I saw my Aunt Jewel today. At least she could have been Jewel, but my dear aunt has long since passed. Every family has a Jewel, I think, and ours was the real thing. My first memory of her was sitting on my uncle’s bed, brick red hair and blood red lipstick. She had a cigarette holder that was longer than the cigarette that was in it, and a can of beer in her other hand. Now, I had never seen a cigarette holder except on TV, and I didn’t know any women who smoked (after all, this was the 1950’s). Add the fact that I had never seen a can of beer before, and it was all in all a very memorable sight. Her voice was as loud and raspy as you would expect, and I learned over time that I was at that moment in the presence of the family’s blackest black sheep. That made her my favorite, and she never lost that distinction.
Jewel actually had the same teacher in the 8th grade that I had, 40-something years later when I was in the 7th, Mrs. W.W. Allred. Mrs. Allred was an institution in Collins, Mississippi, having taught both my parents a decade or so after Jewel, and a couple of decades before me. She was a hard taskmaster, and never showed us any sense of humor, but I still maintain that she was the single person responsible for teaching me more grammar than any other. She drilled it in, plugged the hole, and dared you to forget. I was afraid of her, and can still diagram sentences and discuss gerunds, largely because of her.
But she and Jewel didn’t have the same relationship. You see, Mrs. Allred had this habit of demanding attention from students, and when she thought she was not getting it, she would throw things at the offenders. It would usually be a piece of chalk or an eraser, but with Jewel it turned out to be a shoe. Apparently she ran out of chalk. Jewel’s response, though, was not to pay attention, or even to throw the shoe back. She got up, went to the back of the room, jumped out the window, and thus ended her education, then and there. Yep, black sheep.
I don’t know a lot about her life, but a few good stories leaked out from time to time. Probably the best was about a framed certificate I saw on her wall the one and only time I visited her in Texas. Apparently there was a time when unescorted women in Mexico were believed to be women of the street looking to ply their trade. They were routinely rounded up, hauled to the local hoosegow, and charged with public prostitution. Now let’s set the record straight right now. Jewel was not that kind of woman. But she and a couple of her friends cooked up a scheme which resulted in their being in a restaurant in a Mexican border town, sans male accompaniment. Sure enough, they got rousted, hauled away, and locked up.
Archie (how that man put up with her, I’ll never know) and his friends waited long enough, then went down to bail the girls out. Prostitution was legal, but controlled. The fine for practicing without a license (yes, the pun is unintentional) was more than the cost of a license, which is what Jewel and her friends had counted on. You can figure out the rest. For the rest of her life, she had a license to practice her art in Mexico. Go figure.
I stayed long enough with her to wreck her golf cart (she made sure Archie never knew too many of us were riding way too fast on it), and to learn her daily routines. She wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but would pop a top on a diet Crème Soda at the crack of dawn. She sipped those things all morning long, and left a trail of Crème Soda cans behind her. At the stroke of noon, though, everything changed. She had a big wall clock that chimed the hour, every hour, and when 12 o’clock came, it never got past the third chime before I heard the sound that Hoyt Axton made famous for Busch beer. I can’t write the sound, but I can approximate it -- ke chew’ -- Jewel popped the top on her first Pearl of the day. From there on Crème Soda was just a memory, and the Pearl cans took their place. That’s the Jewel I knew and loved.
I saw her today, but she was 50 years too young, her hair wasn’t near red enough, and she’d lost the cigarette holder. Okay, maybe it wasn’t her, but the woman I saw sure triggered a lot of memories in me, and just for a little while Jewel was right back with us, smoking, drinking, cussing, and having a heck of a lot of fun. It had been a while since I had thought of her, and I realized that I miss her. Everyone should have an Aunt Jewel.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Picking Blackberries
It started out as just another Friday morning, which is of course more than all right with me. Friday is one of the days I get to stay at home and work all day instead of having to clean up and drive to Huntsville. I treasure those days and, like probably most of us, dream of the time when that will be every day instead of just one or two extra days a week. The way fuel prices are going, and the way food prices are headed, that day may not be so far away. If I just hadn’t spent all of my future earnings prematurely! Oh well, someday I’ll have caught up, and then if you want to see my smiling face you’d better have a photograph handy, because I’ll be holed up in southern middle Tennessee, and it will take several sticks of dynamite to get me out.
We had answered a listing on our local Swap and Shop page for blackberries. Or at least we had tried to. The way it works is that you can post something for sale, and it stays on the page until enough people put their postings after you that you get crowded off the bottom of the page. Sometimes your stuff will stay there a week. This time, only a day and it was gone. So I did what the locals always do. I posted an ad that said “Will the person with blackberries please call me”, and added my number. Sure enough, the phone rang, and a fellow said he had put the ad up for his dad, who did in fact have berries, and he gave us the number to call.
Okay, back to Friday (one of the days I don’t have to ….. you know). We fed, milked, ate, got ready, loaded the car and took off. The man whose house we were going to had said we might get 2 or even 3 gallons of berries, and I had begun to think we were likely to catch as many wild geese as berries, but we were committed, and off we went. Two towns and an hour later, we found the right house, and met the owner. What a gracious man! He led us to the berries, helped us pick them, and pretty much told us his entire family history. And it was uplifting and good. Here was a man who has been married to his sweetheart for more than 49 years, and for the last 6 months has been helping her recover from a succession of things, several of which could have done her in. He is very proud of the fact that he was able to go every day for months to the hospital, and then to the rehab center and sit with her, and it was evident that he is very much in love with her. She’s still recovering, and he cooks her breakfast every day, cleans the house, and helps her get stronger.
All this while we’re picking what turned out to be 7 gallons of berries, the biggest and sweetest I’ve ever seen. They are the Triple Crown variety, in case any of you want some berries, but I warn you they are much better for jelly than for cooking, as the seeds are very big.
We went to the house to wash some of the stains from our hands, and from Wendy’s lips (we may actually have picked 8 gallons, but our baskets only had 7 in them), and we met his wife. She is finally ambulatory, and a sweet, spirited, and witty woman. He threatened to leave her on the patio and go fishing, and she informed us in an aside that she has her own fishing gear that he knows nothing about, stashed away in the basement. She said one of them may sneak off to fish, but it may not be him. After 49 years, she said, he just may not know everything there is to know.
She told us that in addition to 49 years of marriage, they had dated for 4 years, and that she was only 16 when they married. Wow. They adopted a child way back when it was not fashionable to do so, and then proceeded to have a couple of their own. All have done well, and are still close enough to home that they can be a family. What a refreshing day, what a refreshing couple, and what a refreshing affirmation that people are good, kind and loving. We see way too much of the other side.
We had answered a listing on our local Swap and Shop page for blackberries. Or at least we had tried to. The way it works is that you can post something for sale, and it stays on the page until enough people put their postings after you that you get crowded off the bottom of the page. Sometimes your stuff will stay there a week. This time, only a day and it was gone. So I did what the locals always do. I posted an ad that said “Will the person with blackberries please call me”, and added my number. Sure enough, the phone rang, and a fellow said he had put the ad up for his dad, who did in fact have berries, and he gave us the number to call.
Okay, back to Friday (one of the days I don’t have to ….. you know). We fed, milked, ate, got ready, loaded the car and took off. The man whose house we were going to had said we might get 2 or even 3 gallons of berries, and I had begun to think we were likely to catch as many wild geese as berries, but we were committed, and off we went. Two towns and an hour later, we found the right house, and met the owner. What a gracious man! He led us to the berries, helped us pick them, and pretty much told us his entire family history. And it was uplifting and good. Here was a man who has been married to his sweetheart for more than 49 years, and for the last 6 months has been helping her recover from a succession of things, several of which could have done her in. He is very proud of the fact that he was able to go every day for months to the hospital, and then to the rehab center and sit with her, and it was evident that he is very much in love with her. She’s still recovering, and he cooks her breakfast every day, cleans the house, and helps her get stronger.
All this while we’re picking what turned out to be 7 gallons of berries, the biggest and sweetest I’ve ever seen. They are the Triple Crown variety, in case any of you want some berries, but I warn you they are much better for jelly than for cooking, as the seeds are very big.
We went to the house to wash some of the stains from our hands, and from Wendy’s lips (we may actually have picked 8 gallons, but our baskets only had 7 in them), and we met his wife. She is finally ambulatory, and a sweet, spirited, and witty woman. He threatened to leave her on the patio and go fishing, and she informed us in an aside that she has her own fishing gear that he knows nothing about, stashed away in the basement. She said one of them may sneak off to fish, but it may not be him. After 49 years, she said, he just may not know everything there is to know.
She told us that in addition to 49 years of marriage, they had dated for 4 years, and that she was only 16 when they married. Wow. They adopted a child way back when it was not fashionable to do so, and then proceeded to have a couple of their own. All have done well, and are still close enough to home that they can be a family. What a refreshing day, what a refreshing couple, and what a refreshing affirmation that people are good, kind and loving. We see way too much of the other side.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Rosie
Wendy disappeared one afternoon while on the way back from deliveries. We were talking right up to the time she got off the interstate, somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes from home. Now I guess I should admit that I'm a fretter (if anyone hasn't figured that out by now), so when an hour passed and she wasn't home I started fretting. It's not like I need to know everywhere she goes and how long she'll be there, it's just that she hadn't mentioned anything other than being ready to be home after a long day. So I called - no answer. I called again - still no answer. So I went on about what I was doing, with the usual what-ifs running through my head; low-key, but running just the same.
Not to worry. She came wheeling into the driveway soon enough, and out of the car jumped two long-legged, tail wagging hounds-from-hell puppies. Yeah, hounds. One was black and tan, the other a bloodhound. The kids went crazier than usual, and she gave me that "they followed me home" look. That was three months ago, and Rosie, the black and tan, and Sounder, the bloodhound quickly became part of the farm. Rosie was the alpha, and made every step we made, learning as a pup which pigs needed chasing and which kittens needed chewing on. Sounder was content for the most part to roll and romp with Rosie, help out with the kitten chewing, and learn the deepest, most mournful baying you've ever heard. My initial reluctance lasted no time at all, and I figured we would have good companions for a long time from these two.
Last Wednesday Rosie didn't go with us to feed pigs and milk, which was unusual but not unique. On the way back from the milk barn, though, we saw her down below the springhouse, drooping, drooling, and almost non-responsive. She had been slower than usual the day before, but we didn't think a lot about it. Puppies get into things, and sometimes they pay for it for a day or two. But this morning she was down. I went on to work in Huntsville, and around mid-morning Wendy called and said she had taken Rosie to the vet. I was worried, yes, and to be completely honest a bit reluctant. All I could see for a few moments was a large vet bill. Unfortunately, my experiences with veterinarians have been universally bad. I had never taken an animal to a vet and ended up bringing a live animal home. That's not a knock on the skill or knowledge of vets, that's just been how it's gone for me.
They tested her, medicated her, and kept her overnight for observation. The next morning she was better, then worse again. Wendy and the kids decided they would rather have Rosie home with us than let her spend the 4th of July weekend in a cage in the vet's office. They went to pick her up and got home with her seconds before I came into the driveway from Huntsville. One look at Carleigh's face was all I needed, and I walked over to the truck with dread. They told me Rosie had quit whimpering as soon as Noah walked in, and had settled down in his lap for the ride home. Just before they got home, she took a big sigh, and died quietly.
For the first time in over 20 years I cried when a pet died. I'm not sure if I was crying for Rosie, who had won my heart over completely, or for Noah, who was heartbroken that he had lost his pet, or for Wendy, who loved Rosie as much as Noah, and whose little boy was holding his pet in his lap and sobbing. It was probably for Carleigh, too, whose pet was wagging his tail and not really knowing what was going on while Carleigh cried. It may have been for all the dogs I ever had, and for how I felt when I lost them. I lost pets every way you can think of, and a few more ways besides. And I still remember them all.
We laid her to rest in a shady place. Sounder is already taking over some of Rosie's chores, and he's a good pup, but we sure miss her.
Not to worry. She came wheeling into the driveway soon enough, and out of the car jumped two long-legged, tail wagging hounds-from-hell puppies. Yeah, hounds. One was black and tan, the other a bloodhound. The kids went crazier than usual, and she gave me that "they followed me home" look. That was three months ago, and Rosie, the black and tan, and Sounder, the bloodhound quickly became part of the farm. Rosie was the alpha, and made every step we made, learning as a pup which pigs needed chasing and which kittens needed chewing on. Sounder was content for the most part to roll and romp with Rosie, help out with the kitten chewing, and learn the deepest, most mournful baying you've ever heard. My initial reluctance lasted no time at all, and I figured we would have good companions for a long time from these two.
Last Wednesday Rosie didn't go with us to feed pigs and milk, which was unusual but not unique. On the way back from the milk barn, though, we saw her down below the springhouse, drooping, drooling, and almost non-responsive. She had been slower than usual the day before, but we didn't think a lot about it. Puppies get into things, and sometimes they pay for it for a day or two. But this morning she was down. I went on to work in Huntsville, and around mid-morning Wendy called and said she had taken Rosie to the vet. I was worried, yes, and to be completely honest a bit reluctant. All I could see for a few moments was a large vet bill. Unfortunately, my experiences with veterinarians have been universally bad. I had never taken an animal to a vet and ended up bringing a live animal home. That's not a knock on the skill or knowledge of vets, that's just been how it's gone for me.
They tested her, medicated her, and kept her overnight for observation. The next morning she was better, then worse again. Wendy and the kids decided they would rather have Rosie home with us than let her spend the 4th of July weekend in a cage in the vet's office. They went to pick her up and got home with her seconds before I came into the driveway from Huntsville. One look at Carleigh's face was all I needed, and I walked over to the truck with dread. They told me Rosie had quit whimpering as soon as Noah walked in, and had settled down in his lap for the ride home. Just before they got home, she took a big sigh, and died quietly.
For the first time in over 20 years I cried when a pet died. I'm not sure if I was crying for Rosie, who had won my heart over completely, or for Noah, who was heartbroken that he had lost his pet, or for Wendy, who loved Rosie as much as Noah, and whose little boy was holding his pet in his lap and sobbing. It was probably for Carleigh, too, whose pet was wagging his tail and not really knowing what was going on while Carleigh cried. It may have been for all the dogs I ever had, and for how I felt when I lost them. I lost pets every way you can think of, and a few more ways besides. And I still remember them all.
We laid her to rest in a shady place. Sounder is already taking over some of Rosie's chores, and he's a good pup, but we sure miss her.
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