Memorial Day

We lived life at a much slower pace when I was growing up on Chicken Road in rural north Dodge County. It was easy to tell where the Bleckley County line was on Chicken Road because the pavement ended when you got to Dodge County. It was really fun when it rained because you might get where you were going and you might not. Today, when people refer to getting in the ditch, it is a metaphor for something going wrong. Back then, it referred to driving on a slick rain-soaked road and quite literally, sliding in the ditch.

We didn’t eat out often and I really looked forward to going to Macon, maybe twice or three times a year. I remember one of the stores in downtown Macon had an elevator and there was an elevator operator that was always dressed up and operated the doors and the controls. It was probably Joseph N Neel’s, but I'm not sure. We’d always go to Sears, Newberry’s, Dannenberg’s, and I remember eating at Krystal or the lunch counter at Woolworth’s.

I remember going to Macon with my mama and her good friend Edna Scarborough. I must have been six or seven years old, I guess. We were in mama’s 1954 blue and white Ford. I remember this trip particularly because there was a parade while we were there. As the parade passed us, some of the entries threw candy. Ms Edna seemed to be getting more candy that the rest of us. She said several times, “Y’all don’t need to get any; I’ll have plenty to share.” She would pick up candy and put it in her pocket and as soon as she stood up, there would be more candy at her feet. As it turned out, we all got more candy than she because she was reaching through the pocket (of her all-weather coat,) and dropping the candy on the ground. She picked up the same 10 pieces of candy over and over.

In that parade were some military units, but there were also some old men dressed up in military uniforms that didn’t fit. They didn’t look like they could defend their rocking chair very well, much less America. Some of them were on crutches and some were missing arms. I asked Mama what those old men were doing in the parade. She explained that they were there to remind us of all the men and women who had made sacrifices to keep America free. I didn’t understand.

She said, “Billy, I’m talking about people like your uncle James.”

I understood. I never saw him in person because he died seven years before I was born. He was one of the first from Dodge County to Join the Navy after Pearl Harbor was attacked. One day this 22 year old was rolling in the floor, playing with his nephew and just a few days later he was a young man rolling in the mud at boot camp. One day he was a carefree brother trying to sort out what he will do with his life and just a few days later, he was a young man with purpose to fight and destroy a common enemy.

He didn’t die in combat, but he did give his life doing what men and women have done for more than 200 years. He was wearing the uniform with honor and a solemn promise to defend the United States of America.

I understood what those old men in the parade were trying to tell me. I had held the musty smelling, moth-eaten flag with 48 stars that draped James’s coffin when they brought him home and buried him at his parents’ feet in Bower’s Cemetery. I had read the letters that he sent his sister, and I had seen his pictures, both in and out of uniform. I saw what his loss did to his baby sister, my aunt Beck. She lived another 30 years, but started dying the day he did.

Uncle James didn’t make it to his 24th birthday. He never married, had children, found his first gray hair, or got to meet me. He gave all that up because he thought that the American way of life was threatened by those men far away and he needed to do his part to protect it.

He didn’t do anything that others before or since haven’t done. I just thought that this Memorial Day, I should introduce you to him by name. He and the thousands that he represents gave their all so that we could have the freedom that we enjoy every day. They deserve so much more.

Late Nights and Books on Texas

I wrote this over ten years ago during the week of Mother’s Day. I was a sick man and wasn’t sleeping well at the time. Reading through it today, I feel the same way as I did then. I hope that you have a wonderful Mother’s Day. bd

Last night as I was reading a pretty good book as everyone else in the house slept, I got to thinking about where my reading habit really began. I am sure that it was the fault of, or credit to my first grade teacher, Ms. Peacock. Now I know that I’m getting older and my memory is not what it used to be, but I remember her as a woman in her mid to late eighties and weighing at least three hundred pounds. She wore her hair in a knot, drank grapefruit juice out of those little cans through a straw (that always had lipstick on it.) She put on that really red lipstick using the back of her granddaddy’s pocket watch as a mirror. I remember someone asking her once why she drank that stuff, was it really that good? And she said that it helped her keep her weight down. We couldn’t imagine how big she must have been before she discovered this miracle juice.

At any rate, Ms. Peacock wrote on my report card at the end of the school year that my reading skills were weak and that my mama might want to work with me on it over the summer. Although Ms. Peacock may have started it mama followed through with a vengeance. You would have thought that I had been diagnosed with a serious, if not fatal disorder the way mama attacked the “problem.”

The bookmobile came to Empire once a week, Tuesday afternoons, I think. My mother and I were there to drop off and pick up a load of books every time it came. I remember it looking like a big pink and white bread truck. Before the summer was over we were visiting other libraries too. I became an authority on the Hardy boys and the Bobbsey Twins that summer. I also caught up on Samson and those poor wandering Jews that desperately needed a map. (I already knew about Kim, Wendy and their rowdy dog Tyke.)

Our routine was to sit on the front porch swing and I would read out loud and mama would shell butterbeans, or whatever hand work was needed, and just listen. I would read a while and then I could go play a while, and then read again. When I finished the book, I would close it and mama would have me tell her the story. Sometimes she would ask me questions. I climbed my Chinaberry tree and played in the creek that summer, but I read a lot of books too!

That was forty-odd years ago. I hadn’t really thought a lot about any of it until last night, as I reading about Texas. When mama sat there beside me shelling butterbeans and helping me with the hard words, I thought that I wasn’t going anywhere that summer. I was wrong. The journey that I started that summer has taken me many places and I hope it won’t end for a while….

This Sunday after a nice lunch I’d like to sit on that front porch swing and read a pretty good book to my mama, close my eyes and tell her the story that I just read, just one more time.

And what are YOU doing this Sunday?