My 2.5 year old child could see me in the gas station as I was paying. And had been told, “I will be right there I am not going where you can’t see me. Wait right here for just a minute.” Got out of the car seat, cranked open the sun roof, climbed up and out, slid down the windshield and hood and ran across the parking lot cheerfully calling out, “I finded you, Mommy!”
A friend and I got on an Elvis-is-not-dead kick in the mid-’80s.
My dad jumped on board and offered the theory that Elvis’ twin brother Aron hadn’t really died in childhood. Instead, he was hidden by the family in the old Southern tradition because there was “something a little wrong with Aron.” When E did the crazy stuff, it was actually when A got away from his handlers and acted out. It was actually A that died and E, who was tired of the fame, etc., took advantage of the opportunity to slip off into oblivion. And, was living happily in MN working at a Burger King.
My cousin’s husband had just finished a pathology residency at UT-Memphis where the autopsy was done and it just made him crazy to hear that conversation.
“Elvis is dead! Dead! Dead!”
That man never did have a sense of humor.
#TCB
When I was 5, my dad decided to teach himself to play the guitar. At that time, my parents had a piece-of-furniture stereo. It was stocked with lots of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Johnny Cash and the soundtrack to Fantasia.
My dad was the one that contributed the Johnny.
As he learned to play, he practiced on Patsy Cline, Hank Williams (Senior!!!!!), Johnny and some Little Jimmy Dickens. Every night, he would practice and sing and my sisters and I would sing with him.
Over time, he got good enough to be comfortable playing for other people and whenever our extended family got together there would be at least one evening of Daddy playing and everyone singing along with him. He was in a couple of bands made up of friends who just liked playing together, never trying to make any money at it.
As he got closer to retirement age, though, the guitar came out less and less often. His hands were getting stiffer and it just didn’t happen as often.
One day when we were talking he mentioned having a dictaphone tape of my sister, Amanda, singing “Jesus Loves Me.” She had been about five and found a little gadget my dad had for making notes to himself on the seat of the car and had amused herself with it for awhile. Even though he doesn’t have a way to play it, he still keeps the tape knowing her childish voice is held in there.
I asked him if he had ever thought to make a tape of his songs for his grandchildren. He asked me what I meant.
I said, “Well, you don’t pick very much any more. You learned ‘I am my own Grandpa’ for Christopher, but Sawyer hasn’t had as much opportunity to sing with you. And, frankly, there’s going to be a day when you aren’t around to ask to sing with us. Not that I think it will be soon, but it is going to happen, eventually. All your little people have always loved singing with you. It would be nice to have a tape or something to let Christopher’s children hear you play.”
He said, “Let me think about that a little bit.”
Several months later, he handed me a CD. It had his picture on the cover, liner notes and everything, like a professional piece of work. He was grinning like he’d just pulled a rabbit out of his hat.
Turns out, he had a parishioner who had a music studio. He’d asked this guy for help putting something together “for his girls” and the guy thought that was a great idea. He said he couldn’t print less than 500 and my dad didn’t know what he’d do with the other 497, but they got to work any way.
Mr. Craig knew some musicians who would help with some background instruments. Maybe they already knew my father, too. I’m not sure. Anyway, Ingram ended up with some guys in the studio with him playing and harmonizing a little.
They called it “Remembering Country” and the liner notes dedicate it to his wife and daughters.
One paragraph say “We started to put a notice on the cover that advance sales had already broken pewter and we expect it to go aluminum within days of its release. But it is not for sale and it won’t be released. If you are one of those lucky enough (or unlucky enough, as you choose) to hear this, just remember it’s the private property of my girls. Keep your snide comments to yourself.”
So, there was one for me and one for each of my sisters and my cousins all got one. His siblings did, too. And the people who went to his church got word of it and started asking if they could have one. A couple of my friends asked for copies and I burned them for them because that was the easiest way to provide them.
I told Daddy that I’d done that, thinking he’d enjoy knowing that people he’d known when they were kids still remembered those nights with fondness.
He said “I may need you to burn a couple more of those for me if it isn’t too much trouble. I’ve almost run out of the 500 I had and a couple of friends have asked me if I had any more. If I do run out and need another one, how hard would it be for you to do that? I’d pay you for the disks.”
I told him that it would be a piece of cake and that I keep disks around so it wouldn’t be a problem.
It has songs that are favorites of each of us, songs we sang to death. “I’m My Own Grandpa” is on it for Christopher. And there are two that he wrote himself. One is a love song to my mother. The other is a damn fine country song.
So, if you ever hear me singing “Crazy Arms” or “Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On” and think that doesn’t sound like my kind of music, keep your snide comments to yourself. 😉
When I was in my twenties, I used my grandmother’s lipstick. She had a kind of peculiar way of applying it and it worked perfectly for me, but not my sisters. Now, I am getting exactly the same lines around my mouth that she had.
She was 5 years younger, in this picture, than I am now.
She was my maternal grandmother.
This is me with my dad.
My parents were only related by marriage. Truly.
My grandparents’ yard was about an acre of a 40 acre property. There was a fence around the other 39 and a neighbor kept cows there. (He paid my grandparents for the use of the property with half a beef every year.) There was a pasture to the right of the house and a wet weather creek back in the woods. We played all over about 10 acres of that property. We had to be careful in the pasture because there were thistles and cacti all over the place. And if we got too close to the cows, the bull got tetchy.
I am 5 years older than my first sister, 7 years older than the youngest. After one visit from all of us without my parents, my grandparents refused to try to keep up with all 3 of us at one time again. But, we did go singly or in a pair. They were very loving and the only punishment any of us ever got from them (with one exception and I don’t blame them, I was unintentionally very bad) was their disapproval. That was usually sufficient to keep us in line. There were occasional threats of corporal punishment. But, they were never acted on. The idea of being so bad that they would actually spank us was was too horrible to contemplate.
One summer when Amanda was 3 or 4 and I was 8 or 9, we visited them together leaving Ingrid with our parents. Our grandparents had a habit of having a cocktail while they listened to a baseball game on the radio, enjoying the evening in lounge chairs in the back yard. They only ever had one. I think his was bourbon and water. Hers was bourbon and Coke. On this particular evening, I took a walk across across the pasture while Mandy played around my grandparents in their chairs under the mimosa trees.
When I was halfway to the other side of the field full of thistles, cows and cacti, I heard my little sister screaming “Save me, Kitty! Save me!” I turned around to see my grandfather holding her by the arm and she was trying to pull away from him. He was holding a stick half the thickness of my arm like he was going to brain her with it. I started running back toward them, thinking “What do I think I can do to stop him? And please don’t let me step on a cactus!”
And noticing that my grandmother was sitting in her chair, just holding her drink. And laughing. When I got to the fence, I could see that both my grandparents were laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes.
I don’t remember which one of them asked me what I thought I was going to do when I got there. I do remember saying “I had no idea. I just ran because she was hollering.”
When I asked what was going on, Mama told me me Mandy had sassed my grandfather and he had threatened to take a switch to her. So, she sassed him again. Probably saying something along the line of “You will not either.”
He never would have. That was not his way. And part of what was absurd was the tree branch he had picked up. If he’d hit her with that, he would have broken bones. The idea of it was ludicrous.
(The only spanking any of us ever got was 3 swats on a clothed bottom on the side of a very busy road where I had been taking a parade of cousins for a walk. It hadn’t occurred to me that walking beside the highway that ran in front of their house was different than walking on the sidewalk in my quiet neighborhood at home. We scared the life out of all the grown ups that day.)
“Save me, Kitty. Save me.” was one of my grandmother’s favorite stories to tell on us. She was still laughing about it 30 years later when we were grown and he had been dead for more than 20 years.
This was taken at my parents’ wedding. She was 5 years younger than I am now. He was a year older than her. I was born a year and a half later.
