Family

AN EMPTY CHAIR AT THANKSGIVING

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I am giving thanks at Thanksgiving despite the “true” history of the holiday. Thankful to be seeing family members I have not seen in far too long. I am thankful for my “steroid driven, humming bird of a wife” …most of the time. My daughter is a neo-natal emergency room nurse and I am thankful the she made the decision to throw away her MBA degree and two “other” careers in order to take courses and become a nurse, all while pregnant and working. Pregnant with Miller Kate, now two, a red-headed little ray of sunshine who has taken after her Grand-mommy Linda in that she is a humming bird on steroids and has stolen her Popi Don’s heart. I also am thankful Miller’s father, Justin, is a father and husband most should aspire to be. Finally I am thankful for my brother, Steve, who saw a need in his community and began a soup kitchen, thereby “walking the walk instead of talking the talk”…something he is quite able to do. “What a mouth that boy has!”

Thankful to, we are still standing as a country despite the “trolling” that goes on. I have actually come in to contact with like-minded people and am thankful to find there are realist still out there who believe “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” should be for all regardless of “race, creed or color.”

Despite the joy I feel at not being served “eel or small bird” at Thanksgiving dinner, I cannot help but feel loss. Lost friends and family members from not only this past year but from a life time. I always lament the loss of parents and grandparents, regardless of holiday, but as I ran this morning it was as if they and others were haunting me…in a good way. Tim Brights’ big grin lighting up the world around him and Jeff Gulley’s much repeated question, “you still love me don’t you?” Brian Kuykendall’s quiet strength and straight path. Bob Crain’s, “Miller come get a liquor drink,” always accompanied by a big smile. They are not the only ones, the list has grown too long. Many I have written about and many I will write about. In some ways even bad memories are good ones.

This Thanksgiving I am going to suggest that we all set a place with an empty chair in memory of our loved ones. Those not in attendance for whatever reason. We want to especially remember those whose physical presence we will never feel again. Those whose memories we will always hold and feel in our hearts until, we to, join them.

WASTE NOT

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Excerpt from the book PATHWAYS which will be released through Amazon in late November.

When did we become such a disposable society? I wish people would quit disposing in my front yard. When did planned obsolescence become…planned? I remember ranting to a science class about wasting resources before I even knew what planned obsolescence meant. Does that make me clairvoyant? No, it probably makes me Clarabelle the Clown. Just because we can throw away a plastic bottle should we? Why do we change fashions every season? Hems go down, go up, then go down again while ties get wide then narrow then wide again. How many of you actually wear something until it wears out? Blue jeans maybe. How many of you really drive a car until the wheels metaphorically fall off. I’ve tried often. Linda and I bought an ’86 T-Bird with sixteen miles on it. It was a beauty. Two hundred and sixteen thousand miles later, thinking we had “licked all of the red off the candy” we traded it for a Mustang. A local teenage boy bought it…and the now father of three is still driving it. Presently I am actually attempting to see who can hit a quarter million first – me or my ’97 Cherokee “Bessie Mae.” We just cracked one hundred and ninety thousand on the “Bessie Mae” but I may be slightly ahead. Am I the only one to name his cars?

My grandparent’s generation were the ultimate recyclers and repurposers. My grandmother was also huge on sayings, “Early to bed, early to rise”, “a fool and his money” and one that I heard maybe daily was “Waste not, want not.” She lived it. Old plastic Clorox bottles were carefully cleaned, holes punched in the bottom and a hole cut about a third of the way up from the bottom. Why? It would become a martin house that would join a colony of Clorox bottles suspended over the garden providing homes for birds that became part of Nannie’s insect control. Buttons were cutoff of unrepairable clothing that would be later repurposed into patchwork quilts with matching pillow covers. The buttons themselves were put into an old Quaker Oats container for future repurposing when I didn’t play with them. My first set of drums were old Quaker Oats boxes and a really magical “comeback” toy. Shoes were “half-soled” repeatedly, old overalls that had finally given up the ghost were cut into patches to extend the lives of this generation’s overalls and blue jeans.

Fall would herald another type of recycling. Dried corn and beans were gathered, the best put into burlap cloth sacks and suspended from the high rafters of the crib. There they would wait until the spring to be shelled out and replanted to provide the next year’s bounty. Potatoes were spread and separated from each other on old newspapers in the darkest corner of the crib waiting to be made into chowders, salads and mashed potatoes. Those that survived the winter were cut, dividing the eyes, and replanted in the spring to start the cycle of life all over again.

Late in the fall an odd-looking truck would show up. It was the miller’s truck, not to be confused with the Miller’s truck. This was cutting edge technology for the period. Instead of taking your grain to be ground up, the truck showed up to grind your grain. This would be preceded by a flurry of activity as corn was shelled from the cob, dang that really hurts your fingers. Corn was ground into cornmeal and grits and no I had never heard of polenta. Even the cobs were ground into a fine powder that was mixed with water to be fed to our hogs. None of this could be done until my grandmother had chosen her feed sacks. This was the ultimate repurposing. She would use the emptied feed sacks to make “sack” dresses that she sewed on her foot-operated Singer treadle sewing machine. Rarely, until later in life, did my grandmother wear anything other than homemade dresses, many made from old feed sacks. Later they would be repurposed into cleaning rags or tie ups for the tomatoes. If they were a particular favorite they would be put into her scrap bag to become a part of a quilt. I am lucky to have several.

THE FRONT GATE PART TWO

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I have spent over forty years involved in athletics and have a love for great expanses of well-manicured Bermuda grass. My wife does not share that love. Compromise is a necessary component of a solid marriage but as I look through the gate I see nothing that is well-manicured. I see a tangled expanse of…jungle. Glad I was able to compromise. Our yard would be best described as a wildlife preserve…all at Linda Gail’s insistence. Any weed that puts off a pin-sized bit of color is a flower to be prized, a stalk that a butterfly or humming bird might avail itself to must be preserved. Any twig found near a morning glory must be pushed into the ground to support that most favored flower. Milkweed is in abundance for the Monarch butterflies. Lord preserve me from the wrath of my wife if I happen to cut one. Plants of all types are found together with no rhyme or reason and she has created a haven for animals of all types…even some who have become unwanted visitors to our home. I consider myself to be truly blessed despite my earlier “Donald” moment and smile at the memories of my bride sprinting naked from our old-fashioned bathroom. Sprinting and yelling, “Snake! Snake! Snake!” I imagined the snake, a six-foot-plus black rat snake, yelling in my head, “Naked Woman! Naked Woman! Naked Woman!” as it tried to escape up the wall behind her.

The summer of our first year living as farm owners we returned late to our yet-to-be air conditioned farmhouse. The late July heat and humidity were still evident when Linda Gail decided to bathe. Believing that the bright overhead incandescent light bulb simply added to the heat, she had entered the bathroom in the dark and, after beginning to run her water, stripped, reached down and plugged in the small lamp that sat next to the lavatory. As the light dimly flooded the small bathroom, she found herself staring at the snake that was coiled below the short electrical cord. Typically male, my attention was drawn to the vision of a fit, well-shaped woman with fabulous…eyes running naked through the house and not on the snake that was trying to escape in the other direction. There is always a price to go with the vision I was enjoying. Someone had to remove the snake…but first I had to find it.

Years later, after a series of renovations that included air conditioning, we decided to build a deck off our new upstairs bedroom suite. One morning we observed a large raccoon taking advantage of seeds that had dropped from bird feeders that I had hung from the deck. “OOOOH! Isn’t it cute? She really is big. Look at her little well-formed hands. OOOOH.” We loved her…until later that night. When we renovated, Linda Gail decided she wanted double French doors and a big deck…off of our upstairs bathroom. For some reason I have always thought it was odd to locate a deck this way but it was the only way to have a deck off of the bedroom…and what Linda Gail wants…. That cute raccoon decided she would use her cute little hands to open the French doors and try to make off with a large bucket of cat food. Discovered in the act by my darling, a tug-of-war ensued over the bucket, until Rocky Raccoon was popped with a towel when she refused to back off.

As you can tell, a lot of our lives has revolved around Linda Gail’s love for animals. We have always had pets – multiple dogs, a cat or two and, of course, that rat snake that lived in our attic along with its mate and what turned out to be a family of flying squirrels. ”Honey, we have to get them out. They might chew through an electric wire and burn down the house.” “Oh, we will cross that bridge if we need to.” Need to? Couldn’t that involve having to build a new house? Oh yes, they are still there and I shudder to think how many generations have joined them. Maybe with the snakes…please don’t suggest anything of the sort to Linda Gail or I will find myself on a snake safari in our attic.

Even when we have attempted to portray ourselves as actual farmers, more times than not, we have found ourselves in a cross between American Gothic and a gothic horror story…or gothic comedy. I remember standing in front of this same gate one afternoon after returning from a nearby coaching clinic. I stood in confusion as I wondered why there were sheets strung like hammocks between the hemlock trees in our front yard. When we first moved to the foothills of the Blue Ridge I made the mistake of commenting that since we had a chicken coop we needed to get a few laying hens. The mistake was saying it in front of Linda Gail’s dad, Ralph. “You know? There’s a guy down the street from me trying to get rid of a couple of chickens.” Thirty hens and two roosters later I had to say “Enough with the poultry.”

A mixed bunch from several different sources, our game hens took offense to our robbing their nest for eggs and decided to take advantage of our free range farming techniques. They just disappeared and after a while we believed that they had been kidnapped by Br’er Fox who had been shopping for dinner. Imagine our reaction to hearing the “peep, peep, peep” sounds of baby chicks emanating from the squirrel nests high in our hemlock trees. Temporarily struck stupid in amazement, we never considered how they would make their way to the ground. Their mothers hadn’t considered it either. Chickens, at best, are not the brightest animals God created and they fly only slightly better than rocks. Chicks? They don’t fly at all but simply make a sound reminiscent of a nut being cracked when they hit the ground. Linda Gail decided that sheets strung under the trees was a better option than running around trying to catch them with a butterfly net that we didn’t have. She is one of the brighter animals that God created and was able to save most of them.

When we met I knew there was something special about her. She had an inflated pumpkin on her head and was hiding behind a bar. She was my roommate’s former girlfriend and even after their last breakup I was slow to grasp that she was feeling the same spark that I had been feeling. After a most pleasing and unexpected face-sucking session after an impromptu stop off at a local “watering hole,” I still did not push the issue. It had to be the alcohol and she was my ex-roommate’s ex-girlfriend after all. I should have been concentrating more on the ex-part than the girlfriend part. After fumbling the chance, I got one more opportunity when she stopped by at the end of a football practice and asked if I would take her to The Casablanca, a blues club on River Street. She wanted to hear an old friend of hers sing and play the piano. Sounds exotic doesn’t it? The Casablanca on River Street sounds sexy…but it was not! It was a rundown brick building and not a white house at all. There was no view overlooking a river, and it was anything but exotic, unless you find Harley Davidsons exotic. No, while the name invoked visions of “Rick’s American Café,” I did not see anyone who resembled Humphrey Bogart or Grace Kelly. Previously having read an advertisement stating that “proper dress is required” I decided that I must dress somewhere between casual business and formal funeral parlor i.e. sport coat, dress pants but no tie. I’m glad I didn’t go for a “Casablanca” inspired dinner jacket and bow tie. As we walked through the door, the first view I had was of a tattooed lady of ample girth, in a hiked-up denim skirt, sprawled on a pool table trying to make a shot without benefit of a bridge. I would guess there was a Marlboro stuck to her lower lip but was looking up the wrong end to see. Women that large can get underwear in rose prints? Who knew…I hope it was a rose print. I tried not to stare but it was almost like watching the wreck that you knew was coming. I could not tear my eyes away until I realized that the three long-haired, tattooed, and denim-clad gorillas with her were staring at yours truly ogling at her. “Linda, what have you gotten me into?”

Since walking through this gate the very first time I have asked that question a lot. We have survived tornadoes, an ice storm with a hurricane attached, and a goat in our well. Yes, a goat in our well but that is a story to be told later along with the story of the goat in the bathroom. Most importantly we have survived with each other. Now with retirement we might have to survive being with each other too much. I stood thinking how lucky I was when I heard our two blue heeler puppies begin to bark heralding Linda Gail’s entrance into the yard. “What are you doing? You are standing there like a dope.” I explained that I was debating whether or not to throw my cap in the yard. As she cocked her head side I explained, “I figured if it didn’t come flying back out it was safe to come in.” She just looked at me and said, “When has it ever been safe?” That is a pretty good summation. Interesting, exhilarating, exhausting, confusing, the descriptors can go on and on but will never include the word safe…except it does. It was time to walk through the gate to my “safe harbor” and begin to create some new memories. I am sure none will be boring.

FISHIN’

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FISHIN’ is an excerpt from the upcoming book Pathways
My grandmother had what I would describe as a single mindedness about her work ethic. Little would get in the way of what she had scheduled to do. Monday was wash day no matter how cold it was just to get it out of the way. The only exceptions were on rainy days or during harvest season. During the late summer, Monday was also preparation day for Tuesday – CANNERY DAY. Tomatoes were peeled, okra cut, beans shelled or soup mix was readied to be canned the next day. Wednesdays and Thursdays were copies of Monday and Tuesday. One day was set aside to sweep the backyard under the privet, another to weed the rock garden and others to do what she hated most – house cleaning. Early, early mornings were spent milking the cow and some days work was rearranged to accommodate for the churning of butter and making buttermilk. During the early summer EVERYDAY was weed the garden and pick “critters” that might be chewing on plants. Nothing interfered except the meal preparations and finally the harsh late afternoon midsummer sun that would drive her into the shade…of her front porch to start processing vegetables. There was no rest for the weary.
I can see her distinctly in my mind’s eye standing in her garden and can clearly hear the “clinking” sound of her hoe making contact with the few small rocks that remained in her garden. She is wearing a cotton “sack” dress handmade from last year’s feed sacks, a broad-brimmed straw hat and old lady loafers that had been slit to accommodate corns and bunions. That was pretty much all she wore as I found out one day when a hornet flew up her dress causing her to strip in the middle of the bean field. There is no modesty when being stung by a hornet but young eyes should not see these things. Her face, arms and legs were as brown as the leather harnesses that PawPaw used to hook his old horse to the wagon and the rest of her…obviously had rarely seen the light of day. I think now how old I thought she was but she was just forty-eight when I was born. I was forty-nine when she died.
There were only two things that would drive her out of her garden – rain and fishin’. Fishing was something that she discovered after PawPaw died. I do not have one memory of her going fishing prior to his death although I remember hearing stories about trips to the river, a mile or so distant as the crow flies. I don’t think this was an example of “sport” fishing but was the setting and checking of trotlines in hopes of supplementing table fare…cheaply. Pan-fried catfish and catfish stew would replace the canned salmon that we often ate in the winter. Well, she made up for lost time as she entered her “semi-retirement” after moving in with us and then later with Aunt Joyce after my Dad remarried. It also did not help keep her in her garden that H.L. Bowers built nine or ten ponds and lakes between us and the river…and gave Nannie free entry…and me with her.
I was not her only fishing partner and she would not overuse the Bower’s lakes. I think she feared that the invitation might be revoked if she caught too many fish. There were also a plethora of people who would line up to go with her, many who would just call volunteering to take her to the lake of her choice. Some would call days ahead to make “reservations” to go fishing. The reason was simple. The Lord had blessed her with the ability to find and catch large quantities of fish. Miss Maggie would say, “She sho’ nuff’ can smell deem fishes.” She also thought Nannie might have sold her soul to the devil or might have practiced West African Vodun because she fished according to the signs of the moon, wind direction and weather forecast. Full moon, wind from the south or south-east with a rising barometer…time to go fishing. There were times Nannie ignored the signs and, likely as not, she would not be shutout.
Her fishin’ was fishing in its purest form. No high-dollar technology was employed. I once gave her a Zebco 33 rod and reel, maybe the all-time easiest reel to use. She never used it; instead, there would be a thin cane pole or three, all strung with heavy twenty pound test line and a small split shot crimped a foot or more above a small gold hook. Rarely did she fish with a bobber. All of her extra gear, hooks, weights and line were carried in a paper poke. I remember when she graduated from a “croaker” sack to put her fish on to a line stringer and then finally to a metal stringer. An earthworm, cricket or a wasp larva was lightly presented to where she thought bream were bedding, allowed to sink a bit and then moved in a slow side to side arc. Wham! That strike would likely be the resulting outcome and into the croaker sack a fish would go! For those of you too young or too Yankee to know, a croaker sack was a porous burlap feed bag “repurposed” to put fish or frogs in to keep them alive or, in the gigged frog’s case, wet. The bag would be laid into the water. Frogs—croakers. Get it? Yes, frog legs do taste like chicken.
I would ask her “Nannie, how do you know where the fish are?” She would answer “Can you not smell them?” Uh, no I couldn’t but I can now and she taught me to look for the “pot holes” that the bream made when they were on the bed. That doesn’t explain how she caught fish when they weren’t on the bed. Maybe Maggie was right about the voodoo thing but I suspect it was the fact that she had studied fishing the same way she studied her Bible or the almanac.
Nothing was too big to go in her frying pan and, sometimes, nothing too small. I guess it goes back to being poor during the depression. Small fish were brought home and, if not cleaned, became a part of her garden. The two and a half pound bream or the nearly eight pound largemouth she caught did not go on her wall. No, that was pure foolishness. An eight pounder could have fed a Chinese family for a month and we were not going to waste it. Hand-sized bream were always my favorite to be pan fried in Crisco using corn meal breading…at least I think it was Crisco…it might have been lard. I’ve tried pan frying them and I just can’t seem to get it right.
There was one August afternoon that Nannie decided to take Maggie and yours truly to Bower’s Big Lake. That’s what we called it. The Big Lake was twenty-five acres of fishing heaven. Bream, catfish and largemouth bass seemed to always be hungry and this day all of the signs were in place. We walked the three-quarters of a mile to the lake, scooted under the gate that cut the River Road, and started to fish from the closest access to water. For the next two hours we did not move and had it not been so late in the day we might not have left then. Seventy-seven double hand-sized “breeeeeems,” as Maggie called them, over filled our stringer. There had to be nearly forty pounds of fish and, for an eight or ten-year-old boy, a near sixty-year-old grandmother and, who knows how old Maggie was, it was a tough trek back to the house…followed by a couple of hours cleaning the fish. It was worth it the next day as the smell of frying fish permeated the air.
I remember the last time I took Nannie fishing. She was in her late eighties and a bit feeble, but not much. Linda Gail and I loaded her up in my old ’72 FJ 40 Land Cruiser and took her to the dock at Bower’s Big Lake. The weather was terrible for fishing. Cloudy and windy, a gale blew from the wrong direction as the barometer plunged but she hung a couple and we have a picture of her holding a “whale” still decked out in her broad-brimmed straw hat. She had at least started to wear pants by this time and I imagine a cotton “sack” dress would have been a little cool. What I remember the most was her laughter, something that I heard so rarely. When I think about Nannie seldom do I see her smiling. This was a special day as were all of the days when we went fishin’.
I miss her terribly and just don’t seem to get the enjoyment from fishing that I did during those days. I still try to get the spark back and will continue to do so. Sometimes I think to do otherwise would somehow be letting her down. The same is true with my garden. I know I could buy produce from the money I spend on seed that I actually raise. Fishing, even when they are not biting, is a little like therapy or maybe meditation. I have found it to be a pathway that leads me to memories that I sometimes didn’t even know I had.