… when you think you’ve learned all you’re capable of learning, and then, something wonderful happens?
Today, me, the non-sewer, finished my granddaughter’s dress. The seams are wonky, it’s a little too big (falls off the shoulder), the back hem is longer than the front ….
Since it was in sewing language, I must have watched the tutorial fifty times. But I did it! The next one will be FLAWED TO a new level of PERFECTION! 🙂
You want to learn something new? If I can, so can you. Onward you go!
The man lying in the bed doesn’t look anything like my Uncle Joe. His head is all swelled up, and a long, bloody cut runs from his forehead, over his eye, and down to his chin. There’s another cut over his nose, a deep gash across his forehead, and a couple more roost on his chin. Mother comes up behind me with a fresh washcloth and scares the tar outta me.
“What happened to him?”
“Punk Squares and Hammit Bashem beat ’em with knucks and a tar tool,” she says.
“What fer?”
“Don’t rightly know fer sure.”
“When’s he gonna get better?” I whisper.
“Ain’t sure he is, Cono.” I don’t really want to know why Punk and Hammit beat up my Uncle Joe. I’m afraid to.
Three days later, after plenty of moaning, my Uncle Joe dies. Earlier that morning, when he took his last breath, Aunt Nolie covered him with a Blanket and cried, “He didn’t deserve this.” She wipes her nose and eyes with the back of her hand. Except for his cuts and bruises, Uncle Joe was whiter than a bed sheet.
Now some men in a big black car come to take away my stiff-as-a-board uncle.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper, my father’s story
I look in my duffle bag and see the sparring gloves Colonel Posey lent to me yesterday He had looked tired to me, like a man defeated from grief but who was still trying to stand up straight. His hair was Graying, and his eyes had lines at the corners like a map of a busy town. But his kindness sat on my chest like Pa’s and Ike’s kindness, stayed there perched like a redbird.
I thought about when Colonel Posey’s little daughter had died six months back from some disease the doctors didn’t know how to cure. I thought about Ervin Clay Carter and Gene Davis, them being dead and how hard it was on their parents and, maybe, how hard it was on me. They were just kids and life had sucked the air out of them easier than sucking a chocolate malt through a thin straw. Then I thought about Private Henderson.
After I’d told Colonel Posey about sparring with my father he said, “You know, whatever picture you’ve formed in your head about sparring with your father might not be what really happens.”
I knew what he was talking about. I thought of other pictures I’d made up in my head that didn’t match the truth, like working on that pipeline. That picture wasn’t anything like what happened. I thought of more pictures from long ago, like me owning my own guitar, or having a real conversation with my dad, or being able to reach my .22.
While sitting for my 14 month old granddaughter, I thought once again about the lyrics of this creepy song:
Rock a bye baby,
in a treetop,
when the wind blows,
the cradle will rock,
when the bough breaks,
the cradle will fall,
and down will come baby,
baby and all.
What a horrible song to sing to little ones at nighttime!
By the way, I’ve never sang those lyrics to any of my babies!
So, here’s the deal.
The song was first published in 1765 in Mother Goose’s Melody. The only change from today was the first line – Mush-abye-baby. (Still weird) The editors noted, it is “a warning to the proud and ambitious, who climb [too] high that [they] generally fall at last.”
Here’s one theory:
James II had a son by his second wife in 1688, displacing the presumptive heir, his daughter, Mary, married to the Protestant William III of Orange. One speculative theory simply holds that the baby in the song is this little guy, and the lyrics were a “death wish,” that the little Catholic prince would die and a Protestant king would ascend to the throne.
Here’s another: A relative of Davy Crocket made up the song when she was babysitting. (IMDB lists her as the writer of “Rock-a-Bye Baby” when it was used in well-over 100 movies.)
Alrighty then.
Another theory is when the pilgrims encountered the Native Americans, they put their babies in cradles up in trees to protect them. (Stupid because surely, the cradle would fall. Maybe it was really the Native Americans who created the song to make fun of the of the newcomers putting their kids in trees.)
Whatever. It’s still a scary song.
My ending goes like this,
At least the song “Ring around the Rosie,” sad because of its original meaning, didn’t have scary words.
Okay, off my soapbox now. And remember to always hold your children tight.
Dad’s been drinking. He sways his way over to me with a look on his sorry-ass face that says, “Ya best answer this next question the way I wanna here it. Where’s Zexie?” He didn’t ask where Pooch was. He could see him lying in the shade by the house.
“What?” I say, trying to keep my axe swinging in the right direction.
“I said where’s Zexie?” he yells.
Unlike Dad, time is standing still and sober like at the picture show, when the film has snapped and nobody knows what to do with themselves. All I know is, I’d been doing what I was told. I was chopping and sharpening, chopping and sharpening all day, the sharpening part being my idea. I have enough wood stacked up to make it through a blizzard.
I say back to him, “I don’t know, haven’t seen her. Been chopping wood all day.”
“Get the gun,” he says. “We’ll follow the trap line. See if she got caught up.” I run inside and get the single shot .22 off the chester drawers and run to catch up with Dad.
Sure enough, Zexie is lying in the first trap we come to, poor little thing. She’s been gnawing on her own leg to get out of that trap. I know I didn’t have anything to do with it. Dad set that goddamn trap, not me. I was only doing what I was told.
Dad pulls the trap open and picks her up, cradling her in one arm like a baby. Then he walks over and slaps the living hell out of me with the other. I stumble back but this time, I don’t fall. I make myself stand up straight.
Dad sure does like dogs.
He hands me the .22 to carry back and starts walking towards the house. Just as I’m thinking, “Don’t turn around you sorry son of a bitch ’cause I’m gonna shoot you in the back of the head,” he turns back around, grabs the .22 right out of my hand, and take the bullets out.
“Here,” he says, and hands the pistol back to me.
He doesn’t trust me, and I don’t trust him. That’s about the sum of it.
I know exactly how it feels to be caught in a trap, and I’ll be damned if I gotta gnaw off my foot to get out of this one. I also know there’s a way to have supper without feeling poisoned. I just have to figure out where that is and which direction I need to go to get there. I’d follow those railroad tracks anywhere about now.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper
Author note: This is a true story and I need to tell my readers that Zexie recovered.
Ike, my great-grandfather, and Cono Dennis, my dad
Even though I didn’t get a donkey or a new guitar, I knew Aunt Nolie was in my corner, wiping off my brow between rounds and telling me to “Get up!” at the same time. I’ve since learned how to “get up” from many of the folks around West Texas. In that rugged terrain, if you don’t stand your ground, you’ll be bitten into hard, chewed on for a long time, and finally spit out just like Granny Dennis’s snuff. You don’t give up in West Texas, you get up.
It’s strange the ways people stick up for others and how they don’t. Sometimes they do it with yelling words, soft words, or even no words at all. Sometimes they do it by fighting, like Punk Squares did. But most of the time, the people in your corner just tell you to suck it up and go back at it. That’s what I’ve learned to do.
On that no-account day I did get a good reminder of what Ike taught me later on. Never trust anybody but your own self. I’d decided that from then on, I was going to protect my hard-earned money, hold on to it real tight in one hand and clutch the handle of my axe even tighter in the other. An honest day’s pay should be just that and nobody—nobody—should ever take that away from you.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper, my father’s story.
Be Tenacious!
My Dad
I yelled, “fall out!” But, there’s one in every crowd. His name was “Johnson,” an ex-merchant marine with big old biceps who thought he could fight a circular saw and come out ahead. He pulled the cover over his head as if that was gonna protect him from someone who knew better.
Everyone was watching me, so I knew I had an impression to make. I walked over, and said, “Well, aren’t you smart?” Then I took that cot and flipped it right in the middle of him.
He stood up, towering over me like a big gorilla, stared down at me and drew back. Now, the thing about big ole boys like Johnson is that they might have a lot of muscle and power, but for a lightweight class like me, they move like molasses. So that’s the last he saw. When he drew his big arm back, my fist landed square on his chin before his pea brain could register what hit him. He dropped like a loose button, out cold as a cucumber.
When Johnson started to stir a bit, he looked at me with surprise and reached up to feel his mouth, like he was making sure all his teeth were still there.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I know a couple of folks without any teeth and they can still eat almost anything.”
He sat there glaring at me and I kept talking.
“And if you keep puckerin’ like that, pretty soon you’re your face is gonna match your asshole. Now get up!”
Everybody laughed except for Johnson. I guess he didn’t think it was funny. But he did stand up and, so far, Johnson and the rest of the cooks barracks have been looking at me in a different light. I don’t count on Johnson looking down on me ever again. Besides, he couldn’t fight the gnats off his butt.
I suppose the fighting Instinct was born in me, like red is born into a beet. Maybe because I started fighting in first grade when I had to stick that pocketknife into the thigh of Tommy Burns so he wouldn’t take my marbles.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper, my father’s story
I no longer have teenagers (thank God those years are over), but I realize many of you do or perhaps will soon. This “letter” is powerful and shows the emotions of struggling teenagers and what they need and want their parents to understand. I learned about this from a friend who has a teenager.
http://gretchenschmelzer.com/blog-1/2015/6/23/parent-corner-the-letter-your-teenager-cant-write-you
The Nuances to which we differed was minimal compared to how we were alike.
Love you, Daddy
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 