MAY 7 -- AUGUST 27, 2000
You may be wondering whether the farmer and I were among the millions of Americans who tuned in to the final episode of “Survivor.” Although we had been too busy freezing corn and butter beans to watch the show’s other episodes, we were on hand for the grand finale.
As he settled in his recliner, the farmer admitted dreaming of being on a desert island with a bunch of women from outside the Bible Belt. But the grand finale opened his eyes. You could hear the disappointment in his voice as he observed, “The women look, well, like they could go toe to toe with Rick Flair in a wrestling match."
As for the men, the farmer was less kind. He commented that if CBS had been serious about finding a few good men, the casting crew should have made a run through Uptown Shelby, Boiling Springs and/or Fallston and stopped a few pick up trucks.
Ten minutes into the show, the farmer quit editorializing and started snoring. I stayed with the show to the end, debating whether a trip to the grocery store wouldn’t be more exciting. But I wanted to form a half-baked opinion about the show, so I stayed put.
This may sound critical and mean-spirited, but it occurred to me that the contestants gave some mighty frivolous reasons for being chosen the winner, or for choosing someone else.
In other words, a year on a cow judging team would have done this herd of contestants a world of good. Cow judging includes being turned loose in a ring full of cows, then having to size them up and give well-thought out reasons as to which cow should be given the blue ribbon, and why. Even lawyers could probably benefit from such training.
I have at least one other bone to pick with “Survivor.” According to the media, “Survivor” is part of a new genre known as “reality TV.”
Reality? If this was reality, where were the children? The telephones? Or the strip malls?
I don’t know about you, but for me, reality includes at least 3 children, plus plastic lawn chairs, an occasional dog, and a car with an inspection sticker fixing to expire. Reality is also cold French fries and lumpy gravy. Reality is clothes that are too tight and shoes that rub our corns.
Ironically, you would think that if CBS were really into reality television they would have put a TV set in every tent, with the commercials blaring. Instead, they had contestants dining on rats and walking through coals.
Over the years, the farmer and I had a lot of close calls raising 4 boys, but the closest we came to this sort of reality was the time a neighbor invited us to a ‘coon fry with all the trimmings and someone knocked over the grill.
Better examples of reality TV are QVC, Monday night football, and The Little Rascals.
Lastly, “Survivor” is purported to have a host of additional redeeming qualities. It is supposed to depict the struggles that most Americans face at work. Maybe if you are a paid political operative, in a third world country.
They say there will be spin-offs. That’s what’s scary.
If there is one common thread that has run through the 31 years the farmer and I have known each other, that thread is “cows.” It started with our first meeting, at my college roommate’s wedding at Sharon Methodist Church in Shelby, NC. The eligible bachelor Jane wanted to fix me up with was an academic “cow man,” with a degree in dairy science from Moo U. (aka North Carolina State University.)
“Not on your life,” I swore to the other bridesmaids.
Three months later, Jane wore me down, persuading me to agree to just one date with the “cow man.” I requested an interpreter. “Has he ever appeared on the Beverly Hillbillies?” I asked Jane. Basically, the only words I understood on our first date were “Cleveland County,” “horse,” “bird dogs,” and “electric milkers.”
Fortunately, in our case, love was deaf. My life’s dream was to get a master’s degree in Madrid. My favorite book was the unabridged version of “Don Quixote” in the original Spanish.
The farmer’s dream was to return to the family dairy farm on the outskirts of Hamrick Town. As for “Don Quixote,” the farmer said he’d heard of it but was it a foreign car or a new-fangled wart remover?
Thirty years later, the desire to move to Madrid has lessened. The old song, “How You Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paris?” got it backwards. The reality is that you’ll never get them to Paris or Madrid once they’ve tasted farming.
In my naiveté, I tried to sell the farmer on Spain with a description of the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. I figured that a bunch of cows running through the streets would be an agricultural turn-on. In essence the farmer said that he would sooner watch chickens peck for corn than watch a herd of bulls outrun a gang of city slickers.
At our ole-timey wedding, I reckon they snuck in the vow “to obey.” There’s no other explanation for my evolving into “cow woman.”
Indeed, milking cows for 16 years marks you for life. Our boys will tell you that everything they know about life, they learned from Holstein cows.
Evidently, what used to be our life’s blood has gotten into their genes.
Jason recently brought our granddaughter over to say her first word for us. I’ll confess to delusions that her first word might be “Nana,” maybe even “Mama Kathryn.”
Instead, Morgan opened her blue eyes wide and simply said, “Cow.”
We were a fine pair. Morgan trying to say “Moo.” The grandmother trying not to “Boo Hoo.”
I vowed to get a grip.
That vow lasted 24 hours. Thursday, we used the last of the gallon of store-bought milk, and as usual, I rinsed the jug to toss it in recycling. “No need to save this baby,” I said to myself. “There will be plenty more.”
Then the empty nest hit me. The days of buying milk by the gallon are over, forever. For just the farmer and me, a pint a week will do.
Memories of thousands of gallons of raw and/or store-bought milk washed over me.
Folks had said I would go off the deep end when the last “cow boy” left home. I never dreamed it would be over a milk jug.
Sometime this week, the empty nest syndrome is destined to become official at our house. Baby Miles will be loading his pickup, heading for Raleigh, and entering the realm of urban higher education.
I’m not sure he’s ready. His biggest concerns are (1) what he will use to pull a fishing boat over to Lake Jordan, and (2) how he will haul his deer out of the woods.
After 30 years of wall-to-wall children, how do the farmer and I feel? Mostly we are too exhausted to feel anything. Friends have hinted that we are in denial. I reckon reality will set in when the pickup vanishes from sight.
Friends say that the sound of a quiet house will be deafening.
Certainly the quietness will take some getting used to. No alarm clock ringing, pointlessly, for 2 hours every morning. No stereo playing George Strait, George Jones, and Boy George. No Mountain Dew moose cups spilling and/or forming rings on tables.
And, can it be, no laundry? If washing machines have feelings, I know a Maytag that’s fixing to have the granddaddy of all anxiety attacks.
We’ll miss the surprises that boys are full of. Last Saturday, I just about had the house straight for the Atlanta folks coming for lunch. I had cooked, cleaned and arranged flowers.
Just as the Atlantans drove up, Miles came into the kitchen and whispered in my ear. “Mama, better not let them go in the bathroom. I’m having a big fish fry tonight, so I have a cooler of catfish thawing out in the shower.”
About that time I reached in the refrigerator for the potato salad, and saw instead a bowl of rough looking critters. Miles patted me on the back and said, “You can’t have them either. Those are frog legs for tonight.”
Could Martha Stewart keep her cool, I wonder, with a house full of catfish and frog legs a-thawin’?
We’ll also miss the laughter that children provide. Our church was hosting a neighboring church Sunday night and needed the ladies to provide refreshments. I was not at home to take the call from the Social Committee, so Mrs. Osborne told Miles they needed me to bring some sort of pickup Sunday night.
Miles hesitated, then said, “Well, that shouldn’t be a problem for Mama… Daddy and I both have pickups.”
When the empty nest hits, in addition to the surprises and the laughter, we’ll miss the hugs. What I won’t miss is the KP duty, especially the garden variety. As a grand finale for what may be his last summer at home, Miles has gone bonkers over gardening. Last week he hauled in enough truckloads of corn to last till he graduates.
Of course, we had to work the corn up after work. Around 10:15 pm Tuesday, as I stirred corn, washed freezer jars, and got stickier by the minute, Miles put his arm around me and said, “ You are a great mama. Not many mamas would do this.”
The way I see it, if I would die for him, surely I can do corn for him. The unexpected hugs and smiles are reward enough.
Growing up in a Baptist parsonage meant that I picked up a lot of baggage. Also, a ton of hand-me-downs and homemade clothes. We did shop for 1 (one) outfit before Easter and the start of school. But, because our parents were saving for our college education, most clothing stores were off-limits. We shopped outlet stores before outlet stores were cool.
While coping with the stress of second hand and/or bargain basement clothes, I dreamed of the day I could waltz into a name brand store on Main Street and ask, “Where are your latest dresses?”
Then I married a farmer, and for the next 12 years, shopping took a backseat to whipping up maternity clothes. During that phase, I swore never to wear a parachute-style dress if I ever returned to a semi-normal state. That’s one vow I’ve kept.
During the next decade, 36-46, what clothing dollars we could eke out of the dairy cows were spent on boys’ clothes. My wardrobe consisted of a pair of everyday blue jeans and Sunday-go-to-meeting jeans. I retired my sewing machine.
Finally, I attained half a century, and the long-awaited moment arrived. I could go to a name brand store on Main Street and buy a snazzy dress. It wouldn’t have to be out of season or out of style. The problem, I reckoned, would that there would be so much to choose from that I would be as frustrated as the proverbial kid loose in the candy store.
I was right about the frustrated part. What I didn’t know was that while I was waiting on the sidelines to jump into high fashion, high fashion had gone out of fashion. Imagine my disappointment to discover that the dresses of my dreams had been replaced by skimpy foreign imports made of synthetic fabrics. Some of the get-ups may have been constructed from recycled Mountain Dew bottles, or car tires.
One of the great ironies of middle age is having more credit than you’ve ever had, but finding there is nothing to buy that you would be caught dead in.
This is more than a local problem – it may even be global. I’ve tried shopping at home, up north, and over the internet. Pretty clothes that fit are hard to come by. Apparently, while we were worrying about the fate of the manatee, the pretty dress was becoming extinct.
Which brings up the matter of the size of one’s anatomy. Although I am not a perfect size 8, neither am I built like a manatee. In fact, according to a recent newspaper article, I share the same size as the average American woman.
You would think, therefore, that somebody would produce attractive clothes for the average Baby Boomer. Ditto for shoes. Clothes for the average woman, however, are not a fad that’s in vogue.
What’s out there are sheath dresses and 18-inch unlined skirts with 12-inch slits for women under 25; and polyester stretch wear for women over 79. Sometimes, for the heck of it, I like to mix and match the two.
Shopping for clothes is akin to panning for gold. If you look hard and long enough, you will surely find a gem. Maybe.
Almost everything I know about life came from growing up in a Baptist parsonage. Daddy, who hailed from Burgaw, was marked by his Eastern NC upbringing. Nevertheless, as far as I was concerned, whatever Daddy said was the gospel.
True to his calling, Daddy appreciated food, with 2 notable exceptions: spaghetti and catfish. The one time some unfortunate sibling mentioned “catfish” at the supper table, Daddy turned green. When he regained control, he made a statement that I assumed came straight from the King James: “Dear children, some fish are scavengers. Nobody in his right mind fishes nor eats them.”
In other words, at our parsonage, you would have been better off to curse than to talk about catfish. I thought everyone felt that way.
Imagine my surprise when I moved to Cleveland County and somebody threw a fish fry. “They’ll fry up all kinds of cats, big ones and baby ones,” the farmer said. “What’s kind of cats do you like to eat, Kathryn?” my new husband asked.
When I regained control, it was time to address this heresy. “The only unkind words my father ever said were about catfish. And I promised my Daddy on a stack of Bibles never to eat them.”
For the next 20 years or so, I kept my vow. Because of the influence of a father, I refused to eat cats, big ones and/or baby ones.
Then one of our sons said, “Mama, get over it. That’s just the way your Daddy was brought up. And he probably learned it from his Daddy.”
Another son had a brainstorm: “Mama, at least try the tails. They are crunchy, kind of like potato chips.”
That’s how I got hooked on catfish tails. The farmer, on the other hand, said his Daddy told him never to eat catfish tails, because you never know…
Then along came Baby Miles, who is named for his Eastern NC great-grandfather. And Miles Jefferson is obsessed with fishing the Broad River for cats.
For variety, he also specializes in grabbling. Until a couple of years ago, I didn’t even know what grabbling was. This I know – Miles’ namesake would not have been caught dead grabbling catfish, among other things. “Grabbling” is not another Cleveland County word; it’s in both Webster’s and the NC Hunting and Fishing regulations. It may even be in the Bible.
When Miles took up fishing and grabbling for cats, there was one redeeming virtue: it’s preferable to the alternatives.
What’s the first thing a mother gets after God creates a catfish fisherperson? Fishing poles. Lots of ‘em. Miles’ bedroom is ringed with fishing poles.
What else does it take to fish for cats? I hope you have eaten breakfast before reading further. You get a refrigerator full of gutted catfish, soaking in your best plastic bowls. Ditto for store bought worms and other bait. You also get jeans, shoes, and a washing machine filled with Broad River sand.
As a plus, Miles says, just think of the heaps of catfish to eat.
If Daddy were living, he would be mighty perturbed. For in just 2 generations, his offspring have gone “to the cats.”
Cuddling your newborn grandchild brings unspeakable joy. However, the fun begins when the infant-turned-model-grandchild becomes interactive.
I don’t know about your grandchild, but our 10-month old granddaughter is perfect in every way. If you doubt that, just ask, ‘cause the farmer and I can verify it. Indeed, the farmer was dead serious the other day when he observed, “All babies are cute in their own ways, but our children and granddaughter are prettier than the other babies you see at church and on the street. Even our nieces and nephews were prettier than other people’s babies. As long as I live, I will never get over why this is. Do you reckon it’s because there were Hamricks on both sides of the family? ”
When I hinted that fathers and grandfathers around the world hold these same opinions of their offspring, he said, “Well, then, somebody should send ‘em glasses.”
As for Granddaughter Morgan, however, the farmer may be right. With her red hair, blue eyes, and Hamrick idiosyncrasies, she is a charmer.
So when her parents asked us to keep her last weekend, we jumped at the opportunity.
I worried that we didn’t have any toys, but as it turned out, we didn’t need any. Morgan obviously is going to be a journalist because she has a hankering for ingesting the news in the newspaper. Literally. And what turns her on is to shred the newspaper with her bare hands.
Her parents don’t cut Morgan any slack when it comes to the newspaper. They’re too young themselves to understand that tearing a newspaper to smithereens is sometimes just what the doctor ordered.
What about her Hamrick grandparents? We drug out the month’s recycling so that Morgan could rip newsprint to her heart’s content. And we watched every rip. Admiringly.
When Morgan wearied of that, she leaded for the dishwasher, which I let her load, unload, reload, load, and unload. Never mind that our clean dishes ended up on the floor – Morgan was learning about gravity and textures.
Eventually she tired of pitching forks onto the floor, and she crawled into the living room. Like any good Baptist on a Saturday night, she read the Sunday School lesson, then tore into the quarterly.
Lastly, to give her some international exposure, we let her play with the stacking, wooden dolls that I bought in Moscow’s flea market. She loves these hand painted souvenirs. “If she breaks them, I can always go back to Russia and get some more,” I rationalized.
By the time her parents came home, Morgan had ransacked the major rooms in the house. And the farmer and I had sat there, mesmerized.
“They’ve let our daughter have the run of the place,” I heard her parents say when they came for Morgan.
“Oh, by the way,” our oldest son said, “we have some great news. Something you will really be proud of.”
Trying to contain his emotion, he said, “Mama, I’ve bought Morgan a lifetime hunting and fishing license. Just think what this means! Not only can she hunt and fish all she wants to without getting arrested, so can her children.”
“Great idea,” I heard myself say softly. “A budding queen needs everything.”
While the weather is the farmer’s all-time favorite literary genre, travel articles come in second. After memorizing the weather, reading the world news, and glancing over the sports section, he devours the travel article.
One of the things that makes him different is that he takes the travel suggestions literally. I can count on it, regular as clockwork. Every Sunday morning he wakes me up, shaking the paper and saying, “Get up and read this. Here’s someplace we ought to go.”
He means now.
Last Sunday, he woke me with the news that Dupont State Park was a-waitin’ and time was a-wastin.’
I should never have asked whoever heard of Dupont State Park. The farmer turned on the light and read paragraph after paragraph touting the park’s granite domes, hiking and horsebacking trails, and nearby eating places.
“The park closes at dusk, so we’ll have to leave right after Sunday School,” he announced. “That will give us time to find where we are going. The article mentions stopping at an outdoor gear shop in Brevard to get directions.
“But, who knows,” the farmer concluded, “there just might be a place up there a man could come back and ride his horse and buggy.”
As a Baptist wife, his request threw me into a dilemma. What do you do when your “husband/boss” asks you to skip preaching? Do you haul buggy or not?
Evidently there weren’t many other Baptist husbands who read that article, because when we got to Dupont State Park, I was the only woman up there. In fact, the only other park visitors we saw were 3 men and a deer.
It makes you wonder whether anybody truly reads the paper anymore.
These were some of my thoughts as we hiked an unknown trail in the heat of last Sunday’s afternoon. The farmer and I are not mountain hikers. We are fiftysomethings waiting for a sunstroke to happen. The farmer said not to worry, that if I died on the trail he would go for help.
After hiking 2 miles, we returned to the car. The farmer’s next idea was to take our Toyota and the park’s dirt road, Pinnacle Road, across the mountain. A fellow hiker had said the road was passable, but that it would take 50 minutes to make the 5-mile crossing.
Obviously I survived the adventure or I wouldn’t be writing this article.
Ditto for the Toyota, who is getting used to hauling buggy through the mountains. We had taken a similar ride last fall across the mountains that border Linville Gorge.
Is it just me, or would you be scared driving your Avalon across a washboard at 3500 feet in elevation? Remember, your cell phone won’t work, your family doesn’t know where you are, and you are the only people up there for miles around.
At least that’s what we thought, till we ran up on a sure ‘nough mountain man in a pickup. Of course the farmer stopped to talk. “We’re just out for a Sunday afternoon drive,” the farmer explained.
“That’s nice,” Mountain Man said. “I’m up here looking for Rudolph.”
And he wasn’t referring to Santa Claus.
At our house, July 4 is a day for turning philosophical. “To pick blackberries or not to pick blackberries?” that is the question. Or, to pose this question with spiritual overtones: “Will the future pies and jelly be worth the present suffering?”
Blessed are you if you have a blackberry-pickin’ dude in the family. All I have at home is a blackberry scout. There is a difference.
Come late June, the farmer is out on patrol, scouting out the ripenin’ o’ the berries. Last Tuesday, the farmer made his annual announcement: “Honey, the blackberries are in.”
It takes more than a simple announcement to send me, a reformed city slicker, into the thickets near the water line and sewage treatment plant. So the farmer drops back and punts: “Don’t you feel guilty about letting the Japanese beetles beat us out of this year’s crop?”
“Let ‘em have ‘em,” I’m tempted to argue. But blackberry season coincides with our anniversary; thus I smile and count to 10.
Looking back over the years, the farmer would be hard-pressed to prove he has picked a John Deere capful of blackberries. He swears he’d go with me into the patch, if he didn’t have yards to mow, horses to feed, and trucks to jump off.
It’s a wonder his father didn’t disown him. PaPa was undoubtedly the blackberry-pickingest man God created. PaPa began at daybreak, taking a 5-gallon bucket with him to the patch. Even more amazing, Papa didn’t hog his berries. A person who gives blackberries away is a person who’ll land a front row seat in heaven.
In fact, I imagine PaPa swinging out about now to pick blackberries along the ditches by the back roads of heaven. Surely PaPa doesn’t have to worry about chiggers in heaven, but what I want to know is whether he will break into a sweat?
After PaPa’s death, the blackberry torch, for better or worse, was passed to me. Our youngest son will pick a coffee can full of berries, then he wilts. The other sons have gone on to bigger and better things. Thank goodness for a daughter-in-law who has the chigger scars and the gumption to be a berry-picker.
It’s too late for the farmer. Looking back on it, I got off on the wrong foot as a bride, and I’ve been scratching ever since.
Six weeks after exchanging “I dos,” the farmer announced that the blackberries were in and blackberry cobbler was his favorite dessert. Nothing in premarital counseling had prepared me for the homemade cobbler ultimatum.
I decided that if picking blackberries was my wifely duty, at least I could work on my suntan. So this city girl put on her bikini and headed for the blackberry patch.
Cell phones, women’s liberation, and 911 had not been invented. Otherwise I would have called the Rescue Squad.
Over the following summers, there were pregnancies, babies, and copperheads. The closest I came to bodily harm was the summer I was in the short rows of pregnancy and scorched myself on the jelly cooker. This may have warped our third son, who to this day, cares for neither blackberry cobbler nor jam.
To pick or not to pick? Once America is paved over, the question will be moot. In the meantime, time is a-wastin’ and the beetles are a-winnin’.
When this column disappeared into thin air the latter part of June, folks assumed that we must be away on an exotic vacation. One lady even asked, “Couldn’t you have written your column from whatever island you were on? By the way, where did you go this time…HI-WAAAAH-yuh?”
How do you explain choosing to vacation on an island in Michigan? During all those years of confinement on a dairy farm outside Boiling Springs, NC, I can assure you that I never longed to be whisked away to Michigan. In fact, Michigan probably ranked 49th on the list of states I dreamed of visiting.
Then a friend brought by some post cards from Mackinac Island ( pronounced “Mac-a-NAW), saying she had found the perfect vacation spot for the farmer. “No cars on the island,” she said, “but lots of horses and buggies.”
The next thing that happened was that Michigan won the Final Four, and the farmer said that if we had needed a sign, that was it.
Nowadays, no sooner do you get a sign than you get on the Internet. Mackinac Island may be short on cars but it is long on websites. Via the Internet, we learned that the island is home to nearly 600 horses and 350 working carriages.
When the farmer found out that the highlight of their annual mid-June Lilac Festival is the largest horse-drawn parade in America, I knew I’d better warm up to the prospects of “Michigan or Bust.”
It’s good we had warmed up mentally because we like to froze to death on our vacation. We woke up Saturday morning in Mackinaw City, turned on the Weather Channel, and heard the weather lady say that the 9 am temperature was 46 degrees, with a wind chill factor of 37 degrees. And she was not joking.
Before our June vacation was over, we had chopped wood and built 2 fires by the shores of Lake Michigan, drunk a bait of hot chocolate, and shopped for bearskins.
Was the Lilac Festival Parade all it was cracked up to be? You be the judge.
The parade had drawn a huge crowd from Detroit (Southern pronunciation, “DEEEEEE-troit.”) The crowd went plum crazy when the Union soldier rode by on his horse and the band struck up “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
You may be one of those who go ballistic over clapping in church. What do you do when you are the only Southerners on an island of Northerners, and the band is playing their song? The farmer said it was OK, possibly even politically correct, for Southerners to clap for the blue coats. “Every vacation has its close calls and near misses,” the farmer added.
Indeed, our “Clap, but don’t tell” policy may have worked too well.
By the end of our vacation, I actually heard the farmer say, “You know, maybe the Yankees aren’t as bad as we’ve always made them out to be. Think about the people we’ve met up here. We have yet to run up on a Yankee you wouldn’t be proud to invite over for supper.”
In fact, by the time we headed home, I lost count of how many “Ya’ll comes” the farmer had issued.
I expected we’d come home from our vacation broke and rested. Who would have thought that we’d have come back might near plum crazy?
Mama and the family assembled at the house last weekend for Baby Miles’ graduation from Crest High School. But after Friday’s speeches were over, how would we entertain the family?
In the end, as always, my husband recommended taking the family on the buggy ride of a lifetime: i.e, riding the Moses Cone Trails outside Blowing Rock, NC.
For me, that meant getting up early Saturday morning to fix country ham biscuits and all the trimmings. For her part, Mama said that peanut butter sandwiches would be just fine. For his part, the farmer said how about whipping up a choice of ham, sausage, liver mush and homemade blackberry jelly biscuits?
With the cooking done, we loaded up 2 horses, 1 buggy, 7 relatives, and 28 biscuits for the day’s adventure. I packed the stuff we would conceivably need -- including the liability policy that covers virtually every sort of buggy mishap.
Unfortunately, I did not think of everything; specifically, sutures.
It was cool in the mountains, so we wrapped up in afghans to stay warm in the open-air buggy. At last we arrived to the top of the mountain, at the Moses Cone Manor House, and I jumped out of the buggy to lead the way to the bathroom. Instead of landing upright, the afghan wrapped around my feet and I slid out of the buggy, falling over a temporary barricade erected on the side of the mountain for who knows what purpose.
Being the tour director means sucking it up and going on. But when I stood up, my sister hollered a message that reverberated around the mountain: “Kathryn, you have ripped your pants.”
“You’re just teasing me,” I said, and then I noticed Mama reaching for her camera. Ditto for the tourists. When I felt the back of my pants, there wasn’t anything there but flesh, and not much of that.
The Lee jeans had suffered a 5x7 inch tear. My sister suggested taking me to Wal-Mart first and then to the emergency room. Mama asked would I please turn around so that she could take a picture for the other sister.
Trying to protect my dignity, the farmer said that he would wait to take pictures of my backside till we got to our picnic spot off the main buggy road. There was nothing to do but wrap a jacket around my waist, bundle the afghan to serve as an inner tube, and mentally sort through my medical record for the status of my tetanus protection.
Mama, the ultimate medical stoic, recalled that we had tetanus shots a year ago prior to our India trip. “Kathryn Mae will be just fine,” she pronounced, “and she doesn’t need stitches. If we take her to the hospital, they’ll charge her.”
The farmer said that taking me to the hospital would cut short the buggy ride and what would happen to the horses and the ham biscuits?
I am the oldest child, a mother, and a Southern wife – a survivor. And I know what the T-shirt says: “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” So I smiled, eased down onto my “inner tube,” and told the farmer to cluck to the horses.
At least one good thing has resulted from this accident. Don’t’ tell Mama but I have a new pair of Lee jeans. And if I ever turn up as a missing person, I have a one-of-a-kind 6-inch scar that will leave you wondering. !
Living in a one-stoplight town makes giving directions easy. In Boiling Springs, aka Hot Water Town, our lone stoplight is not only the center of the universe, it’s also the starting point to get anywhere else.
Want to know how to get to the Big City, Atlanta? Go up to the stoplight, turn left, keep a-goin’ till you hit 85 and it will take you right in.
Don’t know the best way to the Broad River? Go to the stoplight, turn left, and head south to the big water.
Outside the city limits of Boiling Springs, however, giving directions gets complex. If you doubt that, just try giving directions from the Old Skating Rink to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in Alexander Mills.
Rutherford County’s version of The Globe is just one of the incredible sights hidden in the woods of our neighboring county. But to get there, you have to go through the country.
And routing people through the country is a dying art. Nowadays, you can’t tell people to turn by the line of pecan trees because half of ‘em can’t tell a pecan tree from a sycamore. Nor can you direct them to hang a right by yon cotton field because more than half of our residents can’t distinguish cotton from kudzu.
I feel, however, for folks lost in Cleveland County and are at the mercy of the next friendly guy in a pickup. Pickup drivers still use the points of the compass to get you to your destination.
If by fate you happened to flag down my husband for directions, after 10 minutes of howdys, here’s what you’d hear: “Go north till you get out of town, then you’ll want to go east for about 4 miles till you come to what used to be the cotton gin. From there you’ll be heading southeast until you come to First Broad River. Just before the First Broad River runs into the Broad River, still going generally toward the southeast, you’ll turn onto what used to be the Blanton Farm and go till you come to the paved road. You can’t miss it.”
It may be easier to give directions in the City of Shelby. The same folks who don’t know a sycamore from a magnolia are well versed in urban landmarks. City folks can tell the difference between Taco Bell and Tina’s Tanning. And if you direct an urbanite to turn left at McDonald’s, 100% will know what to do.
Unfortunately, as I explained last week to a visitor from Tampa, the problem with Shelby is the traffic. As we crossed town for lunch, I zig zagged, doubled back, and cut through parking lots. I explained to Ms. Hackney that I was trying to stay off the main road on account of the traffic and all the stoplights.”
“What do you consider ‘the main road’?” Ms. Hackney ventured. I reckon she didn’t notice.
“Oh, in Shelby, the Bypass is the main road.”
This visitor not only never got it, she implied that I was clueless. Her idea of traffic is 6 freeways and interstates crossing over and under in downtown Tampa.
During her stay, we never drove to Boiling Springs. Imagine her reaction had we been stacked up at The Stoplight, 3 pickups and 1 car deep in every direction.
It’s a case of gridlock, country-style.
It’s Mothers’ Day, and I’m trying hard not to overreact. But the events of last weekend are proof that we are reaching the tail end of childrearing.
Friday, our baby went to his senior prom. Sunday, he and his fellow graduates were honored by our church, complete with the playing of “Pomp and Circumstance” on the pipe organ.
Were if not for estrogen, I might not have survived the high and low moments of last weekend’s emotional roller coaster. It’s hard to get a grip when your final and midlife baby is fixing to graduate from high school.
The adventure that we began with the public schools on August 25, 1976, is drawing to a close. The good news is that science projects will now be history. The bad news is that we are losing our last magazine subscription coordinator. And where will we get our wrapping paper, giant candy bars, and fall festival raffle tickets?
Financially speaking, after 24 and a half years, we have just 2 weeks of lunch money left. Indeed, as I composed this very sentence, our high school senior interrupted with those 5 inevitable words: “Hey, I need lunch money.”
With 4 sons in the public schools, we had to cough up a lot of dough for lunch money. I used to wonder where that large chunk money went, and then I looked at our healthy, growing sons. So the farmer and I say heartfelt thanks to a host of school lunchroom ladies for the 9,360 nutritious meals and the 18,000 homemade rolls you served our 4 youngsters. Thanks, too, for the smiles you dished up in the process.
There is another group of ladies to whom parents of seniors are indebted. These are the Ladies in the Office. They run the school. You know who you are. You also know who we are, because our children have told it all. But thank goodness, you have the grace not to blackmail us. Thanks, too, for loaning the children the things you weren’t supposed to: money, pencils, and the phone.
It is the teachers, of course, to whom parents of seniors are most indebted. Think of the practical skills our children use everyday. Because of the work of teachers, our children can read and analyze a work document, calculate expense ratios, swish with fluoride mouthwash, and put current events in perspective. Indeed, three sentences in a paragraph are not fair to you. But thanks for teaching our children about World War II, trees, the human body, decimals and democracy, and metaphors and metamorphosis. Without you, how impoverished our children would be.
Ditto for the librarians, counselors, and teacher’s aides. . Look around a public school and you will find a host of partners supporting the student-teacher relationship. Hopefully even the parents are involved.
Thanks for coaches, who have the unique opportunity to get inside our children’s heads and can inspire winning attitudes. And for custodians and maintenance personnel, who keep the campuses safe, clean, and livable.
And I appreciate good principals. I call them good because 100% of them took time for friendship with our children, beginning in kindergarten. Would that all children received and were receptive to this proffered friendship.
Last to be mentioned but first on the scene: school bus drivers. School drivers exemplify courage. I learned this from a T-shirt that read, “You can’t scare me. I drive a school bus!”
On Mother’s Day, I rise to salute all of you who work and volunteer in our schools. Thanks for the memories – and so much more.
A funny thing happened while we were in San Antonio several weekends ago: a new white buggy showed up at what used to be our dairy barn.
The farmer said it was enough to make him believe in Santa Claus.
“Bah, humbug,” I thought to myself. “Just because you’ve been a good boy all year long doesn’t mean Santa will have your heart’s desire trucked in from Indiana.”
The children hinted that I should be tickled that their daddy doesn’t change trucks and/or wives every 50,000 miles. They pointed out that even a wagon and a 20-mule team wouldn’t set us back as much as a new Ford 250.
Indeed, some husbands are high maintenance. Trading pickups every other year may be a social and/or occupational necessity in Cleveland County, but it’s expensive. For all his conversations about the virtue of pickups, the farmer is content to drive old trucks. Nor is his ego is threatened by a truck that misfires, misses gears, or is missing its original paint.
In fact, one of the farmer’s predominant character traits is his overall contentment. What other trait would you expect in a man who has spent the bulk of his life surrounded by contented dairy cows?
I should have seen this new buggy coming when the farmer pulled a chair up to the computer and asked where the “on” button was. The farmer said that if you could buy everything from “A to Z” on eBay, he bet there would be a buggy under “the letter B.” Or would “white buggy” be under “W”?
This year’s Valentine contained a second clue that Santa was considering an early Christmas present for the farmer. Among the roses that arrived at the office was a handmade Valentine that said the farmer loved me so much he was considering giving me either an outboard motor or a white buggy. The women at the office said they would put all their money on a white buggy.
Never mind that the farmer has 3 perfectly good black buggies. And never mind that the farmer has always stated that white buggies are NOT the genuine article.
“Who ever heard of a white buggy in the good ole days?” he asks. “At the turn of the century, a guy driving a white buggy through the red mud holes of Cleveland County would have been laughed out of town.”
“Black has always been the authentic color of choice in carriages,” he adds. “Look at Model A’s and T’s. They came out in black, too.” To the farmer, that cinched the buggy color debate.
So, why this midlife change of heart? “Well,” the farmer has said, “it just breaks my heart when a sweet bride-to-be calls and asks if I have a white Cinderella buggy. Brides envision two things: Prince Charming and me in a white buggy.”
Sure enough, when you look in Modern Bride, you will see white, even pink, carriages being used to whisk off the bridal couple. The farmer says that if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed since the horse and buggy days, it’s that if you want to stay in business, “you’ve got to embrace change.”
But I do draw the line at a “pink carriage.” If he gets a hankering to go that route, I’m going to suggest he take up a new business altogether, with Mary Kay.
