PERCY, SIGN LANGUAGE AND JESUS

                       John 14:14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

                                           

                                  Pelican drawn by Percy while I worked with him.

Back in the 70’s, I was an art therapist at a mental hospital, dealing with anything from depression, schizophrenia, alcohol and drug abuse.  Friends used to ask, when discovering I worked at a mental hospital, if I was a patient or a therapist.  I usually replied, quoting a co-worker, “You just watch which one goes home at the end of the day, then you’ll know who’s crazy and who isn’t.”  It was a very interesting part of my life.  I have many stories of life on the edge of sanity.  This however is not one of them.

Just north of Forest Hill, in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana was Camp Claiborne, a former U.S. Army military camp during World War II.  Not much is left of this camp except a few abandoned buildings, some sealed off with fencing. Many streets still exist as well as parking lots and footings of original buildings.  Today, there is a 26-mile, hiking, walking and biking trail.  There is evidence that unexploded ordnance on the property still exist.  This area is now owned by the United States Forestry Service.

 The late England Air Force base, in Alexandria, was actively using this remote area as a practice bombing area for the fighter planes in the 1970’s.   I used to drive in that area hoping to watch the planes drop their explosives.  All I ever experienced was the noise as they exploded, and it was loud. 

                                  

Percy lived in this area.  Alone.  Percy was deaf.   I really have extraordinarily little information as to why he lived alone but I do know that he did not know any sign language and used only his primitive signs to communicate.  Percy was scared from the noise which he felt and saw as the planes flew overhead. He, apparently, was also frightening people around the area that didn’t know him and thought he was mentally ill with his weird hand gestures.  Percy was brought to Central Louisiana Mental Hospital and placed in my care.

 I think he was sent by God.

Frances and I were taking sign language classes at Emmanuel Baptist since the church had a deaf ministry.  We learned to meet and communicate with deaf friends all around the area.  Frances excelled in learning this language, possibly due to her French heritage and using her hands whenever she spoke. She eventually became an interpreter for our church services.   I got by.

 I now had a deaf man in my art therapy class.  Percy needed to learn sign language.    I managed to understand his home-made signs and taught him some of what I knew.  I taught him the alphabet.  I needed more help so I decided to call on our friends, deaf ministers from the Assembly of God, to see if they could visit and try to understand Percy’s signs.  They were given permission to visit my therapy class.  Together the three of us worked on communicating with Percy.  It was obvious that his signs were only home-made and not American sign language.  So, Percy and I had sign language lessons.  The two ladies came twice a week and we began with basic signs.  I worked with him daily.   I felt as if our daily lessons were like Ann Sullivan as she taught Helen Keller to communicate.  Frustrating at times, but extremely rewarding at others.  He mimicked the signs, but I didn’t see that look on his face as the light that comes on when understanding.  I showed him the sign for airplane.  He panicked and began crying and holding his ears. It was obvious that he had been traumatized by the airplanes practice bombing the area.

Meanwhile, the head of my department was trying to arrange a place that would take Percy since after evaluation it was determined he was not mentally ill.  Our hospital was not equipped.  Percy needed a place to teach him not only to communicate, but some basic human skills, like cooking, and cleanliness, so he could learn to function and eventually live in a half-way house.   A place in St. Louis, Missouri was thrilled to work with him.  He would have to fly there.  I reminded my boss that Percy was terrified of planes.  Every time we used the sign of airplane, Percy would panic.  He’d immediately run and hide under a table, making his handmade signs, covering his ears, crying, and shaking like a leaf.

St. Louis could not take him for at least a month.  My job was to continue the sign language lessons and convince him to fly.  I had a friend who had a small plane that was willing to fly Percy around the area, if we could convince him to get on the plane.  This was an extremely hard task.  I eventually got him to the point where he did not run and hide and cry when seeing a picture of an airplane or see my sign for plane.   Percy, meanwhile, had mastered concrete thoughts and we needed him to understand abstract concepts.  I worked with him by trying to get him to understand where he would be going.

The ministers from the Assemblies were concerned about his salvation.  They began trying to teach him about Jesus. (I realize that this being a state institution, I was not supposed to cross this barrier, but I did). They were met with a blank expression.  He already knew the signs for “love” and “me”, but the word “Jesus” was met with confusion. We continued daily signing “Jesus loves me”, pointing to a picture of Jesus on the cross.  He would mimic the signs and smile and nod as if he understood which is a common thing for deaf people to do.  I was not really convinced he understood.

                                                      

The day arrived for us to fly in my friend’s plane.  We drove to the airport.  I was to be the one to fly with him and the pilot.  We looked at the plane.  Touched the outside, peeked at the interior. Looked at the propeller. I signed that he and I would get on the plane and fly around. He shook his head.  I asked him to get inside.  He balked at first but after I boarded, he followed. We sat a while.  The engine started.  He grabbed me.  We took off.  As we became airborne, Percy looked at me, made the sign of the cross and signed “Jesus loves me” while pointing up. He then placed his hands in a prayerful position and closed his eyes. He understood the abstract concept. He knew about Jesus.  Maybe he learned it somewhere in his past for we never learned about his history, or maybe we taught him.  Either way, I beamed.  Percy looked out the window after that and did not appear afraid.  

A month later I took Percy to the airport and helped him board a plane to St. Louis.  He smiled and hugged me, and we said our goodbyes.  I did learn that he became a star pupil and made great progress.  I thank God for this angel that crossed my path and became part of my story.

© Nippy Blair 2015. Posts and pictures on this blog cannot be copied, downloaded, printed, or used without the permission of the blog owner, Nippy Blair.

                              

                 THE COUNTRY GROCERY STORE                

                    

 I grew up in the fifties when life was tranquil.  It was a time of freedom where everyone knew his or her neighbor, doors left unlocked.  Children rode bicycles with abandon anywhere in town. 

There were trees to climb, horses to ride, creeks to explore, secret places to hide under the canopy of pines where we would sit for hours telling secrets or gossip.

We had the pure freedom to be ourselves, southern kids, “raised properly”, according to our mamas.  We were raised to care for each other.  Neighbors cared.  People cared.

My daddy was one of those who cared, always helping people.  Most of the time incognito. If someone needed some cash to tide them over for the month, my daddy would quietly take care of things.  He would pay utility bills or monthly house payments and never let the person know who the anonymous donor was.  Having grown up poor, daddy had a heart for those in need.

                                    This story is one of those adventures.  

 We were living on the edge of town on Jackson Street Extension.  It was considered out in the country then.  There was one house on either side of us and lots of land that went all the way back to Prescott Road.    We had enough land to raise cotton and corn as well as a pasture where we kept our cows and horses and a few pigs.  The cows were milked twice daily and many times the evening milk went to someone down the street who had four kids and trouble making ends meet.  I remember riding my horse to deliver the milk. 

 Daddy was always helping others when he could. He thought no one knew, not even mama or us kids, but we did, he couldn’t hide anything from us.  Since the majority of those helped didn’t know their benefactor then he never asked for any payment in return.  He liked it that way.  Staying incognito.

There were occasions, however, where he would help someone with the stipulation that they would pay him back. If they were capable, he expected them to hold to their end of the bargain and pay what they could and they did, usually in exceedingly small amounts and most of the time at the crack of dawn or late at night. 

So, we became used to living in a goldfish bowl; used to having company appear at all hours of the morning.  Daddy was a state senator at this time and the country folks would appear, as the sun was peeking over the horizon, to see THEIR senator and the city folks would be calling late at night to see THEIR senator.   This happened all the time.   Mama would smile politely and offer them coffee while she went and waked daddy. After they left, he would say, “Just helping a friend”.  Mama usually retorted, “Then you get your lazy self-up and open the door and make the coffee!”

            One Saturday morning a man appeared at daybreak.  He had walked most of the way since his truck had broken down.  The man owned a grocery store out in the country.  The only one for miles around and he needed help.  His son had gambled and owed money that he couldn’t pay. There were threats. The man was afraid he would lose the store.

 Daddy helped with the agreement that he pay him back a little each month.

The man paid a small amount to daddy for several months but then stopped payment even though he still owed daddy a large amount of money.  Even daddy and his generous heart couldn’t let that pass.  Rather than cause the man any embarrassment, my daddy made an agreement with the store owner that he would take payment out of merchandise. the man agreed and daddy told him that my mama would be making regular visits to get groceries free of charge.  He was to tally the amount on each visit, give the ticket to mama and that amount would be taken off his debt.  This would continue until the debt was cleared.

Daddy just assumed that mama would drop her busy schedule to go grocery shopping in the country.  She was already busy with humorous book reviews for the book club or being a hostess for the music club.  Her life was busy teaching Sunday School.  She was active with church committees. She was busy writing articles for magazines.   This was a huge assumption on daddy’s part.  

She hit the ceiling!  “It’s easy for you to say,” she fumed.  “You won’t be the one driving to the boonies and buying groceries out in the country.  How am I ever going to find this place?  I have a life, too, you know!” She did not want to drive out to this small store for groceries. 

The house was tense for several days.   

As usual mama eventually gave in and went.  Since I was the eldest son, and the only one gullible to go with her, I went.   There went my trees to climb, horses to ride and creeks to explore.  Instead, I would be on an adventure somewhere deep in the pine forest. 

Mama was used to small stores for little items needed if we ran out of something, like Tommy’s grocery down the street, but her main shopping was at the A&P grocery store in town.  Mama was not happy about traveling an hour just to get a few items.   But the man owed them money, so she went.   

 The first Saturday, we traveled down the highway to the country road which wound itself all over the place.  The pine trees were thick as ticks on both sides, and it gave an eerie vibe.  We worried what would happen if we had car trouble.  There were no vehicles traveling down this road. How would anybody find us way out in this dark wilderness.  The day was creepy and scary and overcast.

Mama found the store eventually and bought crackers, bread, and canned goods, lots of canned goods.  We loaded up on anything that didn’t need refrigeration.  The man rang up the groceries and gave us the ticket.  Mama looked at the amount and almost cried.  “This will take us a year of Sundays to ever get things settled,” she moaned.  On the way home, mama called daddy every bad word she could think of, mostly under her breath, in between sobs of why.  “Why?” She’d cry while hitting the steering wheel.  “Why?”  

Every Saturday we trekked through the pine forest to this godforsaken store and bought what we needed, mostly canned vegetables week after week, month after month.   One week mama bought a case of pineapples for an upside-down cake. She was entertaining some ladies from church the next week and needed a dessert.

 The day before her Sunday school party, mama opened a can of pineapples.  Something was wrong.  They were brown and smelled.  She opened another can.  It too was nasty.  Mama looked at the expiration date. It was way over the expiration date.  She looked at the other canned items that we hadn’t used yet and discovered they too were expired.  Why was this man selling bad goods?  Why wasn’t he receiving new shipments? She was furious as she sent me down to Tommy’s groceries to buy pineapples.  I went on my horse, of course.

Mama was determined to get to the bottom of this.  She asked the grocery owner who delivered his groceries.  He told her.  She called the warehouse that delivered them and received little help.  She ended up calling the main office of the Dole Pineapple Company.  They sent a representative up from New Orleans.  He discovered that some of the workers, the warehouse owner’s son included, were pushing some of the cases to the back of the warehouse and at night delivering them to small groceries out in the country and collecting the money for themselves.  

                                                       The warehouse ended up being shut down. 

 

                                   

We received several cases of pineapples every two weeks for a year as gratitude for bringing this to their attention.

 

 Mama used every recipe she could find so we could have pineapples at our meals.  We, meaning the children, were sick of pineapples after a few weeks.  Mama made everything she could think of using pineapples. She gave some to friends.  After a few months she had had it and eventually thought of a shelter downtown and donated our pineapples to the shelter that fed homeless.  Thank goodness.

Mama still spent her Saturdays driving to the country for about a year buying groceries, while daddy still, quietly, continued helping others in need.   We children continued our free-range roaming and life eased back into its tranquility.

At daddy’s funeral there were many people that told me what a blessing my daddy was because he had helped them when they needed it most. How thankful they were for his help. They praised him for his generosity.  I can only imagine how many others felt grateful who had no idea where their help had come from.  

Be kind to your neighbor.

 © Nippy Blair 2015. Posts and pictures on this blog cannot be copied, downloaded, printed, or used without the permission of the blog owner, Nippy Blair.