Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa George

                                                              A Christmas Memory

One of my favorite memories was going to Grandma and Grandpa George's home out in the country in south Louisiana for the holidays.  My mother's parents, Rev. A.D. and Ruth George lived on the George family farm near Independence, Louisiana, next door to his brother, Uncle Herbert.   This was the highlight of our lives for we dearly loved going there every chance we could.

  Daddy always prepared to go hunting with his friends, promising to be home for Christmas day.  Mama prepared for the rest of us to go to Grandma and Grandpa's.  Preparations for trips like this were always stressful on the getting there, part because Mama had to get us ready by herself and also because she was not known as the cool cucumber mother that had all her ducks in a row when stressed.   In fact, Mama didn't even have ducks...on occasions like these she had a goose...a loose goose.  A totally frazzled goose.  For years we called her Goosy Susie.

 The preparation began the day before the trip by her shooing us away while she packed suitcases and toys for four children.  We would have helped but she usually told us it was easier for her to do it herself.  “It'd be like trying to herd four free range children through a cattle chute,” she'd bemoan.  “I'd rather herd cats!”  So off we would roam while Mama packed and loaded the car including the Christmas presents we weren't supposed to know were in the back of the Buick station wagon. The next day, of course, she had to load the car with all the other gear needed for a week or so at Grandma's.  Which led to the task of, again, rounding us up from the four corners of the universe to go to the bathroom, change clothes again, find shoes, sweaters or coats, favorite toys or games before assigning seats where we wouldn't kill each other for the two and a half to three-hour drive to Grandma's, depending on how much she had to stop to discipline us. This never worked for we had free roam of the back seat but at least she tried.  Before long, the loose goose had emerged with shouts of, “I don't care.  Get in the car!  Now!  Nippy go find your brother!”  

 Sometimes Mama would have games for us to play, but that resulted in fights over who saw what first, or “I've already found that letter.  Mama!!  Make them stop!”    Becky, of course, kept her head in a book the whole time except to complain. Baby Jane just crawled around on the floor.  Bobby and I constantly pestered each other with Mama shouting that she was going to pull over and leave one of us on the road to rot beside some trash barrel if we didn't stop, her free hand swinging around the area of the back seat trying to catch us, while we ducked her grasp making Jane cry and the car to swerve to the edge of the road before quickly jerking it back in the lane.  This usually called for a stop on the side of the road for a discipline lesson which went on deaf ears.

 Since this was before seat belt laws, the rowdiest one had to switch places with whomever was in the front next to mama which caused a completely new problem as the rowdy one climbed over the others across the seat, kicking and shoving, while the rest wrestled for positions in the back.   “Lord, help me,” mama cried, “if I make it through this, I'm going to reserve a room at Central Hospital!” (the local mental hospital) “and they won't blame me a bit!!!”  Or “I’m moving to California and leave all you critters alone in the woods and not tell your daddy where I left you.”

 Yet, despite it all, mama always managed to arrive safely with the four heathens still alive and usually singing Christmas songs as we left the highway, maneuvered the long dirt road through the woods to the old weather worn converted shotgun house nestled against the trees in the clearing.  It felt like arriving in a past century. 

                                                       
                                                                          Pulling taffy

                Grandma would always have candies and cookies ready the minute we arrived.

  Grandma loved to bake.  There would be every kind of cake, pie, candy, or cookie that anyone could want.  We looked like a car full of circus clowns as we barreled out of the station wagon shouting all the news we had to share with Grandma and Grandpa.  Once everyone was settled, we sat out on the back porch or by the fireplace as Grandma gave us taffy to pull.    We would gather in pairs and have contests as to who could be the best taffy puller.  The adults sat around giving us encouragement or relaxing with a book.  The collie dogs were scattered about the room fast asleep ignoring us.   If the cousins came there was even more fun.  At least for everyone else.   The girls were the oldest and all about Becky's age, so they always gathered in the corner plotting evil or revenge on the younger children.   I had no boys my age, so I usually was left out.   This likely was when I discovered I preferred playing alone.  The younger ones were corralled by the adults when not tortured.

Since there was no indoor plumbing, getting ready for bed was a unique experience at the outhouse.

                                    

If it were daylight, we boys would sneak near while the girls were inside and shout “Snake!” or something which always brought screams and threats.  If it was getting dark, no one, and I mean no one, wanted to go past all those tall camellia bushes to the far corner of the yard to do their business.  We usually had to be accompanied by an adult.  After dark, of course we had the chamber pots placed under each bed.  And yes, we each had to share emptying them in the morning.  Then it was off to bed.  We each had a collie to sleep with which was always fun.

 The next morning, after we arrived, we got to choose the Christmas tree from the woods.  Grandpa would harness the horse with a flat sled, gather all the children and off we'd go like a Currier and Ives Christmas card.  You could hear shouts from each other as we let him know who had found the perfect tree.  Grandpa would slowly walk around each one, pointing out it's good or bad features before raising a fifteen-foot pole to measure the height, eventually deciding on the perfect one.  Taking out his saw, he measured a spot on the trunk and had each one of us give one stroke with the saw before finishing the task himself.  As we dragged the tree to the sled, we all excitedly talked about stringing the popcorn or cranberries or making paper chains to decorate. 

 I remember laughter as we took turns playing the old pump organ in the corner and singing Christmas carols as we decorated the tree.  Sometimes I would pump, and my sister would “play”, but the songs never sounded so sweet.   On Christmas eve we listened to Grandpa read the Christmas story from Luke 2.   

 

                              

 Our days were spent exploring outdoors or playing on the stairs that led to the attic.  Usually, we played school on the stairs and Becky was always the teacher.    There was always a trunk to explore as well.  It felt like a secret hideout when we were allowed upstairs.

In the attic we learned to weave rag rugs on a frame that grandma made with nails on each end holding the warp. 

 Frequently during the holidays (Thanksgiving or Christmas) Uncle Herbert would be making cane syrup.  

                           

We would be allowed to help gather the cane from the field, putting it on the flat sled behind the old horse.  Sometimes we could skim the impurities off the top of the boiling syrup, all the while dreaming of the next morning's breakfast when we would enjoy some of that same syrup on our pancakes.

 Today we sit in our warm houses with artificial trees or ones from the tree lot, but the season is just the same.  We read the Christmas story from the Bible and sing carols (without the pump organ) and reminisce of the times when family always gathered and remembered.

Advent is a time for families and church and love. I am thankful we still have the laughter and love in our house.

© 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 Girl I married

Have you ever known about someone before you ever met them?  I have.  Her name was Frances.  Yep, the same one I married.  You know that stately beauty with a beautiful smile and swan like neck.  Strange isn't it.  Some people would say it was written in the stars; we were ordained to be together.  I can't argue with that.  I personally believe that God had these plans all along, too. 



I was in the army.  In Vietnam, at the time. My commanding officer asked me to replace someone putting together a yearbook for our brigade in Tokyo.  He knew I had a background in art and assumed I knew all about layout and proof reading. Of course, I told him I did.  I was clueless.  I went to Tokyo for my last month in Vietnam.  What a blessing.  I did get to meet with the person I was replacing.  We had one day together and he taught me everything I needed to know to finish the yearbook.     



I had a friend stationed at the airbase there.   Sam lived down the street from me growing up.  His wife, Jill, was pregnant.  Jill was also a great friend.  I had gone to college with her and we even dated, as friends on occasion, before she met Sam.  Sam was in the air force and going on temporary duty to Korea.  I looked in on and visited Jill a lot while he was gone. 



Jill has a twin brother, David.  I was always hearing about this girl he was dating from south Louisiana.  Jill was also telling him about me watching over her while Sam was gone.  This girl was named Frances.  Frances was also hearing about this friend that was with his sister over in Tokyo.



Years later, after I finished another year with the army, I returned to school and finished my degree. I started work as an art therapist in town.  I lived in a house that had been vacant for seven years.  It was rent free since my dad owned it.  One day, I got a call from a dear friend, Madie Carter, who was like a second mama to me. Her daughter and I were long time friends.   Ms. Carter had a girl staying with her that had graduated from Northwestern and was teaching in Alexandria.  I should meet her, she said.  Her name was Frances.   I was invited to a meal, several times.  I politely declined those several occasions.  Eventually, Frances joined my church, Emmanuel Baptist and I went down to meet her.  She looked at me and said, “You must be the guy Ms. Carter keeps inviting and never comes.”  I could have kicked myself.  She was beautiful. 



We ended up singing in choir together, going to Sunday school together and I finally got the nerve to ask her for a date.  (Men are dumb when it comes to matters of dating.)  I asked her one day if she would like to see Cabaret the movie with me.  She said that she heard about it and did not think that would be the kind of movie she would want to see.  I said, “Oh, okay.  Well maybe some other time.”  I kicked myself to the curb all the way back to the car.  Why didn’t I ask her to do something else, or even see a different movie? 



A few weeks later I finally worked up enough nerve to ask her out again.  I chose the correct movie.  The day of the date came, and it was a disaster.  It rained.  Not just a rain but a down right flood, a Noah's Ark type rain.   My roof was leaking in several rooms.   I called her and told her that I was not going to be able to go on the date because I needed to stay home and mop the floors.  I did not explain about the roof leaking or what a disaster each room was.  Oh, no.  That would have been too easy.   Again, remember,men are clueless and dumb when it comes to dating.



She must have thought I was nuts by this time.  I'm sure she was rather cold toward me at church for a good while after that.   Eventually I did ask her for a date a third time.  I told her I had to do something over at a girl's reform school.   Did I explain that I was chaperoning some youth?  Of course not.   Would she like to go.  She said yes, to my surprise.  So, our first date was chaperoning twenty something youth to sing at a girl’s reform school.  We did not go anywhere else afterwards.  You would think I had been able to get my act together by this time.  Bless my heart.    



We did continue dating after that and one day discovered we had heard about each other before.  I I told her about my friend Jill whom I had visited while in Tokyo.  She asked Jill’s last name, “I heard about you from her twin, David. I used to date David. He was always telling me about her friend helping her while her husband was flying to Korea.”  I realized that this was the Frances I heard about from Jill.  The puzzle came together.  Small world isn’t it.



How we married is a story all its own, just as bizarre and yet we have been married almost 47 years.  Bless her heart, she still loves me.

© 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.

Today is my brother's birthday so I'm sharing a story from my archives about him.  Happy Birthday, Bobby.

My brother, the Sleepwalker

              My brother and I were unlikely roommates.   He and I are as different as night and day.  He has been a good ole' boy from head to toe since the day he was born and I am, well, I'm not sure what category I fit into.  Bobby is four years younger than me.  We were roommates, forever.  Something neither of us cared for. 

              Bobby was born not long after we moved to the Paradise community.  Our room was upstairs with a screened porch adjoining it. We frequently played on that porch.  I was careful with my toys, Bobby not so. When I was nine and Bobby five, I had a toy Roy Rogers Ranch set, complete with the fences and buildings for Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk and all the animals.  I would place them in a corner of that screened porch and play with them for hours, keeping things nice and neat, carefully putting them back in the box when finished.  Bobby loved destroying things.  He lost one of the horses and broke one of the fences.  He also had some pet white mice that he removed from their cage.  These critters chewed on Trigger and caused him to lose a leg.  I was furious.  I told Mama that I wanted a room all to myself.  I threatened to lock him on that porch with his pillow.  Of course, that didn't happen.  I was told to just be more careful with my toys.

We moved the summer before I went to the fourth grade.  Daddy built us a ranch style house on Jackson Street Extension, out in the country.  It had a long hall that separated the living quarters.  There was one house on either side of us and corn and cotton fields all the way back to MacArthur Drive.  Our pasture went all the way to Prescott Road.  The house was huge.  The fireplace alone had enough bricks in it to build a small house.  We both thought we would have a room to ourselves.  We didn’t. The bedrooms were off the long hallway, ours first and then my sisters.  We didn't have real doors, just an accordion style folding screen in place of one wall that separated us from the hallway. This was so we could have cross ventilation since there was no air conditioning. Mama and daddy were at the end of the hall with a real door, and a small window unit.      

We didn’t like that we had to share a room again.  Daddy had a headboard custom made by Leonard Lemell, our faithful carpenter, that had a shelf for books and stuff.  Our two single beds, connected by this headboard, were side by side with only a foot between us.   We were both unhappy. At least we each had our own closet and built in chest of drawers.   My side had sweet potato vines and books neatly arranged.  My clothes hung in the closet with short sleeves first, then long sleeves, then pants, all facing the same way, neatly spaced.   My underwear and tee shirts were carefully folded in the drawers.  I constantly told him, “Don't touch, that's mine.”   Bobby had jars of pickled rats and snakes.  He had clothes strewn everywhere, skulls of dead animals, wads of bubblegum stuck on the headboard.  His closet looked like the Tasmanian Devil had taken up permanent residence.  We fought, constantly.

            After about a year, Daddy became tired of our fighting.  The headboard that kept our beds so close was placed in the center of the room giving each of us our own space.  He threatened to build a wall between us if we didn’t behave.  He should have.  This worked, but the only problem was I had to pass his side of the room to go to the bathroom.  We co-existed, fighting often.  I still had to live with a brother that would place his cat on me after I was asleep.  Have you ever been awakened by a cat sucking on your neck in the middle of the night?    How that poor cat survived, I'll never know because it was slung upside the walls too many times.  He also found great pleasure in sneaking up from behind and choking me until I passed out. 

              One night, after both of us were asleep, daddy thought he heard a burglar in the house.  He walked quietly up the hall searching.  When he got to our room, he found me sitting up in bed talking in my sleep and Bobby sleepwalking.   Bobby became a regular sleepwalker after that night, and I continued to talk. 

            Soon the trouble began.  Bobby didn't just leave his sleepwalking to our room only.  Since we had no real door, he began wandering the hall to my sisters' room, into the kitchen and other places in the house.  Once he thought he was going to the bathroom and ended up going in the refrigerator.  Mama had a chain and lock placed on it after that.  Mama and daddy discussed things with our next-door doctor.  He said that when Bobby was sleepwalking, we were not to wake him suddenly for fear of causing trauma.   So, we put up with him wandering the house during the night.  It became a game like “Where's Waldo”.  Every morning we would search closets and rooms to see where my sleepwalking brother finally bedded down.  We got used to it.  

             We had a door in the hallway that exited outside. One night, Bobby went outside.  He was found sleeping on the patio in the back yard.  Since we lived in the country, we hardly ever locked doors.  We had to lock the door, now.   He found other doors.   When someone forgot to remove a key, he would unlock the door and head outside.   Soon, he didn't just leave the house and sleep in the yard, he began wandering to the barn, or was found in the pig lot or in the pasture among the animals, quietly sleeping with his pillow, cows and horses calmly ignoring him.  We even found him in the nearby woods off Prescott road.   Mama was beside herself and threatened to place a chain and lock on HIM at night.  Maybe she should have.   All of us were losing sleep.

Securing the doors became a hard-and-fast rule.   But that didn't stop him.  He still managed to escape.  One morning, we found him on the grass under the China berry tree, in our neighbor's pasture, fast asleep.   All the doors were still locked, and keys accounted for.  This happened for several nights.  I was put on watch, after that, to see how he escaped.  I really hated that, but at least I didn't go to sleep first to have that cat thrown on me.  That rascal had found the wood box next to our huge fireplace.  The wood box opened to the den and to the outside so we could load firewood from the woodpile without tracking the wood across the living room.  No one ever thought that it should be locked.  Bobby had managed to crawl through that space and leave the house. 

Bobby finally stopped walking in his sleep.  The reason?  One night he went outside and fell into a ditch filled with water, frightening him alone out there in the dark.   In the middle of the night he came banging on the door and screaming.  Bless his heart.  He was traumatized.

He was always in his bed every morning, after that experience, AND we continued being horrible roommates.

© 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 JADE STONE AND MAMA

This is a blog from the archives. One of my favorites about my mama.

April 22, 2015

             My mama had a mischievous eye.  Occasionally she delighted in bringing it out to wink in merriment. Once when she and I were returning from Grandma and Grandpa Georges in Hattisburg, Mississippi, she decided we'd drive to New Orleans and spend the night before coming home.  I thought nothing about it because I was used to those, spur of the moment type excursions, on Mama's part.

            We stopped for lunch somewhere on Magazine Street, Mama’s favorite place in the world to go antiquing.  She could spend days just enjoying all the unique shops up and down this street.   After ordering our shrimp po boys and while waiting for our meal, Mama began eavesdropping on the people in the booth just behind her, another of her favorite pastimes.   As they ordered, they were talking about a certain large expensive piece of jade, from Burma, they had seen on Magazine street, on their last trip during Mardi Gras and had come back from Dallas to purchase it.  During the conversation the couple mentioned the shop's name and described the jade in detail to their friends who had traveled with them.  The lady said, “Let’s enjoy our meal and dessert and then go purchase this jade. There’s no hurry.  I had called and they know we are coming.”

  Mama looked at me, a twinkle in her eye, “Quickly finish your meal,” she said.  “I know that shop.  Let's have some fun.”   We rushed through our shrimp po boys and left straight for the antique shop, just two blocks away.  

When the people arrived to acquire the jade, they found Mama at the counter holding that beautiful stone trying to decide whether she would purchase it.  She kept going on and on about its quality and how her daughter would love to wear it at her wedding.  She told the shop owner that we had come from Dallas for this stone. “You do remember our phoning about this, don’t you? We wanted it for our daughter’s wedding,” she said, smiling at me.  The couple was restless and nervous as they watched in horror.  “Napoleon, Mama said, addressing me, don't you think this would look perfect on your sister?  Sweet daddy won’t mind.  His precious darling is marrying someone with almost as much money as we and Daddy would LOVE to show off by buying something expensive for his precious little girl.”  I nodded, used to playing along. Mama stood silent for the longest time before putting it down.  She started to walk away but quickly returned to the counter and examined it some more. Finally, Mama said to the owner, “Could you hold this beautiful stone while I retrieve my daughter?  It won't take a second,” she said, “She’s down the street purchasing some antique armoire for her new house on the lake.  Darlin’, I'll even leave my son, Napoleon, here until I return.”  He agreed.  The couple was devastated. Mama turned, smiled while greeting the couple, walked to the door, and left. 

 I watched the color leave their faces.  The wife was about to cry.  She kept whispering to her husband to do something.  He stood his ground, however, while standing there in his cowboy boots and leather Stetson hat, appearing as if his temper would flair at any moment.  I was afraid that if mama didn’t return soon, from around the corner, he would be rude and force the owner to let them procure it, after all they had come all the way from Texas for this stone.  I averted my eyes from them as they stood there, uncomfortable in their silence with hatred in their eyes.

I thought Mama was hiding around the corner a wee bit too long and was about to bolt for the door. The man in the Stetson hat began pacing the floor while the wife continued crying.  

Just as I felt Mama had abandoned me, she returned and said, loudly, from the door. “Oh, never mind about holding that jade. I can't find my daughter.  Come on Napoleon, let's go.  I changed my mind concerning the jade.”  The expression on that woman’s face was priceless, tears smeared her mascara.  The man practically knocked me down rushing to the counter, checkbook in hand. 

 Mama and I stood outside on Magazine street laughing. 

© 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.