Category: Blog (Page 16 of 101)

While spending a week with Aunt Rene
Zayre’s Department Store
Many summers ago

Aunt Rene: Here’s two quarters for you, Darlin’. Don’t they shine pretty? You can almost put your lipstick on looking’ in ’em. With these two quarters, you can buy anything you want in this store . . . as long as it doesn’t cost more than 50 cents.

Jeanne: This is what I want, Aunt Rene.

Aunt Rene: Little Women. You want a book?

Jeanne: Yes ma’am.

Aunt Rene: Sure is a thick book.

Jeanne: Yes ma’am. I like those best. I can read it this week.

Aunt Rene: Don’t you want something else?

Jeanne: No ma’am. This is what I want.

Aunt Rene: You’re sure?

Jeanne: Yes ma’am. Really sure.

As I gave the cashier my two quarters (It took a while ’cause the cashier had to put on her sunglasses to get a good enough look through the shine to tell they were, in fact, quarters.), Aunt Rene’s head went side to side, as though scanning to make sure she didn’t see anybody she knew. Or, more to the point, that nobody she knew saw us.

The cashier rang up the sale, put my book in a bag, and before it touched my eager hands, Aunt Rene intercepted it and asked the cashier, “Would you please double bag that for us, Darlin’?”

Wasn’t long after that shopping trip that Aunt Rene started paying close attention to my bowel moments. Maybe she got “Are you regular?” confused with “You just ain’t right.” I think we can all see how that could happen.

“If I live to be 100,” he said too many times to count, “I’ll never forget the feel of that cold, metal gun barrel against the back of my head.” Daddy didn’t live to be 100, but I have no doubt he was right: he’d have forgotten his own name before he forgot the bandit holding the gun to his head as he, an adorable little 5 year old boy, woke up and raced to the outhouse, having forgotten that the bad men were there.

Guns are a common thread running through my family history.

On the paternal side of things, I have a way-back relative who was Sheriff, and when his re-election campaign heated up with his opponent closing in, he shot and killed his competition. As you may have guessed, he lost the election.

On the maternal side, my granddaddy was a Revenue Agent and Sheriff, so guns were tools of his career. Granddaddy taught my male cousins about gun safety and how to shoot a gun while we girls were inside with Grandmother, learning to bake a cake.

My only personal experience with guns was when Larry P. and I shot tin cans off rocks, calling it a date. On another date, we shot mistletoe from treetops to use for . . . . um . . . . decorations. Yeah, that’s it: Christmas decorations.

But all this changed on Saturday when I spent eight hours learning about North Carolina’s gun laws, gun safety, and gun proficiency. There was a written test and a shooting proficiency exam. I had to shoot 10 rounds from 3 yards, 10 more rounds from 5 yards, and 10 rounds from 7 yards away from the target. I had to show that I knew how to identify the parts of a gun and demonstrate that I knew how to load, grip, and reload three or four different guns.

The course was taught by a knowledgeable and personable retired South Carolina highway patrolman, and The Engineer and I were the only ones in the class, but I don’t mind telling you that I was scared. I was scared of failing the written test, failing the gun handling demonstration, and ultimately failing the shooting proficiency exam. I was terrified of taking my ear muffs off prematurely.

But I didn’t. I breathed through the written test, muddled through the demonstration part, and once I tuned out the instructor’s talking and took matters into my own hands, heeding what my own body knew to be right for me, passed the shooting proficiency test with flying colors. I stayed in the targeted area, and some of my bullets went through holes previously made, just like on tv. (And I followed the advice of my friend, Francis Cavendar, putting my ear protectors on before getting out at the range and leaving them on till we were back in the truck headed home.)

Saturday, you see, was step one in getting my North Carolina Conceal Carry Permit, and thanks to the instructor and the required course, I know much more about guns than I did on Friday night. During the class, I remembered how, using only my voice and upper body strength, I once saved my purse and The Engineer’s car when a would-be thief attacked me in a bookstore parking lot in Atlanta one night. I hope I never have to use a gun to protect myself or others, but I am now confident that I know the legal definition of deadly force as well as when I can and cannot use it. Said another way: I now have a few rounds in the chamber.

Which may or may not be a metaphor.

Granddaddy Hewell feeding the chickens
in one of the many barns he and his sons built

Granddaddy, Daddy, and Uncle Gene built barns – several of them. Before I was born, many barns housed chickens, but barns are versatile through the ages. As a young girl of nesting age, I transformed Uncle Gene’s shop and the center room with the most delicious farm sink you can imagine into my own apartment playhouse. Later, during my horse phase, another barn became home to Pet, my Shetland Pony. Then as I blossomed into my Save Every Living Creature phase, the other side of my playhouse barn became home to rabbits. Two at first, but by day three, I counted 200.

I became acquainted with my first scorpion in the barn farthest away, so that’s all you’ll hear about that barn.

I loved those barns with the gray seasoned wood, the smell of freshly baled hay, earth, and horses, the shop where Uncle Gene made lamps and repaired tractors and his motorbike before he was killed. I lovingly dusted and cleaned everything there, including the jars that screwed into their tops that Uncle Gene had nailed to the bottom of a shelf to hold his nails, screws, and whatnots.

I especially loved sweeping those concrete floors – even the floors under the rabbit cages. I’ve always loved sweeping.

The exteriors of Granddaddy Ballard’s barns, with their pieces of tin and the occasional Pepsi signs painted silver tacked on to cover holes and gaps between the boards, became the outdoor equivalent of Grandmother’s patchwork quilts. Granddaddy Ballard used one barn as his garage, parking his faded red Ford sedan in one side of a barn and his green Chevrolet pick-up truck with a hole in the floorboard in the other side. His mule called the barn behind that barn home, and it had a concrete water trough the size of a claw-foot bathtub with a spigot just the right height for me to turn and fill up the trough with cool, fresh water. A third barn had a place on the side where cows were kept, and a ramp where they walked into the back of a truck. The smokehouse was a dark, aromatic place with slabs of bacon and sides of hams hanging from the ceiling, curing. Granddaddy stored wooden cases of Co-Colas in the smokehouse.

Barns hold much real estate in my heart, and though we had a very specific destination on Friday, nostalgia ruled the day as we drove through bucolic countryside filled with barns and cows and pastures and hills and tractors. I swooned. A lot.

Did you ever iron crayons between sheets of wax paper to make stained glass?
Me, too.

Did you ever carve your initials into a tree?
Me, too.
And the initials of your love du jour – did you carve them into the tree, too?
Yep, raising my hand on that one.

Did you get Highlights magazines delivered to your home? Did you go straight to the Hidden Pictures page
Me, too.

Did you ever melt bars of Gulf Wax paraffin and pour it into milk cartons to make candles?
Me, too.
And ice. Did you ever fill a milk carton with ice then pour melted bars of Gulf Wax paraffin over it to make candles with holes?
Yeah, I did, too.
How ’bout this: did you ever melt bars of Gulf Wax paraffin, whip it with a beater, and “ice” the candles you made from milk cartons?
Me, too.

Did you love to finger paint?
I did, too! And when my chiclets were teensy, I let them finger paint on the tray to their high chairs. (Mostly they painted themselves, though.)

Did you ever order an antiquing kit from the Sears and Roebuck catalog and give your furniture a make-over?
Me, too! And wooden boxes, too, like the one shown here that belonged to my mother when she was a little girl.

Did you ever take a pencil and swoop it back and forth across a blank sheet of paper, filling it with infinity signs then go back and color in the spaces created?
Yeah, I did, too. (Still do sometimes.)

Did you make necklaces from macaroni and shoe strings?
I didn’t . . . but I still have the one my brother Jerry made for me.

How ’bout bird houses made form popsicle sticks – did you make those?
Not birdhouses, but I did make a basket from popsicle sticks. Does that count?

Did you make irises from sheer silk fabric, wire, and glue?
I did. We even held parties to make silk irises. (Mama Helen still has hers.)

Did you watch Captain Kangaroo and make things right along with Mr. Green Jeane and Dancing Bear?
You guessed it – I did, too! AND I stole emptied borrowed a shoebox from Mother’s closet and used it to store my art supplies in so I was always ready.

Did you ever write and stage plays in your living room?
Why, yes I did. There was only one other house on our road, so I cast Carla and Gordon then charged all our parents a nickel to attend the grand opening.

Did you ever use yarn to stitch pretty pictures on burlap?
Yep, me, too.

Did you love to finger paint?
I did, too! And when my chiclets were teensy, I let them finger paint on the tray to their high chairs. (Mostly they painted themselves, though.)

Did you ever pick dandelions and giggle with delight as they flew into the wind?
Yes, I surely did.

Making art and playing really isn’t something you outgrow, you know.

There are several milestones in a girl’s life, like leaving the little whiter-than-white frilly lacy fold-down socks behind and donning stockings. One spring, everybody in my 12-year-old Baptist Sunday School class – Dianna, Ginger, Elender, Pam, Jean, Jane, Joan, Susan, Linda, MaryLynn, Mary – fell all over themselves telling me that their mothers were letting them wear stockings on Easter Sunday.

“Are y’all telling me the truth?” I asked them through narrowed eyes. I’d known every one of them since the cradle.

“Yeah, really. Mama said I could wear stockings on Easter Sunday, and I didn’t even have to ask her,” they assured me, each in turn. Ginger added “Is your mama gonna’ let you wear hose or do you still have to wear those little girl socks?” and stuck her tongue out at me for good measure.

I relayed the information to Mother, and because she (a) heard it 15 times an hour for three weeks straight, (b) knew each of the other girls and mothers involved, and (c) could not bear the thought of her daughter being ostracized she eventually said “Okay, Jeanne. Since you’re my favorite daughter, You can wear hose to Sunday School and church on Easter.”

We went to Alford’s (the groceries/furniture/toys/clothes/lawn mower/everything store in town) to buy my garter belt and stockings, then Mother and I did a little bonding as she gave me a lesson in how to slide the little rubber plug into the hook to hold the top of the hose in place gave me a little pamphlet that told me in words and diagrams how to use the garter belt and she went outside to work in her flowers. Every morning, I opened that box with the shiny pink paper on top to eye the folded-up stockings, and every night before I went to bed, I took the lid off that box with the shiny pink paper on top and eyed those stockings.

Easter morning dawned crisp and sunny, and I sang all the favorite Easter hymns – Christ Arose!, He Lives!, Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade! – as I rolled those stockings down, pulled them over my toes, then unrolled them all the way up to my thighs and the waiting garter belt. I put on my white patent leather shoes, and as a bonus, Mother said since I was old enough to wear hose, I could put the strap behind the heel instead of wearing it over my arch. Two things ticked off of my Milestone Bucket List on the same day. Life was good.

Mother pulled that aircraft carrier sized Oldsmobile into a parking place, and since that was the year she taught the 14-year old girls Sunday School class, we walked into the Ingram house then into the Sunday School assembly together. I could feel all eyes on me as I strutted strolled walked down the aisle to take my seat with my classmates . . . and this time all eyes really were on me.

On my legs and feet, to be more specific.

It all happened so fast.

Feeling a little giddy with the enormity of becoming a young woman right alongside my friends, I took my seat then bent down to look at their stockinged legs, and saw 22 feet, all wearing whiter-than-white frilly lacy fold-down socks. When my eyes made their way up to the faces of my former friends, not a one of them was looking at me. Except Ginger who wanted to be sure I saw it when she stuck her tongue out at me.

My mother took it all in, too, and instead of taking her seat on the pew with her class, she turned herself right around and marched – yeah, I’d definitely call it a march – right back down to the Oldsmobile, backed out of the parking space, drove home, retrieved my whiter-than-white frilly lacy fold-down socks, drove back to the church, parked the Oldsmobile, knocked on my Sunday School class door, thrust the socks in my hand and told me by way of her body language, to go to the bathroom and make the change. Pronto. Faster than pronto. Quicker than faster than pronto. And she was not smiling. Not one little bit.

As it turned out, my friends weren’t ganging up on me (except for possibly Ginger), they were simply indulging in a strength-in-numbers positive-thinking-can-make-anything-happen campaign that went bad.

It was a long time before Mother rolled the stone away from the cave where she buried those stockings and let me put them on again. In fact, the next time a pair of hose touched my legs was the day I walked down the aisle to say “You betcha” to The Engineer.

We had just asked for the check when a young man spotted Mother and scooted onto the booth beside her. “Is that your golf cart with a for sale sign on it?” he asked, pointing out the window.

“Un huh,” Mother said.

“Why are you selling it?”

“I want a new one.”

“A new one? Do you need a new one? What’s wrong with that one?” he asked.

“Nothing’s wrong with it. I just want a new golf cart.”

“Must be nice to be able to get a new golf cart just because you want one,” he said.

“Do you want a new golf cart?” Mother asked him.

“I’d love to have a new golf cart. Maybe if I had married well, I could get a new golf cart just because I want one. Or if I was blessed or if I had inherited a lot of money. Or if my spouse made big bucks, then I could get a new golf cart just because I want one.”

I honestly believe he thought he was being funny . . . bless his heart . . . but I do not share his sense of humor.

“Now wait just a cotton pickin’ minute,” I said. “My mother may, indeed, be blessed, but she can afford to buy a new golf cart because for decades, she lived beneath her means . . . which is to say she saved money. She did marry well, but you insult my mother when you say that her husband or her parents or her in-laws made the money that allows her to buy a new golf cart. My daddy was a good entrepreneurial provider. It was my mother who brought home the steady paycheck, who provided the health insurance, who built up a retirement nest egg. How dare you dismiss Mother, her abilities, her efforts, and her career. She may never have been paid what she’s worth, but my mother is buying a new golf cart with money she earned.”

He never saw it coming, and I’m not sure he gave it a second thought when he left. But my mother, who’d most likely never considered things from my perspective, sat up a little straighter and beamed.

And I’ll have you know, she sold the golf cart before we paid for our breakfast and bought the new one that very afternoon. She’s still driving it, too.

When Aunt Rene died, we found only two books in her house: How to Play Canasta Without Cheating that I told you about yesterday and her Bible. Her well-worn, falling-apart, oft-used black leather Bible.

I’ve always said you can tell a lot about a Southern woman by what she keeps in her Bible, and Aunt Irene proves me right with the poems and quotes that meant enough for her to tuck safely away between the pages of her Bible. If you were lucky enough to know Aunt Rene during her stay here on earth, you’ll be nodding your head at what an accurate portrait these saved treasures paint of her. If you didn’t know her, read on and you will . . .

THOUGHTS FOR MEDITATION
The more of friendship you display
the more will come your way.
The more kindness you bestow
The more gladness you will know.
The more for others you can do
The more you’ll find they’ll do for you.
The more desire you have to give
The greater is the life you’ll live.

~~~~~~~

JUST FOR TODAY
My goal today is to make someone happy.
I will expect less of others and more of myself.

I will do my best to give more than I receive
and love others as much as I love myself.
I will try to see Christ in the face of each person I meet.

~~~~~~~

A VERY SPECIAL RECIPE
1 cup common sense
1/2 cup of justice
1.5 cups of love
1.5 teaspoons mutual confidence

Add 2 large portions of sense of humor.
Spice to taste with wit and nonsense.
Bake in a moderate oven of warm approval.
Cover with generous appreciation.

~~~~~~~

TEN BEATITUDES
(FOR THOSE WHO HAVE LOVED ONES
OF MATURE YEARS)
1
Blessed are they who understand
my faltering days and palsied head.

2
Blessed are they who know that my ears today must strain
to catch the things they say.

3
Blessed are they who seem to know
that my eyes are dim and my wits are slow.

4
Blessed are they who look away
when coffee spilled at the table today.

5
Blessed are they with a cheery smile
who stop to chat for a little while.

6
Blessed are they who never say
“You’ve told that story twice today.”

7
Blessed are they who know the ways
to bring back memories of yesterday.

8
Blessed are they who make it known
that I am loved, respected, and not alone.

9
Blessed are they who know I’m at a loss
to find the strength to carry the Cross.

10
Blessed are they who ease the days
on my journey home in loving ways.

(copied from St. John U.M.C. Bulletin, Augusta)

~~~~~~~

If someone were to pay you 10 cents for every kind
word you ever spoke about people, and
collect 5 cents for every unkind word,
would you be rich or poor?

~~~~~~~

SUMMER SANCTUARY
I cannot think an unkind thought
When working in my garden.
My heart is full of tolerance,
Forgiveness, love and pardon.
I cannot harbor hate or greed
When working with the flowers,
So I shall harvest love enough
To last through winter hours.

~~~~~~~

Is anybody happier because you passed his way?
Does anyone remember that you spoke to him today?
The day is almost over, and its toiling time is through,
is there anyone to utter now a kindly word of you?
Can you say tonight, in parting with the day that’s slipping fast,
that you helped a single brother of the many that you passed?
Is a single heart rejoicing over what you did or said?
Does the man whose hopes were fading
now with courage look ahead?
Did you waste the day or lose it?
Was it well or sorely spent?
Did you leave a trail of kindness,
or a scar of discontent?
As you close your eyes in slumber,
do you think that God will say,
You have earned one more tomorrow
by the work you did today?
Always leave home with a kind word –
it may be the last.

~~~~~~~

The Daily Dahlia #67

Canasta was Aunt Rene’s game of choice. Don’t tell my mother, but when I spent the night with Aunt Rene, we’d stay up till 10 o’clock playing canasta at her kitchen table. When I married The Engineer, we pulled up another chair to the table and asked him to join us. We stayed married, but it was embarrassing watching him play canasta. He may know how to build magnificent buildings, and he may know how to jack a house up to fix the foundation and he may know how to construct roads and bridges, but he sucks at playing canasta.

He just never quite got the hang of the game . . . or at least how Aunt Rene and I played the game. Every now and then, for example, Aunt Rene needed a few more cards, so she’d pick up the discard pile and proceed to make good use of it. The Engineer somehow got the idea that it was okay for him to do the same, so he’d pick up the discard pile and commence to melding and adding cards to his hand. Before he got far enough to mix up the cards, Aunt Rene would look over the top of her glasses and inform him, “That’s not allowed.”

“But you just did it,” he said.

“No I didn’t,” Aunt Rene said with the best poker face you ever saw.

“Yes you did,” The Engineer argued, clearly baffled.

“Put the cards back down,” she’d tell him. “We don’t like cheaters.”

At his first Hewell Family Christmas party, The Engineer gave Aunt Rene a book called How to Win at Canasta Without Cheating. Aunt Rene opened the package, saw the title of the book, and without missing a beat passed it right back to The Engineer saying, “I don’t need this, you do.” If amortized, that book was the cheapest Christmas present ever because it just went back and forth between The Engineer and Aunt Rene every year till she died.

Book or no, we never, ever invited The Engineer to our canasta game ever again. He was just too darn much trouble. You had to watch him every minute.