That's my Daddy. The two big-haired chicks are my sisters. They all live in North Carolina so they get to hug each other whenever they want. I would guess they find time for it between tanning, whitening their teeth, and teasing their hair.
My Daddy can do anything. There is NOTHING you can ask him to do that he can't figure out, except maybe get his wild-eyed daughter Sher to straighten up and fly right.
That's a puzzle that keeps him up nights.
He can fix cars, and build houses, and ride a bike without hands, and whistle using a blade of grass between his thumbs.
He's funny when he wants to be, and funny sometimes when he doesn't mean to be. The time he "punished" my sister and her boyfriend while they were making out by blasting John Phillip Sousa at ear-splitting, airplane engine levels, was HILARIOUS. He wasn't laughing though.
Come to think of it, I hope it was my sister and her boyfriend. As I get older I find my stories can get all goobered up. For all I know, he blasted me and my boyfriend with God Save the Queen.
Daddy sometimes reads what I write, although it takes him awhile to find it. It might be 2015 before he finds this, but I can guarantee one thing for sure when he does. I'll get an email that says what he always says when he reads something I've written...
"That was sorta funny, but it didn't happen that way. You get carried away."
Sher to visiting Southern Daddy - - -“I remember when I was a teenager we girls once came home to find the contents of our messy bathroom drawers dumped out on the kitchen counter with a note that read ‘You are acting like pigs so you need a trough’.”
Daddy to Sher - - - “That did not happen.”
Daddy to Sher’s son - - - “Your Mother gets a little carried away.”
Sher to Step-Mother - - - “You know what I’m talking about. Tell him he did so do that.”
Step-Mother to Sher - - - “Yes, he did.”
Daddy to Step-Mother - - - “You’re getting carried away.”
Step-Mother to everyone for no good reason - - - “One time when I was a young girl, one of the neighbor men came running to the front yard where my Daddy was working. He said, “Better git yer shovel, Claude! Somebody’s done fell out of an airplane!”
Sher to Step-Mother - - - “Somebody fell out of an actual air plane?”
Step-Mother - - - “Yes sir. He thought he was going to the bathroom and opened the wrong door. He fell right in the church graveyard.”
Sher to Step-Mother - - - “You Madam, are telling an untruth.”
Daddy to Sher in defense of his wife, who by his own confession, gets carried away - - - “Oh yes he did. I remember hearing tell of it.”
Step-Mother to family who had just eaten a glazed ham supper - - - “He sure did. Daddy said they was shoveling intestines for hours.”
Sher to toilet - - - “Ralph.”
Sher to Step-Mother - - - “You expect me to believe that some guy not only falls right out of an airplane while attempting to pee, but does so over the church graveyard? You further expect me to believe that in response to a guy splattering all over the place, your Father simply grabbed his shovel and at the request of a neighboring farmer, went to scooping up bits of guy?”
Step-Mother to Sher - - - “It’s the truth.”
Sher laughing hysterically, to all present - - - “I cannot wait to write about this. No one will ever believe we actually had this conversation at the dinner table.”
I was awakened this morning by the sound of children and wanna be children lighting money on fire. Today is the 4th of July and in our small town, despite the tragedy of flood waters, the tradition of firecrackers from morning to well past midnight is in full swing.
When I was a child, the sale, purchase and use of firecrackers was strictly verboten. The truth is that even if we’d had the option of buying them at every corner store, Pop would never have allowed it. The idea of spending good money on something that you take a lighter to didn’t make much sense to him.
One 4th when I was young, two of the neighborhood kids went running from door to door, yelling at the top of their lungs. They were going to have a big Independence Day fireworks show at their house and we were all invited to sit outside and watch it as soon as it got dark.
My brothers, sisters and I were tickled to death and all afternoon, wondered aloud to each other what kinds of things we’d see. We’d never seen a fireworks show before and although we expected “the law” would probably come arrest our neighbors for blatantly disobeying the ban, so long as they didn’t get hauled off until after they’d entertained us, we didn’t care.
I guess we figured so long as we fed their blue ticks and looked after their trailer while they were in the county lock up, it was all good.
That evening, Daddy carried lawn chairs to the yard for him and my step-mom and us five kids spread out old electric blankets with the cords cut off to sit on. We were a little early for the extravaganza, but when something so big is about to happen right across the street, you don’t want to risk missing a minute of it.
Once we were settled, Pop went back in the house to get his shotgun and my step-mom to get some mayonnaise crackers and sweet tea.
Yes, I said shotgun.
Although we never had any fireworks, I guess Daddy had enough boy left in him that he needed to at least make some kind of noise to mark the holiday. Twice a year, on the 4th of July and New Year’s Eve, he’d pull out his shotgun and at some point during the evening without warning, he would fire it straight into the air as if he were trying to shoot down a star. A single blast and he was done.
Yes, I said mayonnaise crackers and sweet tea.
I grew up poor so rather than bags of store bought potato chips, we made do with other things. As only a mother can, my step-mom managed to convince the five of us that there was nothing better than Duke’s Mayonnaise on saltines and of course sweet tea was as much a staple as water or milk. More so, really.
While I now know that tea had enough caffeine and sugar in it to keep an eight year old awake for three days straight, back then we didn’t give any thought to such things. A big glass of ice cold no-doze right before bed helped me spend countless nights as a child planning my escape from the Jolly Green Giant who lived under my bed and plotted to eat me.
As dusk turned into country dark, our excitement was almost too much to contain. With mouths full of crackers, we began shouting and clapping our hands to encourage the pyro-experts to hurry it up. Neighbors all around us joined in excitedly. Had any of us known what a “wave” was, we probably could have pulled one off.
On second thought, the wave is dangerously close to dancing and dancing leads to eternal damnation and hell fire, so I suppose I should retract that last statement.
With great drama, the front door of the only mobile home on our street slowly pushed open and the two kids filed out, Momma and Daddy right behind them. I thought how lucky they were that their parents bought them illegal fireworks to play with. We weren’t even allowed to say “butt” in our house.
We watched wide-eyed as the four huddled around the back of their pick up and I shushed my little brothers who were doing something entirely annoying, like breathing in and out. Before I even had time to smack one of them and make it look like one of my sister’s had done it, I saw sparks and my attention was drawn to the night sky.
I was puzzled to see nothing more than stupid old stars there.
“Woo-hoo! Look at this!”
These two offspring of what I had been previously convinced were the coolest parents in the universe were dancing and prancing all around their front yard with a single sparkler in each hand.
“Hey, Jerry! Do like this!” The girl instructed her brother in the ways of sparkler showmanship by making big circles in the air while hopping on one foot and then the other. Occasionally she would run toward the front of her yard and bend down on one knee like Elvis, sparkler held high in one hand while using her free hand to wave.
My siblings and I whispered to each other and finally to my Daddy. “Where are the dang fireworks? That’s just Tina and Jerry running around the yard with some dumb old sparklers.”
Yeah, we swore but in our defense, we were very upset.
Without a word, Pop racked his shotgun and fired a single shot. I guess we could have taken our Mason jar glasses and gone inside, but it was North Carolina. Even watching two kids systematically burn up what was surely more than enough sparklers for the whole neighborhood while yelling, “Look at me!” and “I’m gonna do three at one time!” was better than nothing.
(And between you and me, I’d have watched them burn matches if it meant stalling my nightly encounter with the green bean and corn monster.)
Growing up in the great state of racism and tobacco had its advantages. I can’t come up with many right now, but in all fairness, I had no time to prepare for your incessant prying.
There was the food. That was good.
Lots of biscuits and gravy and sweet tea and always some manner of animal insides fried until crispy.
There was the cache of good looking Southern boys who wore Wranglers with the requisite round imprint of a Skoal can on the back pocket and whose pick-up trucks and/or Camaro’s bore the Rebel Flag and at least one loaded shot gun in the back window.
That was scary.
And there was Southern marriage. That was all kinds of good, if good means disturbing and not at all healthy in any way, shape or form.
True story.
When I was in my sophomore year of high school (and openly dating grown men who today would be ambushed by Chris Hansen and his Dateline militia for doing the things we did before 11 PM on a Saturday night), there was a girl in my choir class named Karo who was also dating someone who was plenty old enough to know better.
(Before you go thinking Southern people name their kids after tasty syrup products, Karo is not her real name. It’s just that I learned my lesson after writing of an old boyfriend only later to be told he was on God’s payroll and my description of him was at the top of Google’s search listings for his name. I changed it as I figured church-goers didn’t want to know one of their pulpit guys was at one time a young horn-dog.)
Anyway Karo and her tall, weird looking, twenty-something honey wanted to get married in the worst way. She was fifteen after all and not getting any younger.
Every morning before she went to school and he went to his job, he’d drive to her house and wake up Karo with a kiss and a bowl of her favorite cereal in bed. Fruity Pebbles, no doubt.
Then while she was poofing her hair he’d go out and crank her car for her, always making sure that it was just the right temperature inside and that the perfect song expressing his deep pedophiliac love for her was playing at just the right decibel level. I’m guessing something by Air Supply.
Their love was the gold standard of creepiness.
One day, Karo came to chorus and told me that Old Balls… I mean, that guy she was dating, had asked her Daddy for her hand and had been turned down cold. Even though in North Carolina it wouldn’t have been uncommon for her to be somebody’s wife before she could legally drive a car, she was an only child and her parents weren’t ready to let her go.
Karo was so distraught, she could barely sing the words, “Shine little glow worm, shimmer,” through her salty tears.
Her anguish had eased markedly however just about three days later when she arrived in class with a big grin and an even bigger diamond on her wife finger.
“We just told him the truth,” she said to me in explanation of Daddy’s change of heart.
For a brief moment I thought she meant the truth about what Old Balls was actually doing when he tucked her in after every date.
“We explained to Daddy & Momma that we were really and truly in love and that we wanted to spend as much time as possible together before the Rapture.”
How’s that now?
Even the good Southern Baptist girl I was recognized the gospel crazy in that logic.
“He told Daddy that he could tell by the signs that Jesus would be coming back in a year or two and he wanted to spend every minute of that time with me because there is no marriage in Heaven and so once we get raptured, we couldn’t be together any more. Daddy said he couldn’t argue with that, so we’re getting married!”
I’ve thought about poor Karo and her lawfully wedded criminal about a million times over the years. I wonder whether he still starts her car in the morning and brings her breakfast in bed.
I also wonder just how pissed off the two of them are that Jesus did not have the decency to come back already so they could finally enjoy the sweet release of what amounts to a Heavenly, completely God-sanctioned divorce.
And if I might be so bold, I wonder exactly how funny Jesus thinks this is. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn He is in fact delaying His big day just to teach the love birds a little lesson in theology. Perhaps something in a “Thou Shalt Not Use My Name in Pursuit of Hillbilly Stupidity” commandment would be in order.
Oh, but who am I to throw redneck stones? I once married a man because he knew all the words to the Old Rugged Cross. Ok that’s not true, but he did have a bigger shotgun than any of the other boys. Nothing says loving like a big gun in your window. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Now I'm all feeling all kinds of 80's. This is the song I want played at my funeral, by the way.
