So Proud to be Here

My first recollection of hearing a radio program when I was very small was a program called Grand ole Opry, broadcast from Nashville. My favorite character on it was Cousin Minnie Pearl. As she came to the mic, she exclaimed in a shrill voice, "I'm jest so proud to be here. So glad I could come." Proud was a word used to mean happy. Nobody would ever admit being proud, a sin. One of the first TV programs broadcast on TV was the Saturday night Opry, and my favorite looked every inch a hillbilly spinster wearing a new straw hat with the price tag hanging down in the back. Although I enjoyed her poking fun at herself and her weird kinfolks, my greatest ambition was to distance myself from anything that might mark me as being from the "sticks".

The fact is I have, through hard work and a good amount of luck mixed with my blessings, managed to be exactly where I have always wanted to spend the last days of my life. I give credit to many people along the way, not the least of whom were those relatives whose ideals filled my head at an early age. Eighty one years after entering the world in a southern"hard scrabble" community in NC, I can say, "I'm just so happy to be here, so glad I am still here and in good health". Before there were child labor laws, I learned to work hard. It gave me amazing bones. My last bone density test showed my bones to be strong as an eighteen year old. The food I ate from the farm, although boring, was perfect to grow on, all kinds of beans, green veggies, eggs, etc.

Recently I came to realize that I have escaped death on at least twenty occasions. I hope I don't bore anyone by recounting some of the more miraculous escapes. Most of them have been falls, but any one of them could have been fatal. I always taught school in high heels. One January morning I was making my way up to the second floor where my food lab was located, my arms so full of groceries I failed to notice that the linoleum had been cleaned and polished, when my feet flew from under me and I fell with the groceries on top of me. With my hair in a bun, I didn't even get a goose egg where I hit. Strangely, I thought about that fall a few months ago, when I had spent several hours at the computer, and as I finished I rolled my chair back and leaned back in the chair, which also swiveled and rocked. Suddenly the large metal shaft sheered off evenly just above the five rollers and down I went. Ted heard me and came to extract me from the chair. I was shaken pretty badly, but although I got a big egg that time, I did not get a headache! Many falls in the yard from slippery rocks have resulted in bruises, appendages I thought broken, but were not, but even having the vine over the hot tub give way when I grabbed it for support and causing me to fall, (on my head again) I have never had a broken bone.

Falling does not indicate that I have been reckless all my life, just busy and unthinking. As a toddler I was into everything, very hard to manage. I noticed that in all my early photos I am sitting on one leg, because it took a bit longer to get from that position, just long enough to snap the picture and I was off and running. My parents left me watching my baby brother when I was two. He was asleep on the floor on a quilt. If he woke, I was to call them immediately. I was so bored I decided to go to a neighbor's house. Before I could get there my daddy saw me and came after me with a switch, burning my legs up all the way home.

My first real scrape with death came when I was about three. I was a very early talker and always had the neighborhood kids following me for great adventures. I remember looking into a paper sack in the corner of the smoke house where they hung hams to smoke. The powder inside was the most beautiful shade of green. I called my friends to come in to see it. I wondered how it would taste, so I ran into the kitchen to get a spoon, and when Daddy found us I was going on the second round, administering arsenic as they stood in a row. It was commonly used to kill insects in the garden. Daddy found a neighbor with a car, grabbed me up and off we went to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. The other parents decided to just melt some lard and force it down their throats, causing them to vomit it up. I remember how good it felt to know how much he loved me. On the way home, he bought me a pink sweater and an ice cream cone. It was the only time I went to a doctor in my childhood.

Developmental psychologists argue that children don't remember anything that happens before they are four at least. My very first memory was going to the beach with my cousin Helen and her parents. Helen was five years older. She was wearing a sun dress, white background with little yellow flowers, and it laced up the back to tie at the neck. When I was in high school I was helping her clean out an old trunk in the attic when I saw that dress and reminded her of wearing it to the beach. She said I couldn't remember it, because I was only two. I could recall sitting on the sand under the porch of a dark red beach house with very high underpinnings to keep the high tide from washing it away, and later I actually was able to show them the house, which was still there, only partly washed away. They had taken me with them to the beach because my mother was having a baby, and desperately needed me out of the way. It was in July, the height of the tobacco harvest.

I also remember the day he was born, being taken to her bed to see my brother. My uncle wanted me to sit on his lap, but his clothes were covered with yellow mud where he had been digging a well. I hated to be dirty, and I screamed until he put me down.

A few months later we moved to Craven County to rent another farm which I have written about in my mother's story. The four years there were spent tending my two brothers, and doing chores. My one experience there which could have been tragic happened when my parents went to New Bern and left us with a hired man. Bill was not a year old yet, and could be contained by piling an old tire in top of another one, a makeshift play pen, and plopping him inside. I will not try to describe the man's actions, but he was aware he was irritating me and told me if I told my parents, my dad would shoot him. My dad would be sent to prison and I wouldn't have a daddy. I have always been blessed with a knowledge of right and wrong, even when I did not understand why it was wrong. The memory burns as fresh still. I tried to never be in his eyesight, and was so glad when he didn't live with us any more. In high school I saw him at a dentist's office, but was careful not to let him know I recognized him.

Two more incidents during those four years could have had terrible consequences. My dad had to build a barn for the mules. I think the farm we rented had been fallow, because there was no place to keep animals, and the house, which had been a very nice antebellum home was crumbling. It was fascinating to see him and some helpers cut down the trees, skin the bark off and put together the log barn with two rooms for animals and a loft for the hay. When the loft was full I figured out a way to get up there and play in the hay, although the ladder had not been attached yet. The logs were small enough and the spaces were large enough I could get my hands through. Bill was two. I pushed him up first. When we were ready to come down from the place where nobody figured we could go, I could not see well. I slipped and fell. Unfortunately a barrel had been placed right beneath the hole, and I fell smack across it, one leg on either side. Bill screamed, but didn't dare follow me. I was too traumatized to scream, but they heard him and scooped me up. I was able to satisfy them that nothing was broken, so there was no need for a doctor. For several days they were afraid that I would never be able to walk, because just trying to move either leg was excruciating. A neighbor who had a radio had heard an ad for Crazy Water Crystals, a cure all, so Daddy flagged down the train which came a few miles from our house, went to the drug store in town and bought a big bottle. By the time I had consumed it, I was able to walk just fine.

Twice in my life I have come very close to bleeding to death. I will tell about the first time, and that will be the end of this episode. We moved back to the Deep Run area when I was in second grade. I was in first grade when I sliced my left thumb open. We did have a pair of scissors in the house, but I was in a hurry to cut a picture off a box to make a paper doll, and a razor blade was handier. I remember seeing the blood gush, but Mama bound it tightly, kept me home from school, and although the scar still measures over two inches, it wasn't deemed necessary to get stitches. It ached something awful all day, and that night, so I could get some sleep, she used one of her folk remedies. She removed the rag and taking a raw Irish potato she scraped a quantity of it on a clean rag and bound it up again. With my hand on a pillow, I was able to go to sleep. Mama came to check on me during the night and found my hand in a pool of blood, soaked through the pillow and into the mattress. I remember her saying, "Oh, My Lordie" and crying. Daddy jumped on the horse and rode to the train tracks where he tied the horse to a tree and flagged down the morning train. A doctor gave him some white powder to stop the flow of blood, which worked right away as soon as he returned. All that time, Mama cried, and my grandpa, who was living with us read a scripture from the Bible about "the blood of the lamb" which was supposed to stop bleeding. The tourniquet hadn't worked and I could not stand, I was so weak.

That covers my first six years of trauma. Next time I will try to finish this theme and return to my experiences growing up and getting an education.