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| Photo: Skitch with the Bug's Bunny cake |
THEN:
Of the many places I lived as a child, the home that would become my favorite of all was the one we called "Up on the Hill". It would become the place I see when I close my eyes, the one I visit right between dreams and reality, and where my soul journeys when it leaves my body far behind.
We moved there when I was eight, stayed until I was 12, and returned for several months the summer and part of the fall when I was 13. Though we called it "The Hill", it was 32 acres on top of a mountain. The top of it had been stripped out, which is a coal mining process that leaves a good portion of the land a barren wasteland. Locals call those wastelands "a strip job". Yet another area was covered in the apologetic pine trees that the mine companies would plant in their wake because the government would force them to apologize, just a little. A strip job is all that is left over after the mining companies "strip" the land of any surface, or near surface, coal. They take ground that is lush, and dark, and fertile with vegetation and animals and turn it into a sandy place with no tress, bushes, or even grass. They run off all the deer, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, and so on and create a mountain desert, as it were. The stripped part of the land also had a pond on it and, unlike the creek I played in freely, I was forbidden to go near the pond. The water was green, slimy, and oily looking. Pop said there was no telling what was still in it. When we first moved up there I discovered a barrel full of some watery, oily substance, but you had to look closely to see the fluid because on top of the barrel were dozens if not hundreds of dead, floating butterflies. Even at eight years old, I was a deep respecter of life, and animals, and nature, and bugs, and beauty. The sight offended me on so many levels that I did not know what to do with the fury it fired. In the end, I used it to tip over the barrel that was as high as my face and way bigger and heavier than I was. As the nasty liquid and the dead butterflies spilled onto the parched ground of the strip job, I realized, in horrid hindsight, that tipping the barrel over might not have been the best thing to do. Now, whatever had attracted and killed all those butterflies was seeping into my beloved Earth. Too late, I wondered what it might do to the earthworms, the moles, the plants, and more. I was eight years old and helpless, lost and clueless.
You may now be wondering how I came to love this place so very much if it had a stagnant and chemical laced pond, a lot of dead sandy wasteland, and a butterfly concentration camp. It is quite simple: the rest of the place was fabulous! Dad owned 32 acres and only a portion of it had been stripped; most of it had not. A great deal of the land was full of wild and wonderful trees of varying kinds, bushes and briers so thick only Brer Rabbit (and me) could wiggle through them. It was covered in little surprises, a wild rabbit here, a patch of wild strawberries there (so much tastier than the store-bought strawberries) a hawk flying overhead, a big bullfrog in the spring. I think Pop tested the spring water, at any rate, he was convinced it did not have any of the pond water chemicals in it, and his assurances were certainly good enough for me. The spring was our only source of drinking water for all the years we lived there. Mother, our resident city-slicker, was appalled about the bullfrog. Dad said, "Awww. He don't drink much!" And then he laughed while she went on and on about frog pee and frog poop. Tanya and I loved drinking from the bucket and the metal dipper, but my mother, a complete germaphobe, preferred we pour from the dipper into our own personal cups instead of drinking after one another with the dipper. Now and then, we would sneak a drink straight from the dipper when she wasn't looking. Now and then, mother would allow us to drink from the dipper and she would wash it after each of us took a good long swallow of the coldest freshest water on the planet. Twice or more a day, we carried two gallons of water uphill from the spring for cooking and drinking. My arms went from scrawny little sticks that had never carried anything any more substantial than a Barbie doll, to what I called (with great delight) "boy arms"! Crit and Daddy helped carry the water, and Mother caught rain in big barrels to do the cleaning, and laundry, and for bathing, or I would have had "man arms" in no time flat.
Pop built the house we lived in. When we first moved up there, some of us slept in a tent and some in the back of the truck. Soon there was a floor and a roof on the house Daddy was building. Not a wall one stood for what seemed like a very long time. It was rather surreal to walk through where there would some day be a wall, to not have a door to carefully close behind you. The doors and windows were the last things to go up. Electricity was a hoped for event but we were resigned to the fact that "running water" was a thing of the past. We read by oil lamp, and the adults cooked on a wood stove. Although I'd had samplings of these happenings when the electricity went out for a day or so, I felt like Laura in the Little House on the Prairie books when it became a day to day lifestyle. Food tasted so different on the wood cook stove. I've not had a piece of that type of cornbread in many years, and it was the best cornbread I've ever had! And just like Laura's "Paw", my dad was the greatest. He built our home, talked and sang with me when he took his infrequent breaks, helped sometimes with supper, and still found the energy to tell me a quick story in the deep dark summer night, while the crickets chirped all around us. As his beguiled daughter, it was easy to forget what a sick man he was. Daddy kept his head cocked to one side all the time, which I didn't even notice until someone else pointed it out. When I finally asked him about it, he told me that he had survived a tough bout of Scarlett Fever as a child and that a boil had sprung up on his neck. When it popped and healed he had less skin on that side of his neck than he'd started out with, probably due to holding his head over to the side to lessen the pain while it healed. These days he could stretch his head up straight, but it was uncomfortable and he said it made his eyes cross. He demonstrated by straightening his head and crossing his eyes. I laughed at that. Like the crooked man that lived in a crooked house, Pop built a crooked house. He'd never built anything more substantial than a chicken coop in his life, so looking back, I'm amazed at what he managed. He took two or three old houses that people let him tear down on the agreement that he would haul off all the lumber, and wiring, pipes, sinks, cabinets, etc. And he took that same lumber and so on and, with the help of my newish brother-in-law and a handful of sporadic friends, built our family the most beautiful hodge podge house in existence! It was up cycling before up cycling was cool, re purposing before the word "re purposing" even existed. He insulated the home with tar paper on the outside (a true tarpaper shack) and with cardboard on the inside. This cardboard was eventually covered with paneling, but some of the bedroom walls inside were pure brown cardboard for many years. The living room, my parents bedroom, the kitchen, and what was originally mine and Sandi's room but would become the dinning room, all had pretty paneling put up pretty quickly, but I adored the cardboard on the walls in the bedroom that became mine and Sandi's. I copied the pattern from a gear shift when I was interested in learning to drive a stick shift, and I wrote my favorite quotes on the walls. I still remember the first quote I wrote on the wall; it was, "You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by listening to what others say about him" by Leo Aikman. That quote resonated into my soul and helped me form good friendships. It helped shape me into the person I am today. I copied words from Reader's Digest "Enrich your Word Power" onto the walls, and hid my diary in the open rafters. Nearby, three wasps had built a nest and Tanya and I would lie in the soft morning sunlight and watch the wasps come and go through some unknown hole in our not-perfect home. They vigilantly tended their own home and babies. We did not bother them and they did not bother us. We named them Tom, Becky, and Huck, though we could not tell one from the other. And I, for one, never cared that the rafters were showing, that the slant of the walls and the floor was not perfect, that if the picture was hanging straight you could better tell that the wall was not straight. In fact, I liked the character of the home, the uniqueness. I was quite proud of the house my daddy had built for us, and the slanted dinning room floor was icing on the cake once Lila bought me a pair of skates for my 10th birthday!
After most but not all of those crooked walls were put up, we had a visitor in the night. Pop had moved our beds inside and I was still sleeping with him and Mother. Like most nights, I was having some trouble getting to sleep. The world was just so interesting! I was listening to Mother's soft breathing, and Pop's light snores, the sound of a far off owl, and the orchestra of bugs outside, wondering how everyone else could just shut life off so quickly and easily. It was like they had an off and on switch but mine was left off by accident or broken. Then a strange sound caught my attention, a snuffing sound, a shuffling sound. I sat up in bed just before a large black shadow walked up to the place where a door would soon hang. It snuffed the door frame and the air around the door. I wondered if it was a dog. I watched while it ambled up onto the cinder blocks we used for steps. It was pretty big for a dog, pretty fat for a dog, pretty awkward for a dog. Nope, not a dog, I decided. It wasn't the slinky, graceful, quiet panther, or "panter" as the old folks called them, that we could sometimes hear screaming in the night air. It might be a smallish bear, I decided. But we'd never seen a bear and I was pretty convinced they had all been killed or run off from our neck of the woods. The beast lumbered into the room as I pondered all this and wondered if I should wake Daddy. All seemed well and peaceful now. Would it attack if I made a move or a sound? Frightened animals were prone to be aggressive, I knew. I not only lived on a farm, I watched Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler every time I could! I was going to grow up and marry Jim! It might be best to not startle the animal, whatever it was. The creature sat down with a huff, and I held my breath. It sniffed the air a moment or two, and I found myself wondering what it could tell by doing that. "They had beans for supper." "Part of the lumber for the house came from over George's Fork way." "Five humans and a couple of mice live here." Then it got up and unceremoniously waddled back out the door. I thought about waking someone up now, but decided against it. The good part was over and they were often grumpy if you woke them. Eventually, I went to sleep. I told my family about our visitor the next morning. "Probably a big, fat dog." They agreed, but the doors and the last wall went up quickly.
It was several months after we moved up there and the house had hit a point where it was functional when Dad and Crit started clearing a path up the mountain for the electricity poles. By the end of that first summer we had both electricity and a party line phone. We had a certain ring for our home and there were other rings for the neighbors. Sometimes the phone would ring and you would "let it be" because it was for one of the other homes on the party line. If no one was watching, I used to quietly pick it up after it quit ringing and sit and listen to the neighbor's conversations. It didn't take me long though, to realize that listening in on them was more boring than a dozen other things I could be doing. It didn't take me long to get my fill of: "How's your arthritis doing?" "Well, I can't move my right pointer finger at all today. Hurts something mighty! How's your constipation been?" Suddenly, they had all the privacy they might want and I was outside playing, swinging, singing, running, climbing tress, and more.
That wonderful crooked home became my refuge from the winter cold, from the fierce thunder storms that raged over our mountain, from the sun that would toast you painfully if you sat out in it long enough. It was a place of comfort even in the coldest winter, thanks to Daddy banking the wood or coal down at night and rising before the rest of us in the mornings to get the fire going again. He bought electric blankets for each of the beds, and we would huddle beneath the warm covers waiting for him to breath warmth and life back into our home. Sometimes it would be so cold when we woke that our breath would smoke. At first, Dad would move quickly, in a painful jerking way, as though the cold controlled his joints, and he would cuss now and again while adding wood to the fire or fighting with the doors and the dampers. But I can still remember the sounds of him humming after he had the fire crackling again, the smell of coffee brewing, and Daddy saying, "Stay abed, Possumfrog, 'til I get the house warmed up." (Years later, I would chose to read "Those Winter Sundays" a poem by Robert Hayden, aloud in college and tell why that particular poem touched me.) Winters were cold but wonderful. I can close my eyes and see my own hands lowering a book of choice to stare at the snow falling outside the window, mantling our dirt yard with magic and beauty. I can hear the thunder rolling over our mountain while Sandi and I cuddled up under quilts and shared my Grandmother's rocking chair on the porch. We would be surrounded by the clamor of the rain hitting on the tin roof and splattering into the barrels. You didn't speak because if you spoke you had to yell and then, most times, the person you were yelling at would respond with, "Huh?". On peaceful spring evenings you could speak, but mostly we would sit there and listen to the frogs singing like night birds. Day hours brought us the Bob White and the whippoorwill songs ringing across the mountains. Summer days would find me reading Dr. Doolittle, or Black Beauty, or Pippi Longstocking while relaxing in the shady woods behind our home on a big flat rock I called "Peaceful Rock." Just down from the rock a few dozen yards was an area that grew thick with white lilies every spring. I picked big bouquets for my mother many times there. The hottest summer days I would abandon even my Peaceful Rock to sit inside. I would be directly in front of a big a metal fan that blew like a personal hurricane. I would drink a big glass of ice cold orange Kool Aid, while fighting with my book pages. And outside the sun baked the front yard so hard that cracks split through the dirt. The poor chickens would abandon pecking for bugs in the garden or worms in the dry dirt yard. They would instead sit in the shade with their beaks open, and hold their wings out, too hot to tolerate their own feathers. Summer nights, Tanya and I would sit in awe at the sound of crickets, so thick sounding that it was possible to be afraid of them, easy to imagine they were blanketing the entire house, that it might crush under the weight of the insects. But it never did. If the curtains were drawn back from the window, we would see more bugs than we could name a we marveled at the strange alien-like insects and the fact that you could barely place a finger on the window pane between where one bug was and where another bug started.
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| Photo: Momma, Wendy, Wade, PT, and Skitch |
My days and nights were spent with Momma, Poppa, and Sandi almost always near, with Lila and her kids often around. Bebo and Shana were both born while we lived up on that mountain, and Tanya and Ramona became my steadfast companions and my two best friends. I was not often allowed to go anywhere, other than school, without my parents, so Tanya and Ramona (bless them and their parents that brought them!) came to me. They were there nearly every weekend and most of every holiday off from school, including most of our summer vacation days. Ramona's parents, Barbra and Elmer, and all Ramona's brothers and her sister Becky were what my family considered "close kin". My mother's niece and my cousin Theresa Kay began living with us for months at a time. She would come to see us rain or shine, sometimes shuffling through winter snows up to her thighs. Pop would run to meet her, to help with her bags. Theresa was steadfast, loyal, and one of the funniest and kindest people I ever had the pleasure of meeting. She doted on me just like my big sisters did. She gave me my first diary, taught me many songs and jokes, and told me stories on top of stories. We had always loved her and her brothers and sisters, but she so quickly became extra-precious to our family during those months when she would stay with us. She would fit right in and seem so happy. She said she loved the peace of being part of our family and felt she was escaping the chaos back home, but then she'd begin to miss her mother so dearly that she had to go back to Pikeville, come what may. She would pack, spend a few months with her mother, and then come back to us tired and a little broken, but I don't think she ever regretted going "home". My mother's brother, Uncle Jr., would stay with us for months at a time too, but he usually didn't exactly leave of his own volition. Most often, he would move in under the condition that there was no alcohol allowed in my parent's home. He would make it two, three, sometimes six months or so before finally breaking down and drinking all the rubbing alcohol, after shave, and perfume in our home (usually while we were at church) and then hiding out from my mother somewhere in the woods. When Mom discovered what he'd done, she'd go on a rant about how she'd had enough of that alcoholic crap from her own parents and wasn't going to allow her daughters to go through one minute of it! She'd voice some disappointment about all the perfume she now had to re-buy, and was her brother trying to kill his stupid self anyway?! Uncle Jr. would camp out in the woods until one of the Pikeville relatives or my father took pity on him and took him to another family member's home. I dearly loved my uncle and felt so sorry for him hiding in the woods alone, but Daddy would take him a tent or the stuff for a good lean to, some food, and some camping supplies. I was forbidden to go near him once he'd "cracked". I had heard a few of the less horrifying stories from my mother's childhood, and that made it easy enough to obey. I didn't want to be around a drunk guy either! Of course, Aunt Nancy and Uncle Leslie were also in and out of our home during this time and all our times. They were frequent visitors wherever we lived, and were very much like second parents to my sisters and me. I didn't get the family dynamics well for many years, but since Uncle was Dad's brother and Auntie was Mom's first cousin, these people and their kids were doubly related to me. Auntie and Uncle's daughter (my first and third cousin) Wanda, and her family, moved into a one room building Dad had made that sat right on the other side of our big garden. I think the building might have started out as a large chicken coop, but it had been Crit's and Uncle Jr.'s home before they moved into the loft of the main house for the better warmth it offered, and the building had even been my playhouse at one time. Wanda fixed it up and had it looking lovely in no time, and I didn't know what to think about having my young cousins Wendy, Wade, and P.T. around to play with all the time. Since I'd been born so late in my family, I was closer in age to my cousins kids and to my niece and nephew than I was to my sisters and our first/third cousins. Now that Wanda's kids were next door, when Ramona and Tanya were over we had a crowd, a real party! We played clapping games, tag, hide and go seek. In the warm season, at least once a week mother and Wanda would pull out the big metal wash tub early in the day and fill it with water from the rain barrels. After the sun had warmed the water for a couple of hours we kids would get a bath. The adults always bathed cleanest to dirtiest, and I was always the cleanest. I remember Ramona and Wendy being annoyed that I always got to go first. Tanya, Wade, and P.T. could really care less. The summer went by blissfully enough and then school started and the days grew shorter and colder. Fall would find us canning and pickling the vegetables from the garden. My pop made the best applesauce. Once it was finished, we would celebrate by trying out a pint or two of the fresh made treat and a big batch of Mom's famous biscuits. Fall seemed also to be the time I settled down more often with a pipe or a hand rolled cigarette of rabbit tobacco. I became so good at rolling them that I would sometimes roll Mom and Dad's Prince Albert cigarettes for them while they finished up a chore or two, but I was not allowed to smoke those cigarettes. Rabbit tobacco was viewed as completely harmless, Prince Albert was not. Once winter had settled in to stay a while, Wanda's kids would come tearing up the garden in their night clothes every morning before school. They would be freezing and I can still remember the telltale steam coming off of anyone that had peed the bed during the night. It seemed like one or two of them was steaming every morning. I asked my sister if there was something bad wrong with them, telling her I didn't ever remember ever peeing in the bed. Sandi said I hadn't peed the bed since I was very young and very little, but that they were fine. She told me that she had peed the bed herself until she was 14 years old! I took another look at my shivering little cousins, crying, and running through the scraggly garden to get to the heat stove and told her I reckoned I would have slept on the commode or the chamber pot if I'd been doing that. She laughed at me and told me I had the blessing of being a light sleeper. I thought about how hard it was to get to sleep at night, every sound attracting my wakeful attention, and how easily I would wake up during the night if an owl landed on the porch rafters, or a far away wild dog or fox called to it's mate, or my sister rolled over in bed. Blessing, eh? I wasn't entirely convinced. The cousins would hover around dad's heat stove and shiver while Mom helped Wanda strip them, wash anyone that had peed in the bed with a warm soapy washrag, rinse that off, and dress them all for school. Eventually, Wanda and her husband Earl tried so hard to keep their little home warm that they burned the place down, and my cousins all had to move off the property. I begged my dad to build another room for them quickly, but Wanda wanted a real house with her own bedroom and a kitchen, so off they went and that was the end of my constant playmates.
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| Photo: PT and Skitch With Pens and Callie |
Pets were plentiful and wild animals were in abundance up on that mountain. Of course, there was Flame. By now she was practically our equine sister. Sandi likes to tell stories of Flame coming right up into the house for potato and onion peelings when the walls and doors had not yet gone up. My sister took to peeling her vegetables outside and throwing the peelings into a pan for Flame as she went. We had a few other horses as well, and our family friends, Billy and Myrtle, gave Sandi a mean little Chihuahua named Feisty. In Feisty, I finally met a dog I wasn't nuts about. I loved her because Sandi loved her and because she was a living, breathing creature with feelings. But, by that time I was finally sleeping with Sandi (I slept with Mom and Dad until I was nine) and Feisty tried to bite me every time I climbed into bed at night. She was a one woman type of dog; she hated everyone except my sister. I decided I liked the kind of dog that could be nice to more than one person, and I've not been fond of Chihuahuas ever since. Feisty had several litters of puppies but they hardly ever lived. One of the few that made it was given to me and I called her Pumpkin. She was a dog that could be nice to everyone and I taught her to dance. What a wonderful little doggy she was! When my parents talked me into giving her away (two indoor dogs were a bit much for them and I had three outdoor dogs as well) I gave her to Becky and Ramona's oldest brother Jeff. He was and is an extreme animal lover, and I knew Pumpkin was in great hands. My outdoor dogs were a long haired black and tan brother and sister set named Panda and Rascal and, one at a time, I had two big collies name General and King. I was a bit accidentally rough of the collies. With King, I decided I wanted to know where he was at all times, so I hung a cow bell around his neck. It nearly drove him insane. He ran all over the farm yelping every time it rang, until he finally settled down under the house, trembling. Daddy, who had alternately laughed and cussed, now cussed again and crawled up under the house to free the poor dog from the cow bell. But King got the easy end of the deal. With General, I decided he had to go to another planet with me. Dad's old junked International truck had been given to me as a sort of redneck playhouse. Sandi had been reading a lot of Andre Norton books and the stories of Tom Swift to me at bedtime. Quite suddenly and wonderfully (in my vivid imagination) the old truck had become a spaceship, and I was leaving for Saturn, and taking all my pets with me! First, I shoved Panda and Rascal into the truck. That was easy enough since they were always right behind me, loyal, and used to me doing crazy-small-human-things. Then, I searched until I found all four of my cats: Pens, Callie, Guinevere, and Felicity and added them to the melee. I easily caught my favorite chickens; Colors, Barney, Charlotte, Henrietta, and Red and put them in the spaceship. I got my a rabbit, Peter out of his cage and pushed him into the ever tightening space. It was getting harder to put one in without another one getting out. Finally, I pulled my collie, General in with us all and immediately closed the door -- on his tail! He screamed bloody murder and frightened the chickens and cats even more than he frightened me. I canceled the trip to Saturn and let them all out in a rush. The door had broken the flesh on his long, beautiful tail but just barely. Still, I felt so guilty about hurting him that I figured I should at least "doctor" it. I grabbed the turpentine and poured it all over his injury. Promptly, General went into a much bigger fit than he'd had when the door was shut on his tail! He went entirely more insane than King had been with the cow bell around his neck! General's yowls, as the old people would have said, "Could have elicited pity from Old Scratch hisself!" My father came running and, over the commotion, yelled and asked me what was going on. When I told him what I'd done, he took off in hot pursuit of the wounded dog. Daddy finally caught General behind the house, and I followed as Pop pulled the howling dog past Peaceful Rock, past the spot where the lilies grew, and all the way down the tree and brush covered mountainside to the river. Pop pulled the wailing dog out into the water. The dog finally stopped howling and yelping and Dad let him go.
General came out of the river looking pitifully wet, exhausted, and traumatized. He spared me one injured look before he sat down and began to lick his wounded tail. A wave of guilt washed over me for the dozenth time in the last ten minutes. I looked at my dad, still waist deep in The Pound. He glared at me.
He jerked with one good chuckle and began to wade out of the water. "I know you didn't mean to hurt him, but don't put animals in that truck of yours. The heat could kill them real quick. And don't you ever put Turpentine on a dog again!"
I could only agree as heartily and formally as I knew how, "Yessir, Pap."
Every spring the farm would see a bunch of baby chicks hatched and I loved playing with them. They could develop an attachment to me that rivaled mine for them. They would follow me everywhere. Most of them survived my love, but (more times than I like to think about) I would settle down to let one sleep under my shirt, pretending I was a mother hen with feathers, and then I would go to sleep and roll on the little baby, accidentally killing them. I cried my eyes out every time this happened and every time I did it again I truly thought I wasn't the least bit sleepy. I probably killed three of them before I learned not to trust myself about whether or not I was sleepy. I also "rescued" what we call a miller (moth) that I found acting sickly on the bedside table. They always reminded me of fairies, so I felt very sorry for the sluggish fellow. I carefully encouraged him to crawl up onto my finger, and I took him outside and put him on my mother's beautiful roses. I was thinking that he probably needed sunlight, water, or food, all of which were in short supply indoors but were plentiful on the dew laden roses. And if you were going to die anyway the middle of a nice fragrant rose was as good a spot as any. Later that day I told my mother what I'd done and she looked shocked. "Dido, don't touch those roses anymore I sprayed them for bugs yesterday!" And then I knew, I had probably killed the little miller-fairy. Still, the bug wasn't there when I went back out to check, so I had my small hope that it had revived and flown away.
Honestly, most of my pets were much safer in my hands than those poor Collie dogs, the miller, and the baby chicks had been. I had a tender heart and usually took good care of animals. I had four ducks that I named Addle, Paddle, Waddle, and Dawdle. They had escaped the trip to Saturn by being off somewhere near the river, but every morning they were waiting to eat corn out of my hands. Nothing beats the feeling of a duck bill scooping food from your palm. Each morning, I would feed the ducks by hand and the chickens by scattering grain. (Chicken beaks are sharp!) And I would gather eggs from the chicken coop. Most of the chickens were peaceful natured and any rooster that tried to "flog" me (attack me with their wings, beak, and spurs) would simply disappear. I didn't realize at the time that Pop was probably killing them. He had and has a very weak stomach and didn't do any slaughtering or dressing of animals that I ever knew of, but looking back I can believe he might have wrung a chicken neck now and then and threw it's body away. Or maybe mother cut it up and plucked all the feathers off. I don't know. I only know I'd tell Daddy that the new Dominique rooster tried to flog me and the next day that rooster would have "ran away from home." A peacock just showed up one day and I named him NBC. He wouldn't let me touch him but he sure was beautiful to look at. I think Daddy eventually found his owner. My favorite cats while living there were a little black one I named PENS and a calico named "Callie". I came up with PENS' name by asking my family, "What should I name the new black kitty?" I was given, "Pot", "Ebony", "Nero", and "Shadow", and so that became his name, but we called him PENS for short. He and his sister Callie were very good at playing with Ramona, Tanya, and me when we were supposed to be sleeping. We would pull the cushions off the two couches in the living room and make a pallet on the floor that was big enough for all three of us. Usually the fitted sheet we managed to stretch over the cushions kept them together but every now and then whoever was sleeping in the middle would wind up on the floor by morning. This was never me, as I liked sleeping on the end where I didn't get too hot. Ramona and Tanya took turns sleeping in the middle as they both loved it. I loved waking up on the cushion instead of on the floor. Pens and Callie would play with us in a most rowdy fashion until Dad got annoyed about the noise and/or giggling. Young girls and young cats do not make a sleepy combination. Once Dad was annoyed it was past the time to figure out how to hush up and go to sleep. Pens and Callie especially loved attacking our eyes. For some reason the blinking lashes that bored them in the day time became total targets in the semi-dark of bedtime. Often, Ramona, and Tanya, and I would be patient and quiet while all the adults went to sleep. Then we would steal up and have what we called "Midnight Picnics". We would dig out frozen snack cakes, pops, left over popcorn, whatever we could find to snack on and sit cross legged on our cushion bed and I would tell stories. They were our sweet secrets, the quietest and yet the best of parties.
I celebrated two of best remembered and best enjoyed birthdays there. I turned ten in May 1977. It rained all day, and my only two guests that were not family did not show up. But I had Tanya and Ramona and my cousin Theresa, who made a really big deal out of everything she could in any way she could. My new nephew was not quite a year old and just becoming extra fun to play with. We had a great indoor party. We bobbed for apples and played pin the tail on the donkey. We had chips, and cake, and ice cream, and pop. Lila brought me the aforementioned skates and started me off on a fun pastime that served me well for many years. Because this was the best birthday celebration I'd ever had, I started a tradition of making a big deal out of the "double digits" birthday from then on (a phrase I heard much later.) On my 12th birthday, Ramona, Tanya, and Bo were there and no other guests showed, though only a couple of others were invited. Our "Hill" was quite formidable and dissuaded most visitors. Mom and Dad's friend Bea made me a Bugs Bunny cake and, though I loved it, I was disappointed it wasn't a real bunny because their daughter had spoiled the surprise by telling me my mother was getting a rabbit from her mother for my birthday, and somehow I missed the word "cake" in the whole exchange on our crowded, noisy school bus. Hence, I was all worked up for a real live bunny for my birthday. That day we took a photo that would become the family's famous "Ghost picture." Behind the birthday girl, and the guests, and the Bugs cake you could see the image of a very sad little girl that looked quite a bit like the me, but I and the entire family are certain that I did not look sad for one second that day. I was beaming! It was my birthday and I had a Bugs Bunny cake, and ice cream, and pop, and presents! And, best of all, I had Ramona, Tanya, and Bo over to stay the night! Life was good!
I was probably nine years old, when my father climbed up in the branches of two tall trees that intermingled so much I couldn't tell where one stopped and the other began. He hung ropes for a swing for me. The ropes were so long that the swing was nearly a low-lying trapeze. It would swing up past the hood of the old International truck and I would catch myself on the hood, turn and swing again. We practiced tricks, jumping onto and off of the truck. Swinging while standing, while lying down. I was practically on horseback again. I was the richest girl in the world! I knew other girls that had Easy Bake ovens and all the brand name dolls, but none of them had horses and a swing! Dad and Mom bought me an FM Radio when I was eleven and I would take it to the swing and listen to music. I would swing and Exile's "I Wanna Kiss You All Over" or "Sail Away" by Sam Neely would wash across the play area. I would lend my young voice to the song and I knew what Heaven must be like.
Most days when Tanya and Ramona were there we would play until hunger drew us to the tried and true snacks that nature could provide. Sometimes we picked fresh vegetables from the garden and ate them, or gathered the ground cherries that grew in the fields around the garden. But often we would wind up further and further from home, resting on the pine needles in the Apology Grove across the valley and eating the green baby pine cones from the trees. They were tart and pungent, but not really so bad on the tongue. Or we'd go pick strawberries in the glen near the strip job. Wild strawberries are small but they are so much sweeter and better than the big ones you could buy in the grocery store. Not that I knew that then. I doubt I'd had a store bought strawberry until I was in my teens. We might wind up eating birch bark while sitting on the rocks that jutted out of the mountainside, or nibbling on teaberry leaves down by the spring. My mother would begin to worry about us and she would call us, but her voice did not carry well. She'd tell Daddy we were "not listening to her" and the next thing I knew my father's voice would ring out across the mountain. I could hear the anger and frustration in it, and if Ramona and Tanya did not run fast enough to suit me (and let's face it, they never did) I would take them by the hand and drag them home as quickly as I could go. I took the shortest route, which oft times left us with brier scratches from face to feet. Once we were following the adults through a path in the woods and I had dashed ahead of Ramona and Tanya. Looking back I was certain I saw a huge snake in a dip in the pathway but I wondered, could it simply be a tree root? I didn't want to take any chances. The girls were hurrying to catch up with us and they had picked up a lot of speed as they were running downhill. There was not time to stop either of them. I called out, "Ramona! Jump!" as she neared the area I was worried about and, just like that, she jumped. An instant later I said, "Tanya! Jump!" and she did. I watched as the "root" slid across the path, and then had to explain to my best friends why I had called out asking them to jump.
We only had one channel on the television and most often we had a black and white T.V. I still loved my Saturday morning cartoons and, to be honest, to this day a good animated film or episode of Bugs Bunny or Pink Panther gets my attention and my sense of humor leans just a little into "mean". Like my Pop, if you fall down in front of me, unless there is blood or obvious big damage, you'll hear the humor in my voice when I ask if you're okay. Pay no attention to it. It's simply that I've watched one too many episodes of Tom and Jerry. Evening shows that we enjoyed were Lawrence Welk, The Wonderful World of Walt Disney, Animal Kingdom, The Waltons, and Little House on the Prairie. Occasionally a good movie would come on and we would watch that. I got a big kick out of "Never a Dull Moment" and told my parents about the "Big ol' fat man that came bouncing up the stairs" until my Daddy was laughing so hard his eyes were closed tight and he was gasping for breath. Still today, I can mention that phrase and he starts laughing.
Movies and t.v. shows were great, but books were still my favorite addiction. Once each month, we went to town to pay bills and buy groceries. Other than school and church, it was usually the only trip off The Hill that we would make. Sandi and I went to the library in town while Mom and Dad went to pay the electric bill, the phone bill, and to buy the groceries. About once a month, we went to the bigger library in the next county while Mom went to a counseling appointment. Both of these libraries would let you check out as many books as you wanted and up to 30 comic books. At each place Sandi and I would get as many books as we could carry, which was usually two bags each, as book are heavy creatures! I would check out 120 comics for myself each month. Sandi didn't much care much for comics, so she would let me check out 30 on my library card and 30 on her library card at each of the libraries. Sometimes Daddy would pick through and read the Conan or Red Sonja ones, but mostly the comics were all for me. Besides Conan and Red Sonja, I would get horror comics, romance comics, super hero comics like Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Thor, Swamp Thing, The Hulk, and She Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Justice League, and Plastic Man. I would grab Archie comics, Bugs Bunny comics, Walt Disney comics, and all the Harvey Comics like Richie Rich, Wendy, and Spooky. In fact, the only comics I pushed aside were the war comics. Even I was too girly for those. On top of the comic books, I always had at least a bag and a half full of regular books from each library. I might be a poverty stricken child who lived on top of an Appalachian Mountain and had never known another life or world than that one, but when I read The Borrowers series by Mary Norton, I knew it was okay to be small and safe, and that my family was all that mattered. When I read George McDonald books I could take a vacation from my life. I could be a princess that was too light to stay on the ground or one that could conquer even the meanest goblin! The Ramona books by Beverly Clearly made my precociousness seem normal and even desirable. Judy Blume told me I was not alone with all my girlish insecurities. Frances Hodgson Burnett took me to riches, and poverty, and back again. And Jane Langton showed me worlds I could never have dreamed up and taught me lessons every child should know. Sandi read to me every single night. She read every fairy tale book we could find, all the Tom Swift books, several of Andre Nortons, and Grace Livingston Hill's, Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys. When I still couldn't sleep, she'd try to explain to me how an elevator worked, which (amazingly!) often put me out like a light! When I ran out of my library books I would read one or some of hers. (This resulted in my reading steamy romance books at the ripe old age of nine.) When she ran out of her books she would read mine or start one of hers back at the beginning. We would read and read again. In two weeks, Sandi would call and check the books out once more so we didn't get hit with a library fine. By the time the month was over, school out or school in, we were through with our books and comics and ready to load down with as many as we could carry and do it all again. Reading was what we did, and we were very good at it!
Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden, 1913 - 1980
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
