tomato gravy...big grandmama's specialty...sometimes i would eat it with a spoon
camp stew and lemonade stands...10 cents a cup...my cousin debra
the mail-man that always pulled a peppermint from behind my ear...(how did he do that?)
being spanked with fly swatters, switches off bushes, and bare hands
crawling underneath beds and up into attics
sugar cookies and biscuits
walking down railroad tracks with chocolate milk we stole from uncle jessie's service station
red clay dirt roads
riding the golf cart down to the mailbox or over to the dump
picking tomatoes in big grandmother's garden without her knowing and eating them like an apple
funerals and funerals and funerals of family members with names like aunt pearl, aunt mary-lou, dotty, granddaddy pue, cousin patricia, grandmama bernice
fried deer meat and red kool-aid with no ice
kool cigarettes and homemade ashtrays
short hair cuts and big size women in house slippers
dresses made by hand to fit around their wide wastes and stomachs filled with the best southern cookin you ever could taste...with all the fixins and butter and grease
houses that carried the smell of bacon and coffee
bonnets and brooms
bare feet
fishin poles and crickets
skinned knees and long stringy, tangled hair
hand-me-down over sized clothes
hide-n- go seek in your yard and the neighbors yard and the one across the street
watching braves games and the soaps
lying to her and him and "don't tell your mama" this and "don't tell your daddy" that
black and white photographs hanging on the walls
and big ole hugs...pulled in tight between breasts as big as watermelons
my forehead would catch the sweat on the top of her chest as a result of years of taking care of
her family and the neighbor's family and her children's children
and letting the little girl down the street spend the night for reasons they would never tell me why...except to "stay away from her daddy"
big rifles and guard dogs
love sent through hands in the kitchen and collard greens on the table
eatin everything on my plate because of the starving children in Africa
fried okra and green beans
Big Grandmama
southern Alabama
these are my roots
i am country
2 comments:
and country's the best kind!
thank God for 'bama!
Huh. I was smiling from the start, thought maybe you'd gone through my family photo album and written about them, until I read about the starving children in Africa. I just can't identify with that. After all, I always cleaned my plate cause of the starvin' kids in China. Were they in Africa, too? Dang. I should've had more seconds!
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