I miss the old days. I miss going to Mamaw's house after church for Sunday dinner. (Hey Grampa, whaaaaaaat's for dinner? HeeHaw, anyone?) There was a meat plus creamed corn, black-eyed peas, collard greens (never touched the stuff myself), fresh cornbread and sweet tea. My special concoction was to mix the corn and black-eyed peas then crumble the cornbread over it and mix it up - YUM! And we were taught how to make a cornbread shake I guess, by crumbling the cornbread in a bowl of milk and eating it with a spoon - also good eats. But the first time I did that in front of non-family I was greeted with "What the HELL are you doing?"
And this dinner at Mamaw's was in the 70's and early 80's, not the late 80's when she moved in with us after my grandfather died and dinner was a sliced-up tomater and 4 green onions! Where the hell's the cornbread?! By then she was being a little passive-aggressive that the family now consisted of my mother coming home late from work, and Tracey and me sometimes. Scott was off at college, so until he came home there would be no 4-course meal.
Some more funny things I remember:
1) Mamaw didn't mind tickling your back, but it was more of a back SCRATCH, so you could only stand it for a couple of minutes. Maybe that's how she avoided having to tickle for long periods of time.
2) She held the steering wheel at 7 and 5 o'clock and didn't turn the wheel hand over hand. She scooted one hand over to the other and pulled the wheel, then did this repeatedly till she was done. She also drove really slow when I was young, and much faster when I was older.
3) She liked to get silly and dance sometimes, but they had the worst albums at their house - Eddie Arnold (one album featured Kay Arnold!), Make the World Go Away, Tennessee Ernie Ford. The best one was jokes told by that country fella with a cousin named Cletus who said "Hawwwwwwww" all the time - Mad Cow's got his name. (addendum 6/15/09 Jerry Clower)
4) She called my grandfather by his last name his whole life, but called her 2nd husband by his first name.
5) After my grandfather's funeral we spent the night with her, and as we were going to sleep she said, "I know I talked ugly to him, but I miss old Papaw."
Now I've done made myself cry, so I guess that's all I have to say about that.
6 comments:
Now I enjoyed the back SCRATCH vs the back tickle especially when she'd get those bugbites! And get her to scratch your back while she's watching the Atlanta Braves play & she'll go for hours! Memaw is with me most every day still thank goodness. Anytime I'm cross stitching, trying to bake one of her recipes or mowing the grass....she's there to encourage me. Sometimes I wish she wouldn't like when I want to rest & she says, "Tea, don't you think that shelf needs dusting?" But I sure do miss her a ton! Sometimes I pull out my bottle of Beautiful perfume & spell it....it's her getting ready for an Eastern Star shindig.
Do you have some empty perfume bottles to play with Junior? And I didn't even mention helping her memorize her lines for Eastern Star with that little tan book she had all underlined and highlighted. That was weird - Bible verses mixed in with stuff about "Honor to the East" and such! Uh-oh, I may have just put my life in danger - I know NOTHING! Absolutely nothing!
I remember helping her memorize the lines too...something about Queen Vashti. My favorite thing was going up to the Eastern Star hall before a meeting when they would just be setting up the day before and running around all the points of the star and playing their piano. Probably wasn't a good idea to pound out "Eye of the Tiger" there......
Ah Memaw! One of the worst days of my life was the birthday call to her (in tears) in the nursing home, "Henry Scott Arnold, you come get me out of this place!"
Just shoot me now!
On a lighter note, you have forgotten so much...."You kids want some chewing gum (aka FeenaMint laxative)!"
Other memorable moments for me, all approx. 10 yrs. old:
1)"Scott, keep your head down, they could shoot over this way. And don't tell your Momma."
2)"After this man pulls us of this ditch, don't you tell your Momma we had a wreck."
And don't forget that at one point in the kitchen after some comment she hit Papaw in the head with a cast iron skillet and knocked him out. Mom will have to clarify the statement.
Also, do you remember her dreams at the lake after watching particular shows and commercials? I was fortunate enough to be sleeping with her after she watched the ad for "Planet of the Apes". She dreamed monkeys were all over her and quite frankly, she used cuss words that to this day I haven't heard outside of the Merchant Marine!
I was not given the feenamint gum but remember her giving it to Scott one time. The dreams/nightmares are the main reason I didn't want to sleep in her room for a while.
Oh yeah! The monkey dream was a recurring one - at 406 she woke me up screaming "get 'em off! get 'em off!" Seems they were running from the bathroom and jumping on her then running back to the bathroom. She nearly kicked me out of the bed on that one.
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