Them Folks Up North



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 It is a long way from Detroit to North Alabama. We left the north with no thoughts of ever returning. I have, but my little brother never has. After we got here there really were no emotional reasons why we did not visit our grandparents, honestly. It would be dramatic to say we would have to stay is why we didn't go back. Really I think we just didn't, because of the trouble. Buy bus tickets and such. My little brother as an adult had his reasons. His reasoning for never going back stems from the worship of the dear southern people that rescued us from being hungry, wet and cold. That was forty years ago. He never has talked about the north much. The mentioning he did was that he had no need for none of our relatives that lived in Michigan. He wants to give the impression that he does not remember much about living there. This is possible.

I must have the best long term memory of just about anyone. He may vaguely have some memories that are not pleasant ones. He may not remember the wet and cold as well as I, because he was not much out of diapers when we got on that Greyhound bus, to Pulaski Tennessee... The bus was taking us to Tennessee not Alabama. At seven years old I did not sit down the whole seven hundred and something miles. How could I sit down? These brilliant parents of mine were taking me to the wrong place.
He did have a discussion with Uncle Buddy. He was married to Mama’s sister. Uncle Buddy said that if Daddy would have manned up Mama would have a home when Daddy died. All this was going on because, Grandmother sent Mama to Michigan when Daddy died, on the Greyhound Bus. When a not so tacky amount of time had passed the northern kinfolk would put her on the bus back to Pulaski Tennessee. I learned after standing for seven hundred miles was the right bus stop, after all. It was ok to leave going up north. It was also the right place to get off the bus for Alabama.
I returned when my grandpa died. I did this mainly to travel with Mama to her father’s funeral. Her mother had died the same day my twins were born. An option that was not a given at all for me. Mama did ride the bus to attend her mother’s funeral. She would not stay with her sister and nephew for a visit. She was too anxious to get back to Alabama to see me and her new grandchildren. The impression that the rest of the world had of my mother was different for the one I had. To the southern family she obtained by marrying my father she was far from normal. To me she was anything that I could get her to do for me. The excuse I stole from my little brother; was that she had never done what she should as a mother for me; This was to rationalize that it was ok to make her do the things I did not want to do. To the southern kin Mama may have not been all there; to me she was my mother.

Haunts

Some of the adults were often telling ghost stories to the children. It was menacing at times for them to repeat the same stories all the time. Uncle Luke was the worst one, to tell of ghosts lived just down the road. He picked areas that he knew we would have to at one time have to travel. As I slowed down to go around the curve for the rest of my life I will sense that there is a ghost riding in the back seat of my car. In Uncle Luke’s stories, the ghost that rode with you to the curve was Hank Brown. He was buried in the Sledge Cemetery; the cemetery was abandoned by caretakers. The ground that the cemetery was on was on the hillside and could not be seen from the road. It was just past the creek before the Old Phillips home place. The Phillips house was already falling down in the early seventies. Uncle Luke had one arm that was missing. He loved to scare little kids with the nub that been left when he was working in his grandfather’s saw mill. He had lost the arm as a teenager. It was told that they took his arm with him to Doctor Bayle’s office in Anderson. The arm could not be saved, so it was buried in the back yard.

His nub did not really scare me as bad as he wished that it did. The moment he came into our house he started picking on the kids. He nudged my little brother and I as soon as he came in the door. If my cousins were there, which was most of the time, he would punch all four of us as he came into the kitchen. My grandmother always fussed at him because I was afraid of my own shadow anyway. She did not realize that the stubby arm did not scare me as bad as the ghost stories he told. It always got her gourd because it was so hard to get me to go outside in the dark to do anything. I would freak if I had to take the dish water out. The dishwater only took a minute to dump. It only took a second for me to dump. I ran with the dish pan just far enough that she would not fuss that it was too close to the house. Going to get clothes that had been drying on the barbed wire fence would terrify me. I could always feel as though something was following me. I got chills that ran all the way down my back as well as all through me when I was out in the dark around the barn lot grabbing clothes.
Uncle Luke usually did not eat with us as many of the visitors did. He ate with us more after his wife died. He was married to Aunt Mae; this was my granddaddy’s oldest sister. She was the sister I remember dying first. There had been another to die, Myrtle; she died before we came from up-north. Uncle Luke was known for his tall tales and being full of crap. He was much younger than Aunt Mae. I think this made him have an air of great self worth. His hair was always burred off close, and his head was shaped like a jug. Thus, he was called Jug-Head by many of the elder men in the community; His looks and air made the stories he told of ghosts even more believable to me. He traveled around the area at all hours of the night, so this made me know for sure that he telling about real ghosts that followed the living as they passed the stretch of road between our home and the dump.
The ghost that I imagined the most vividly was the one that rose in front of the doctor and my great-granddaddy. The two men were headed to Lexington to deliver one of the Robertson children. This was Grand dad’s daughter and the doctor’s sister in law. The trip was made in a horse and flat bedded wagon. It was close to midnight as they made the Ford Bridge that was just before the cemetery. The horses were already starting to fidget as the two men in the wagon started across the creek. Each of the horses almost stopped at the far side of the bridge. Grand Dad was cussing for them to get on; Doctor Bayle’s had the whip beating them to make them go the five miles to Lexington. He was slashing the whip and Grand Dad was yelling his devilish vocabulary that only he could spit out. Both men were unaware of what the horses were sensing up ahead. The creek bottom was to the left for a short piece and begins the hill that Sledge Cemetery sat upon. The path to the cemetery is more than just a path, somewhat of a road that wheels of wagons had made. This is where both of the men realized that the horses were spooked by what was raising in the road in front of them. Grand Dad and the doctor both had pistols strapped to their sides. Grand Dad was as usual a bit tight so reaching for the gun was what he thought of first. He fired the gun until all the bullets were gone. Doctor Bayle’s gun was still at his hip until Grand Dad grabs it and uses it also. Doc was only thinking go! Go! Go! He beat those horses as hard as he could. All during this time the white figure in the road was moving right in front of them as though it was floating backwards. The noise was as the men told it as the wind was their names to them. Doc Bayles said he was so afraid he never even thought of the gun that he carried on his hip. The flight of the monster would end at the curve just past the Andrew Phillips house. The two men rounded the curve whipping the wagon behind the house. Looking back down the road there was nothing there. It was the calm of night as if nothing had ever been there. Where the name Hank Brown come from neither men could ever say; it was just like both men new that Hank was who was chasing them even though he had been resting on the front corner of Slegde Graveyard for nine years. He had drowned when the creek sweep him and his horse to the Beaver Dam. The Beaver Dam is the next bridge along second creek.

Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love,

Where there is injury, pardon

Where there is doubt, faith,

Where there is despair, hope,

Where there is darkness, light,

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much

seek to be consoled as to console,

not so much to be understood as to understand,

not so much to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

                               it is in dying that we awake to eternal life.-                                                                                                                           -- St. Francis of Assisi

The Seat Under the Telephone

The wine Daddy started to drink, that was so cheap, was drank while he sat in that same spot. I say he sat, he basically slumped in a chair. The chair was a chrome legged kitchen chair, with yellow and green plastic cushions. The table was to his right. This is where he sat unshaven, wearing a white undershirt and his socks. I remember his socks the most, because he caught them on fire trying to light that monster of a heater we had. He caught the sock on fire and I was to doctor the foot for what seemed like forever.
The ordeal of getting to a place that we could borrow cream to put on it was yet another worry that my five year old mind was plaqued with. Worry is something I never have not known. Just like the being cold and wet thing. I still feel the cold and wet of the nights and days of my first seven years of life. Just like I still see my daddy's socks, because he had caught them on fire. The telephone, the heater, and the socks.
The telephone did not ring often. The times that I remember Daddy on the phone were the times terrible news was on the other end. The terrible news about the fire in Alabama was for sure the worst phone memory. Daddy was drunk, but still he was heartbroken. The one brother that had made him proud was gone. His wife and son were still alive, but in grave condition. The next times that the phone rang it was the news of their deaths. Then were the calls from Grandmother making it possible for Daddy to come to Alabama for the funerals. Daddy had no money and Grandmother had to over the phone arrange for him to get money and get there. All this in the seat under the telephone.

Forgiveness

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. ~Mahatma Gandhi

The family members that did well take great pride in the family name. Often when we talk say that it is the blood; that makes them so strong and prosperous. Our family gene pool held many things that can make you excel in many ways. There was ego, passion, pride, good looks and the desire to have money. These things can be used for the betterment or the down fall of any person. What outsiders saw many times was the obvious. Sometime it was a drunken fit for the whole Corum Hollow to hear. Sometime it was a car ran in the ditch. Then there were a couple of fires. On a better note there was a good cotton crop, the church services we attended, how nice we looked in clothes that were handmade, and the help lent out to the struggling farmers surrounding our home.

Once more the perfect crime can be comitted if you don't tell a soul. The men in our family did not often hide the fact that they drank. It was just not widely known what they did at home as they drank. The community I am sure spoke more bad of them than good. It was a time when drinking was even done in the work place. There were many a deal made over a glass of whiskey. The deals my daddy and them made were made sipping from a bottle of moonshine. Moonshine of the late 1960's was nasty at times. It was made many times in old car radiators. The Jackson's that made some of what Daddy and them drank were so dirty from collecting scrap metal that the black never washed off of them. That is if they even ever tried to wash it off. There was a bottle that Daddy showed me one day that instead of being a clear liquid, as wildcat was supposed to be, was grey. In the bottle there was a slime floating around. Daddy told me he never thought he would, but this was one bottle of whiskey that he was going to pour out. This made me for sure that he wasn't drinking for the taste to begin with. He was drinking for the effect that it had on him. The Jackson's wildcat whiskey would have been drank by my daddy if they had not left the slimey stuff floating around in it. There was always a thing that if you drank beer, the drinking was not a problem. I remember when we were still in Michigan that Daddy only drank beer at first. Then it was whiskey. Jim Beam most if the time. Then it was wine. He became a wino. Wino because it was very cheap, especially the sugary wines, just a dollar or so a bottle.