Chapter 6

The BIA agent wasn’t quite sure how to handle the request from the old chief. The chief had asked if it would be all right to trade his forty-year old wife for two twenty-year olds. Rather than get involved, the agent simply agreed, to get the old man out of his office.

Some time later, the old chief came back with a request to be allowed to trade back for his first wife. The agent noticed that the old man looked quite haggard and drawn.

“Before I agree,” he said, “Please tell me why you want to change back. I would think a man your age would enjoy having two young women to care for his needs.”

“Chief find out he not wired for 220.”

The vet was somewhat bemused when the old farmer told him he needed something for his constipated calf, so he gave him a quart of Croton oil and told him, “Give this to it and it will be as clean as a whistle.”

The old man looked at him a bit funny and asked, “All of hit?”

After being assured that the vet meant that the entire quart was to be given at one time, the farmer left.

A few days later, the vet saw the man on the street and asked, “How is your constipated calf doing?”

“I don’t hev nary constipated calf. I said I had a constipated cat.”

“You did? Surely you didn’t give it the whole quart?”

“You tole me to.”

“Yes, but that was because I thought you said it was a calf. My God! What happened? How is the cat?”

“Dam’ if I know. The last time I seed hit, hit were goin’ over the hill with five other cats. Two wuz diggin’, two wuz coverin’ up and one wuz lookin’ fer new territory.”

From Don:

Seems that Momma had to deal with some stains in the laundry that were just beyond what she could tolerate, even for farm clothes. To kill two birds, she gave Willet a nickel and told him to sashay to the store for a pint of Naptha because the chore was well within the abilities of the child and got him out from underfoot at the same time.

When he returned, she proceeded to spot clean the clothes and the fluid did the job on the grease, grass stains, and every other problem she encountered. Satisfied, she then told Willet to take the leftover of the pint, about 75% still in there, out to the barn closet.

Willet, the Scatterbrained, headed for the barn but somehow rationalized that he could save the effort, distance, and time on the assignment by taking a slight detour to the outhouse and pouring the Naptha into the hole; nobody the wiser.

This would have been fine except come midnight, Grandpa went out to the one-hole for a constitutional wearing only his overhauls. Seated, Grandpa pulled out the makings and rolled a small cigarette in the dark.

The Naptha had evaporated and spread in the hole as a heavy vapor, just waiting for the dropped match. After the explosion, the entire family came outside to inspect the large pit where the outhouse had been located.

Nothing, not even a roof shingle, was left. They only looked up to the nearby tree when Grandpa groaned. There he was, draped over a branch, still holding the shred of the cigarette, and muttering, “Must have been somethin’ I et.”

JC’s momma invited the preacher to come for Sunday dinner, which was the noonday meal. The evening meal was supper.

JC’s daddy was worried that they wouldn’t have enough food, especially when the preacher showed up with his wife and all six kids. He called into the kitchen to his wife, “Slice it thin, Honey, and make lots of gravy”, he told her.

JC always dreaded a visit to his father’s parents. His grandfather was famous for never speaking and always had a wad of terbacky in his cheek, spitting in or near the spittoon most of the time. His grandmother was as garrulous as his grandfather was taciturn. She dipped snuff and always seemed to have her lower lip full of it, with brown streams running down her chin from the corners of her mouth.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, but she always wanted to hug and kiss him when they first got there. After the initial trauma, he would get outdoors as quickly as possible so he and his father’s youngest brother could go outside to play. His uncle was only two years older, chronologically, but seemed much younger.

They would play all sorts of games and stuff like jumping out of the barn loft, which really hurt your ankles, but made you feel more like a man for being brave enough to do it.

During one visit, his uncle stood in the open door from the barn loft that faced away from the house and shouted the dirtiest word he knew. “Hockey!”, he screamed. JC never knew whether he didn’t know the word “shit” or just thought that the local euphemism was a close as he dared go.

When JC was six, his younger sister came down with Diphtheria. It was a highly contagious disease and the family was quarantined for 30 days, to avoid spreading the disease. He never knew how she contracted the disease, since no one ever mentioned anybody else being quarantined.

His most horrible memory was watching when the doctor used a huge needle and syringe to give her 500,000 units of medicine. He didn’t know how much that was, but it sounded like a terrible lot and his four year old sister was obviously in agony while it was being administered.

She survived without lasting effects, but suffered through a bout of smallpox the following year. No one else in the family was affected by either illness.

Despite the almost total absence of modern health care, back then, there was very little sickness and people lived to ripe old ages with very few debilitating diseases. JC always thought that drinking out of a common dipper had to fill your body with every antibody known to man.

If a serious illness did occur, such as Diphtheria, the doctor came to the house. When JC’s tonsils needed to be removed, they took him to the hospital in town.

Cash was scarce in the country, but the store owner allowed them to pay with eggs. Two eggs could be used in place of a nickel and two nickels bought a filling lunch of baloney and crackers, with a Pepsi-Cola and enough Louisiana hot sauce to wash it down with. For another egg or two, he could have a Moon Pie, which was quite a treat.

Moon Pies were produced in Chattanooga, site of Lookout Mountain and some bloody Civil War battles. Cannons located on Lookout Mountain commanded an excellent field of fire, so the mountain was an important strategic asset.

To JC, the most important thing about Lookout Mountain was the presence of Rock City. It was a tourist attraction built on the edge of the cliffs overlooking Chattanooga and was as exciting to him and his contemporaries as Disney World would be today.