OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

OK, so talk about an old guy's parents who are long gone from this earth doesn't matter to most people. Luckily I don't care. This is my story and I'm telling it.

Finished watched "Big Fish" and whoever wrote it really was trying to say something about life and relationships. Not sure what it was, but I was struck by one very astounding fact (at least astounding to me). In every person's life there is an incredible number of events, people, happenings which occurred only to him. That such an huge array of things (that particular combination) should have occurred to one person and only one person, strikes me as miraculous. So, as the story sort of says, every person's life is full of incredible happenings, even if we don't choose to embellish them. Just because something is hard to believe doesn't mean that it doesn't have some basis in fact.

In my last post I mentioned that my father would probably have been thought of nowadays as, at least, borderline abusive. I never thought of him that way, just strict. My mother, on the other hand, would be called "smothering". Thus, I had two "disfunctional" parents and was perfectly happy. You see, it's not necessarily your circumstance that creates your happiness, it can be your attitude.

My mother was short. Short enough to have her kitchen cabinets redesigned to fit her better. I suppose she was at most about 5'. And by the time I can remember her, she was approximately round. Not that that mattered to me, of course, she was just "momma", who did everything for me. You see, she was of the old school and a child doesn't know anything until he's grown.

Anyway, I can remember a time when I was about 15 when we went to get me a new pair of shoes. That was the first time she said something of this sort: "Why don't you pick out the shoes you want." Now this was a dumbfounding concept to me. After all, she decided when I needed new shoes, she paid for the shoes and up until now had selected the shoes. I was now faced with probably one of the first decision I had to make on my own. I looked over all the shoes there and ended up picking a pair that looked exactly like my old shoes. She looked at me and asked, "Why would you select a pair of shoes that are like your old ones?" To which I replied, of course, "Why not, I like them." Anyway, we got the shoes, but somehow I always got the impression that she was saying to herself, "I was right, he's really not ready to be making important decisions."

I never even owned a pair of blue jeans until I was grown as she didn't consider them "dressy" enough. Later in life, when I would visit and we'd go into town, I would deliberately put on a holey T-shirt. Then she would start with "You can't wear that to town." And I would reply, "Why not? I don't care what anybody thinks." And she would say, just short and sweet, "You should." Anyway, I'd smile, then I'd change clothes and we'd go and for years I participated in this little dance with her, deliberately baiting her. I turned her need to control me into a game which I won just by playing the game.

Now maybe subconsciously I realized just how severely she controlled my life, because when I went away to college I didn't have any desire to ever move back like some kids. I went to college about 300 miles away so I was back about every month (to have my laundry done, if no other reason), and I enjoyed the pampering for the weekend, but I was ready to get back and face the world. By the way, if there's any of you out there who resent your mother making you do your own laundry, consider yourself lucky. You can't imagine how many clothes I ruined until I figured out how to do it on my own.

Now my father never went to school. In his lifetime he managed to figure out how to shakily write his name (and believe me, it was a struggle for him, taking a good minute for him to carefully trace it out). He could do some elementary arithmetic, but not much. My mother had only gone through the 8th grade, but won several spelling bees, so I guess she must have been a good student.

I can remember them sitting at the table, my mother filling out my father timesheets for work. He's trying to tell her what he did that day and she's trying to paraphrase it to fit it in the small space. Then she'd repeat it back and it wouldn't really suit him and then they would have a little argument about it. But what could he do, he had to depend on her, she did her part in his earning the paycheck. Or when we were traveling and she's trying to read the road signs for him and he's going so fast that by the time she can read them it's too late. Then they would have words about it. But my mother gave as good as she got and they worked it out.

My mother never cussed. OK, once that I can remember. She liked (believe it or not) buttermilk with cornbread crumbled in it. She was carrying in a large glass of this mixture one night and dropped it on the carpet. She DID utter a cussword at that point and it was quite startling. You know, when you don't use them often they have much more impact when you do. Anyway, I sort of inherited that from her. Always figured an intelligent person should be able to come up with other words to use, but I have to admit there are times when I utter them, but I have to be pretty mad and, even then, my main intent is to shock and to emphasize. As a matter of fact, I don't think my current wife has ever heard me cuss, she just doesn't make me mad enough, I guess.

Now my father cussed like a sailor. As a matter of fact, he would put sailors to shame. Funny thing is, he didn't even think of them as cuss words. They were just like all the others to him and he used them liberally. I can remember the first time he (and I) heard a cuss word on TV. It was about 1957 and it was a play (you could get away with more in plays than regular shows in those days - including nudity in "Hair" a few years later), and some guy used the word "damn". My father just about collapsed in the floor, he thought that was the funniest thing in the world for them to be cussing on TV, to sound like him. Come to think about it, maybe that's why my mother didn't cuss. Naw, she was just a lady and ladies don't say such words.

My mother never drove. Never learned how to. I can remember a story where they were down some rocky southeastern Oklahoma path (can't really call it a road) where they got stuck trying to cross a stream and my father had to get out and push so she had to "drive" out of the creek. Just about ruined the gears (it was a standard) and lots of choice words, as I understand it, but she drove her 100 feet and that was it for her driving.

My mother made quilts. Beautiful, mostly hand-made, quilts. When she died, they were the main prizes that her children were after. Now she made two styles. Some were almost display quality and she usually gave those as gifts and then there were the plain ones that she made for herself to use. It was the latter of course that all of us kids wanted. The fancy ones were quite often made of material specially bought for the quilt, the others from material left over from her sewing her own clothes. I look at some of those quilts now and I can remember each material and see my mother in the dress of that design and color.

My sister, in the later years, had her make several special for her, buying the material, etc. She paid her for them and they are beautiful, but you know, they're just not the same as those that she used on her own beds. She hand-quilted the squares into the quilt using a large frame that was suspended over my bed. She would let it down on one end during the day, do her thing, and then put it back up when I came home from school. So at night with the moonlight coming in the window I could look up and see the underside of the stitching my mother had done during the day and see how much progress she had made. It wasn't much but it was always some. Her work was always plainly in sight for me.

Anyway, after my father died in early 1959 things changed a little, but my mother tried to keep it as much the same as she could (for me, I think). We had to move, she used some of what little insurance money she got to buy a oil-camp house, moved it onto my brother's land outside of town and we made life with just us two. She was once asked if she thought she'd remarry and her reply, so much her, was: "Why would I want an old man around here to take care of."

She got $25,000 insurance, should have got double indemnity but my father was too slow dying. Sounds cruel, but the insurance policy stated that you had to die within 6 months of the incident (his hand became infected when he scratched it fixing an old lock on a door, developing into blood poisoning) for it to be considered an "accident". So it was a long, slow, in-the-hospital, out-of-the-hospital, back-in, process. Eleven years later she was able to start drawing my father's social security (she had almost never worked outside the home) and she lived on that $125 a month (and even managed to save some) until her death. When she died, she had slightly over $24,000 in the bank. She was pretty frugal with a penny.

She was pretty shrewd, too, and used her little-old-lady ways to manipulate some people. Like she would tell the doctor, "Well, I'm on social security, and I can only pay you $5 a month." And they'd pat her on the shoulder and say, "That's quite OK. Whatever you can afford." Remember, she had $24,000 in the bank. And the banks gave interest based on a 30 day month. And after every month with 31 days, she drop by the bank and complain about it until they gave her an extra day's interest. Of course, she never went to complain about February and banks were different then, they actually liked people and wanted to keep their customers.

Now my mother was faithful in her marriage. Seems like a strange concept nowadays, but it was the standard in those days. My father, in his younger days, was a bit of a carouser (I think my mother tamed him, like most women do their men), and he and his friends would play at the local barn dances (he played banjo, but I can only remember hearing him play once), at least until they became so drunk on white lightning that they couldn't play anymore. So the story is that one night, after he and my mother were married, he was playing at a barn dance, got drunk and on his way home stopped by a single woman's place on the way. Never really got a straight story about what happened there, but my mother was sitting on the porch waiting for him when he finally got home about 2 in the morning. Word has it that he was informed that the next time it happened, he might as well not come home, he should just stay with whatever floozy he had decided he preferred over her. Anyway, they stayed together so I guess he never went visiting other women in the evening after that.

You know, we all remember our mother's cooking. A few interesting facts about mine. My father only like FRIED potatoes, so that's all we had (he was, after all, king of the manor). After he died we never had them again. She never cared for them. She always overcooked her meat, could not stand anything even slightly pink, one thing I HAVE changed in my diet. She hated fish, even their smell, but since that was a large part of our diet, had to cook them. Years later I noticed that although she cooked them, she never actually ate any. Fish also stopped when my father died. She always made more food than we needed later in life because you never could tell how many kids and/or grandkids might show up (about all of them lived in town, except me later).

She always got me up early for a good breakfast. Now, like most teenagers what I wanted to do least was get up early and usually I didn't want anything to eat, but that didn't stop her. By the way, from the time I left home until about 2 years ago, I almost never ate breakfast. And, of couse, the breakfast consisted of eggs (cooked in grease), biscuits (soaked in grease), gravy (made with grease) and bacon or ham (almost MADE of grease). Is it any wonder that I had heart trouble in my 40's? Then if there was anything left, she'd put it on the stove (over the pilot light to keep it sort of warm) and then anyone who wanted a snack could finish up the biscuits and meat, for that colesterol(Sp?)-high snack.

But her stew (I've taught my wife to make it) is unique. And, because we were poor, many times in my early days we had no meat at all and dinner consisted of red beans and cornbread. And that's still one of my favorite meals, especially with a big piece of raw onion. Plenty of carbs there, no wonder I have diabetes now.

So that's a little about my "momma". She was controlling and manipulative and, I found out years later, after her death, she cried the whole 300 miles back home after she and my sister drove me over to college. She wasn't what you'd call demonstrative (rather stoic, as a matter of fact) but she truly loved me and I now regret that I waited until I was 35 to ever hug her. She died in '85 and there are a million other stories, of course.