I'LL SHOW YOU HOW BITING GOES!

Pound River on the right and The Barncliff, or Crit's Hole on the left

THEN:


    When I was very little, they told me Crit was "family but not related," which was my parents way of saying Crit was unofficially adopted.

    There is a certain rock cliff near the banks of the Pound River that is, by a select few, called the Barncliff. This is because the people that lived down on the river, back in my dad's day, used to house their animals there to keep them out of the wind and rain. The rocks that hang near the front are pocked with holes that birds love to nest in. My family is drawn not only to the river, but to this spot. We walk along the river road and stop and admire this spot like a great painting hanging on a museum wall. Someone in the group invariably says, "There's Crits Hole," and the rest of us mummer, smile, and nod. Back in the deepest and darkest spot of the Barncliff, my father found our Crit. Crit was about seventeen years old, hovering and afraid, hungry, and probably recently beaten. My pop had known Crit from school and knew he was mistreated at home. Dad was about two years older than Crit. He took the boy home to my grandmother who stuck him in with her brood of children and loved him like one of her own to her dying day. So, he became an unofficial uncle, a friend, a family member. To those of us that were not yet born, Crit was just "Crit". He was always there. He loved us in his gentle and slightly bumbling way. Most of us outgrew his intellect at around the age of nine. Whatever bad times happened to Crit, they might have been why his mind did not seem to grow up completely. But none of that mattered; He was Crit, and he adored us, and we him.

    Crit lived with my grandparents until they had both passed away. He was a great help and a blessing to them in their old age. After my grandfather died when I was five, Crit came to live with us. My dad was his best friend and it only seemed natural that Crit be with us.

    He told on me once for playing in the creek and my mother gave me a switching none of us ever forgot. Crit never said he was sorry for ratting me out, but he never told my mother on me again as long as I lived.

    Crit was slow to think, slow to laugh, and slow to anger. He spoke with the most backwoods Appalachian drawl I had ever heard. He did not chew tobacco, he chawed backie. He did not fall backwards, he fell backards.

    I never knew how to think of him. He was more my dad's age than mine, but he called my sisters and me "Sissy." Half the time I thought of him as an uncle and half the time as a brother. I wasn't the best or most patient of little sisters. He would get in your way when you were walking through the house and bumble around trying to get out of your way. I knew I should say, "Excuse me," but mostly I said, "Crit, for crying out loud! Get out of my way!"

    Sometimes it was hard to get him to bathe and that also frustrated me to no end. Mom would ask. Sandi would hint. I would ask. Crit wanted to be agreeable just a notch less than he wanted to bathe. It usually took my dad putting his foot down and insisting before Crit would, quite literally, take the plunge and we could all breathe easily for a while. I found a trick that worked a time or two. I put a rubber band around the vegetable sprayer in the kitchen and asked Crit (quite uncharacteristically, he should have seen it coming) to get me a drink of water. He'd turn on the sprayer and it would soak his shirtfront and maybe more before he got the water turned back off. He would be annoyed for just a second or two and then say, "You little rascal you!" And snicker with me. I would finish giggling then say, "Now, Crit since you're already wet, you might as well take a good all over bath." Often he would do so, but I never knew if it was because he was "already wet" or because he figured if it meant that much to me he should just give in and take the blasted bath.

Critter Bug

    I am ashamed of my mistreatment of him now, but at the time he took it with such stride that I barely noticed I was being impatient or unkind. I wish my mother had switched me again, if that's what it took to get me to be gentle with my gentle Crit.

    Crit helped my dad with all the farming jobs, with the logging, the lawn mowing, the saw mill work, and anything and everything my father bent his back to. I read "The Raggedy Man" by James Whitcomb Riley, in a school forensic contest and dedicated it to "My Crit."

    Crit loved to spoil my mother, my sisters, and me. Mom or Dad would give Crit a little "yard sale money" now and then, and he never found anything he wanted but inevitably came back with some found treasure for one of us. He collected coins from the sidewalk and found items wherever he went. We were given watches and odd pieces of costume jewelry that his sharp eye saw glinting in the grass. Many times when I was feeling "peckish" Crit would give me a handful of coins to go get a bag of chips, or a snack cake, or a pack of "crispies" from Long John Silver's. If, for any reason, I was not feeling like a walk, he would go himself and bring me back the cheap goodie of my choosing.

    Not long ago, a distant cousin said, "I remember that old man! He used to go around bumming quarters all over town. He aggravated people to death!" And I felt a surge of unexpected resentment. After my heart cooled down, I realized it was possible that Crit bummed and we never knew it. Still, I think he would have had more quarters if that were the case. Often he was counting pennies and nickles. I think my cousin may have Crit confused with an old guy that I remember bumming quarters off everyone, even broke teens like myself.

    Crit ate apples core and all and with a spoon. You would hand him an apple and he would go dig a spoon out of the silverware drawer and dig a hole in the side of the apple. He would easy everything on the inside and throw away the empty, hollowed out peel. I once asked him why he did not eat the apple peel and he said that the peel was too tough. I told him anyone that could eat the core of an apple and the seeds could probably eat the peel too. He made a face and shook his head no. He wasn't eating the apple peels.

    Crit was the daddy of some of the best family tales. He once asked my mother, "Did you know Shiny is a'blow us?" She knew pretty quickly that "a'blow us" was "below us" but she could not figure out what "Shiny" was. He repeated himself several times and then lost some of his good nature. He stamped the floor with a bit of frustration saying, "Shiny! Shiny is a'blow us!" Finally my mother figured out that "Shiny" was "China" and Crit was releaved to be understood and agreed with. We told the story now and then and Crit would grin and say "Chiny," He would nod, "I meant Chiny."

Once Crit tried to express the idea that my sister Lila was very unique. He told my mother, "When they made that Lila Ann they throwed the mode away." At first, my mom thought he was talking about a commode not a mold and the story has been passed down with giggles and soft elbow jabs thrown Lila's way ever since.

My favorite story is about a day when my father and Crit were out possum hunting. These were lean times and the family was not opposed to a big pot of possum gravy. Our dogs ran the possum up the tree, and my dad suggested that Crit climb the tree and knock the possum out of it so that Dad could shoot the animal. Always obliging, Crit climbed up almost as high as the possum was and tried to pull the critter out of the tree by its tail. He had it envisioned right, but things did not go according to plan. What actually happened, was that he yanked the possum down on top of him and the possum bit Crit on the nose. Crit screamed, grab the possum by the scruff of the neck, and managed to get it loose from his face. He held it out and shook it, yelling, "I'll show you how biting goes." And then he bit that possum back! He bit it right on the nose! And being the reasonable descendants of justice-loving Scott's that we are, it always made good sense to us. Many of us would have been tempted to do the exact same thing! A select few probably would have bit that possum just as quickly as Crit did.

"I'll show you how biting goes!" became a battle cry for justice in our home. If someone wronged any one of us, the suggestion was often, "Well, why don't you show him how biting goes!?" And many times, we did just that!

Where the birds happily make nests