Fifties

Stories I Need to Tell My Grandchildren

/ cigarman501 / 9 Comments

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

An Introduction

The time and place of my birth and early life seems alien today…the middle of the Twentieth Century in a Southern, rural, farming community. There is little resemblance of my childhood world to the modern one. A Baby Boomer, I might have grown up in a foreign country…or another planet. I did grow up in a different century. It is certainly not your world, my grandchildren, my loves.

I feel the need to tell stories. Hopefully you will recognize the language, hopefully you will learn that your roots run deep.

The hands of the clock moved slower then…there had to be more than twenty-four hours in the day.  Not because we were bored but because it seemed we did so much in the time that we had. Days so rich and so filled, there had to be more minutes in the day than the 1440 we have now. 

In the time of my youth, cotton was still king with cotton gins and textile mills running at full capacity.  Pulp wooders were still stripping the hills of pine trees to feed the hungry paper mill just across the river from my home.  John Deere tractors pulled disc harrows or hay bailers toward the river bottoms. There were more cows than people, when “backyards” included vast pastures and mixed forests. There were no traffic lights and few stop signs.

Dark-skinned truck drivers were still carrying huge loads of red clay past our house to Ashe Brick Company in distant Van Wyck.  Distant…which was just down the road a piece but might as well have been on a different continent.

Little white boys with crew cuts and flattops standing out in their yard giving the black truckers a universal sign of pumping fists they smilingly returned by blasting us with their air horns.  They seemed to never tire of it, I know we didn’t.  Huge grins blindingly white against dark complexions.

My little brother playing in a sandy ditch using his voice to mock the trucks as they shifted through their gears, pushing his Tonka Toy Truck as he did.  My parents worried he would destroy his vocal cords if he didn’t quit. I might have wished that he had…but just a time or two.

Sitting under a huge pecan tree on a hill above a two-lane blacktop, watching the sparse traffic and being able to recognize the cars of friends, family, and acquaintances, some by their distant sound.  There was always a stir when a new model cruised by. Knowing who the occupants were just by the cars they drove. Everyone waved and smiled.  It truly was a different era.

It was a different time because my family was still intact, and the place of my youth still existed.  Family and place are important. Two hilltops and two ‘hollers’ filled with extended families.  Grandparents and Great Grandparents, uncles, and aunts, all making sure we always toed the line. The old Nigerian proverb ‘Oran a azu nwa’, “it takes a community or village to raise a child,” certainly was true.  

Cousins to play with even though I was between generations.  Younger than one generation and older than another, I sat dead in the middle, alone. It didn’t matter.  My closest friends of the same age were just across the road or just up the road apiece, all within walking distance.  I am amazed at how long an hour of playtime was during those days.

Forays through our mixed forest into the piney woods across the “crick “ to the Morris’ home or across the road, walking past the scary kudzu shrouded ravine to the Jackson’s.  An active imagination wondered what might be lurking there. What animal or monster, or if the kudzu might reach out and kidnap me. An unofficial club house in a privet shrouded sharecropper’s home that sat abandoned next to my house.

If we had a penny we might trek to Pettus’ or Yarbrough’s store for a small Sugar Daddy or BB Bat. “You be careful crossing that road, now, Stop, look, and listen.” Traffic was sparse but our parents still worried.

There were few families in my little world I wasn’t related to.   If the last name was Griffin, Pettus, Perry, Rodgers or Wilson, our family trees probably merged at some point…sometimes becoming quite tangled or maybe without limbs at all. An aunt on one side of the family was also an aunt on the other side of the family, and also my third-grade teacher. I need to ask questions because I don’t exactly remember how that came to be. The last name, Miller, was a rare one but then my dad was a transplant from Fort Mill, thirteen miles away.

Playing football or baseball in the stubble of harvested hay, or corn, or cotton in the field across the road.  At least we didn’t have to worry about avoiding cow patties, but we never learned to hook or popup slide, either. 

Corn cob fights around the corn crib and barn where we did worry about cow patties.  The forts and tree house we built on a bluff above a stream that led to the distant Catawba until cut by one of Bowers’ lakes…not so distant after all.  Playing war in the eroded red clay banks between the cotton and corn fields.  Our parents threatened to tan our hides because of the ruined clothes, once white tee shirts forever stained by the red clay.

Walking or riding my bike down the dusty “river road” to Bowers’ ponds teaming with blue gills, largemouth, and the occasional catfish.  On to the river that seemed so distant then…probably no more than two or three miles away today. Could it have moved closer?

I wish I had asked my grandparents more questions. “What was it like during the depression?” “What did it feel like to see your first car?” “What was it like to work on the railroad.” “How did you make your biscuits so moist on the inside and buttery crisp on the outside.” Hopefully these stories will answer some of your questions after my soul joins “The parade of souls marching across the sky.”

I’m going to tell stories that will be alien to you.  I hope you will take the time to read them sometime.  Hopefully, they will be educational.  Hopefully, you will want to read them.  Maybe you should read them to your mother and father, too.  Some will be humorous, some painful, some will just be.  All will be written with love.

An introduction to Stories I Need to Tell My Grandchildren, a work in progress.

***

Don Miller’s Amazon site: https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0jXxoLIhO8m6Oz6EZ3yUhX3TS3YHpsX0ldPJIFZxBDXQNB8JiA4in1Sgw

Quote from Goodreads.

Image produced by Canva

Quote “The parade of souls marching across the sky.” from the song Wheel Inside a Wheel by Mary Gauthier.

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 PINK IPOD

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THE PINK IPOD is an excerpt from FLOPPY PARTS which may be purchased through Amazon at http://goo.gl/Saivuu

I have a pink IPOD which for some reason has become the object of debate. I realize that I don’t coach in one of the more progressive areas of the world but find it thought provoking that even the mature kids that I coach ask, “Why do you have a pink IPOD?” They ask this while giving me the old fish eye and nodding as if they know something that I don’t. Well, they probably do know something that I don’t but they do not know the reasoning behind the pink IPOD. I do not know why some men and boys have a homophobic fear of the color pink. I have several gay friends who nicely counterbalance the homophobic friends that I have, and none of them wear pink any more, or less, than anyone else. I also have no femininity issues unless they are latent. What if they are? I am in perfect tune with my feminine side and do not feel the urge to wear frilly feminine underwear…at least not yet. So, what is the reason for a pink IPOD? I know you are all on the edge of your seat anticipating the answer. Drum roll please! TA – DAH! You see, I can find it more easily when I lose it. Unless I have lost it on a pink flamingo or pink Cadillac, it is easily seen. No other reason at all. It is easy to find! Now if you feel the need to discuss pink being one of my favorite colors or my lack of concern when I wear pink knit shirts, pink ties or flowery Hawaiian shirts in pink motifs, we can talk about it. I do so love pink flamingoes and would offer a body part to own a Fifties model pink Caddy convertible. I just believe that I am a progressive thinker. Okay, not THAT progressive! It would have to be a body part that comes in twos.

My last year as a full time teacher, I shared a room during my planning period with Lola, a former Seventies “flower child.” I don’t know for sure that she was a “flower child” but she certainly looked the part, in a slightly industrial-sized way, and acted as if she had gone “one toke over the line” some forty or more years ago. I would venture to guess that she had continued as one for the last four decades. For those of you who grew up in the “Big Hair and Shoulder Pads” period, a “flower child” is another descriptor for “hippy” and a “toke” was the deep, held in inhalation of pot. I could almost see her sitting at the corner of Haight and Ashbury dressed in denim or gingham, singing “It never rains in California”…no, I see her more as a Janis Joplin type singing “Me and Bobby McGee,” – a cleaner Janis Joplin type.

Once I wore a pink knit shirt and several days later a pink oxford cloth dress shirt with a dandy purple print tie. She commented that “You seem to wear a lot of pink.” I was unsure what constituted “a lot” and I really didn’t think I had even worn them both in the same week. I had also sported the color blue three times that week and I was five for five wearing khaki. I probably should look into some trousers in colors other than bland. Rather than asking to see her fashion police badge I attempted to disengage from the conversation by answering, “No, not really” and shuffled the lab papers that I was trying to grade. It did not work.
She had recently remarried and I tried not to think about a story I had heard about the newlyweds “cavorting” at the previous year’s faculty Christmas party. By trying not to think about it I thought about it. If putting out my own eyes would get rid of that mental vision I was having I would gladly do it. Let’s just say that Lola was helping the new hubby unwrap an early Christmas present when they were discovered in the act while not locking themselves in the host’s bathroom. Kind of brings a different meaning to “be done in a minute.” I have just become a little queasy, and I know it has nothing to do with what I ate. Earlier in the year I had made the mistake of feeling sorry for Lola and was paying for it by “being her best friend”…actually her only friend it would seem. I am glad I wasn’t a BFF because forever seemed to get a little longer every time I was around Lola.

“’Herbie’ would never wear pink,” she said in her “little girl” voice. I knew I was going to hate myself but asked why anyway. “Herbie doesn’t believe it is manly even though I know differently. Herbie is quite manly. He is just afraid that other men might think that he is…uh…well, you know, Gay.” She tried to smile while biting on her lower lip and let her voice trail off. I tried to think of a way, in good taste of course, to stick a finger down my throat. Did I mention that Herbie looks like an overweight warthog wearing a Seventies lime green polyester leisure suit, complete with gold chains worn under a flowery unbuttoned shirt? He was a throw-back from an earlier period that I had tried to purge from my own memory. Before I could excuse myself to find a place where she wasn’t, Lola went on to say that Herbie had made her return a pink shirt she had bought for him and then questioned if I thought that was normal. Normal? Absolutely not! There was nothing about this conversation that was normal.
Few of my homophobic friends, or homosexual friends for that matter, have a fear of wearing pink …that I know of. I do find it humorous that some of my homophobic friends, one especially, are so adamant about “I don’t want them coming around me!” In my wisest teaching voice I ask, “Ken, are you afraid it is going to rub off on you? You know it is not like the flu. You can’t catch it.” I loved it when he offered the explanation that, “I don’t want them coming on to me.” Why did I love it? Because I got to ask, “Do you have a problem with the women coming on to you, because unless you are having to beat them off with a stick, you are probably not going to have to worry about men coming on to you.” I know I just missed a wonderful opportunity for a pun.

I also question the concept of being against homosexuality if you are a heterosexual male. Doesn’t that improve the odds of hooking up with a heterosexual female? Mathematically that would be two guys you wouldn’t be in competition with. Shouldn’t men be railing against lesbianism? No, we all have this dream that we can convert them. Ken would say, “It’s Biblical.” I couldn’t help myself and asked, “What about ‘spilling your seed upon the ground’ Ken?” Ever been guilty of that? In a study I read, of the ten thousand men polled, ninety-nine percent admitted to doing it and I would suggest that the remaining one percent are liars. He looked pensive for a moment, nodded his head before turning it to the side and weakly asked, “What’s with the pink IPOD, man?”

WASTE NOT

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

WASTE NOT is an excerpt from the soon to be released book PATHWAYS

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.

The first fall frost would signify another “waste not” moment as a hog would be slaughtered. If you have a weak stomach or really don’t want to know how your food is processed, you might not want to read any more of this paragraph. I was amazed at how little of the hog was left after it had been processed. It began with a “crunch” as a heavy hammer was used to dispatch the hog. My uncle didn’t want to scramble the poor hog’s brains with a bullet even though the brains would be scrambled with eggs later. The hog would be hung by its rear legs, its throat cut and blood would be drained to be used later in blood pudding or other recipes. All of the recognizable parts of the hog were butchered and all of the unrecognizable parts were turned into sausage, liver mush and souse meat. Yuck! Anyone ever read the ingredient list on liver mush? Hint, liver is not the first ingredient…or the second. I really don’t want to even think about souse meat. The bones and the head would be boiled, the broth used to flavor soups and beans. Later the bones would be ground and used as fertilizer. Hog tallow (lard) would be stored and used in the making of candles, soap and biscuits. I liked eating the biscuits better than the soap that was used after I uttered an “expletive.”

While I don’t slaughter my own hogs (actually I don’t raise them), I did pick up some of my grandparents’ frugalness and their belief in environmental safekeeping. At the very least, I ask the question, “Is there anything I can use this for?” I’ve turned two liter bottles into bird houses or feeders, old pots into strange artwork, and Jack Daniel’s bottles into lamps. I have a pair of jeans that have patches on top of patches…only because they feel sooooooo good. Kitchen waste goes into a compost bin to join grass clippings and black print newspaper in my garden. Glass, magazines and plastics are separated and placed into recycling bins at our local trash dump.

Without really trying, my grandparents taught me to be a good steward of my world. As I constantly pick up trash from my roadside, I wish others had been taught as well or had paid better attention.