Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A Memoir

A Memoir


I was a young lassie, two or three. My favorite place to travel was to my maternal grandmother’s, down in central Alabama. It was literally an over the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go, kind of journey. We would take the bus down to her house, as my Dad stayed home to work. It was an hour and a half trip.

My grandmother , Mema Martin to me, Lula Bell to others, and her second husband, Pepa Martin, whose name was Fate, lived in a two bedroom cabin on a dirt road on the way to Jordan dam. We were just across the road from a Boy Scout camp. My cousins and I loved to play and explore around this camp. As the war was still going on, it added to the adventure. If we heard an airplane, we knew it had to do with the war.

Theirs was an unpainted cabin with a front porch we loved to sit on, a wood stove inside.
There were pigs and chickens. “Slopping the hogs” as it was called, always made me wonder and fascinate, how could we eat them, they were so messy. The chickens were entitled to roam the property. There was a well near the back porch with a pump, which supplied water for all the property.

Mema’s only vice was using, or dipping snuff. She used a tin can to spit in, no fancy spittoons then, not in her circles anyway. The tin can was usually wrapped in a small paper bag, probably for a better grip and preventing it from slipping or spilling when picked up.

On one particular day, since it was just my Mom and me visiting, we got a letter from my Dad, there was no telephone. I was very proud of this letter. After reading it I held on to it tightly, deciding I was going home to see my Dad. I started up the dirt road, making my way home. My mother and grandmother thought they would just give my toddling little body some time to see how far I would go. After about one quarter of a mile, I was still trotting along. As my mom understood I had no fear, she decided I needed to be fetched.
Thus ended my sojourn, my first to explore the world on my own.

This wandering into the world, was repeated some forty-five years later by my first grandson when he disappeared out of my backyard here is Boulder on his way to Oklahoma to find his dad who had just moved their belongings a few days ahead of his wife and son. He was found a few blocks away by a policeman, after all the neighbors and his mom were out on a search.
Patricia Jordan
5/2/10

1 comment:

A Week's Worth of Women said...

Great writing Patricia! I loved it and the picture that you created!
Annette.