I call this segment of my dad's story The Man With the Power because it always seemed to me that he knew everybody, and that he always controlled every situation. I came to this conclusion when I was about six. The house we lived in had a lane just wide enough for one car. To pass another vehicle one driver needed to back his car back into the front yard or into the main road, whichever was closer. I noticed that Daddy was never the one to back up. He just sat still and waited for the person headed to or from our house to back up and let him pass. I may not remember it correctly, but I saw him tell a friend who was headed in and backed to the main road, "Come on up to the house. I won't be gone long." People seemed to let him carry the situation his own way. I remember taking a class in sociology where we learned to analyze the power structure of communities and neighborhoods. I wrote my paper on Ocracoke Island, just off the coast of NC where many people had never taken a boat to the main land. You only needed to spend a few days there to realize that the people with all the power on the island were those who were in the Coast Guard. I cannot account for my dad's popularity, because he had no money nor property, only an infectious laugh (a low huh, huh, huh) and a fantastic memory for detail.
To illustrate his memory, I recall that he had a favorite poem about "Hoover Times" which he read in the paper when Roosevelt was running against Thomas Dewey. Hoover had been president during the Great Depression when most people had seen very hard times. I cannot remember all of it but it was something like this:
When Hoover was president I lived on a farm,
And a dollar bill was as long as my arm.
If Dewey wins I'll move back to the farm,
And plant some vegetables behind the barn.
I'll feed my family with roasting ears,
And try to get by for four more years.
He had very strong opinions, but I do not ever remember hearing him argue with anyone except my husband. Then it was fun for him.
He had a solution for every problem. When I was about six I was doing a lot of work on the farm. I hated getting up early, while it was still dark. When I was tired I was not allowed to rest, so I faked a stomach ache in order to get some rest. The regularity of my stomach aches raised some suspiscion with Daddy. He announced to everybody, including the hired hands, that he knew something that would cure a stomach ache in a hurry. He asked Momma to bring him the empty blue quinine on the kitchen shelf, which he took to the pasture and in plain sight began to fill it with sheep droppings, which look for all the world like symetrical pharmacy pills. In all seriousness he asked me if I could swallow them dry, or if he should get a glass of water for me to wash them down. By that time I was sobbing and my face was washed with tears. I replied in a shaking voice, "I'll take them with a little water."
He could control his laughter no longer, and I was relieved to see he was only joking, and that he was onto my deception. I could never find any way out of the forced childhood labor after that. I don't remember when I actually began to enjoy the work. Maybe it was when I knew there was no way out, but if I could do it better than any of the others, it gave me some measure of success, or gave me some attention.
He was not a person to ask, "What would you like to do?" He made all the decisions. He and Momma drove to see us several times when we lived in Southern Pines, the first year we were married. My getting engaged only drew one remark from him. He said it looked like I would want to work a while first, I had worked three years, paid off my college loans, bought and paid for my car, and bought Momma a gas stove and refrigerator.
When we were out of the army and living in New Mexico they drove to see us there, and brought Bobby and Ella and their two little boys. We skipped church on Sunday to take Daddy and Momma sightseeing up to Taos and Santa Fe. Ella found a Baptist church for them to attend. Before they left we took them by our brand new chapel. My parents and Bobby commented that it was very nice, but Ella kept her eyes in her lap, refusing to look at it. When they had gone home we noticed two leaflets left on our living room table which they had brought from the Baptist Church. We thought how fortunate Bobby was to have married this beautiful girl who was five years younger, such a good little mother and so dedicated to their church. She was very smart and would later return to high school, get her diploma, enroll in nursing school and graduate first in her class of one hundred. We have watched with pride as they raised their three sons, and we consider it one of the greatest blessing of our old age that we have had a hand in their conversion to the Mormon faith. Another story for another segment. My next story will be of my own father's conversion. I really cannot take any credit. It was living with an angel forty years.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
The Joker
I am not sure the draft I was writing about my dad as his family's humorist got published.
(Here is what was in the Draft: Mama was not a big talker, but Daddy usually had the floor when we were in the company of other family members, and it seemed to me that she registered approval on her face at his skill in story telling. His language was clean, and he allowed no swearing of any kind. I believe that was true of all his family. Not even a "darn" could be used. We might have been poor, but we were never "common". Bathroom language was unheard of in our house.
Daddy loved a good practical joke. He tried his hand at raising sheep for wool. Since I was put to work on the farm at a very early age, I sometimes faked a stomach ache to get out of work. One day I started to complain as soon as he gave me a job to do. He said he knew just the thing that would cure a stomach ache, and going into the kitchen first to get a little blue medicine bottle he proceeded to fill it with "pills" dropped by the sheep in the pasture. I watched with disbelief until he asked if I could take them dry, or if I needed to have water to get them down. I could tell by his face that he was dead serious. I began to cry. He reminded me that we didn't have all day and I should make up my mind quickly. Trying to stifle my tears I said, "I'll take 'em with a little water." That broke him up, and I knew then that he was teasing me. He told the story at every family occasion for a long time-the sure cure for stomach aches!
Raising sheep didn't pay during those depression years. Neither did raising the crop of sugar cane for molasses. It was fun to see the baby sheep, and it was interesting to see the mill grinding the cane powered by a mule walking around it in a circle. I really loved the molasses we had all winter. Usually we didn't have a cow, but we used canned milk which I would sweeten with a good shot of molasses.
The old antebellam)
In case you did not read about my dad's cure for stomach ache, please send me an email and I will put it in my next post. I think it is a very funny story, but I don't know what happened. Suddenly the whole page disappeared. I got it back as a draft, but could not add to it. Then when I decided to publish the draft, it didn't seem to work either. HELP!!!
As I was about to explain, the big house in the woods had some features we were very reluctant to leave after our six years there. The best one was the banister which I enjoyed sliding down. Bill had just become old enough to master it. The best thing about the house, though, was the huge pecan tree in the front yard. I remember when Mama learned to drive the first car we ever had. When Daddy was working in a field far enough away that he couldn't see what she was doing, she would get the car keys and drive round and round the pecan tree with us in the car. She had watched how he drove it, and without any lessons from anyone she drove it to town one day and got her license. It was so unlike her, I still can't believe she did it.
Daddy got a kick out of our getting out of bed early, as soon as it was light, to see how many pecans had fallen during the night. Bill and I had our little buckets and I always beat him, of course. One morning we found the ground literally covered with not just pecans, but every kind of nut on the market. Daddy had planned his trick very well, and I can just see him smiling when we came in with our buckets full of walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds as well as pecans. He was clever enough not to get peanuts, because we would never have been fooled - we grew peanuts and knew they grew underground. We spent a lot of time gazing up into the limbs and branches to see which shell each nut had fallen from. We knew it was a magic tree. We never wondered why it only happened one night, but we knew that it could happen any time! Moving away from the magic tree was the saddest thing that happened to us. I was in second grade and remember the morning Bill and I went out to say goodbye to the tree and hugged it.
Daddy loved to play practical jokes. When I was a freshman in college he played a joke which made him famous in the new home town we had just moved into. Mrs. Helen Wessel had persuaded him to move back to Swansboro where I was born. I don't know if he had lived there long enough when I was a baby to make any men friends. Except for brief leaves from his job, I believe Mama was alone with me. It didn't take him long to get acquainted, because there was a country store in the small village. At night he loved to sit with a few men around the potbellied stove and socialize. One of the leading citizens in the town was a farmer of some means who monopolized every conversation with his plans to buy the first German imported car in our state, a Volkswagen. He had pictures which he dragged out at the slightest provocation, detailing the features, primary its small extremely unusual design and fantastic gas mileage. Gas should not have been a concern, because it only cost fifteen cents per gallon, and was plentiful because the war was over. Night after night they had to listen to the story of the fabulous little car, and his plans to meet the train delivering it.
The day finally came, and everybody at the store got to see it, even sit in it and take a little spin. He could not believe that he had driven it from town and the gas gauge had not moved. After he drove away, Daddy hatched a plan to play his trick. Each night he would sneak up to the Odum farm and pour gas into the tank to refill it. His friends at the store never missed being there night after night, when all the attention was directed to the number of miles he had driven without the gas gauge moving at all. He had begun to assume the gauge was broken, but when he tried to fill the tank it woud not hold any more. A hundred miles to the gallon! INCREDIBLE
Then one night he caught Daddy pouring gas into his tank with a can. Mr. Odum never hung out at the store again, but everybody loved to tell the story around town.
Too bad Daddy wasn't a magician. He would have loved to entertain people. As far as I know he never had an enemy. He had no use for religion. He always said he wouldn't ever critisize anybody's church because it might be the right one, but he wouldn't join one, because it might be the wrong one. I was never in church with my dad until Ted and I took him to the Provo Temple to be endowed and sealed to my mother, as he had promised he would do when she died the year before. A story for another time.
(Here is what was in the Draft: Mama was not a big talker, but Daddy usually had the floor when we were in the company of other family members, and it seemed to me that she registered approval on her face at his skill in story telling. His language was clean, and he allowed no swearing of any kind. I believe that was true of all his family. Not even a "darn" could be used. We might have been poor, but we were never "common". Bathroom language was unheard of in our house.
Daddy loved a good practical joke. He tried his hand at raising sheep for wool. Since I was put to work on the farm at a very early age, I sometimes faked a stomach ache to get out of work. One day I started to complain as soon as he gave me a job to do. He said he knew just the thing that would cure a stomach ache, and going into the kitchen first to get a little blue medicine bottle he proceeded to fill it with "pills" dropped by the sheep in the pasture. I watched with disbelief until he asked if I could take them dry, or if I needed to have water to get them down. I could tell by his face that he was dead serious. I began to cry. He reminded me that we didn't have all day and I should make up my mind quickly. Trying to stifle my tears I said, "I'll take 'em with a little water." That broke him up, and I knew then that he was teasing me. He told the story at every family occasion for a long time-the sure cure for stomach aches!
Raising sheep didn't pay during those depression years. Neither did raising the crop of sugar cane for molasses. It was fun to see the baby sheep, and it was interesting to see the mill grinding the cane powered by a mule walking around it in a circle. I really loved the molasses we had all winter. Usually we didn't have a cow, but we used canned milk which I would sweeten with a good shot of molasses.
The old antebellam)
In case you did not read about my dad's cure for stomach ache, please send me an email and I will put it in my next post. I think it is a very funny story, but I don't know what happened. Suddenly the whole page disappeared. I got it back as a draft, but could not add to it. Then when I decided to publish the draft, it didn't seem to work either. HELP!!!
As I was about to explain, the big house in the woods had some features we were very reluctant to leave after our six years there. The best one was the banister which I enjoyed sliding down. Bill had just become old enough to master it. The best thing about the house, though, was the huge pecan tree in the front yard. I remember when Mama learned to drive the first car we ever had. When Daddy was working in a field far enough away that he couldn't see what she was doing, she would get the car keys and drive round and round the pecan tree with us in the car. She had watched how he drove it, and without any lessons from anyone she drove it to town one day and got her license. It was so unlike her, I still can't believe she did it.
Daddy got a kick out of our getting out of bed early, as soon as it was light, to see how many pecans had fallen during the night. Bill and I had our little buckets and I always beat him, of course. One morning we found the ground literally covered with not just pecans, but every kind of nut on the market. Daddy had planned his trick very well, and I can just see him smiling when we came in with our buckets full of walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds as well as pecans. He was clever enough not to get peanuts, because we would never have been fooled - we grew peanuts and knew they grew underground. We spent a lot of time gazing up into the limbs and branches to see which shell each nut had fallen from. We knew it was a magic tree. We never wondered why it only happened one night, but we knew that it could happen any time! Moving away from the magic tree was the saddest thing that happened to us. I was in second grade and remember the morning Bill and I went out to say goodbye to the tree and hugged it.
Daddy loved to play practical jokes. When I was a freshman in college he played a joke which made him famous in the new home town we had just moved into. Mrs. Helen Wessel had persuaded him to move back to Swansboro where I was born. I don't know if he had lived there long enough when I was a baby to make any men friends. Except for brief leaves from his job, I believe Mama was alone with me. It didn't take him long to get acquainted, because there was a country store in the small village. At night he loved to sit with a few men around the potbellied stove and socialize. One of the leading citizens in the town was a farmer of some means who monopolized every conversation with his plans to buy the first German imported car in our state, a Volkswagen. He had pictures which he dragged out at the slightest provocation, detailing the features, primary its small extremely unusual design and fantastic gas mileage. Gas should not have been a concern, because it only cost fifteen cents per gallon, and was plentiful because the war was over. Night after night they had to listen to the story of the fabulous little car, and his plans to meet the train delivering it.
The day finally came, and everybody at the store got to see it, even sit in it and take a little spin. He could not believe that he had driven it from town and the gas gauge had not moved. After he drove away, Daddy hatched a plan to play his trick. Each night he would sneak up to the Odum farm and pour gas into the tank to refill it. His friends at the store never missed being there night after night, when all the attention was directed to the number of miles he had driven without the gas gauge moving at all. He had begun to assume the gauge was broken, but when he tried to fill the tank it woud not hold any more. A hundred miles to the gallon! INCREDIBLE
Then one night he caught Daddy pouring gas into his tank with a can. Mr. Odum never hung out at the store again, but everybody loved to tell the story around town.
Too bad Daddy wasn't a magician. He would have loved to entertain people. As far as I know he never had an enemy. He had no use for religion. He always said he wouldn't ever critisize anybody's church because it might be the right one, but he wouldn't join one, because it might be the wrong one. I was never in church with my dad until Ted and I took him to the Provo Temple to be endowed and sealed to my mother, as he had promised he would do when she died the year before. A story for another time.
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