, we could count on a flock of the dumb sheep ambling down the road and up our three acre driveway into our yard and proceed to do their business.  Not pretty.  Of course, we would shoo them off, by blowing the horn, running and shouting and screaming but they would just silently, slowly, eat their way back down the road from whence they came.  The manager of the farm would eventually see that they were loose or somebody would call them and they would round up the sheep put them back in the fenced area and so it would go until the sheep found another little place they could get out later on that day or the next.

One day I’m inside and hubby’s outside on the lawn mower yelling to the top of his lungs.  I run to the window and look out and see him like an angry driver with road rage chasing a big black faced buck sheep around and around the front yard.  Now, there are big pine trees out there, so they are going around and around the trees, in and out, round and round we go.  The buck would stop.  Hubby would crank up; head straight for him and buck would run back toward the house.  Hubby wants to head him down to the road but buck wants to go back to the back yard.  Round and round they go.  This goes on for a while and I’m running from window to window watching this fiasco.  Hubby looks like a mad man!  Buck is in back yard now.  Goes running through Hubby’s lean-to.  Uh Oh.  Not good!  Buck has diarrhea all the way around Hubby’s mustang!  Bad news!  Hubby runs in house!  Yelling to call Farm Manager!  Can’t get Farm Manager.  Hubby jumps in truck.  Drives up the road and gets Farm Manager.  They come back.  Farm Manager (Hispanic no speak English) lasso’s buck in the garden which cows have destroyed.   Buck sits down in garden.  Doesn’t move.  Lasso on neck.  Tongue is hanging out of buck’s mouth.  Husband is saying to Farm Manager “You’re going to choke him to death”.  Farm Manager says “I hope he die”!  Finally, Farm Manager drags poor buck to truck and leaves with him. 

Hubby calms down and goes outside to clean up around mustang.  Discovers dumb sheep has drunk all the water from Kutz-It Paint remover bucket that I left from refinishing my furniture.   We never saw the sheep again.

Cow’s in the Corn……..

Oh, how I love the springtime!  It’s my favorite time of the year because I love gardening.  I don’t mind getting my hands and feet dirty.  I love putting out or dividing perennials and making little secret gardens and then sitting and admiring the fruits of my labor.  I weed, water, reorganize, look for odd planters or accent pieces for my garden.  It’s a labor of love.  I love flower gardening.  

It’s probably because I’m a city girl and not cut out for anything that would resemble life without an Ingles or Publix for my food supply.    The kind of gardening that means plowing, seeding, fertilizing, picking, shelling, shucking, cooking, freezing, or any of that kind of stuff, just doesn’t make me want to put on my garden gloves and go skipping out to the yard with the Moo Poo.  

At one time we did live on a beautiful farm in rural Virginia, which belonged to a very dear friend.  We were in a bid and needed a place to move quickly because we had sold our house and her lovely home just happened to be available, so she graciously offered it to us.  Five hundred acres of Virginia family farmland that was picture perfect, complete with pond, sheep, cows, original homestead, tenant houses, barns, hay, - you get the picture.  It was gorgeous!    The house we lived in sat on about three acres. 

Since we were now living in the country, we decided it was only proper that we plant our own vegetable garden as we had plenty of good garden soil and space right in the back yard.  After all, we were country folks now.  We already had a June apple tree and a cherry tree that produced cherries so abundantly that every bird that side of the Shenandoah Valley came for those cherries and everybody in town knew about the June apple tree and called to see if they were ripe yet.  So, we proceeded to plant us some corn, squash, beans, cucumbers, cantaloupes, and tomatoes.  We were going to have us some good vegetables to freeze and give away!

 Did I mention that we had sheep and cows on the farm?   The garden was looking good.  Nice and green.   We came home from work one day and hurried out to see how the garden was doing.  We looked in horror at our blank garden plot.  The cows had demolished the garden in one afternoon.  I think the tomato plants were left.  Guess they didn’t like tomatoes.   

We enjoyed the June apples and I made applesauce and I got a ladder and climbed to the top of that cherry tree and outfoxed the birds and got more cherries than they did and made cherry pies, cherry jam, and cherry cobblers.  But we decided to shop local businesses for our food supply from then on and leave the produce growing up to the professionals.  Those cows outranked us on that farm anyway.