Growing Up Southern: November 13, 2017

My Sainted Mother did have one disagreeable trait. At least it was to me. She was a strong believer in discipline, and punishment, a truly concomitant pairing if there ever was one, much dreaded by young boys in the rural South.

I resented it bigly, this requirement that all Southern boys labor under: that you have to “mind Mama” no matter what, and that sure and certain punishment follows failure to do so. I think it damaged my ability to concentrate. Something did. My wife, in typical “woman supports woman” mode, says that it’s the reason I’m not sleeping under a bridge today. Take your pick.

Whippings were the thing. Mother’s were without guile, nor were they fit for sociological study. It was transgression, apprehension, (often occurring with the aid of and older sister), trial, and immediate execution of sentence. There was no analysis, no appeal, no footnotes, and no dissenting opinions.

Punishment was even worse when Mother was the administrator. She even made you acquire your own tool of torture.

The place where we lived had an abundance of persimmon trees, known for their supple and indestructible limbs. Mother was nothing, if not prescient, so ofttimes she would make “pre-transgression” preparations if the upcoming event portended the appropriate level of exuberance.

“Go over yonder and cut me a switch,” she would say. “And it had better be a good one.”

Displaying a deficiency that has plagued me for a lifetime, i.e. the inability to connect dots of logic and understand the simplest elements of “cause and effect,” I invariably returned with a small, supple affair, believing in my heart that small size equated with less pain.

It was exactly what the hell she wanted. A diminutive woman, she favored the thin, limber models of her objets de torture. It’s this way, see. She had a musical bent, or at least a rhythmic propensity. The wiry, limber switch allowed her to add a verbal contrapuntal element to her beatings. I can still hear her, in my PTSD induced nightmares.

“I’m, (swish … whap) not (swish … whap) going (swish … whap) to (swish … whap) tell (swish … whap) you (swish … whap) again … ,” for as long as it took, some hour or so it seemed, fully to describe my transgressions and their repercussions. In the meantime, I would be voicing my earnest assurances that the beating thus far was fully sufficient to avert any repetition of the offense. “I’ll (swish … whap) tell (swish … whap) you (swish … whap) what’s (swish … whap) enough (swish … whap).”

Later, as I sulked and made mental plans to run away and live alone in the forest like a South Arkansas Tarzan, I would promise myself, that when I became a famous composer, following careers as a policeman and railroad engineer, that I would write a masterpiece using the “state-swish-whap” cadence as the musical motif for a work to be entitled “The Crazed Mama Sonata.”

I haven’t yet, and plans fade with each passing year.

Yesterday, I talked about the predilection for hyperbole among us Southerners. I no doubt demonstrated it today. We do believe that falsehood should be used for embellishing stories and not for self-aggrandizement. But, truth be known, Mable Josephine Harris von Tungeln was a sweet lady and beloved by family and friends alike. I worshiped the ground she walked on while she was on Earth.

It just didn’t pay to piss her off. That’s all.

The Harris sisters in the bloom of youth.
My métier de la justice is on the left.
Yeah. She looks harmless enough.