Well, the second day was quite an awakening. I heard a lot of banging and clattering so I kinda scooted to the edge of the bed and dropped down to the floor. I put on my hand-me-down Big Ben overalls and managed to get one side much higher than the other. I adjusted the straps and now the other side was higher. After a few attempts to meet the Gentlemen’s Quarterly standard , I gave up. I looked like a hillbilly. I then went to see what was the matter. I still had a little residual hangover from raiding my Dad’s Moonshine stash.
I still couldn’t walk all that great but I managed to wobble through the house occasionally leaning against a doorway or a wall and found myself in the kitchen. I saw my Mama in one of her pretty blue- flowered flour sack aprons moving pots and pans around on the wood stove. She had these
heavy , black, cast iron pots and pans she used to cook with and the wood stove was designed where as you heated the stove you also heated water in a hot water tank enclosed on the end of the stove.
I just stood there quietly and watched as my Mama fried side pork and stirred grits into boiling water and took a pan of biscuits from the oven. Man those biscuits smelled and looked so good all lightly browned. She seemed to be doing several things at once: Putting dishes on the table, stirring the grits, turning the frying side pork, slicing tomatoes, putting silverware on the table and replenishing the wood in the wood stove.
She finally turned around and saw me and said, you are sleeping in a little late aren’t you? It’s almost 6 o’clock. Well, I didn’t hear the rooster crow said I in my defense. We ate the rooster last night for supper said my Mom. He was getting old and lazy. Around here we kill off things that get too old or too lazy. With that, I went out the back porch and into the side yard and started splitting more stove wood. I certainly did not want to be categorized with last night’s rooster.
I heard something and turned around. My mama was on the back porch trying to get my attention. She told me to go down to the spout branch and bring up a jug of milk for breakfast. I wobbled down the hill and almost fell into the water from the spout that had been carved from an Ash Tree. The water was cascading out the spout and pouring over two jugs of milk. My daddy liked to reuse things; he used gallon jugs to hold his moonshine whiskey and also milk. I wrestled a jug from under the ice cold water and lugged it up the hill to the house. I manhandled it up on the front porch, crawled up the steps and dragged the milk into the kitchen. My mama looked at me and said son, I wanted the sweet milk, and this is buttermilk. Take it back and get the sweet milk. I had no idea what sweet milk was. I was later to find out it was milk that had not been churned into buttermilk. I started to protest but as I opened my mouth I saw my Mama had a stick of stove wood in her hand so I reversed the process and wobbled back down the trail to the spout branch and exchanged the milk and delivered it back. By this time I was tired and hungry and the table was piled high with biscuits, grits, fried eggs, sliced tomatoes, side pork and a big quart jar of grape jelly.
I pulled myself up into a chair and my sister Thelma came into the kitchen and looked at me like I was crazy. She said, you better get out of Daddy’s chair before he sees you and knocks you into next week. I clumb down from the chair and up into another. Thelma shook her head from side to side and said that’s Charles’s . The next chair I climbed into was Howard’s, then Harold’s, then Thelma’s, then Estelle’s, then Edgar’s, then Mama’s, then Gerald’s. I ended up sitting on a little homemade bench at the back of the table. You see, at our house everything was run on a seniority system even though we were a non-union shop.
By the time I got situated the table was full and I was stuck where everybody kept asking me to pass things up and down the long table. Finally, I got a biscuit and pried it open with my fork, put a chunk of butter on it and managed to get a couple of fried eggs and grits on my plate. All that was left of the side pork was a gristly end that was really tough to chew with my new teeth. I looked across the table and watched my brother Charles. He was a master of food management. He cut his eggs into his grits and as the yellow yolks ran into the grits, he plopped a chunk of fresh butter in the middle of the grits and used his fork to cut up two big slices of tomatoes into the mix. I followed his lead and that’s how I learned to eat breakfast. I drank a glass of milk from my Mama’s recycled snuff glasses as I ate. Gerald finished before anyone else and Daddy told him to get the hoes ready. I was a little shocked at the language until I found out just a little later that he was referring to dirt moving instruments or tools used to hoe corn.
I was full and starting to get a little sleepy. I was thinking about a nap when my Dad looked at me and told me to go help Gerald. I went out and helped Gerald prop the hoes against the front porch. I started to go back in the house when my Daddy came out and told me to grab a hoe and get to the cornfield. At my age, I didn’t know a cornfield from a candy apple and I remembered what my Mama had told Gerald yesterday. I looked at my Daddy and said , I’m too young to hoe corn yet. I heard all my brothers and sisters take a deep breath and some covered their eyes and some covered their ears. The giant walked up to me and said in a real quite voice: You ain’t gonna get no older if you don’t get off your lazy ass and grab a hoe. You dammed sure didn’t have no trouble using that fork at the breakfast table. I quickly grabbed a hoe. My Mama didn’t raise no fools. Thelma looked at me and shook her head, that’s Charles’s, I grabbed another and you know the rest. It was kinda like the three bears story, too hot, too cold, and so forth, That’s Estelle’s, Edgar’s Gerald’s. Daddy watched this routine until he got a little perturbed and grabbed an old ratty looking hoe from the end of the stack and shoved it at me. I grabbed it and immediately got a splinter. I looked up at the giant and said, it’s too long. The giant grabbed the hoe from me, slammed it across his knee, broke it right in the middle and jerked out his big yellow handled knife from his pocket. Everybody covered their eyes including me. Everyone was waiting for my screams and backing up to avoid the blood splatter. My whole life flashed in front of me. I finally peeped through my fingers covering my eyes and saw my Daddy whittling the rough end of the hoe handle smooth. When he finished he whacked me on the butt with the hoe handle, jammed the hoe in my hand and said what the hell’s everybody standing around for. Get to the field and get started.
I fell in line behind all my brothers and sisters who were muttering about how I had escaped death. They weren’t sure if I was brave or stupid or some combination thereof. So my second day was spent hoeing corn all day in the hot hot sun. I was plumb worn out at days end. I had blisters on my hands, all my muscles ached and I was sunburned.
No comments:
Post a Comment