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.

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