Almond Sugar

  Psalm 150:4     …praise him with the strings and flute.  

 Almond Sugar is not like the rest of her family who should be medicated and placed in a padded room.  She is normal. 

 There are 27 dogs and 15 cats that live in the house with them, in the backwoods of North Louisiana, and occasionally a pig or two.  There are holes in the walls covered by cardboard and broken windows which the brothers destroyed from their constant wrestling over who drinks the most.  The screen door leans against the wall hanging only on one hinge.   In the summer they crank up the generator and turn on several fans to keep the animals comfortable.  In the winter, they all gather in the “big room” and huddle around the fireplace sleeping on pallets with the animals acting as blankets sharing chews of tobacco with each other, and fleas.  Some of the cats have become addicted to the juice after licking it up from the floor.  It is a pathetic family.  They are not cultured except for Almond.

  Her real name is just Almond, but when she’s home, everyone keeps saying, “Almond, sugar, will you open the window?  Almond, sugar, will you feed the dogs?  Almond, sugar, your daddy needs his beer.  Will you get it for him?  Almond, sugar, whatcha cookin’? We’re hungry.  Almond, sugar, can you fix the porch rail, Bugger, Jr. broke it tryin’ to catch a possum.”

 Almond Sugar is gifted in music and plays first chair violin for the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra.  Her family cannot understand this strange girl for they are musically challenged.  Her daddy. “Bugger” and her brother, “Bugger, Jr.” barely know how to play the radio, much less a musical instrument.  In fact, the closest they ever came to making music was when they came home drunk, trying to sneak in the house, knocking over pots and pans in the kitchen that were all over the floor to feed the animals.  Two of her brothers, after eating the entire pot of their ma's bean soup often gave a musical concert, but that is as close as they ever came to making music.

 When Almond was in school, her ma was overheard one night talking to a drinking buddy at a bar, saying, “Almond Sugar’s teacher said she is gifted and above normal.  Hell, normal people make me nervous, and I got me one with a gift.  Don’t know where that child keeps it, I’ve looked all over that room of hers and ain’t found no gift yet. I think that teacher’s lyin’.  If that child got a gift from her teacher, she ain’t never brought it home.  Gift, hell.  There ain’t one, I’m tellin’ ya.”

 Almond seldom comes home but when she does it seems all her time is cleaning or mending or fixing broken windows or things around the house.  Her family never lifts a finger to help.  She would send money home, but she knows where the money would go.

 Still, her parents are getting old, so she makes the effort to visit every other month even though she would prefer remaining in the city.  When not in Shreveport playing with the symphony, Almond loves to sit on the front porch in a cow hide chair, resting her feet on the porch rail, with a hound dog under her feet or a pig. If she isn’t reading, then she will pick up her instrument and play Mozart or Bach.   But sometimes, you can catch her with a big smile on her face, tapping her foot and playing some good old Blue Grass Country.

 I guess you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t completely take the country out of the girl.

© 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.

 MY FAMILY

 Proverbs 1:8 Hear, my son, your father’s instructions, and forsake not your mother’s teachings.

It has been said that Southern families are known for being a colorful sort of people.  Southern politician's families even more so.  Then why should anyone be surprised if my family looked like an 8 box of Crayola Crayons (that's counting the dogs).  We were different, brilliant, and nontoxic, and oh, so much fun.

 My dad held the trump card of the raconteur, feeling most at home with an audience around him, telling homespun tale after tale.  Never mind if the tale grew in proportion each time it was repeated.  If it caused attention being brought to him then the better the tale.  Daddy loved an audience.  He rose from the ranks of the poorest sharecropper’s son to work for the common good.  He honed his skills of honesty and hard work, meshed with a clear understanding of all man’s problems and dreams.  He had a big generous heart and a fair dealing hand which characterized his efforts in the strange world of Louisiana politics.  The most important person was the person he was currently talking to.  He loved having people around him.  He loved a good joke, and no one was immune.  Not even the governor.

 

         


  My mother was articulate, literary, and well trained for public life.  She was a scholar, loved reading,  writing and entertaining.  She loved the arts.  She, also, required lots of alone time.  Being a Methodist minister's daughter, she had lived her entire life “in a fishbowl” and was well suited for being scrutinized by everyone, relishing the idea of surprise as to their evaluations.  She too loved jokes and loved telling stories.  Mother felt drawn to the man who had never known the genteel ways she had been taught, perhaps exercising her independence by rebelling against the tight reins her parents had kept on her and perhaps due to her idealistic hope of refining the rough edges of this common man.

  As a young couple, they were perfectly suited or so one thought.  On the one hand, there was the idealistic country boy out to conquer the world, who had never used a telephone until the day he arrived at college.  On the other hand, there was the young lady who was used to Sunday socials, attending plays and concerts and teas in the warm summer afternoons, or sneaking off to swim on a Sunday afternoon, a known sin for a preacher's daughter.   My daddy was a home body, he had never traveled outside of central Louisiana, except during the war when he was sent to China, and really didn't care much for it.  Mother loved to travel. She was used to it since Methodist preachers moved every three years back then.  No two backgrounds could ever have been more different.  Yet, there was a commonality between these two.  Both had a keen sense of humor and playfulness; both were strong willed, though mother had been trained to acquiesce to the male in the family.  Both loved to talk at the same time.  One never really listened to the other, but continued to talk over and above the other, succeeding to communicate his or her wishes only by endless repetitions.  To this competing conversation at the dinner table, we four children added our voices creating a cacophony intolerable for most, but the norm for us. 

 My parents believed in entertainment and creativity.  There were large gatherings on election eve.  There were small groups over for meals.  Sunday School parties, party parties. People were always coming to visit us to talk politics, or ask for help.  Our house seemed like a revolving door.  Everyone was treated as a dear friend, although, privately Mama grumbled behind closed doors.

 Our life was one adventure after another. For instance, when I was around nine or ten my mother decided I should experience a train ride and a plane ride.  I thought she did this with all of us, but found later that I was the lone lucky one, probably she saw us as kindred souls.  So, the two of us went down to the train station on lower Third and boarded a train to New Orleans where we spent hours exploring Magazine Street and the antique stores.

 We went to Brennan's for a meal, white tablecloths and napkins, jazz music in the background, and fine silverware.  I even wore a tie.

  
A sharp contrast to the rowdy meals we had at home.  We spent the night at a hotel on Canal Street.  The next day was spent at the Audubon Zoo after some beignets at Cafe du Monde.     

 

She even took me to Preservation Hall.  We traveled Bourbon Street while I had a lesson about the evils that lurked behind those doors while laughing at the drunken characters we met.  She told me that someday I might want to attend Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but I should wait until college which I did.   The next day we boarded a plane and flew home.  I was now a man of the world, I thought.  

 

 

  
A few years later, when I was twelve, while staying with daddy in Baton Rouge, he took me to a bar/restaurant downtown just a block from the Heidelberg Hotel.   He said I should learn about Beatniks.   These were young people who were part of a social group in the 1950s and early 1960s that rejected the traditional rules of society and encouraged people to express themselves through art.  We sat at a back-corner table, wine for daddy and a coke for me, listening to the young people.  Some played their guitar, others read a poem.  One sang a song of rebellion.  After each performance, the fingers would snap in approval.  The room was dark with wine bottles as candle holders and black lights around the black walls.  Everyone there wore black clothing with berets or scarves. Most everyone was smoking.  I, being naïve, thought, they were only cigarettes.  Daddy didn't think the smoke would be a problem since we wouldn't be staying for long, and it was important to have this experience.  I was fascinated by these people that I had heard of but never seen.    

  I might have even dressed the same except that I owned no black clothing.  Blue jeans and cowboy boots with a western shirt was my attire those days. 

 When we were in early elementary school, mama caught some of us using crayons on the walls in the hall, guess who?  Yea, me. I tried to blame my younger brother, but she saw through my lie.  There was some fussing, not too loud, while she complimented my artwork.  I did have to clean up after myself.   A few days later, Mama cleared out a closet in the middle of that hall and declared that it would be everyone’s place to be creative.  The closet had a space where the clothes should be where we could play. Overhead were two large, deep shelves that used to house suitcases.  We could climb up and lie down in those cubbyholes.  We wrote all sorts of things on those walls as well as colored and drew to our hearts content.

At the barn, we made hideouts and tunnels in the hay loft, and read books away from prying eyes.   My brother hid in the loft and skipped school and discovered smoking. We climbed trees and hung by our knees on the topmost branches, well, I did anyway.

  We used slingshots, shooting China berries, and had wars with each other or just tormented our sisters.

We were free range children.  We made rafts in newly created drainage ditches and floated around the ditches.  We laughed at the table and walked around the rooms like Groucho.  I was frequently on my horse galloping around the lane that circled our cotton and corn fields, pretending I was in the Kentucky Derby. Our only rule was to be home for supper and before dark.  I’m glad I grew up in a family that was different, brilliant, nontoxic, and fun.

© 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.

Madame Zulu Voodoo Jones 

Luke 6: 18 who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.  Those troubled by impure spirits were cured.

I was travelling down highway One from Mansura to Marksville in Avoyelles Parish when a sign on the roadside caught my eye.  So, I pulled over.  I had passed this forlorn place many times while traveling down highway One only to laugh at the ignorance of others who might have stopped there.  This time, curiosity got the better of me and I stopped, laughing to myself. 

The yard was bare of any grass.  There were chickens scratching about on the hard, dry earth enclosed by a fence that long ago had lost its usefulness. The house was an unpainted dogtrot that had seen better days but still had a little life left in it, maybe.   The sign, crudely painted on an old sheet of plywood in the front yard said: Madame Zulu Voodoo Jones, Faith healer, Palm Reader, Treater of all illnesses, Remover of the Devil, Reader of the stars.

The old hound dogs greeted me at what used to be a gate before I could get out of the car.  One obviously had recently given birth to a litter from the looks of her and the other looked as if he could tear the tires right off the vehicle if so inclined.  He began making his rounds, barking, growling, and relieving himself on my right rear tire while the female sat scratching and trying to make the puppies leave her alone.  

There was someone sitting in a rocking chair in the open space between rooms, a box fan in one corner and a TV balanced in an open window.  An extension cord was dangling precariously out the window and across the porch to the fan.

I rolled down my window enough to speak.   “Is Madame Zulu in,” I shouted, “I would like….”

The woman jumped, startled by my intrusion. “Yes, yes, don’t leave.  I will get her,” interrupted the animated woman as she spat upon the ground.  “Get out of the way, dogs, we got company,” she hissed.  Tripping across the extension cord she hurriedly rushed into the house.  I waited while the guards continued manning their post. 

About ten minutes later, the same woman, (or her twin sister) returned dressed in a garish dress, wrapping a bandana around her head.  She tugged at the skirt and rolled it up enough to walk barefoot around the chicken droppings while fastening a metal belt made from beer tabs around her waist.  In her best “Haitian” accent she began a singsong monologue as she ushered me upon the porch.   “Welcome, welcome, mon amis.  Yes, I am the Madame.  Welcome, welcome.  Yes, I can read your palm.  I can tell you do not need a healing for you have no major illness.  $20.00 before we gaze into the crystal ball.  Come, come in mon.” 

I hesitated, “No.  You must pay first,” she smiled  toothlessly while grasping my arm tighter.

 I hunched my shoulders, my empty palms facing up trying to explain that I did not wish a reading today and did not have $20.00.  I mainly wanted to know her prices for future references.

She turned on me with a vengeance that would make the devil himself take notice and forgetting her Haitian accent cursed me for interrupting her soap opera while calling the dogs and reaching for a broom. 

I twisted my ankle as I stumbled down the steps, landing right in the middle of the fresh chicken droppings.  The dogs surrounded me, barking madly, while she swung wildly with a broom barely missing my head several times.  She continued swinging and cursing as I stumbled over the chickens, causing them to cackle and flutter over my head, scratching my neck.  I crawled over the bare ground, the dogs barking and growling ferociously.  The male grabbed my pants leg and tore off a piece.  He stood there shaking the cloth as if it were a dead animal.  This is when I took flight, past what was left of the gate, barely making it to the car before the dogs were on me again.

I sat stunned in the car watching her remove her wig and bandana while tugging at the skirt.  Giving me the evil eye, she slammed what was left of the screen door, cursing at the top of her voice.  From the open window she shouted, “Nosy old white trash, interrupting my program.  Hope the dogs’ bit you good, yes sir, interrupting my program.  Dirty white trash.  How can a decent woman make money with people like you?  Git, I said, git before I send the Gris Gris.”

*Note:  Gris Gris is a Cajun term that usually means to put a curse on someone.  Usually in jest, but I'm positive not in this case.

© 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.