Growing Up Southern: March 29, 2018

I was in that state being half awake and remembered that it may be Easter weekend coming up. That made me think of something, then something else, then something else, and then today’s topic.

See, I first remembered a program in the little auditorium at Lakeside Elementary school in Pine Bluff during which the fifth-grade boys had to sing In Your Easter Bonnet. We pulled it off and it was okay. Singing off-key in front of folks doesn’t scar a person for life. Ask anyone who has ever performed the National Anthem at a baseball game.

But then I thought of another incident that originated when my Cub Scout den mother got a new neighbor. This neighbor was the wife of a former Navy man, and she was Hawaiian. I mean she was a real Hawaiian. She and my den mother became close friends. That’s what got it all started.

See, our den had to put on a program at our school. Women being the devious and mischievous creatures that they are, our den mother and her friend got up an idea for which its levity was only exceed by its cruelty. It’s true. Oh, did I mention that the neighbor, who was Hawaiian, was an expert at native dancing?

What then, could be more damaging to the collective psyches of a bunch of young boys than to make them stand in front of a room of peers and adults and “perform” a Hula, in imitation costumes?

Oh yes, we did. There was a popular song out, from the old Arthur Godfrey show, called The Hukilau. Nothing would suit these two women but that they would teach us this song and its accompanying dance moves. Further, our mothers would make the costumes from crepe paper, to heighten the air of authenticity, and to torture us more adroitly.

Picture it if you will. The costumes included a single strip of crepe paper across our bosoms. I’m sure there was a Hawaiian word for it but Sainted Mother forever referred to it as my “little brassier.” For the bottom part of the outfit, strips were cut to resemble the grass skirts worn on the islands.

Want an idea of what we did, my pals and I? Click here and let your imagination do the rest.

We pulled it off. We were able to hold ridicule on the playground to a minimum as there were a couple of guy on the football team, and one alumnus of Reform School who had suffered right alongside the rest of us. Long-term effects were more insidious. I think the ordeal thwarted my intention to become a fireman, and I began to consider a backup plan as a brain surgeon. Even then, I feared being interrupted during a delicate operation with, “Hey, aren’t you one of the ones who did the hula dance at Lakeside Elementary that time?”

It didn't even help to imagine my tossing a lobe into a pan and saying "Hula means 'dance,' so when you say 'hula dance' you're saying, 'dance, dance' smarty pants."

I finally opted for different careers, first as a naval Bosun’s Mate and then as an urban planner, both being professions in which an aberrant past is not only accepted but considered formative.

Others of the group were reduced, from their embedded shame, to practicing such things as law or chiropractory. One even became a TV evangelist. To say that the event scarred us is like saying a military-school education makes a child want to “get back” at the world.

I could name names of the still living survivors, some of whom matured into respected senior citizens. I might even land a spot on Sixty Minutes to discuss my information.

Ah, but I’m not into blackmail.

On the other hand, there is this new guitar I’ve been wanting. Further, there may be a photograph or two. Just saying.

Yeah well …
You may think it's funny.

Growing Up Southern: December 6, 2017

Did I ever tell you about the time the Hester boys and I decided to build a raft and float down Bayou Bartholomew from Jefferson County, Arkansas to New Orleans?

It was like this.

The Bayou ran just south of the city limits of Pine Bluff back then. In places, it was clogged with stumps, logs, and wild growth. But we found a stretch that promised to run fairly clear for a mile or two, then we would take our chances on getting the rest of the way to New Orleans, if our parents gave us permission (and supplies).

We had a nice place to start from, it being a clearing we had used as a hideout and as a defensive position to ward off any invasions from the city boys on the north side. It was an ideal raft-building spot. We had a fair collection of tools by then, including a couple of rusty old axes we had pilfered from a junk pile and a “mill bastard” file I had borrowed from my daddy’s tool box. It was going to take work, but we had all summer.

The Hester boys claimed, or at least their mother did, ancestry with some famous Indian chief or other, so it was naturally assumed that they possessed some genetic understand of raft construction. First thing one Monday morning, we selected our first tree and commenced work.

The idea suggested itself before long that our Indian forefathers didn’t value the art of felling trees very highly. Progress proved slow. We took turns at the effort. Wesley, the oldest Hester boy went first. Then I took my turn. Robert Hester went third. The youngest of that family, Bobby Joe took one turn and jumped ship. We didn’t mind, for we had already decided that three passengers was about all our raft would handle.

Long story short. By Friday, we had felled our first tree and cut it into ten-foot lengths. A glorious life of adventure lay straight ahead. We spend the weekend pilfering every scrap piece of rope we could find and reassembled our band at the port of debarkation Monday morning. The time for initial assembly was upon us. We needed to make room for the next tree.

Did I mention that I can’t remember what kind of tree we chose for our masterpiece? It might have been Pine, for I remember vaguely christening it the “Pride of Pine Bluff,” as we imagined our historic entry into the Crescent City.

We lined the sections so they touched one another, rolled them to the pre-prepared entry point, lined up at third points and rolled the first phase into the brown water of Bayou Bartholomew.

I wish I could remember exactly what species of tree we had chosen, the exact kind that we had spent a week on in assembly, the source of so many blisters and splinters, and the cause of such fatigue. Then I could acquaint you with a fact that might prove useful to you some day.

That species of tree won’t float when it’s green.

Maybe none will. We never knew. As we watched those logs disappear into the brown soup and roll to the bottom of the “longest bayou in America,” our wanderlust sank with it. We decided, after a gang-vote, that our next construction project would be land-based.

We were going to build a tower so high we could see Little Rock from it.

We never did, though.

Stuff that dreams
are made of.

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.