LIFE WITH A STORY

Ma never used knives although I noticed several wickedly sharp black stained ones in our yellow, aged kitchen silverware drawer.  Meticulously placed, undisturbed, I began to wonder if I had a “screw loose” trying to develop the theory of why we never used this short, amazin’, cuttin’ knife that could cut up a potato like magic but yet we never ate potatoes.  The three inch parin’ knife was the first to be gobbled up by some alien, then came the age old “sock in the dryer” theory my Aunt Mattie talked about when she came over to visit.  “Thelma, my favorite, brown sock disappeared in the clothes dryer this mornin’,” Daddy said.  I kept tryin’ to deduce the reason why one sock disappears and yet the other one don’t.   He would mumble under his breath at five o’clock in the mornin’ on his way to work since my room was closest to the dryer, “I guess I’ll never find a second sock to match this one ever again.”  I figured that Daddy could use whatever color sock he wanted and no one would see two different color of socks hidden under his work pants.  I knew one day I would buy my Daddy a pair of socks but I was only seven years old and I learned at four years old, you have to have a job to buy anythin’.

 

Most theories of strange disappearin’ objects get lost with a shrug of your shoulders and a sigh of “oh well, I’ll look for that later.” “Let’s cook in the kitchen, cut up vegetables, and eat a potato, I told Ma.”  I never saw the miraculous three inch parin’ knife after that and I figured she buried it in the backyard.  “There ain’t no good food, no help to cook it, and no house cleaner to clean up this mess,” she finally said to me one night. I figured pretty soon that I was goin’ to have my first job startin’ with her.  Thelma was on the move with chores and I was the chief executive officer, administrator, flunky, and only one to handle them.  Marybeth, my girlfriend from third grade and neighbor next door, became even closer when I hid from Ma especially when she wanted me to do the dishes.  We lived in a dingy, old, delapetated house in a neighborhood filled with old, worn down houses that need a good coat of paint yet I imagined my life to be beautiful, theatric, amazin’ and theorized what color every house should be on our block.  

 

Ma, my brother, Mike who was three years old and I made frequent walks to the grocery store since Daddy took the only family car.  We walked nine blocks from our house on South Martin Street as Mike held one of Ma’s hand and I held the other one.  R.E. Saint John Stadium was three blocks down the road to the right of our house so I figured we were rich because of all the excitin’ football games, cotton candy, homemade cakes elaborately baked and decorated from neighbors in town.  You could win one of those mouth waterin’ holiday cakes in a raffle if you stood on the right square when the music stopped on Halloween night at the Carnival in the stadium parkin’ lot.  I think the most amazin’ french fries I ever put in my mouth came from the snack stand during a football game.  But I’m not sure what my taste buds want right now, french fries or a snow cone we could buy at the stand on the corner.  I never found out who R.E. Saint John was but I knew he must be very important maybe even a Saint.  Marybeth and I made frequent visit to that snow cone stand and I would choose my favorite flavor of blue coconut.

 

Seasoned in the South complete with a total East Texas accent and desire for fried chicken, corn on the cob, homemade biscuits and gravy, no down home ‘Larapin’ Good’ meal could ever be complete without homemade, light orange, mouth waterin’ peach cobbler.  But my family ate all this great food in Tyler, Texas at the local Luby’s house hold atmospheric name called, “Traditions Cafeteria.”  We rarely ate at home because Ma never cooked and if Daddy came home early from an oilfield job in the week, Daddy, Ma, Mike, Marylee, and I would crowd in our 1972 Lincoln Continental car and off we went to “Traditions.” I figured we were settin’ a family “Tradition”.  

 

“Ma, can we eat biscuits tomorrow mornin’ even if Daddy goes back to work in the oilfield or pullin’ telephone poles out of the ground?”  He did all kinds of jobs to make money, along with his brothers, Jack, and Ralph.  Daddy was an entrepreneur long before I knew how to spell that word.  My sister Marylee told me the same story at least one hundred times or more that the reason we came to Kilgore, Texas from Shreveport was Daddy had to tear down one thousand oil derricks and haul off the steel to be sold.  I thought, “Wow! anybody that could do that was absolutely amazin’ and strong.  Yep, that was my Daddy, Clarence the strongest man in the whole wide world.”

 

I wondered if the number of derricks increased every year like those stories by men who caught a fish at 4 a.m. ridin’ in their fishin’ boat to their favorite secret spot on the lake.  That fish miraculously gets bigger every time somebody brags about catchin’ the biggest fish ever caught.  I couldn’t catch a cotton-pickin’ thang on the lake except a snappin’ turtle.  One day Daddy told me, “better step back a bit sweetheart, this thang is mean.”  I didn’t have to be told twice ‘cause I saw it “snappin”.  I stepped back farther than the 1967 Red Ford pickup and hid behind it.  I sho’ didn’t want that ugly thing snappin’ on me.