1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/Summer

                                            Summer

I hear summer.
I hear crickets,
A fox's howl.
A mosquito buzzing at my most vulnerable ear.
I hear the struggling of the young hands at the piano as they try to
recapture the rapture of Tchaikovsky.
I hear the banal blare of the idiot box
And cattle in the distance,
A frog,
An airplane,
And unnameable noises that caress my ears, breathing summer.

And the scratching of my pen, desperate to capsule that which refuses,
yes-defies captivity. 

Susan J. Skinner

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/CAMP WANICA INTEGRATES

In September of 1967,  my senior year,  Corsicana High School integrated for the first time.  Well, I guess you could call it that.  About 8 students who went to Jackson High School, the school across on the east side of town that was totally attended by people we referred to as Negroes, transferred to CHS.  I had no idea what they called us, nor had most of us given it any thought, as our paths just didn't cross that much with those our own age.   They had their school and church events; we had ours.

I don't know that anyone on either side had that much curiosity about it.  We just lived parallel lives on the east and west side of town, marking graduation, football games, summer vacation in our own ways, but with the shared joy and angst of teenagers.   Certainly, there were those who spoke in pejoratives and who made fun of those of whom they had no real knowledge.  They had been taught that by their parents, some of them, on both sides of town. 

One of the kids, a very nice boy my age, rode our bus.  He sat quietly, bothered no one, and when it was time for him to get off the bus, stood up, made his way to the front and exited as quietly as he entered.  After a month or so of this, and after we learned his name, we waved and yelled goodbye to him out the bus windows.

"Bye Walter," seven or eight of us would yell, hands waving wildly out the bus windows.  He'd make a small wave gesture with his hand and smile that weak smile as he walked slowly down the gravel road toward the shack he lived in.  The green roof was barely visible among the junked cars.  We thought the cars were his dad's business, but he never talked about it.  We didn't ask either. He was a good student and a genuinely nice kid.


The only other student I knew of the transferees was a young girl named Faith, who had an ebullient spirit, huge smile, and mega talent.  She was my sister's age, two years younger than I and had started to school with them either 8th or 9th grade year, transferring to the high school in the 10th. She played the piano like a pro and was immediately recognized for her ability and personality.  Everyone I knew liked and respected her.

That was the extent of our exposure to integration.  The real test came several years later when a new high school was built, and both groups were merged into one new building.  Coming from a world where black and white had only seen one another from afar or in certain prescribed social roles into the new world of forced equality made for interesting dynamics in our little town on both sides of the aisle. 

Our high school principal, Mr. Don Bowen, was very popular with the students.  After a couple years as principal, he was made superintendent at age 28.  Then he had to deal with the contentious issue of integrating the schools.  It must have been very hard for him, with people of both races taking up hard stands with entrenched views on the changes. 

I graduated in 1968, and that summer would be the first summer that Camp Wanica, the Camp Fire Girls' Camp ouside of Corsicana, integrated.  I knew I wanted to be one of the counselors for the girls who would come from the east side of Corsicana.  Pat Gnoza wanted to, too, so we both volunteered, and our requests were granted.  The kids loved Pat because she was so funloving and humorous.  They seemed to like me, too, but for different reasons that I wasn't sure I could name.  Maybe because I laughed a lot and didn't yell too loudly at them when they needed correction.

The camp probably should have served as the model for the United Nations because we had no problem integrating.  The 15  little girls, aged 8-10, filled two cabins of the eight or so at the camp.  They were funny, intelligent, and inquiring. 

They were very interested in my boyfriend, and on the one night I was allowed to go on a date with him, they waited up for me and met me with all sorts of questions about what we did, where we went, and what he looked like. 

"Can we go up to the gate with you to meet him when he comes to get you?" Valerie had asked before I left.

"No, I don't think Ms. Fish would allow that," I said. 

"Well, can you just bring him to the cabin for a minute?" she continued.

"No can do," I said.  "I'd get kicked out of the camp for sure."

"Hmmph," she said, folding her arms across her chest.

"How we gonna ever get to meet him then?"

"Well, maybe later this summer you can meet him when we're not at camp," I suggested.  That seemed to pacify her for the moment.

"Y'all go to the carnival?" she asked.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, we usually do.  He's really good at winning teddy bears and stuffed animals on the games."

"Then we'll see you there," she said with authority.

As it turned out, she was right.  Later that summer, I met five of the girls at the carnival, and introduced them, giggling, squirming, slapping their legs, and acting silly, to my boyfriend, Coy.  They told me later they thought he was handsome and he sure was good at the games, so I assumed he met their approval.

In years past, they could have seen him daily as he delivered ice to the camp with his dad, who worked for Southern Ice.  Each day they brought 50 pound blocks of ice and filled up the wooden holder outside the lodge dining hall.  Ice was chipped for drinks, used to ice down everything that needed to stay cold that wouldn't fit into the refrigerator and for miscellaneous things. 

This year, he had taken a job working at the Hat Factory, where his mother worked, because it paid more.  He also hauled hay on the weekends, hefting it from the field onto a trailer, then taking it to some rancher's barn where they unloaded it.  Both jobs were hot and dirty, but he seemed to thrive on hard work, and his 130 pound body had no fat on it at all.

Camp sessions, lasting ten days, were filled with constant activity, except for the enforced rest period immediately after lunch each day.  Each girl had to stay on her metal bunkbed.  Some slept, others read or wrote letters, but quiet time was enforced, and the soft buzzing of the fans in that tiny cabin lulled us as though they echoed the soft whir of eternity.  Life stretched out before us, clear as a summer's morning and vibrant as the nighttime sound of cicadas. I lay on my bed smiling, staring up at the raw ceiling boards.  The girls were thinking of returning to their families while I contemplated leaving mine, moving to a college dorm.  And that bronze wiry young guy pulling levers at Adam Hat Factory was increasingly a part of my thoughts, including those for the future.

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/Reflections #1

                                                              

  REFLECTIONS #1


I want some promise of tomorrow
And so I say, "Until tomorrow then,"
And hum a secret tune within my mind,
And smile at promises of tomorrow, when
Whatever happens will reflect today,
The tarnished golden hours shined anew,
The variations on an older theme.
So all tomorrow promised will come true.
When time reveals the last tomorrow's shade
And locked-in words give up their solitude.
Then I am promised that rapt melody
That haunted me through every thought and mood.
But until then I wait with head held high,
Today was tomorrow yesterday, I'm told.
Creating memories is not my aim.
I leave them now, tomorrow to unfold.

Susan J. Skinner





copyright 2011 / all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/Red Balloons

The following are poems written by my sister when she was between 15 and 17 years old (1962-1964).  This one had no title, so I took the liberty of adding one, which she would probably say was too obvious, certainly not as well thought out as the poem. I'm going to be adding some of her poems in between posts.  Some of them may be paired with stories, while others may stand alone.  As far as I know, they are all original, written in her hand, with corrections and changes made on many of the pages.  Hope you enjoy them. 

                                                   

                                                RED BALLOONS


If life were just as I would have it,
The world would be full of red balloons,
Each with red string for a child to hang on
Each, round and rosy like harvest moons.

Soft, rose bubbles for a child to cling to,
Filled with hope and not with air
Each, a dream for a lonely child now,
A dream to banish every care.

Why must I grow up and worry?
Why must I grow old and care?
And live in a world where red balloons
Are filled with uninspiring air? 

Susan J. Skinner  

copyright 2011/all rights reserved

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/Camp Wanica

Camp Wanica provided a month of pure fun in the summer.  I attended as a young Camp Fire girl, when I was 8 to 12 or so, but the sessions were only 10 days long.  We were just getting wound up when it was suddenly over.  But the summers after my tenth and eleventh grades in high school, a group of about ten of us became Junior C.I.T.s (counselors in training) and then Senior C.I.T.s, and finally after graduation, full fledged counselors.

We oversaw the campers and assisted them as they did various chores around the camp: busing the tables in the screened-in dining room in the log lodge, mopping the latrines, cleaning the lavatories and toilets, and emptying trash.  They also had to clean their cabins and make their bunkbeds. 

We led sessions on beading vests (they earned beads for certain attainments, and these were put on their Camp Fire vest), leathercraft, Indian lore (about which we knew very little-we just read out of a book and tried to make it sound authentic), and we helped them learn to fold the American flag and give it proper respect. 

The first summer I was a counselor in 1968, some of my peers in the larger cities,  unhappy with the U.S. policies and the war in Vietnam,  started burning flags, while we at the camp still held tightly to tradition and love of country.  We stood on the precipice of cataclysmic social change, unaware and naive, happy at  Camp Cocoon.

One of my compadres, Pat,  taught swimming as she was an excellent swimmer.  I didn't teach swimming, having barely passed the Senior Lifesaver test myself,  relieved to have survived it.

We almost let one of our team drown as we watched her sink and surface about three times,  thinking she'd start swimming to the side of the pool at any time.  Finally, I think Pat had the good sense to dive in, push her up, and help her to the side, where she sputtered for about ten minutes while we all explained why we hadn't jumped in to save her.  In that regard, I had very little explaining to do as everyone knew I was only capable of keeping myself afloat, not anyone else. I still managed to guilt myself about it for the rest of the day though.

Pat was known for her fishlike ability in the water.  She could swim laps for hours, strong and adaptable.  Once, while at "free swim", I laughed hard at one of her witticisms, and the cap on my front tooth flew up and out, several feet from my mouth, made an arc, and landed in the pool.  Though we immediately started looking for it, we couldn't find it on the rough white bottom of the pool.  I kept my mouth firmly closed though six or eight little campers were hanging all over me begging, then commanding me to, "Smile, smile!"

"No," I said through clenched teeth and tight lips as they tried to peer in my mouth. 

"Let us see what you look like," they chimed in unison.

"No," I said again, folding my lips inside.

"Pleeeeease," they begged, laughing.

"Not funny!" I said, without opening my mouth, which caused looks of consternation on all their faces.

"What did you say?" they all asked at once. 

At that, I just shook them off my arms and back and turned abruptly, walking toward the ladder to escape them.

"Hey, hey, hey!!"

I turned toward the exclamations.  There was Pat, treading water in the middle of the deep part of the pool, holding something tiny and white in her hand.  "I found it!  I found it!" she yelled.  "It had washed to the drain.  I've got it!"

"Thank you!" I yelled, momentarily forgetting to keep my mouth closed.  I was standing on the side of the pool now, above the gaggle of campers who wanted to see what I looked like with only half a front tooth.  I knew it was not pretty.

I looked down at them, standing in a tight group, their mouths agape, eyes at full alert.  "We're sorry.  We didn't know it would look that bad," Belinda said, ostensibly on behalf of the entire knot of girls.  She looked like she might cry as did several others.

Now that I knew I would have the cap back in place in seonds, I felt much more secure.  I turned directly toward the girls, looked down, and gave them my biggest smile.  "Awwww, it ain't that bad," I drawled like a hillbilly, "sometimes ya just have ta be tough out here in th' country."

Pat pulled herself up on the side of the pool and handed me the precious white porcelain.  I popped it onto the tiny nub of tooth the dentist's drill had left where my front tooth had been and walked toward the cabin.  I glanced back toward the pool where the little girls seemed to have lost their zeal for swimming.  Several of them stared after me, but turned away sadly when I looked back at them. 

"We older girls have feelings too," I told them as we walked to the cabin that night after we returned from the program in the lodge.  Several of them had already said they were sorry.  "But it was funny.  Thank goodness Pat is such a good diver or I'd have had to keep my mouth closed the rest of camp!" 

Laughing, we linked arms and walked through the dry bermuda grass down the hill to our cabin, the midpoint in a semicircle of cabins that ringed thebase of the hill. The lodge was behind us at the top of the hill.

The canvas flaps, just long wooden frames covered with heavy canvas, were raised all the way around the cabin, creating the appearance of an odd-shaped craft that might lift off in flight at any moment.  We rarely put them down, only if it rained or was unseasonably cool, which it rarely was in those searing Texas summers.

Each cabin had responsibility during the session for raising, lowering, and folding the flag.  It was a solemn ceremony, and here was where we demonstrated the seriousness of handling the flag properly.  Singing Taps usually made a lump come in my throat, and sometimes, even when I was a counselor, not a camper, it made me homesick.  Everyone stood at attention, still and quiet through the entire routines.

We also took the campers fishing at least once during the session.  We trekked through the scorching sun, tennis shoes stirring the dust in the fields as we walked among the stunted mesquite trees and prickly pear cactus leading to the muddy tank where we often fished in vain. 

On one hike, a camper named Gertie,(not her real name)  who was a whiner, was walking behind me in the line separated by three or four kids.  There were at least three of us counselors accompanying the ten or so children aged 6-9 .  Gertie had whined about the heat, the walk, the dry grass, the flying grasshoppers hitting her, and finally began to complain about something biting her. 

At first, it just seemed like more of the same, so we basically ignored her.  Her pleas and cries became more insistent, and I finally let the other children pass and waited for Gertie.  She stopped beside me and started crying in earnest, saying something was stinging her.  I spotted a red ant on her sock, then another and another.  I began frantically knocking them off, when I realized they were on her pants.  I grabbed her jeans by the waist, unzipped the pants, and yanked them off, leaving the poor little thing standing there in her Snow White underwear.

  By this time, Pat had stopped and was helping me as we knocked red ants off her legs.  She had at least 10 stings.  We applied ointment out of the First Aid kit.  Someone carefully checked the inside of her jeans for ants clinging to the denim, and knocked the ants off before we had her step back into them.  It was the first, and probably the only time,  anyone felt sorry for her.

 All I could think of was thank goodness she was not terribly allergic to stings.  How she could have crossed an antbed none of us saw, and crossed it slowly enough for ants to cling to her is still a mystery.  But it happened, and thankfully, it was before our society became so litigious.  We might have told her parents.  I don't really remember.  But there was nothing more made of it.   She continued to whine throughout the camp, but we paid a little more attention now. 

Sundays, we all dressed in white shorts and white blouses with red ties around our necks.  The red neckpieces were short and gave a little flair to the Sunday uniform.  Miss Fish led the procession to the pasture where there was a large circle of white painted rocks.   We carried towels on which to sit.  There we had a prayer service, sang hymns, and generally acknowledged God.  It was a quiet time and solemn and everyone respected the calm of the hour.

With the same respect, but a bigger air of excitement was the night each session when we had a nighttime "Council Fire", harking, I'm sure, to some Indian tradition, the links murky to we youthful Texas girls.  The entire camp dressed up, this time in navy blue shorts with an offwhite Camp Wanica logo  and crisp white shirts.  I think we wore the same red ties. 

We processed with "measured steps", as instructed, in a very long line, all 100 or so of us, just at dusk, singing "We come, we come to the Council Fire, with measured tread and slow, to light the fire of our desire, to light the fire of Wohelo, wohelo, wohelo."  Wohelo meant work, health, love.

"The little twinkling stars above, are whispering nature's lore, while all about us the soft winds sigh,  and great Wokanda watches o'er.  Wohelo.  Wohelo."

We ended up on the banks of the tank (called a pond everywhere but Texas), again sitting on our towels.

At a signal, some of the counselors came across the tank on a log raft, their sanitary napkin torches, fasioned earlier in the day, lighting up the night.   They were dressed in hopsacks, their hair in breads, paint on their faces, looking surprisingly like the Indians in Hollywood movies. 

When they were almost to the bank, several counselors on horseback, also dressed in Indian attire and holding torches aloft,  thundered up from the pasture and brought their steeds to abrupt stops 20 yards or so behind the admiring campers. 

Following that, we listened to some Indian lore and sang both Indian songs and camp songs.  Sometimes those somber ceremonies dredged up deep emotions unsummoned.

"I miss my mommy," I heard Gertie say quietly.  "I miss my mommy," she said again a little louder.  As I moved to sit by her, she said very loudly "I miss my mommy!" and began sobbing. 

Miss Fish, the camp director,  had looked our way with a frown, put her finger to her lips and made a shushing sound.  I knew Gertie would not be quiet, but I put my arm around her and tried to console her by talking. 

I heard someone sniffing, looked behind me and saw that Edie, another of the campers was crying.  She put her head down and her shoulders were shaking.  Pat went to her and tried to talk her out of crying.  She continued.

Eventually, at least ten of the children were crying uncontrollably, so Miss Fish stood up, announced the Council Fire was officially over, and we started our half mile walk back to camp, other campers and counselors trying to comfort the criers, some children remaining stoic though their faces were contorted because they wanted to cry but wouldn't. 

"Go we forth from the Council Fire, into the night, into the night.  In our hearts renewed desire, burning bright, burning bright."  The campers mostly didn't seem convinced.

"Sing, Gertie," I urged her. 

"Loveliness of thought we've found, warmth and friendship's love.  Forest stillness closes round, sky and stars above.  Blend into the mystic call of wohelo, wohelo.  May Wokanda's blessing fall upon us as we go."

That night, after lights out, I heard sniffling and noseblowing throughout the cabin. 

"Camp's over in two days," I said out loud in the dark.  Silence.  "You'll all be home on Saturday." 
Silence.

The sniffles stopped momentarily. 

A small voice from one of the top bunks,  "Saturday?"

"Yes, two days from now."

"Oh.  I'll miss camp."

Little voices chime in.  "We want to stay.  We'll miss camp.  We don't want it to be over.  That's sad."

The stillness covered the cabin like a soft sheet.  No more sniffles.  I could hear mosquitos buzzing outside the screened windows, soft night sounds, leaves moving gently against the branches as a warm breeze kissed the trees.  They would leave on Saturday, and this summer would be a tiny footnote of their lives.  Who knew what effect the camp experience had on them?  I doubted any of them would choose leatherworking or torchmaking as a career. 

"Wohelo, wohelo," I sang to myself quietly before drifting off to sleep.

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/GET OVER YOUR MENTAL ILLNESS

                                                  Jan age 11                       Felisa age 14
                                                                      Dec. 1964
                                                                     



"The Lord, the Lord is my strength and my song..." Isaiah 12:2b Zondervan NIV Study Bible


I debated about posting this online.  It's fairly self revelatory, but told with a sense of humor, which I have had toward myself my entire life.  That humor has made life fun, and it makes people laugh, but my concern is that someone might think I don't take mental illness (I prefer to call it brain illness) seriously, which I do.  

 A lifechanging  event like the death of my 17 year-old sister Susan in a car accident in October of 1964, when I was 14, can cause even the most stable among us to lose our footing.  This post tells something about my initial foray into developing coping mechanisms, but explains my inability (thankfully) to  become totally neurotic because of the one-person intervention by my then 11 year-old sister Jan.  (We didn't even know the word  intervention in 1964, at least not in the current vernacular).  My pragmatic family, my own personality orientation, and for me, most important, my faith in God were the legs of the tripod  that kept me firmly grounded after my tranquil world was changed so abruptly.

Just to be clear, I didn't unravel.   I marvel, looking back, that I continued to seem normal to my peers and for the most part to my family, who simply told me to "quit" when I did something untoward.  

When I read this over,  I thought, "my goodness, there was a seriously troubled kid," but I wasn't.  Or if I was, I was delightfully unaware of it.  I was just working very, very hard to make sense of my personal world,  which had been upended.


Writing this made me realize anew that there are all sorts of behaviors that kids develop to cope during their teenage years, be it relative to personal insecurities, divorce, death or any other upheaval.  And they can't all just "quit" like Jan demanded that I do.    Fortunately, I was able to stop, or at least to go underground with my little idiosyncrasies.

Thank goodness for typing class, beginning when I was 15.   I think I transferred my compulsive behaviors there and thus moved on through high school being able to have a sense of order in my life. 

My younger daughter still teases me about changing my hand position constantly on the steering wheel, and she remembers that I always moved my hands constantly on her back when she lay in my lap at church when she was small. 

So perhaps in that way the behaviors persist, but I am thankful, for as I have learned more about brain illness, I realize that I am probably one of the lucky ones.  Nothing in this post should be taken to make light of those illnesses as they are such  a serious problem to so many.  You can, however, laugh at my antics if you like.  Fortunately, I am strong enough to take it.


I know that we moved when I was 9, so the "teeth counting" started before that age, because I remember lying slouched in an old brocade rocker in the living room at Purdon simultaneously watching television and clicking my teeth together as I mentally counted each click.  Thinking back, it may have been related to the first major anxiety- provoking event that I experienced, as we planned to leave our little town of Purdon and move to a ranch near Corbet, where we would ride 15 miles on a school bus to a much larger school in Corsicana.

That particular oddity, the "teeth counting", I never revealed to anyone, certainly not my ultranormal sisters and older brother, or my ultracruel teasing brother.  And maybe I forgot about "teeth counting" for a while, a few years,  but when I was 15 and in the 10th grade,  I perfected that particular routine.  Once I landed in typing class and started the "asdf  ;lkj" routine, I began to obsessively type on my teeth again. 

Granted, given the tenuous nature of teenage relationships, my desire to "fit in", and the endless ability of youth to be cruel to one another, I could only do the dental typing in private.  Or surreptitiously in public, but I had to be careful not to contort my face even the slightest bit or some sharpeyed girl or guy would notice, call it to everyone's attention, and I would immediately become a social pariah after being unable to explain why my left jaw suddenly jutted forward, then the right.

 I didn't think the explanation that I was simply typing "a" and then "i" in the word "pain" would satisfy their interest.  They'd push until I had to tell them I was dental typing an entire sentence expressing, "you are a pain".

 No, that ritual had to be kept quiet, but the teeth typing helped me in some strange way to alleviate tension, I suppose.  I've never really been sure what the reason for it was, but then I guess most people would say that about their own tics, obsessions, and compulsions and other miscellaneous odd behaviors.  No explanation really seems adequate or to make sense.

You're probably thinking I was a really poorly adjusted misfit who got made fun of all through junior high and high school, but actually I managed to fit in fairly well, and somehow I was clandestine enough with my own set of odd behaviors that they were never discovered.  Well, almost never discovered.

I think I teetered on the brink of mental illness once, without realizing it, after Susan died.  Unaware of what they were, I developed some odd routines; maybe they were compulsions.  I later learned what they were called after I studied  psychology.   I was "outed" by my younger sister, who like the rest of the family was very pragmatic, not given to drama, and simply not tolerant of aberrant behavior.

"What are you doing?" Jan demanded, opening the door to my room suddenly one night.  Her deep blue eyes probed the room like search lights on a police helicopter. 

"Nothing," I lied.  Or maybe I wasn't  really lying.  What I was doing was nothing, really, as it may have given me a sense of control, but would not change the fact that our world had been rocked.

"Yes, you are.  You were doing something.  Didn't you just jump up in the air?"

"Oh that," I said, casting quickly about inside my head for an explanation.  "That was just a practice for a cheerleading jump."  Election as 9th grade cheerleader had definitely been a highlight of my junior high career.

"Well, it wasn't very high," she said, eyeing me suspiciously.  "I know you can jump high. What else were you doing?  I saw your light turning on and off, on and off.  Why do you think I came in here?"

"Oh," I said a little sheepishly.  This was getting a little harder to explain.  "I was just checking something about the light.  I thought something was wrong with it."  I could see by the skeptical look on her face that she wasn't buying my explanation.

"Well, stop whatever you're doing, or I'm going to tell Mother," she said, like it was a threat.  It was  a threat in a way, because Mother would never understand the rituals I had developed.  Or how it helped me cope with the huge changes in our family.  And I sure couldn't explain it to her, nor did I understand, why it had started.

"And while you're at it, stop lining your shoes up like that."  I glanced where she pointed, at my open closet door, where four or five pairs of perfectly aligned shoes glared up at me now like accusing witnesses. 

Straighten my red King James version Bible exactly in the center of the shelf of the blonde nightstand, then pat it three times on top.  Stand straight up facing the nightstand and the lightswitch and make a quick short jump up, bending knees at 90 degrees keeping toes pointed.  Simultaneously reach across with the index finger to the light switch and turn the light off, then on, then if it doesn't "feel" right, off again.  Until all of it felt balanced and right, I had to repeat the ritual, and that is why Jan caught me, turning the light on and off.

 Years later, I read about people- it helped my feelings that some were famous or accomplished- who developed rituals so strong that they couldn't get through a doorway or leave their home because they had to repeat them until they were perfect.  Sometimes that left them standing mid doorway, unable to enter or leave.  I was just trying to get things in order so I could go to bed, I suppose, and I was always able to complete the routine, until the night Jan "discovered" me and interrupted the drill.

Jan left the room,  her blond ponytail swinging purposefully behind her, but tried to catch me performing the routine by jerking the door open quickly and entering the room again,  her eyes wide, lids stretched to capacity.   I was on to her though.  I didn't start the routine again, though I had an overwhelming urge to do so.

After that day. the compulsions just took different forms.  They still reared their head during times of stress, but they found a different outlet--in thoughts only.  In our family, blunt honesty coupled with threats brought most behavior under control.  Jan probably accomplished with her confrontation and threats what years of psychotherapy might not have.  We couldn't have afforded therapy anyway.  And Mother wouldn't have thought it was necessary. 

It bothered me some for a few days not to have the Bible exactly straight and be sure the light was properly turned off, but I thought of other things, distracted myself.  And Jan had said something about mental illness. And I didn't want to be mentally ill. My maternal grandmother had mental illness. I didn't want to end up rocking in a chair repeating a phrase over and over like she did.  So I stopped. Just like that. Well, for the most part. Some of my thoughts were still obsessive, but I dealt with them.

Not long after that evening,  I had a dream.  I had stepped into the front yard.  Over my right shoulder, a flash of color high up on the roof caught my eye.  I looked up to see Susan there,  walking along the center seam, the highest point, where the front and back of the long house joined.  She held her arms far out to each side, palms open, fingers widely separated, walking carefully, using her hands to keep her balance.

The day was bright and beautiful, a perfect autumn day,  the brown and gold leaves on the big oaks in the yard competing in a color contest with the blue sky.   And she was wearing an emerald green fitted wool skirt and matching mohair sweater, the last thing she had worn,  but she was barefoot. 

She looked toward me smiling, as though making sure I saw her, but she didn't say anything.  It wasn't she who could walk on a roof.  That was me!  She was the indoors girl! 

Looking at her, though,  I felt a sense of peace and contentment emanating from her, reassuring me she was happy and safe.  That was all.  It was enough.

A few months later, at Collins Junior High, I was singing in the choir.  We sang a melancholy melody called  "Song."  The lyrics that impacted me most were , "when I am dead my dearest,  sing no sad songs for me, plant thou no roses at my head, or shady cypress trees.  I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain, I shall not hear the nightingale sing on as if in pain."   I thought of Susan so strongly that a lump in  my throat almost prevented my singing.   Few of our choir songs had dealt with death.  After all, we were only 14.  What did we know about death?  Most of my friends were compassionate with me.  They just couldn't  know what it felt like.

Later, after school, I sat on her bed in her room (both now mine at my mother's insistence-no shrines allowed in our family) and leafed through one of Susan's old high school notebooks.  There, on an inside divider page, were the lyrics I had sung hours earlier.  They were from a poem by Christina Rossetti written in the 1800's.  Susan had handwritten them there.  It was as if she had reached from heaven to give me a message of comfort. 

I also found a letter she had written in July to one of her close friends, explaining that she felt she would die soon by either an auto accident or drowning.  She had not given the letter to her friend.  Perhaps it was a childish fantasy, but she was not given to those.  It was written out, about 3/4 of a page in her beautiful, neat script. 

She insisted to Mother that she be allowed to complete high school the summer after her junior year, skip her senior year and start college. Named a National Merit semi-finalist, she gave up scholarship chances and entered Navarro Junior College, just seven miles from our house. She rushed to soak up all the world of knowledge offered. 

We wondered why she seemed to be in such a hurry,  but I think God knew, and perhaps He gave her a nudge.  One could wonder whether she had foreknowledge or whether these were the writings of a dreamy teenager. Her faith seemed as strong as her intellect.   I'll leave each reader to his/her own conclusion though I have my own as well.

During July and August of 1964, my mother and Susan had been discussing Susan's summer school novel,  Lord Jim,  by Joseph Conrad.  On her memorial marker, Mother wanted a quote from the book.  "The last word is not said." 

"The last word is not said, — probably shall never be said.  Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our last word — the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submissions, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be shaken, I suppose — at least, not by us who know so many truths about either." from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.


Grief is not a one-time event, to be experienced so that you can "get over it."  It can, in the right context, and with the right perspective, make us infinitely deeper, wiser, more compassionate, heighten our awareness, and develop our capacity to cope with life events.

It must be woven into the fabric of life so that it fits into the pattern rather than "sticking out,"  enriching our lives,  not diminishing them.   How people choose to deal with grief is as varied as the human species.  Time changes grief ; it does not and should not erase it,  because the way we grieve is as much a part of our character as the way we love.

       'Be the green grass above me, with showers and dewdrops wet,
        And if thou wilt, remember,
        And if thou wilt, forget."
                                                  from Song by Christina Rossetti


We will remember.  We will not forget.










copyright-all rights reserved fg 2011

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/ NETTIE CALLS THE SHOTS

Honk, honk. Honk, honk, honk.  Hoooooonnnnnnnk!!!!

The first honks were like announcements of arrival.  The last one--insistent.  Just like my grandmother sometimes when she wanted us to do something.

"Nettie's outside!!" I yelled, looking out the picture window and seeing her big old lumbering 1953 black and white Buick.

"What does she want?" Susan called from her bedroom, where she was doing math homework.  I knew this because I had opened the door earlier and been told to get out because she was "doing math homework".  I knew she wouldn't leave her room anyway to go outside to see what Nettie wanted.  She never did. 

She was what I called  "an inside girl."  She had perfect, unmarred hands and fingernails.  She didn't like to get dirty or sweat.  And she would much rather read, or play Canasta or Scrabble than run down the sides of the creek or climb on the thick wooden rails of the corral.  I couldn't understand it.

On days when the entire family rose at 6 a.m. on a Saturday to work cattle,  Mother and Daddy usually  made a halfhearted effort to get her involved, then gave up, saying something like, "Well, you can set the table for lunch then."  Like that was a punishment!  They probably made a show mainly to keep Jan and I from whining about why she didn't have to help, and we did.

Nettie knew I'd always ride with her in her car,and sometimes Jan would,  riding through the dusty pasture roads, looking out at the Herefords grazing placidly on the thin grass, standing hip high in thistles and milkweed., stirring up the grasshoppers. I found their intermittent bawls oddly calming and pleasant.  Sometimes they jerked their heads up from eating, grass jutting from their white lips as they stared at us, unperturbed, chewing rhythmically on the green repast, saliva dripping from their mouths, watering the dry ground below.

She sometimes stopped the car suddenly, throwing up a small dust cloud behind us.  She opened the driver's side door, held onto the steering wheel and turned her ample body sideways.  Holding to the open door, she then stood up slowly, her arthritic knees creaking like two rusted  barn door hinges begging for oil.

"Hand me my cane," she'd say, "and my hat."  I stuck the wooden cane toward her from my place in the front seat while Jan grabbed the huge sombrero-like hat and set it on the driver's seat. Nettie  grasped the smooth wood in the curve of the cane handle, steadied herself, reached down for the hat, and after dwarfing her head with the monstrosity, started out toward the cows.  Prone to skin cancers, she wasn't taking any chances.  The hat and a long sleeved shirt were summer standards.

That was our cue  to get out of the car and scramble toward her.  She wasn't afraid of the cows and neither were we, but it was best to walk close to her so if she started a stampede, punching and yelling at them, that we weren't in their way.

"You old heifer, what are you looking at?" she'd ask, jabbing her stick toward a large red and white cow, with bags hanging almost to the ground.

"Why,  I'm looking at you," Jan would whisper, chuckling.  We stifled laughter.

"Where's your baby?" she said, louder, like the cow hadn't heard her the first time.  "Oh, I see him.  Right over there.  Now he's a pretty thang."  Now softer, like you'd exclaim over a mother's new baby, a REAL one, "He sure is.  Come here baby, come here."  The calf ran lickety split, kicking up his heels with abandon.  He was nowhere near Nettie  and not planning to come any closer by the way he was acting.

I shaded my eyes and squinted up at the blinding sun .  Jan kicked at a dried cow patty with the toe of her tennis shoe.  We weren't with Nettie  anymore.  It seemed to be just her and the cows.  I wondered if living alone as a widow so many years made her converse with things other than people.  She might talk to her furniture for all I knew. 

"Here bully, bully, bully," she teased.  "You old bull.  You think I'm afraid of you because of those big old horns.  I'm not afraid of you.  You made some pretty calves this year.  You sure did." 

She took a few steps forward, away from the car, and waded into the middle of the herd, about fifty cows.  Her felt Daniel Green houseshoes would be no match for this dust.  Her red and black plaid dress moved slightly in the hot breeze, and the back of the cotton longsleeved shirt she wore over it waved like a multicolor flowered flag.

 Most of the herd began  moving slowly away like bored guests at a dinner party moving away from a boorish speaker.  A few stood very still, looking at her, their slight defiance caving when she continued walking toward them, her cane stabbimg  into the ground, anchoring each step.  The bull was the last to cede his territory, but he, too, eventually moved out of her way, his 1200 pound body drifting slowly away like a large ship on calm water.   Hooves plodding, he gave a token shake of his long thick horns, their dirty ivory tips at least three feet wide.

We could never figure out why she did it.  The cows were having a perfectly lovely day, munching on grass and weeds in the pasture until she came and broke up their party.  There was no point.  Only to tell our dad, her son,  that she had "looked at the cows" and give her observations.  That was her contribution to the family business, I guessed.

She sure couldn't help us on Saturdays when we worked cows.  That was when the real work with the livestock took place.  Cows aren't very smart.  We'd often get behind them in the pasture and yell, walking them toward the corral.  Rarely, Daddy would saddle Sugar and try corraling them that way.  She was so lazy that she'd get tired and wouldn't run fast enough to herd them, instead trying to go to the horsebarn, a different place altogether.  If one of the methods didn't work, or too many decided to cut and run, we'd load a bale of hay in the back of the truck and they'd follow it like kids following an ice cream truck.They fell for the "food trick" almost every time, except in the spring when they had gorged on new grass.   


Once they were all inside the corral, we just shut the gate, and we had them.  Several of them would always run over and drink water out of the old porcelain bathtub that was their watering trough.  Then, it was a matter of culling a few at a time from the group, persuading them to go into the smaller pens and eventually running them into a corner where we could push a gate against their rear ends,  making their walking area smaller and smaller until they had to move forward in a line until each one individually reached the "squeeze chute."

That had to be manned by my dad or someone strong.  The cows were enticed in there because they could see an opening.  They occasionally had to be prodded with a hotshot, a metal stick with batteries that delivered an electric jolt.  In my father's defense, he didn't use it much or let others use it much.  Only with the most recalcitrant bovines.

My cousin Phil usually found time to chase Jan and I with it, threatening to shock us, and laughing happily at our screams.  He usually managed to herd us toward a cow paddy that we stepped in,  our feet  sliding wildly through the brownish green muck.  Simultaneously we shuddered,  shouted our disgust,  and ran for  rags to wipe off the slimy mess, all to the background peals of laughter of Phil and the rest of the "crew."

The "squeeze chute" was made so that the cow's  head could stick out through a gap in the bars, while  its body was squeezed tight.   But dumb as most of them were, they would imagine they could jump through the hole for their head and drag their whole body behind.  The chute was hinged on the sides, so my dad could "cinch" the metal bars tight enough to hold them still and then do the necessary work. 

It was hot, messy, nasty work, and the branding seemed downright cruel to me.  I could hardly bear to look.  A small fire was built and the branding irons placed there.  Once they were red hot, they were applied for a few seconds to the cow's hide.  The cows bawled-loud-but it only lasted a few seconds.  Then they had a new letter S on their right hip.

And they never seemed to hold it against my dad or even remember it after they escaped the corral.  The branding was always the last thing after tattoos were inked  into their ears with a tool that looked like it had a thousand sharp needles sticking out of it,  and shots were given for who knew what,  and they were doctored for anything else that was wrong with them. 

Some of them had pinkeye at times, and my dad squirted some type of drops in their eyes.  They also got sprayed with insecticide to kill the swarms of tiny flies and the thick, slimy white grubs that imbedded themselves under their tough hide. 

Sometimes one of the boys who might be helping work cows would mash hard on each side of a small opening on  the cow's hide and out popped a shiny worm, blasting up like a rocket, rising high above the cow's back, then descending like a failed flight, to the trampled dirt and manure inside the corral.

About 11:30 on cow working day, Mother headed for the house where she scrubbed her arms and hands, and prepared hotdogs, french fries, ice cold tea and usually a frozen dessert like lemon or chocolate cream pie.  When it was ready, she stepped outside holding a large cowbell in her hands, and shook it hard, till the sound was loud enough to reach us working at the corral. 

In a few minutes, the old turquoise truck pulled up to the garage and in tromped seven or eight sweaty and dusty  kids and adults.  Half headed to the two bathrooms while the others waited their turn for hand and arm washing at the sink. 

Conversations at the lunch table usually consisted of the morning's excitement, the wild cows, the bulls, the mad ones, the mean ones, the sick ones, the ones that tried to escape.   Everyone jockeyed for position to tell their story, waiting impatiently to tell their viewpoint of the activities.  Some times they got to, but more often my dad held center stage.  If he took a breath and someone talked really fast, they might get to tell something before he started in again. 

My cousin Phil was about 17 now, and he often came down and participated, though I couldn't understand why.

If I were an only child and lived in a nice, modern, and most of all "air conditioned" house, I doubted I'd ever come down to a hot place like this, that smelled  of manure and cow medicine and sizzling cowhides.

"Hey, where were you this morning, Snow White?" he teased Susan.  She ignored him, but you could tell she, like the rest of us, never got mad at him.  He was totally good natured about everything he said and did.  He was like the seventh kid in the family when he was there, but better natured.

"I set the table," she finally said, like it was justification for something.

He could always get away with saying things to my dad we would never say.  He made fun of him for getting so worked up and yelling and cussing the cows which was as much a part of cow working days as sweating.

"Hey," he called across the timbers of the chute one day, his arms hanging across the third rail, feet planted on the first, "you'd bawl too if someone stuck a hot iron to your butt."

We all watched to see my dad's reaction.  His face was already red and flushed from the heat, the effort, and the frustration with the cows, who never seemed to understand what was expected of them.  I watched as his face appeared to turn from red to fuchsia. 

Then he was done branding the cow, and his shoulders relaxed.  He released the bar that held the cow's head in place, and she backed up fast, her rear end slamming against the metal gate behind her, hooves scrabbling on the dirt of the chute.  My older brother Elton Jr. was at her head and released the pin on the small gate that had held her and swung it back, running backward quickly, not because he was scared of her, but to encourage her to run forward.

Once she saw the opening created when Jan or I slid the corral gate open at the end of the chute, she took off for the opening, kicking her heels wildly as she exited to open pasture.  By that time, we had jumped on the corral fence to make sure we didn't get her happy back feet in our faces.  We were always amazed that these lumbering beasts could move with such agility as they ran, their back feet leading, twisting their bodies up and around like an invisible hand was wringing them out like a dishrag.

Daddy watched her go, laughing at her antics when she got outside the corral.  Then he picked up the branding iron and held it toward Phil, who was safely across the chute.  "Boy," he said, "you keep on and we may have to use this on you."

We all laughed, then looked toward Phil, whom we knew would have a retort. 

"Yeah, well, you'd have to catch me first, short man," Phil said to peals of laughter.

My dad didn't say anything, but I could see him smiling as he pitched the branding iron back on the fire. 

'Well, I believe we're about through for today, boys and girls," my dad announced,  at the same time that we noticed a black and white buick moving toward us like a mirage, the sun reflecting off the shiny metal bouncing up and down in the middle of a thick cloud of brown dust.  We could barely see Nettie's head over the steering wheel, but we could see the huge sombrero-like hat, sticking out on each side.

Honk, honk, hoooooooonnnnnnnnnnk!

"Yes your majesty?" Phil cracked, sweeping his hand across his body and bowing at the waist.

"Let's go, everybody!" Daddy said, moving toward his mother's car.  "Nettie's here for the day's report!" he laughed goodnaturedly.