The Leap

I think I would try to get back to normal today if I had any idea what normal is. It tends to change from day to day. One doesn’t feel the void that a person could leave in one’s life until that person is gone. Then that void begins to attract every aspect of your being like a physiological black hole. It takes a while for the whole system to recalibrate. Then you get ready for the next upheaval.

If there has been one reliable constant in my life, I think it might be instability.

Well, enough of that. Onward and upward. Did I ever tell you about the time the Hester boys, Robert and Bobby Joe, and I got one of our most grandiose ideas and carried it out until we got caught?

It happened this way.

Somewhere back in the 1950s, they built a stock-car track about a half-mile up the highway from our little grocery, in a large flood-plain area. It flooded too often for most legitimate uses, so a race track seemed appropriate. This was years ago. There’s a Walmart there now.

Anyway, we, the Hester boys and I had a chance to see a travelling daredevil show there one Sunday afternoon, after church. That is to say, after church for me, the Hesters were free from human bondage at the time and weren’t burdened with church services until a woman at the Methodist church in town discovered that fact. That’s a story for another day, though.

Come Monday of a summer day, we found ourselves still mesmerized by the thought of the Sunday show’s grand finale, the jumping from ramp to ramp by one of the crew over three or four cars parked side by side. Oh, the exhilarating thrill!

How to translate such grandiosity into our rural lives became a fixation. We inventoried our status. We had no cars, but we had bicycles. We had no ramps, but we had the remnants of some oak lumber my daddy had inherited for payment of a delinquent bill. We had hammers. We had a saw. My daddy had nails and a generous attitude about our use of them, whether he knew it or not.

Almost instantaneously, it seemed, we had two ramps propped on bricks on the seldom used gravel road that ran alongside our house and store.

It worked. With enough speed, we could make the journey in mid-air from one ramp to another. We widened the distance and soared. We widened the distance again. We widened the distance again and again, until Bobby Joe hit the far ramp with a tire and went somersaulting down the road. We set that as the ultimate distance and took turns making the “Leap of Death.” That might have left us with no future save a career in daredeviltry had we not gotten bored. Young boys do that.

Someone noticed my little brother sitting in a muddy ditch playing with a crawdad house. It must have been a scion of the Dark One himself who gave us the idea. A true Leap of Death required a potential victim. In a flash, brother was laid out perpendicular between the ramps and we were making a truly death-defying leap. It was most exhilarating, and I was mid-air in my fourth or fifth leap when I saw, at the end and to the side of the far ramp, my daddy. As my bicycle continued to soar, I looked around. The Hester boys had disappeared, with me still in mid-air.

Did I ever tell you why I never became a daredevil?

A career cut short?

Growing Up Southern:September 7, 2017

Somethings about the past I don’t miss. Some I do. One thing I miss is the canned peaches my grandmother used to make. My goodness.

I don’t see how they did it, those women back then. We’re talking about a tin-roofed farmhouse before there was any knowledge of insulation. You looked up saw the rafters. An aunt of mine used to decorate them with circles of those corks you used to get in coke bottle tops sewn together in rings.

As I understand it, canning requires things to be put in sanitized jars that are then subjected to high heat. In Mama Rodgers’ (originally “Harris” but she remarried after her first husband died) day, that meant laboring over a wood cook stove during the heat of an Arkansas summer when 100-degree days were common.

Those far-off times created some real women.

But back to those peaches. I remember they had little black spheres of spice floating around in them and a sort of sharp, sweet taste. I’d sell all my wife’s dogs to the Gypsies for one jar of them now. They raised the peaches of course, she and Grandpa Rodgers. (That’s what we called him). They also raised everything else she canned. Along with vegetables, she relied on a smokehouse that stood next to the main house. I don’t know what it looked like inside because we weren’t allowed in there. We could have gone into the root cellar where the canned things were, but I suspected there was a particularly big rattlesnake waiting for me should I dare, so I never.

But back to those peaches. I remember having them for Sunday dinner (lunch to city slickers) when folks would gather at the house after church. The men and boys would eat. Then the women and girls. Then Mama Rodgers. All that would be left of the fried chicken by then would be the neckbone. That didn’t seem a fair deal for one who had worked so hard to feed everyone else. I don’t think women back then expected a fair deal. Survival was miracle enough.

I’ll talk about Mama Rodgers more later. She was a fine lady, unsullied by pride or arrogance. Widowed into abject poverty with three young children at home (our mother being one), she knew comfort in her last years, surrounded by family. She had this one old hat of which she was so proud. I guess you would call it old fashioned now, but she loved it.

But back to those peaches, I don’t think you can buy those at Walmart, and I don’t know anyone who cans them like that today. Too bad. 

No stilleto heels,
but she loved that hat.

Sailing To Oblivium: July 21, 2017

There is another memory of growing up in a small country grocery store that I wouldn’t believe had I not seen it. Those were different times, you know, very different times.

Most of the business that supported the store came in the morning, at noon, (“dinner time”) and late afternoon as people got off work. Since families had only one car, if any at all, there was not much traffic at mid-afternoon. After crops were “laid by,” there was even less.

During weather such as we are having lately, the only relief from heat in the store was a large pole fan aimed directly at the counter. It provided a minimum of comfort for both customers and the proprietor, my daddy.

Now here is where it gets a little unbelievable. As I have said before, my parents arose each morning at 5:00 a.m. in order to catch the early traffic. One can imagine how someone may have felt by mid-afternoon. Needless to say, small stores like that didn’t turn enough in sales to allow hiring help. You owned it—you ran it—and you just grabbed a little rest when you could.

I have seen my daddy, back in the old, old days, curl up on the counter of the store, under the fan, and nap briefly at that slow time of day. If a customer did come in, it would wake him and he would be right back on the job. Even had he not awakened, the customer would have probably just put an empty bottle in a rack, grabbed a “cocola,” and left a nickel on the counter.

Those times are long gone, in many respects. For one thing, the traffic never ceases these days on that once quiet highway, a graveled one in my early youth. Now, four lanes of asphalt accommodate a steady stream of drivers going somewhere, to do something, for some reason. They drive at speeds my mother would have described as “sacking air,” so one would imagine their purpose is an important one, but of that I am not certain.

Back toward town a short distance is a Walmart store, located on a site, incidentally, that once housed a stock car track. Any number of supporting businesses are located there now as well. Suffice it to say that a motorist headed South would have no use for a country grocery store these days.

And even if one did exist, the noise of modern life would probably keep the storekeeper from grabbing a nap.

Just remembering …

Recently, I mentioned the country grocery store my parents owned. Started me thinking. What was it like, back in the day, to run or depend on such a business? Here are some things I remember.

- Daddy cutting perfect slices of bologna and “lunch-meat” with a butcher knife. Later in life, he purchased a used slicing machine. It was faster, but no more accurate.

- People purchased one roll of toilet tissue at time. No worries about running out. Last year’s Sear’s Catalog was always on standby.

- The old folks untying their money from a pocket handkerchief.

- Nothing was priced. The customers who shopped there bought so little that they knew the cost of everything.

- When someone purchased a box of sanitary napkins, Daddy would immediately place it in a separate grocery sack while they continued to shop, a quiet display of modesty lost in the fog of history.

- Families stopping by on their way to town on Saturday morning. The girls wore their second-best skirts and the boys’ hair would be oiled and roached. Faces would be scrubbed until they shone like glass.

- The store stayed open until nearly midnight on Saturdays as people did their shopping for the week or maybe the month. We would fall asleep listening to the sounds of “The Grand Ole Opry” drifting in from the store radio. Groups would gather outside, and once a woman sliced another’s arm with a razor over a “man-squabble.”

In mid-afternoon, there was no business. Daddy would curl up on the store’s counter and nap, If a customer came in, they would wake him and make their purchase. Then he’d curl up again.

- In mid-morning, selected salesman and tradesmen on break would gather in the store, around an old pot-bellied stove in winter, and enjoy themselves. They would swap lies, stories, and rumors. When their voices dropped, my mother, back in the house, would know they were telling jokes and threaten to “take a broom after them.” She never did, though.

- An old woman lived at the end of the road that ran by the store. My sister and I carried groceries and old newspapers to her. She gave us roses, in season, for my mother. She was the oldest person I could imagine, really ancient. I imagined later in life that she might have even been born into slavery. Then I found her on a census role. She was about 70 when we were kids … like I say, really ancient.

- In the summer and fall, the whole family would turn out for “cotton-picker” or “cotton-chopper” trucks. That, though, is a story for another day.

Bet my sister could add to this under “comments” if someone encouraged her.

Our store and home in later years.