NaBloPoMo, Day 12
I'm co-opting the story for tonight's blog post from my lovely mother. Hi Mom! :)
My Mom is a natural-born storyteller and this is one that my siblings and I always requested growing up. She has such a good sense for the rhythm of telling a story - knowing when to pause for dramatic or comedic effect, letting the suspense build, and just generally keeping an audience at rapt attention - I'm sure I won't be able to do it justice in writing, but maybe when you see her in person next you can ask her to tell it so you can hear it in her own charming, Southern cadences. I don't know if any of her children have inherited this talent in person, but maybe we should have a contest this Christmas, eh siblings out there?
My Mom grew up the youngest of seven children in an idyllic little neighborhood on top of Marion Hill right outside Richmond, a place sort of halfway between suburban and rural, where there were plenty of other homes around (not right on top of each other like today's neighborhoods, of course), but no fences. The lot of their home is about an acre in size and runs in a long, rectangular strip. The house sits toward the front, behind it is the yard, beyond that are the garden and my Grandma's famed blackberry bushes, and farthest off of all is an empty field.
In summer the garden was in full swing and was instrumental in feeding the family. It was huge, maybe a quarter acre, about the size of your average small house lot today, and my Grandma was a real taskmaster with her kids about it because that thing needed to be weeded and watered and debugged, and why else would a person have seven children if not to put to them to use as manual laborers? They toiled in that garden every day of the summer, a few hours each in the cool of early morning and in the evening.
One day my Mom and her next-oldest brother were supposed to be weeding in the garden when they got into a fight. My Mom was maybe 7 or 8? And my uncle 9 or 10? Maybe they were 6 and 8? I don't remember and I haven't done the phone research to confirm. Anyhow, it was not a good fight - there was rolling in the dirt involved, and crops damaged, and my Grandma was pissed.
She was not a woman averse to corporal punishment (honestly...would you be if you had seven children and no driver's license to escape them once in a while?) and after separating the two brawlers she told them to stand right there and under no circumstance were they to move a muscle until she came back with a switch. Do you know about switches? I don't think I've used that word in so long that as I'm writing this it sounds so funny to me, the word "switch," and it occurs to me that maybe that's just a regional term, not universally known? A switch is a long, skinny stick for use in amplifying the sting of spankings administered to naughty children. Stick isn't quite the right word - it's too brittle-sounding - and a really good switch is ultra-thin and flexible, so that it won't break, and it makes a fearsome whip-like sound, not unlike Zorro's blade, when brandished.
My mother, dutiful child that she was, did as she was told, remained in place and took her licks. My uncle, on the other hand, decided that there had never been a better time to take off running across the back field, over into and across the neighbor's field, and into the farthest, most unreachable corner of the neighborhood, hoping that some other neighbor family would take him in until my Grandma cooled down. If I remember right, I think this plan must have worked, because he didn't resurface until hours later at dinnertime that night.
This is the part of the story where I am always amazed by my Grandma's acting ability. She played it cool when he slunk back home and continued her facade of nonchalance all the way up to bedtime, waiting until just the right moment - when my uncle was stripped down to his skivvies and about to put on his pajamas, guard down and self-satisfied that he had gotten away with the scheme - to emerge with the switch and declare, "Time for your whippin'!" And then I am sure that she really laid into him, poor guy, so he probably ended up getting his just desserts and then some.
I think the fury of injustice my mother felt after my uncle's return, watching my Grandma ignore his punishment, must linger in her heart a tiny bit and contribute to the relish with which she tells this story, because she always did tell it with a smile. :) I doubt that it ends in as gleeful a flourish when my uncle retells it. :)
THE END
3 comments:
My recall of this incident doesn't include an initial fight between Jimmie and Amy; I am pretty sure they had put fresh tar on the stumps of some trees that the local kids sat on during the course of a baseball game or football game they were playing in the neightbor's field. Over on long street, some workers were refreshing the macadem surface of the road and the tar was just to tempting to resist. I am pretty sure that was the specific mischief behind this story, but I could be wrong. One thing I do need to correct though is that the garden actually went all the way back to the property's edge (the trees) when we were kids. That empty field that is there now was home to sweet potatoes and turnips and butterbeans and more rows of corn when we were growing up. The whole back half of the property was garden when Grandpa was there to work it!
Love it, Jaime! I remember that garden stretching all the way back to the stand of trees separating the Powers' from the neighbors, so it was in its glorious height at least a few years of my childhood.
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