She Spoke With Her Life

Several years ago I went to the funeral of one of the matriarchs of Fancy Farm.  Someone made this comment about her speaking to us with her life and I thought that was one of the best compliments anyone could be given.

I went to the funeral of another matriarch in our community today.  She was a matriarch to her brothers and sisters, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and anyone else she deemed family.

All through the funeral this quote kept coming back to me.  She did speak with her life.  She always had.

The family wanted this to be a celebration of her life.  And they wanted it simple.  I went, prepared to cry my heart out, and found myself smiling throughout.  Even though I got teary-eyed a time or two (I mean, who doesn’t get teary-eyed when Lacy sings the “Ave Maria”), I never shed a tear.  I was sad that she was gone.  But I was so glad that she had been in my life.  I’m one of those who considered her family.

She was one of the oldest amongst her brothers and sisters.  And for all of these years she had remained so close to her brothers and sisters.  She worked daily for over 30 years with her brother and a couple of sisters, a daughter, a daughter-in-law, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.  So many to count.  But she loved them.  And she was extremely loyal to them.  And she was always overly protective of them.  All.

She and her husband spent most of their time together.  Even when she was working, he was working.  They had different jobs.  They complimented each other so well.  She was strong where he was weak.  He would move mountains for her if she asked.

She had three children that she raised right.  Those children gave her 8 grandchildren.  Those grandchildren gave her great-grandchildren.  She valued each one of them like they were gold.  And she didn’t stop there.  She had so many foster grandchildren, ones that didn’t have grandparents that she decided needed to have a grandmother at times.  I count my children as some of hers.

And it didn’t matter what you were up to, she wanted you to know that she was proud of you for whatever you did.  She supported the arts, and craft fairs, and every fundraiser that approached her.  And it was fun to watch her.  Every year there used to be an auction fundraiser for a school where her grandchildren attended.  She might not have bought everything that she bid on but she made sure that it brought what it was worth.  And there were times that it wasn’t worth much at all.  But she made sure that she bid it up high enough that it made the fundraiser extremely successful.

She came to everything that you invited her to.  I don’t know how many birthday parties we asked her to and she didn’t care if there were 3 kids or 20 kids there.  She came.  And she laughed and watched every move those kids were making.  It didn’t matter how young or old they were.  Every once in a while you would catch her eye and she would just grin, in a knowing way.  It was then that you knew that she had the patience of a saint.

Don’t get me wrong.  I remember she could get worked up about something that was going on that she didn’t particularly like.  She wasn’t shy about voicing her opinion.  In a lot if ways you would think that she was a nice, quiet woman.  And she was.  Until her feathers got ruffled.  Then she made sure you knew what she was thinking.  Personally, I always liked those conversations with her.  In a lot of ways she voiced what we all were thinking.

And when it was time to go, when time had tired her out too much, she went out on her terms.  Her grandson told me that she had talked with him on the phone and told him that those doctors didn’t know what they were talking about.  She felt fine. They were making too much of a fuss.  The day she died she said she wanted to go lie down.  She did.  She wasn’t feeling well so she hollered for her husband to come in there with her.  He did.  He sat with her, praying the Rosary, until she was gone.  I can’t think of any better way to go than with the man you have loved for almost 60 years praying you straight into heaven.

She told the kids not to make such a fuss.  And they didn’t.  But they sent her out with joy.

The thing about matriarchs, time takes them but also makes them.  Even though she is no longer here with us, her wisdom will live on in the experience of having had her in our lives.

Gratitude

If Fr. Darrell was here right now he would say “How’s Your Lent Going?”  And I would tell him today that my Lent is going great!

Okay, I haven’t been great at reducing carbs but I have quit playing computer games and other than today I have eliminated sweets from my diet.  But one of the best things I am doing is following a Lenten calendar where I do something different every day.  Those days could have me praying or fasting or serving.  I won’t leave for work without checking what it is I have to do on a particular day.  Today was a prayer day.  Today I was to pray in gratitude.

I’m pretty familiar with expressing my gratitude.  I keep a gratitude journal although I normally have to remind myself to write in it.  I tell people “thank you” although I’m not always good at doing that.  But I do think that I am always grateful for the things in my life.

Nothing makes that more clear than a day like today.  Today is my birthday.  I have always made a huge deal about my birthday.  I normally start celebrating my birthday a month in advance.  And I make sure everyone knows just how many more days until my birthday and then on that day I make sure everyone knows that it is my birthday.  I’ve always been like that.

But then Facebook enters the mix.  One of the nice things about Facebook is that it reminds you whose birthday is when.  It even gives you a list of whose birthday is on a particular day.  I have always been amazed at the number of birthday greetings are generated through Facebook but I will tell you that the people of Fancy Farm start early and send you greetings all day long.

I have had over 200 Happy Birthday greetings.  Now some of those were people that I have worked with.  Some were from people I went to school with.  But the bulk of the people offering their best wishes have been the people from my community.  And they have ranged from a simple “Happy Birthday” to serious conversations with just how old I am.  And, in gratitude, I have wanted to acknowledge each and every one of those wishes.  But when there are over 200 greetings it has gotten a little tiring.  So I decided I would write about it.

There are people in this community who know me because of Facebook or something at church or some other community organization.  A couple of weeks ago a new member came to one of our Rosaries and she introduced herself to me.  I told her I knew who she was.  We were friends on Facebook.  She said she knew that but didn’t know if I knew her.  I told her I may not recognize her but I knew her name and some of her posts.  I felt like we were old friends.  She commented on some of my pictures and some of the “quotable quotes” I put as my status updates.  It was as if we had known each other for years.

Having this type of welcome is something to be grateful for.  We are so lucky in our community to have the friendliness of this community.  And I have been welcomed like this since the day I moved to town.  Everyone may not know my name, they may not know anything about me.  But they recognize me and make me feel like I am one of the family.

I make a big deal about birthdays.  I get that from my mother.  She was born on Christmas Day and always valued birthdays.  So I have always made a big deal in my family about birthdays.  Well that has rubbed off.  My children can be just as obnoxious about my birthday as I am about theirs.  But I love it, as I know that they love it.  So today all 4 of my children sang “Happy Birthday” to me.  I have received phone calls and emails and texts and Facebook posts.  My youngest daughter wanted to know what I wanted to do and she made sure that it was done.  I am so grateful to have the type of family which recognizes what I value and they make sure that I feel valued.

I am so grateful for my faith.  I know we always give this lip service but it seems the older I get the more grateful that I am to have the faith in my religion that I am privileged to have.  As much as I hate Lent, I know that it is more valuable to my faith and my faith formation than any other time of the year.  Lent gives me the opportunity to take a look at my faith life and make changes or decide what more I can offer to my faith.  The closer it gets to Easter the harder Lent seems to be, but the better the rewards will be.  It doesn’t hurt that our faith community is so strong and we have wonderful leadership by Fr. Darrell and the entire parish staff.

This year I haven’t been real obnoxious about my birthday.  For instance, there was only one day that I reminded everybody I talked with that my birthday was 3 weeks away.  The reason I haven’t been so obnoxious is that I have been very busy at work. Even though I don’t have all kinds of things happening I do have a lot of activity going on and lots of people who know what kind of work that I do.  Plus, I’m having some success with my writing and photography.  I couldn’t ask for more than what I have.  Okay, I can but I know that it will all come together in the end.

So, Fr. Darrell, if you were to ask me how my Lent was going today.  I would tell you that I have learned that I have a lot to be thankful for and a whole lot of people to thank.  So I’d say today, my Lent is going pretty good.

Thanks for asking.

There’s a Case of Sisters Marrying Brothers

Living in a small town it makes sense that some people marrying into the same family as their siblings.  Let’s face it.  We’re a small town full of large families.  For years no one interacted outside of the community.  Everyone went to school in town, went to church in town, worked on farms or in town.  A lot of times they didn’t interact unless they got a job outside of the community or went away to college.  So it makes sense that my little sister dated his little brother.  That’s just the way it was.  I was telling someone about it and he told me that he and his brother dated twins.  His brother ended up marrying one twin but my friend didn’t.  And he was from a different community.

I guess it’s not much different than the way a lot of us were raised.  I went to school with the same kids for 8 years, then kept on with the same girls I had grown up with in high school.  When it came time to get a date for a dance or prom I had to go back to the boys I was raised with because I didn’t have many opportunities to interact with young men my age.  My dad liked it that way.  But I went to school 4 blocks from home.  I went to church there too.  I shopped at the local grocery store, 3 blocks away from home.  I went to the drug store and dime store too.  The only people who shopped there were people from our neighborhood.  The bank was across the street.  There was a pizza parlor on the corner, next to the funeral home.  We never had to leave the neighborhood.  And we only had one car.  Mom took that to work.  Dad drove a company truck.  We did get another car when my sister started driving but we couldn’t just get in the car and go.  We had to ask permission.  We had to tell Mom and Dad exactly where we were going and exactly when we would be home.  Even then we still stayed in the general vicinity.  We went to the ice cream parlor and then drove over to the park to swing while we ate our ice cream.

It’s the same in a small town.  No one had an extra car.  In fact, a lot of farmers didn’t have cars.  They had pick-up trucks that they loaded their family into the back of when they went to church.  The school bus picked them up for school.  You didn’t run to the store for anything.  If you had to go out of the community it was usually done once a week and you did all your business that day.  You went to the grocery store and only bought things you didn’t have in your freezer or pantry.  You went to the bank.  If someone needed a new pair of shoes, they got to go but all they got to get was the shoes.  It was a big even to go to town.  And if you went to Paducah that might have been done 3 or 4 times a year.  It wasn’t the norm.  Not like today.  Today if you need something no one thinks twice about driving the 20 or 30 miles to Paducah.  No one dares think of the 10 miles into Mayfield.  It used to be that Murray was where kids went to college and they only came home on the weekend, if then.  Now we might drive to Paducah one night and head to Murray the next day.  We’re all over the place.

And we know a lot more people than were raised in our little town.

You don’t see sisters dating brothers, let alone marrying them.  Of course you don’t see the large families that we were raised in.  We have 2, 3 or 4 children, not the 10, 12 or 14 of our parents or grandparents.  Our children are dating people from all over the community, all over the county, all over the state, all over the country, all over the world.  My niece moved off to Nashville after college and met a man whose family is from New York.  My daughter, who we couldn’t talk into milking while she was in high school, went off to college and studied dairy cows and then married a dairy farmer, from half-way across the state.  My son, who wasn’t born in Fancy Farm, moved back to Louisville, where he was born, and found the love of his life and now lives up there.  We’re scattered all over creation and back.

And that’s good.  We need to know how the rest of the world is.  We know how our community is.  But it’s not good in that things are slowly but surely changing all around us.  Some of us like the way things always were.  Of course, there are plenty that are ready to catch up with the rest of the world.

What brought this all up though was trying to figure out how sisters could move all the way out to California from Fancy Farm and end up marrying cousins, also from Fancy Farm.  So, Shirley & Bob, Lyndal & Carolyn, Rachael & Frances, Wanda & Janet, Betty and Elaine, thank you for keeping us all grounded in who we are.  Good for you!  And good for us!

Mama Say a Prayer for Me

There are so many times throughout our lives that we need someone to pray for us.  Sometimes it’s an illness or a surgery.  Sometimes it’s a life decision that we are making.  Sometimes it is for help in getting back on our feet.

But it’s something very special if we ask our mother to say a prayer for us.

My mother has been dead for almost 30 years.  It’s not often that I ask her to pray for me.  But when I do I know that I really need those prayers.

Usually my prayers to my mother are when I am asking for help for my children.  It’s hard to raise children.  And your children are never raised.  My son, who is 30, needs as many prayers from me as he did as an infant.  And, as his mother, I have to abide.  It’s a mother’s job.

But I reserve asking for prayers from my mother for the things that weigh heavy on my heart.  Usually, I feel that I go to her when I’m at the end of my rope.  I go to her with things that I don’t want anyone else to know about, no one else to even fathom that I am thinking.  I know that she’ll understand.

I didn’t know it when I was little but my mother was grooming me when I was young to the fact that she wouldn’t be there through life to get me through.  She introduced me to another woman who I could feel comfortable going to whenever I needed someone.  This woman had been through the worst things imaginable and had persevered.  She introduced me to Mary, the mother of God.

Sounds hokey, right?  I mean, if you were raised Catholic you knew all about the Blessed Mother.  She was introduced to us as an advocate with a direct line to the Son, and to the Father.  She would take our side.  And the best way to go to her was through the Rosary.  If we were diligent in praying to her she would be diligent in taking care of our prayers.  Yeah, right.

Well, literally, yeah, right.  I don’t know when it was I made up my mind to return to the Rosary, and to the Blessed Mother, but praying the Rosary diligently, sends your prayers directly to the Blessed Mother who will take them to the Son and to the Father.  I don’t know how it works.  I just know that it works.

I read a book one time by Peggy Noonan, from the Washington Post.  She was commenting about her faith with the Rosary and mentioned a friend of hers who prays the Rosary every morning.  She asked her if it truly worked.  Her friend replied that she wasn’t sure if it helped but she was definitely sure that it didn’t hurt.  She went on to say that she could tell a difference in her day if she didn’t start the day praying the Rosary.

In the last 6 years I have taken my troubles to Christ.  I have taken them when I was at the last thread of the end of my rope.  It was at these times that I told the Lord that He was going to have to take care of things because I couldn’t do it anymore.  I was done.  And you know what, He did.  But I’m sort of a control freak so when things get good again I have a tendency to take my troubles back.  There comes  a point when I think I can take care of them.  Uh, no, I can’t.  But I think I can.  I have found that the Blessed Mother, through the Rosary, reminds me that I need to let God handle my problems.  If He handles them then I am a lot happier and don’t worry as much.

It has probably been 6 years ago that I came to realize that the Blessed Mother tells us what to do without being so demanding.  I was praying the Rosary as I did my daily walk.  I was professionally in a state of a turmoil.  I had a good job that paid me a lot of money.  It wasn’t a bad job.  It was one of those that people would have given a lot to have.  The problem was that I hated it.  I loved the people I worked with but I hated them.  I was so tired of it all.  I wanted to quit but I also knew that I couldn’t afford to quit.  I cried so many tears over this job.

While I was praying and walking that morning I was praying the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary.  These are a set of mysteries enacted by Pope John Paul II.  I was intrigued with them from the beginning because they were contemporary but then again, not.  The  second Luminous Mystery is the Wedding Feast at Cana.  Now with this mystery, the first miracle that Christ performs, most people believe that it’s about the miracle of changing water into wine, or the celebration of a wedding.  That day I was concentrating on Mary while I was praying the Rosary.  And when she said to the servants “Do as He tells you to do” I felt like I had hit a vein of gold.  That became my mantra.  I had been waiting my whole life for someone to come along and point me in the right direction, and push.  I knew I could do anything that came my way but I was always looking for the next thing, usually along the wrong path.  So I made up my mind that day that God would send me what He wanted me to do.  I didn’t need to run it down.  He would take care of it all.  All I had to do was what He told me to do.

Since I have been living my life that way I haven’t been disappointed.  I have not gotten rich with all of my “get rich quick schemes” but I have been able to create, to think outside the box, and make my professional life worth my while.  I used to say that everything about my life was perfect, except my professional life.  I used to say once that was fixed that I would truly be happy.

Let me tell you, I am truly happy.  Not everyday.  Not all the time.  But the majority of the time I could about giggle I’m so happy.  I am doing things that feed my creativity.  I am again helping with the bills, not entirely, but I’m helping.  I am giving career advice to those around me.   I am developing a customer base and biulding up my invoicing.  In another five years I may truly be in wonderful shape financially, maybe a whole lot sooner.  Don’t get me wrong, I do have my ups and downs, but overall I am happy.

And when I run into something that is not easy to do, doesn’t seem to be going well, I analyze that and try to determine if it’s God’s will or my desire?  Because if it’s my desire then I need to let it go and wait for the next thing that God sends my way.  Because He will provide.  I truly believe that.

And there are times that I think well, even though this is hard I still think it’s something I should do then I take it back to the Mother and ask her to help me determine if it is something I should be doing or if it’s something I should turn my back on.  And she has never steered me wrong.

I don’t think that Mary holds all the answers.  But I don’t think it hurts.  I equate it to a family lifestyle.  I mean, in a lot of households the Dad is the decision maker.  A lot of times you will run an issue by the Mom before taking it to Dad for approval or not.  If you have Mom’s buy-in then getting the issue past Dad is a whole lot easier.  That’s what I think about the relationship between Mary and her Son, and his Father.  If Mary thinks you need to take it to the Father she will give you her input.  If she doesn’t think it’s right, she’ll let you know that too.

Sometimes, you just have to go ask Mom first.

Everybody Dies Famous in a Small Town

Several years ago there was a country song by Miranda Lambert named “Everybody Dies Famous in a Small Town” and it is so true.  I live in a county of 30,000 people but the town I call home has a population of about 500 people.  Well, I live on the outskirts of that town so I don’t count in that 500.  It’s small.  And everybody knows everything about you.

I wasn’t born here.  I was born in the largest city in Kentucky, Louisville.  Actually, I lived in the suburbs there too so it was sort of a small town.  Nothing like Fancy Farm though.  Although you knew your neighbors and all the kids in the neighborhood you didn’t necessarily know their complete families and everything about them.  You knew how often then cut their grass and if they had a dog and how mean their mom was and which mom could and would make cookies for all of us but you didn’t know where they came from and what they did for a living or anything about their families.

In Fancy Farm, you know.  There is this one family that go to church with us.  Shoot, most everybody goes to church with us.  They might not go at the same time but that’s where they go.  That’s where the town came from.  But anyway, this family is very friendly.  And, we know everything about their Mom and Dad, their Grandmother and Grandfather, their Great-Grandfather.  We know all of their aunts and uncles and great-aunts and great-uncles and each and every cousin they have.  That is, we know all of them that live in town.  If they live away from here we know about them up until the time they left the area.

Facebook makes it worse.  It’s like this huge party line.  I can remember my sister-in-law knew everything.  If someone was sick, she knew.  If someone died she made sure to let the rest of the family know.  If someone got a new job, she knew.  If someone was having trouble in their marriage she knew too.  She died before Facebook became big for adults.  She would have loved it.  She would have known all kind of business.  She would have kept us all informed.  But people will talk with me all the time like we are best friends.  On Facebook we are.  I have to remind myself of that all the time.  We all have so many more friends because of Facebook.

And everybody is famous in Fancy Farm.  If they scored a touchdown on the high school football game, we know.  In fact, a local high school won the state championship.  One of their up and coming star players is from our town.  We know about every play he has played.  We know about every successful play he was involved in.  We know, because we asked.  Another boy went to the state tournament in golf.  We know how he did because we were in the town where the tournament was held on the day he competed and we know that he probably got robbed because he had to play in a monsoon of a rainstorm.  We know that one of the 94 year old ladies that lives down the road probably shouldn’t drive anymore because one day last week she almost had a wreck trying to pick up her newspaper from the end of her driveway.  She just couldn’t get the car situated close enough that all she just had to do was open the door and reach down and pick up the newspaper.  She just wasn’t watching for traffic.  We know which farmer  put out their crop and when.  We know who has been born, and who has died.  I’ll never forget that we noticed a grave being dug in the cemetery and we had to call the church office to see who died.  We wanted to make sure so we could take food to their house.

When I came to the area the first time my friend, whom I was visiting, took our picture and she sent it to the newspaper.  So here I am in the local newspaper.  I couldn’t believe that.  I still have that newspaper clipping.

When someone does die it is a huge event, a community-wide event.  It’s not just the family who is involved, it’s the entire community.  First, you should take food to the family.  They’re going to have family in from out of town and no one is going to feel like cooking.  So, a platter of cookies or a casserole that can be frozen in case there is too much food, or a sliced ham or deli tray are in order.  Then it’s time for the visitation.  It doesn’t matter who the person is, if they’re from the area, you go to the visitation.  I can remember going to the visitation and others wondering if we were related, and we said, no, we just thought a lot of the person who had died.  People who aren’t from this area can’t necessarily relate, but that’s what we do.  Not everyone goes to the funeral but most people take food for the funeral meal.  If it’s a big family, the funeral meal is a huge potluck dinner with fried chicken, sliced ham and all kinds of vegetables and casseroles.  During the summer you get fresh vegetables.  The desserts are wonderful.  Again, people that aren’t from here just can’t relate.  There is a whole group of people who organize these dinners and make sure there is plenty of food, and serve the food for the family.   The whole thing is that the family doesn’t have to do anything during this time.

I have heard people ask who it was that died, they must have been somebody important.  We couldn’t agree more.  Everyone from our community is important, and famous.  We work hard to remember them well.

Addicted to Ice Cream

When I was growing up I would spend a lot of time with my grandmother.  I used to spend the night.  I loved that.  I could be by myself and get spoiled rotten.  I remember at night, before bed, she would fix ice cream.

She had these great sundae glasses.  They were more bowls than glasses.  But she would make floats in them.  Sometimes she would make root beer floats but most of the time we had cream soda.  If you’re not familiar with cream soda you don’t know what you’re missing.

My grandmother would buy Big Red Cream Soda.  Big Red, as its name implies, is red.  Mama would mix this with ice milk.  Ice milk is lower in calories than ice cream.  At least that’s what we were lead to believe.  But the cream soda would form ice crystals on the ice milk.  Then she would top it with Cool Whip.  Oh, my mouth is watering now just thinking about it.

We would have Hershey Syrup sundaes too.  We would get cherries on top of those.  When the ice milk was melting at the bottom of the glass we would swirl it all together until it was mushy and have soft serve ice cream.

I loved these treats but I didn’t inherit my grandmother’s sweet tooth, my sister did.  I think growing up she could eat ice cream for every meal and then have it for dessert.  When she went away to college she would walk to Baskin Robbins and get a Matterhorn which is 7 scoops of ice cream and two toppings.  I guess we all have our demons.  Mine was Whoppers at Burger King.

My other grandmother, my dad’s mother, made the best homemade ice cream you ever put in your mouth.  She always made banana ice cream though because my Uncle Joe loved banana ice cream and because he churned the ice cream he got to choose the flavor.

One year we got my dad an electric ice cream freezer for his birthday and we were taking it out to my aunt’s house for a cook-out.  Dad decided he wanted strawberry ice cream since Uncle Joe didn’t have to churn it.  So all the way to my aunt’s house we looked for fresh strawberries.  This was back when you could buy fresh fruit like that on street corners.  But no one had strawberries and Daddy didn’t want any from the store.  He wanted fresh.  We ended up with banana ice cream.  I didn’t mind, I loved it.

When I moved to Fancy Farm it seemed as though we had home made ice cream all the time.  I never made it.  Jimmy would get a mix and add fruit.  But I wanted home made, from scratch, ice cream.  I found a recipe in my Southern Living cookbook.  It was banana but it had to be cooked.  I didn’t remember my grandmother cooking her ice cream but I was pretty young when she made it.  We were having a family party, had everyone over, and they were making so much fun of me and my fancy recipe.

It took forever to get done.  When it finally did it didn’t look very good.  It was pretty runny.  It didn’t smell very good.  But my wonderful brother-in-law, Danny, wasn’t phased by it.  He got a big bowl and filled it up.  He took a huge bite and the look on his face was priceless.  His eyes got huge.  I think he turned green.  He ran outside, I’m sure to spit it out.  But I heard he tossed his cookies too.

I’ve never ever thought about making home made ice cream again.  I leave that to the professionals.

“The Watermelon Truck” – another short story

People in Fancy Farm like watermelon.  It seems they can’t wait until they show up in the stores or in make-shift stands on the side of the road.  Jimmy tells of his dad taking a trailer over to Missouri and bringing back a trailer-load of watermelon.  In fact when we are over in Missouri he seems to always go by the old watermelon patch and show me where they used to grow them.  Sometimes he’ll plant a row or two of watermelon and mush melons (cantaloupe) along the tobacco patch border.  It makes good sense, the ground is already fertilized and ready, so might as well use it.

This reminds me of a story my dad used to tell us from when he was growing up.  Daddy was raised in the west-end of Louisville, a community known as Portland.   This was a working class neighborhood.  Most people didn’t have a whole lot.  In fact, Daddy used to laugh that they would move every time the rent would come due.  Knowing how he was raised, that doesn’t surprise me.  He was born during the depression and a lot of people weren’t back on their feet.

And as most kids who live in the city have done through the years the streets of Portland were their playground.  They ran the roads.  In fact Daddy used to call us street-runners.  If there was something going on, even in our neighborhood, we were all out in the streets checking it out.

Daddy had a group of boys that he hung with.  There wasn’t really a lot to do so they had to make up their own fun.  I remember playing games in my grandparent’s back yard, the yard that didn’t have any grass, just a lot of dirt.  We played “Red Light, Green Light”; “Mother May I”; and “Red Rover”;games such as those.  I’m sure if I asked my children if they even knew how to play those games they would look at me like I was half crazy.  We played those when I was real little and then never played them again.  I’m sure Daddy and his friends played these games too.  But I also know, if he was to be believed, that they played other games as well.  I do know that when we were growing up he had stories to tell.  I think he liked to use them as “don’t do as I did, learn from my mistakes.”  I used to get so mad at him for that attitude.  Just because he did something and it turned out wrong didn’t mean that what I did was going to turn out wrong.

Anyway, he hung with this group of boys.  They ran the roads.  One of the things they would do in the summer-time was go down to the Ohio River and hang out down there.  Daddy said that he had swum across the river once.  He was probably 14 or 15 years old.  Anyway, on the way down to the river they had to go around a toll booth that collected a toll for anyone who wanted to go over the bridge into Indiana.  They would climb over the viaduct where the cars would go under to pay the toll. Once they got to the other side they would run down the hill to the river bank.  Lots of people did this.  They were fishing or swimming.  It was just an easy way to get to the river.

Sometimes the traffic was backed up to pay the toll.  I’m sure it wasn’t backed up like we think of today.  There wasn’t as much traffic back in those days.  Not everybody had a car then.  Those that did had one car to a family, not 3 or 4.  There were some men who hauled watermelons from the farms south of Louisville in Mack trucks over into southern Indiana.  They might be hauling 80 or 100 watermelons at a time.  A lot of times they were the ones who were backed up waiting to pay the toll.

The boys knew these were watermelon trucks.  They had slats in the sides of the bed to keep air circulating to the watermelons so they wouldn’t spoil.  The boys could see those watermelons.  And usually when they were heading to the river it was because it was so hot.  Nothing was hotter than Louisville in the heat of the summer back in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.  Not too many people had air conditioning.  Many didn’t even have fans.  Everyone was outside because it was so hot, and humid.  A watermelon can cool you off pretty quick, even if it wasn’t on ice.  Many times they went by and decided that they really needed to have one of those watermelons.

They came up with a plan.  One of the boys would climb up onto the viaduct and jump down into the truck.  They would then throw watermelons down to the boys on the ground and then jump out of the truck before the driver even knew anything was going on.

There were flaws with this plan.  First, you never knew how long that truck was going to sit waiting to pay the toll.  Some days the tolls took a long time, other days not very long at all.  So you had to plan it just right.  At best you would still be in the truck when it moved up.  The worst was that the truck would move right at the time you were jumping.  That was a risk.

Also, the boys couldn’t do this if there was any traffic behind the truck.  Back then if a kid acted up or did something wrong every adult took it as their responsibility to discipline that child.  It wasn’t anything for an adult to ball you out or even whip you into shape.  But the worst was that they would take you home and tell your dad what you had done.  Dad always emphasized that part of the story.  He said that it never happened to him but he knew a couple of kids it had happened to.  If the stranger hadn’t whipped him you can be sure that his dad gave him a good licking when the stranger left.  That was the way things were then.  It was understood to be pretty much the same at my house.  We didn’t have strangers discipline us but my mom and dad had so many friends if they saw you doing something wrong they made sure you knew that they knew and that they didn’t like it.  Shoot, I think that would still go on today with that same set of friends.  It was the same if we got in trouble at school.  We used to pray that we would get disciplined in school because if the teachers let Mom or Dad know, we knew we were in for twice as bad.  Of course, the worst was if we got disciplined in school and then at home too.  I was too scared to ever do anything that would get me in trouble like that.  I wasn’t particularly afraid of being whipped, unless it was with the hairbrush or Daddy’s belt.  I learned early to avoid those at all times.  But I would rather be beat to a pulp than to disappoint Mom or Daddy.  If they said they were disappointed, oh, that hurt more than anything.  And if Mama cried . . .

Anyway, back to the story.  Those were the two biggest risks with their plan.  But if the timing was right and they didn’t get caught they had a whole watermelon each.  They could take it down on the bank of the river and eat the whole thing.  Or if they were leaving the river and they got to take it home with them, they knew that they wouldn’t be asked where it had come from.  It would just be a treat for everybody at the house.

So the boys used to take turns jumping into the truck and throwing the watermelons down to their friends.  Everybody except this one boy.  He was always in the thick of anything they did.  He just never volunteered to get up on the viaduct and throw the melons down.  At first nobody noticed but one day it was just 4 of them coming back from the river.  Somebody hollered at him to stay up on the viaduct and jump into the watermelon truck that was coming up the road.  He acted like he hadn’t heard them.  Two of the boys made him turn around and go back up on top of the viaduct.  He got into position right about the time the truck stopped.  The truck was half-way underneath the viaduct.  The boys down on the road hollered up at their friend to jump into the truck.  He acted like he didn’t hear them.  They hollered again.  Finally one of the boys went up there to give him some “encouragement”.  He told his friend that he was getting ready to jump, not to rush him.  Between the boy up there and the boys down on the ground hollering at him he finally jumped.

Right then the truck moved up.

Daddy laughed and laughed and laughed at that story.  I always felt sorry for that guy.

It’s Just Another Day

Growing up, Thanksgiving was always a big deal.  It was a time for family to get together and to be together.  We loved it.  Of course there was all kinds of food.  Grandma would cook the turkey and the dressing and the pie.  I’m sure there were other dishes but I so remember the pie.  Grandma could cook the best chocolate pie that I have ever tasted.

Once I was married it became a marathon of food.  We went to my family’s for dinner.  We went to the in-laws and then the family meals as well.  For an entire weekend we were busy traveling from one meal to another.  And it was like that until the families started getting smaller because Grandma died, Daddy died, others moved on.  It just wasn’t the same.  My most memorable Thanksgiving I wasn’t even there.  I was in high school and was away from home at a tournament for the weekend.  My family hosted and Mom brought the ping pong table up from the basement into the living room.  My sister had taken over a lot of the cooking chores, including the pie.  She made pecan pie.  I heard that Daddy said that he was going to eat a piece of that pecan pie, even if it killed him.  He was diabetic.  The next day he was in the hospital.  I think I’ll always remember that story.  And I guess it made such an impact on me because I wasn’t there.

So fast forward so many years.  Both of my parents died, I divorced, and brought both of my children to western Kentucky.  Four years later I moved to Fancy Farm.  Thanksgiving in Fancy Farm is all about faith and family.  But I learned early on in this household that Thanksgiving is just another day.  Everyone will tell you that.  Yes, we get together, still, for dinner.  But it is usually not on Thanksgiving Day.  Most of our family takes Thanksgiving day and spends it with other families.  We have always just had a dinner here with our immediate family.  There have been no demands put on anyone to join us, but if you’d like to, you’re welcome.

So when my older kids moved out of town, I never required them to come home for Thanksgiving.  They could, but if they had somewhere else to go, that was okay too.  If anyone in the family didn’t have a place to go for dinner, they were invited.  But that didn’t happen very often.  So through the years it turned out that it was just my family for dinner.  Jimmy would smoke the turkey and I would make all of the trimmings, including the pie.  Not pecan pie, just pumpkin, and this year apple.  But we would eat dinner and then watch old movies on TV.  And Jimmy would go back to work.

You see, Thanksgiving is in the heart of tobacco stripping season.  So there’s always activity going on in the stripping room.  And my dear sweet husband will tell you that Thanksgiving is just another day.  So we have dinner and he goes back to work.

We do manage to go to Mass first thing.  And for the last few years you had better get there early or you won’t get a seat.  Mass is such a wonderful way to give thanks and really sets the mood off.

But I am still thinking that Thanksgiving is just another day.  Instead of looking at it that the kids aren’t home and Jimmy’s working, I look at it as another day of thanks-giving.  Because we should all strive to give thanks each and every day.  Not that every day is great but we all have so much to be thankful for.

People in the Country Drive on Both Sides of the Road

My youngest daughter got her driver’s license last week.  Actually it is her restricted license.  Now she can go where she needs to and she can run errands for me.  I think she has been to Hobbs Home Center at least twice a day every day.

I have been through this before.  My two older children survived getting their license unscathed.  I only turned partially gray with them.  And this one should have been easy.  She’s been driving since she was about 10.  But the other two went to driver’s school and this one didn’t.  And it showed.  She learned to drive like her dad.

One of the first times I remember driving with Jimmy was in his brand new truck. We were driving up to the lake.  He was not speeding.  But he wasn’t staying in his lane, and he was not watching the road.  Talk about distracted driving.  I mean, I hadn’t ever lived in the country.  I was used to interstates and expressways.  He was scaring me to death.  About the third time I hollered at him to watch the road he pulled over.  He told me to drive.  He was too busy checking out everybody’s crops.  I was relieved but scared to death.  I mean, it was a brand new truck.  But that became the norm.  I just got used to driving at certain times of the year:  when the crops were coming out of the ground, while they were growing, and right before they were harvested.  Yeah, pretty much all the time.

I didn’t mind.  I enjoy driving.  And I knew that we would be safe.  But I have come to know how he’s going to drive.

He will take a right turn into oncoming traffic.  He does pay attention if there is a car there.  There have been times I thought he would hit the ditch on the other side of the road when he is turning right.  He always drives in the middle of the road or into the other lane.  My dad used to say “well you pay taxes on both sides of the road”.  He hurries and gets over if there is some on-coming traffic.  And he won’t stop at a stop sign if it’s a four-way stop.  If he’s turning right he will treat a stop-sign as a yield.  Yeah, he’s not a good example for a new driver.

In fact, my daughter didn’t pass her driver’s test the first time she took it.  She didn’t pass because she couldn’t parallel park.  She didn’t pass because she didn’t know how to do a turnabout.  She didn’t pass because she hit a curb or hit a car or anything like that.  She didn’t pass because she rolled through a stop sign.  She argued with the examiner.  She assured him that she had indeed stopped at the sign.  He informed her that she did not make a complete stop.  When she got in the car she told me she didn’t know you had to.

The examiner gave her a list of things that he was looking for.  He explained to her that when she stopped at a stop sign she needed to count, “one thousand, two thousand, three thousand”.  She fussed at me that I hadn’t told her all of these things.  I mentioned that I hadn’t taught her brother or sister how to drive, I paid someone to do that.  That guy’s main job is to teach these kids the rules, the laws of driving.  I told her that there would be no way that her dad could pass a driver’s test, I probably couldn’t pass a driver’s test.  That was not very reassuring to her.

She didn’t drive again until the day she retook her test.  She passed and immediately became an expert.  That’s the way kids are.  Oh, wait, that’s the way we are too.

“In the Cemetery” – A Short Story

This is a short story I wrote for submission in a Kentucky magazine.  It didn’t get in so I thought I would share it here.

Before I start, this is based on a story I heard several years ago about a guy who was raised in Fancy Farm.  I don’t know if the guy actually existed but I took a lot of lee-way with the truth.  The names were changed to protect the innocent.

I’m not sure exactly when this was, probably in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s.  It was after the Great Depression, when not everyone had made it back on their feet.  My grandfather used to tell this story.  He thought it was the funniest story he knew about living in this small town.

It happened in the church cemetery.  That was back when the cemetery really was in the church yard.  Now the cemetery is a lot larger.  Now, the cemetery takes up the field next to the rectory, from the highway down to the creek.  It goes from the baseball fields over to the credit union.  In fact, since the church bought the credit union they have turned that yard into a new part of the cemetery.  My dad always said that people were dying to get into that cemetery.  He thought he was so funny.

No, but this story really is funny.  You see, there was this guy who never really worked.  His wife had up and left him and took all of their kids, to go back to where she had come from.  I’m  not sure where that was.  But she left him behind.  They said that during the depression he had turned to drink and never got over it.  That happened to a lot of people.  This guy walked everywhere he went, unless he could catch a ride.  If he was out later in the day he was usually drunk.  Everybody knew that about him, no one thought too much about it.

I guess people kept him fed.  I’m sure he could work if he wanted.  Some people only work when they need money.  When they get a little then they’ll quit until they need it again.  That’s why Daddy never wanted to hire them.  He would pay them on Friday afternoon and sometimes wouldn’t see them again until Tuesday morning.  When you’re cutting tobacco you can’t wait that long, especially if you’ve got it cut but not picked up in the field.  I remember one year he lost about 3 acres of tobacco that way.  Since his help didn’t show up the tobacco got sunburnt.  There’ son way to fix sunburnt tobacco.

Anyway, back to the story.  I don’t remember what this guy’s name was so we’ll just call him Tom.  Tom walked everywhere he went.  He walked up to the gas station to get cigarettes.  He walked over to the restaurant to see if he could mop their floor for his supper.  He would walk to his sister’s house for a hand-out.  And, like I said, if he was walking later in the day he was usually drunk.

One day, right about dusk, Tom was walking from the gas station back to his house.  He lived at the family home place.  It had been abandoned after his mother had died so it was pretty run down.  I guess the roof was still good so it kept him out of the elements but I don’t think it had any electricity or gas to it.  I guess he used the fireplace for heat.  Tom always walked through the cemetery as a short cut.  He would walk through what used to be a bean field behind the church, through the cemetery and cross the highway on the other side of the rectory.  He would then walk through a couple of yards to get to his parents place about a half mile out of town.

The sun was about to go down when Tom got into the cemetery.  He wasn’t afraid of being in the cemetery at night.  Even if he had been, he was drunk enough that he wouldn’t have even known to be scared.  But he was walking pretty slow on this particular occasion and stumbling around a little bit.  He would be able to make it home but he wasn’t moving very fast.

There had been a couple of teenage boys goofing off around town that night.  They weren’t bad kids.  They were a little bored so they were looking for something different to get into.  They had been throwing a baseball back and forth to each other in the middle of the highway when they decided that maybe they would walk up to the school and see if anyone was hanging out up there.  They walked south towards the church.  They were going to cut through the cemetery and head up the hill towards the high school.  They figured there had to be someone else out and about since supper was over.  They wouldn’t be able to stay out real late but didn’t have to be home at dark like their younger brothers and sisters.

Once they were in the cemetery they took a detour down the hill a little to inspect the job the grave diggers had dug earlier in the day.  An old lady who had been raised in this town was going to be buried there tomorrow.  They didn’t know her.  She hadn’t lived here since she had gotten out of school.  A lot of people did that.  They came to town once a year to visit their relatives and when they died they came home one last time.  The boys weren’t looking for trouble, they were just curious.  It wasn’t every day they could inspect a fresh grave.  When they got over there they saw Tom heading up the hill, staggering.  They decided to have a little fun.

One of the boys went a little further down the hill and hid behind a big gravestone.  The other boy jumped down into the grave.  When Tom got past the first boy he heard somebody say “Hey Tom!”  Tom turned around but didn’t see anybody.  He decided he was hearing things so he continued his voyage home.  He had a bottle with him but he was concentrating on staying upright and not running into any headstones.  A little bit later he hear “Tom” but it was further away from him.  It must be some kid yelling for a friend, he decided.

Tom went a few more feet and he was pretty close to the fresh grave.  The second boy said “Tom, come here.”  He tried his best to sound haunting.  Then the other boy started making sounds you would think where spooky.  They weren’t doing a very good job with any of it but Tom was pretty drunk so the sounds had the desired effect on him.

The first boy started again, “Tom, I want to talk with you.  Come over here.”

“Where are you?” Tom hollered out.

“Over here.  Come over here.”

“I don’t see nobody.”

“I’m here”, the boy called back.

Tom walked closer to the fresh grave.  n fact, he was so close now that if he didn’t watch where he was going he was going to end up in the grave.  That’s when it happened.  That’s when the second boy reached up and grabbed Tom by the ankle.

Tom dropped his bottle and took off running.

The boys picked up his bottle and took it to share with their friends up at the school yard.

The next morning Tom was in church.  He never drank again.