Category: Early Stories

The Long Road to School

Photo from Flickr
When I was a teenager on the farm, we started every day with a “good” breakfast.  It usually involved cereal, almost always corn flakes, and toast, along with milk for me and coffee for Mother and Daddy.  On the weekends Mother was more apt to fry eggs and bacon and bake biscuits, but she certainly didn’t do that every morning.  Daddy and I ate breakfast and then went our separate ways, he to drive to work (or drive a schoolbus, as he did in later years) and me up the long gravel driveway to catch the school bus.

In the winter I remember standing up at the road in the dark, waiting for the yellow school bus to appear shortly after 7 a.m.  I had my lunch in a paper bag, my books under my arm, and a coat wrapped around me.  Bear in mind that girls were not allowed to wear pants to school until I was a senior in high school, so picture me shivering in knee socks and loafers, waiting for the bus.

The farm was 17 miles outside of town and about 20 miles from my junior high school and high school.  But the ride to school took well over an hour.  The bus crawled along winding country roads, stopping frequently where there were clusters of houses, then speeding up a bit in the lonely spaces between farms.  Some of my cousins rode the bus, but most of the other riders were kids I didn’t know well.

The bus had hard, dark green vinyl-cushioned bench seats with a curved metal bar on the top of each seat, so you could hold on when the driver took a curve a little too fast or if you wanted to stand up and talk to someone.  This would invariably cause the driver–generally male and grumpy–to shout, “Y’all sit down right now!”

During the winter the sun would come up in the course of the ride.  If the clouds were thin I could see the sunrise through the scrubby trees and bushes along the side of the road as we roared past.  Red skies at morning, sailors take warning—a pink sunrise was considered a sure sign of rain or sleet to come.

The bus ride to school was usually quiet, since all of the teenagers wished they were still at home in bed.  Some of them slept all the way, while others gossiped or tried to finish homework.  I often sat with my cousin Judy.  During those long rides we didn’t talk much.

I watched the countryside flashing past and daydreamed.  I don’t remember what I dreamed about.  But I was convinced this was just the beginning of the road for me.  I had no idea how long the road would be or where I was going.  Even as I absorbed the stark beauty of a winter sunrise,  I knew I was going somewhere, some day, out of the hills and hollers.

What We Owe to the Carter Family

Photo from The Carter Family Fold
Most of my friends who read this are probably saying, “Who on earth are the Carter Family?”  Even for me, growing up in Tennessee and exposed to the Grand Ole Opry and other country music from an early age, I didn’t know who they were and what their influence was.  Then I got a DVD from the library of a PBS special, “The Carter Family:  Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

My family is musical on both sides.  In Mother’s family, Aunt Geneva played the harmonica and Uncle Fatty (Jesse) played the guitar.  My grandmother on the Jones side played banjo and autoharp.  I never heard her play or sing, because she died when I was small.  But I often heard Aunt Geneva and Uncle Fatty.  I thought they got their songs from the radio, and that some of them were old songs from our part of the country.

After watching this show, I now know that the songs they sang did come from the radio and from records–of the Carter Family, and later of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle.  A. P. Carter started in the late ’20s with his wife Sara and sister-in-law Maybelle, recording old songs from the Virginia mountains where they lived, close to the Tennessee border.  Then over the years he went further and further afield, looking for more material.

Old songs that went back hundreds of years, and blues and field hollers, were all fodder for them.  A. P. arranged the songs and sang harmony; Sara sang lead, and Maybelle invented a new style of guitar picking unlike anything that had been before.

When Mother sang “I’m thinking tonight of my Blue Eyes,” that was a Carter Family song.   “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “Wildwood Flower,” and “Keep on the Sunny Side” were all in my family’s repertoire, and all Carter Family songs.

Now the Carters are called folk musicians and roots music.   During the folk revival of the ’60s Joan Baez recorded some of their songs.  Maybelle’s picking inspired Doc Watson and others who took her style into the mainstream of country music.

But for me those songs bring back a rainy Sunday afternoon in Aunt Lou and Uncle Floyd’s “parlor” sitting around the coal-burning stove.  Aunt Geneva is playing the melody of “Wildwood Flower,” then Uncle Fatty picks it in Maybelle Carter’s style, picking the melody and strumming chords at the same time.  Then they sing, Mother and Aunt Lou joining in and patting their feet.  Daddy and Uncle Floyd sang too, but softly, for the others were better singers, and they wanted to hear them.

I wish I could hear their voices again.  Maybe it’s time to get out my old Sears Silvertone guitar.  Or better still, listen to Roseanne Cash (June Carter’s stepdaughter and Johnny Cash’s daughter) sing “Long Black Veil.”  She has that lonesome mountain sound, brought into the modern world.

Moons of Jupiter

With Ron, in Malmo, Sweden

February is a tough month for me.  Daddy died in February, when I was only 22.  My late companion died in February some years ago, drowned during vacation in Florida.  So I’m always glad to see the back of this month, and spend some time remembering.

The first time I saw death close up was my grandfather’s death when I was a teenager.  My father drove us up the hill from our farm to Pap’s white clapboard house to wait for the ambulance.  Aunt Nina had heard Pap fall in the bathroom, and found him dead on the floor.  He was almost 90 years old.

I saw the ambulance men bring Pap out on a stretcher.  He was neatly dressed, as always, in grey pants, a crisply ironed shirt, and black laced-up boots.  He had combed his thin, fine white hair, but he hadn’t shaved yet, so his chin had white bristles.    His cold blue eyes were open wide, his nose jutting, his jaw slack.  He looked surprised, nothing more.  Daddy stood frozen as his father went by.

I have seen death again since then, my father in a coffin, my mother, Ron breathing out his life in a frantic knot of paramedics.  I have seen old people fighting death like commandos, wrestling it down, falling to it.  I see it advancing down the hall, lurking behind a hospital bed, swerving on a highway.

I used to think that, whenever you lost someone, eventually the gaping hole would be filled by another comfort of some kind.  Now I think that we’re all like the moons of Jupiter.  We’re pelted by meteorites.  Sometimes you get a glancing blow.  Sometimes you get a crater.  Sometimes you crack into pieces, and you’re not a moon anymore.  You keep orbiting around.  The holes may not hurt as much, but they are still there.  And we look for comfort.

Sweets to the Sweet

Valentine’s Day has me thinking of hearts, flowers and candy–especially candy.  I was ruined  years ago with Belgian chocolate, not Godiva, but Neuhaus and other brands brought fresh from Brussels, with no preservatives, dark chocolate with real cream fillings so you had to eat them in a week or they would spoil.  Even the shapes were beautiful, shells, hearts, sculptured curves.  Ron would bring them back every time he went to Brussels or flew through the airport.  As my admin assistant at that time said, “It’s hard to go back to Hershey’s when you’ve had this.”

Daddy was always fond of chocolate, but we never had anything like those Belgian chocolates when I was growing up.  If times were good Mother got a Whitman’s sampler on Mother’s Day.  Daddy’s favorites were chocolate-covered cherries.  Mother always got him a box for Christmas, as well as chocolate drops filled with coconut.  Uncle Floyd always gave us a tin of King Leo peppermint sticks for Christmas.   Once Mother went through a fit of baking fancy cakes, and she made a heart-shaped cake for Valentine’s Day.  I think she got the idea from Good Housekeeping magazine.  Valentine’s Day was not a romantic date for my parents by the time I came along.  I think having a fifth child at age 38 (her) and 40 (him) was enough for both of them.

Valentine’s Day was not a big occurance at my house, but it was fraught with anxiety in elementary school.  In the second or third grade each student in my class had a paper bag to be their “Valentine mailbox,” and we were expected to slip valentines in to our friends’ boxes.  Mother was adamant that I give valentines to the whole class.  “Nobody should be left out,” she said.  “It’s mean.”  So I dutifully gave one to everybody.  Most of the class did the same thing, having equally strict mothers.  But there was always some child too poor to buy the boxes of cheap valentines, even the punch-out kind.  I felt embarrassed and ashamed for the kid.  And we each were acutely aware of who in the class got the most valentines–usually some little blond girl.

Our school did not have the elaborate cupcakes, cookies and decorations that became prevalent a generation later.  I just remember those funny candies with the sayings on them like “Be Mine.”

After I grew up, Valentine’s Day became more of a ritual.  The boyfriend took me out for dinner, brought me flowers, maybe candy, maybe some small piece of jewelry.  We drank champagne.  We swept any issues under the carpet and had a romantic evening.

Those days are behind me now.  But I still like the flowers.  Maybe I’ll pick up some the day after Valentine’s Day, when the prices go down!

Ice Storm

This winter has been very mild so far, except for a weird October snowstorm.  I’m not sure why I’ve been remembering the ice storms of my Tennesee childhood.  Maybe my sister Sherrie sparked the memories with her account of a storm a few weeks ago on their farm.

Snow was rare where I grew up, and always the occasion for celebration.  I got out my sled, and Daddy played with me as the runners sank into wet slush.  Ice storms were more common.  Rain would begin to freeze, then coat trees, roads and the ground with a glittering layer.  When the sun came out the next day, everything sparkled.  The reflected light was almost blinding.

Often the ice on the road would cause school to be cancelled, since the school buses couldn’t run safely on their long routes through the country.  There weren’t any snowplows or salt trucks, so we had to wait for the ice to melt before school could resume.

Sometimes the ice would be heavy enough that tree branches would break and fall on the power lines.  If the power was out in many places it could be days before it was restored.  The poor folks who went through this after the October snowstorm here know what that is like.  We had resources on the farm, however, that made a couple of days of ice storm aftermath seem like a holiday to me.

Daddy hooked up a generator to the freezer so our frozen food wouldn’t spoil.  We had a wood-burning stove in the garage, which never had a car in it, so the garage functioned as a den.  Mother cooked on top of the stove, which can’t have been fun for her, but I thought it was great.  She even allowed my dog to come into the garage, when normally he was banished to his doghouse.  Often my aunts and uncles on the main road would get their power back faster, so we were invited for lunches and dinners with them.  Afterwards they would all play Rook, the only card game they were allowed as young people and still their favorite, and laugh and talk.

Two days was about my limit, however.  After that I really wanted to be back in school with my friends since none of them lived nearby.  But a couple of days off with my aunts and uncles, and time to read all I wanted to, was a real treat.

Y’all Come Back, Now…

Mother and Daddy at home on the farm
I think I was in junior high or high school when Aunt Evelyn died.  She was an aunt by marriage to Uncle Fatty (Mother’s brother Jesse), and had been sickly for years.  Poor Aunt Evelyn was always having polyps taken out of her colon, in and out of the hospital at least once a year, and felt unable to cook, keep house, or do anything resembling work.  Mother disapproved of this mightily, and all the community paid lip service to feeling sorry for Evelyn while privately wondering if it was all imagined.  Then one of the polyps turned out to be colon cancer and she died.

Her body was taken to Nave Funeral Home, which had just opened.  Mother, Daddy and I drove into town for the viewing.  It was very strange going to Nave, because I had known it as something else–the Rudolph mansion on Madison Street, where my sister Juanita had rented an apartment with one of the Rudolph girls after she graduated from Austin Peay.

The Rudolph mansion was a square, three-story brick edifice with white trim, two or three porches, a porte-cochere, and numerous fireplaces, sitting in a spacious yard with old oak trees.  I remember that Juanita’s bedroom had a white-painted brick fireplace with a marble mantlepiece.  As a child I thought it the height of elegance (as I thought everything Juanita did or owned was).   The Rudolph family had lived there for many years, but I guess the upkeep got to be too much.  So for a while they rented it out as apartments.  Then they sold it to Mr. Nave, who made it into a funeral home.

The conversion was tastefully done.  The high ceilings and dark wood floors with carpet runners kept the feel of an expensive family home.  As we walked in a dark-suited usher greeted us, asked which viewing we were attending, and led us to the proper room.  Aunt Evelyn looked smaller and thinner than ever in her coffin, but the makeup added some color to her face, maybe more than she’d ever had in life.

Mother sat with the other women at a comfortable distance from the coffin, wearing her Sunday dress and talking in a low voice.  I sat with her, keeping my distance from the dead, and itching to leave.

Daddy stood by the coffin with a small group of his brothers, friends and cousins.  As always, he was pleased to be with them, and they all chatted.  Daddy even chuckled a bit at something one of them said, a kind of “heh-heh-heh” laugh.  “George!” Mother hissed in a shocked whisper.  “Now, old woman,” he said, and stayed with the group a while longer.

Finally Mother and Daddy were ready to go.  Instead of going out the front door, we went to the side entrance with the porte-cochere, since it was closer to the parking lot.  Another dark-suited attendant opened the door for us.  Mother thanked him.  Then the man smiled and said, “Y’all come back, now, hear?”

Daddy and I burst into helpless laughter.  We laughed all the way to our car as Mother tried to make us hush.

Girls and Horses

When I was a child, I wanted a pony or a horse so bad I could taste it.  I was obnoxious.  I read “The Black Stallion,” “Misty of Chincoteague,” and that dreadful sentimental tearjearker whose name I forget, about the carriage horse that gradually sank to pulling a coal cart (this was in England) and was rescued by an early member of the Humane Society.  Was that “Black Beauty”?

I collected glass figurines of horses and then some kind of high-class plastic ones which cost way too much money for what they were.  When I fractured a vertebra in my back (a story for another day) at 10 years old and was in the hospital for a week, my cousin Marvel baked a chocolate cake the day I came home, and topped it with a glass Palomino with a saddle and bridle.  That’s how far gone I was, and how public it was in my family.

What is it about girls and horses?  Putting aside the obvious sexual imagery (and please, I beg you to do that), I think it’s all about control of emotion and empathy for a larger, more dangerous other.  And it’s also that horses have big eyes, lots of emotion and not much in the brains department.  Kinda like men 🙂

I went to see “War Horse” last week.  It was both a beautiful, sweeping story of a boy and his horse, and a powerful antiwar message.  I highly recommend it.  You need to see this movie on a big screen–you cannot get the sweep and majesty of it on a DVD.

Why do horses move us so?  They have been noble creatures from their earliest days, painted in caves in France.  There’s a whole nomenclature in heroic statuary in which the horse’s pose indicates the rider’s accomplishments or nobility.  Yes, in an equestrian statue, there is a message if all four feet are on the ground, or one front foot is raised, or the horse is rearing on its hind feet.

This from Wikipedia (accuracy to be confirmed):  Hoof-position symbolism

A popular belief in the United States is that if the horse is rampant (both front legs in the air), the rider died in battle; one front leg up means the rider was wounded in battle or died of battle wounds; and if all four hooves are on the ground, the rider died outside battle. However, there is little evidence to support this belief.

But how strange and rich that we impose those beliefs!  Horses carry a lot of freight, and a lot of weight.

Recipe: Original Red Velvet Cake

Red velvet cake was not part of my holiday tradition in middle Tennessee.  My mother made blackberry jam cake every year, and I’d never heard of red velvet cake until Ron made it for my Christmas party here in New York.  After he died, Linda graciously assumed the mantle and has made red velvet cake every year since for the party.

It’s really a chocolate pound cake with cream cheese frosting.  What makes it red is a ton of food coloring.  Linda has tried everything from beet juice to all-natural coloring, but nothing gets that lurid red except regular food coloring.  If the thought of Red Food Dye #whatever bothers you, just use one bottle instead of two.

This recipe is a little retro–I think it dates from the ’60s if not earlier.  Now that red velvet cake and cupcakes are popular, I’m sure there are many variations.  But this is the one I know and love.  Happy Christmas from me, and a shout-out to the memory of Ron.

Red Velvet Pound Cake

3 cups cake flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Sift together the dry ingredients.

Then mix:

3 cups sugar

5 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1-ounce bottles of red food coloring

1/2 cup Crisco

1/2 lb. butter

1 cup milk

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.  Bake in a tube pan 1 1/2 hours at 300 degrees.

Icing:

1 8 oz. package cream cheese

1 box powdered sugar

1 stick butter

1 cup pecans (small pieces)

2 tablespoons vanilla

P.S.  I got the photo from Wikimedia for a “Southern red velvet cake.”  I never think to take a picture of Linda’s–too busy eating!

We’re Having a Party

Tomorrow I have my Christmas party.  I’ve had one ever since I moved to my present location in 1996.  It’s less elaborate now than in my earlier years, but still involves decorating for Christmas, 10-12 friends, and more food than any of us need.

But that’s part of the holiday spirit–fun, and excess, and not being prudent or circumspect.  I’m baking a pecan pie, and tomorrow a tomato-ricotta tart.  I have smoked salmon, shrimp, cheeses, vegetables, and pate.  And, needless to say, lots of wine and other drinks.

My friends are bringing appetizers and desserts.  The real treat, however, is that one of them brings his guitar and we sing Christmas carols and Beatles songs.  Okay, it may sound hokey, but we love it.  How many chances do we all get to sing out loud?  When do we get to laugh, and tell stories, and dance?

My cat is exiled to the basement until the food is gone (he can’t be trusted).  Then he comes up and socializes, too.  Even he feels how warm and fun it is.

It’s not that all inhibitions are loose.  That’s not it at all.  It’s that we love and trust one another, and this is a party where we feel warm and happy together.  I love it.  And I’ll do it as long as I can.

Peace out, my friends, and may you all have a happy party in your immediate future.

Decorating the Tree

My mother had a yard sale at our house on the farm before she sold the house and moved to an apartment in town, some years after Daddy died.  She was tired and ill, and there was very little she held on to other than her clothes and her china and crystal.

I came to help out, and ended up hauling stuff back home with me that I couldn’t bear to be sold.  My sister Sherrie was there, and she spotted all the Christmas ornaments and lights, heaped on the ground.  Mother had kept the ornaments my sisters had given her, but had dumped all the balls and lights.

“Look at this,” Sherrie said.  “These lights are older than you are.”  She was right–I remembered them.  The bulbs were plastic or glass and shaped like birds or stars.  Sherrie always claimed the yellow bird sang to her from the top of the tree one Christmas.  I took the string, as well as a string of the original Bubble Lights.  Both strings were the kind that, if one bulb goes out, the string goes out, so you had go around the tree tightening and replacing bulbs until the string came back on again.

Those lights went to Atlanta with me, and then on to New York.  I haven’t used them for several years.  I bought one of those pre-lit artificial trees that looks more like a bottle brush than anything else a few years ago.  When I load it down with ornaments it doesn’t look too ghastly.

But this time of year I remember searching over the farm for a cedar tree without a fork in the top.  The first year after Daddy died, Mother and I went out into the fields with an ax, determined to have a Christmas no matter how awful we felt.  We found a big, lovely cedar, round and full.  It was all we could do to cut it down and drag it back to the house.

We put it in the garage and went to set it in a bucket of water so it could soak up some before it went in the tree stand.  The tree was about six inches too tall for the garage ceiling, which meant it was more than a foot too tall for the house.  Mother looked like she was going to burst into tears.

Then the phone rang.  Uncle Floyd called to see what was going on.  Mother told him our problem.  He showed up 15 minutes later and sawed off the bottom of the tree to the correct height.  So we had Christmas after all, using those bird lights, the Bubble Lights and all the other strings we had.