Flavors (3 page)

After about a week, I was lucky to get a biscuit and a chicken wing. Yet, none of that deterred me from my primary passion in life. Fun.

Adventure awaited me.

The ancient four-room farmhouse, a rustic unpainted silvery-gray structure with a dilapidated tin roof, sprouted up on a rise from which everything surrounding it sloped downward, over green meadows where a milk cow and two tired-looking work mules grazed. There, I spent hours lying on my back, at peace with creation, smelling the sweet grass and wildflowers, listening to the drone of insects, gazing at the blue sky, dissecting and naming fluffy cloud shapes and daydreaming

The land-bottoms disappeared into a bordering forest, where, on one side, a crystal clear spring nestled in the corner of a rock basin. In it, minuscule crawdads darted about, entertaining me. This fountain, twice a day, replenished the Melton's two-gallon metal water buckets, hauled up the long, steep hill by sturdy Melton males.

On occasion, they would condescend to let me struggle, huffing and puffing, to carry one uphill. The thrill I got was incomparable.

Through those enchanted woods that wrapped the entire farm's boundaries flowed bubbling creeks on all sides, magical bodies of water in which to splash and play and scoop out
sandy floors until water reached our waists, only to level out to ankle-depth again overnight. Oh, how clear the water. And the smell of dampness and earth and foliage was like no other.

The fecund bouquet, zested with lemon, remains with me today.

Even the barn stalls, lined up across one terrace, openfaced and intriguing, beckoned to me. One unit in particular drew me like a gnat to peaches. Straw heaped up on one side, leaving the other wall free for me to bunker down in my cherished solitude. I loved hay's sweet fragrance and would lounge there, cross-legged, head lolled back against the splintery wall, whose cracks let in sunshine to wrap me, with my imagination spinning rampant for hours on end. Sometimes reading. Always musing.

Down the hill, I could hear Frances snorting and I would venture down to her pen and talk to her. I imagined she knew exactly what I was saying. Most of the time, she would be slumbering on a freshly laid bed of leaves and foliage, at peace with life.

To this day, I remember the mystical pull of it all and experience again how I saw, felt and smelled infinite nuances of life and being.

To me, life is a huge pie, each slice a different flavor. Childhood is definitely
lemon
. Yet youth cannot completely contain it because a bit of its tanginess pops up still, a half century later. Not as often, and maybe not as strong, but during an exceptionally joyful time of love or discovery, or triumph, I
whiff
it.

That summer of my early earthly odyssey was indescribable
lemony zest
. It proved to be a quest to somehow discover the real me. A person with depth and wisdom. For nearly twelve years, that unearthing eluded me. I didn't analyze too closely. That was strange, considering I evolved into a near neurotic overachiever by my mid-teen years. Heck, during those lemon
drop preteen years, I had no idea where my life was heading, nor did I particularly care. I lived in each sterling moment, savoring every sight, touch and smell of it.

“Get in here and help with the dishes.”
Grandma's strident decree shattered my musings as, a week and a half later, I sat staring out the window, now raised to cool down the house. The screens were natty and nailed unceremoniously to crude window frames, but they kept out the flies and mosquitoes and ushered in balmy breezes.

“Never saw a girl so flighty in all my life,” Grandma muttered as she turned away and swatted an intrusive fly on the wall. I didn't really get it with Grandma, whose flavor was mostly sage-y. In retrospect, I suspect that, to her way of thinking, I was a totally alien-genetic composite dangling precariously from the stoical Melton family tree. And that's putting it kindly, out of deference to her, who was, after all, my grandma.

Being who I was, naked of ego, I told myself it was just Grandma Melton's way. That's what Mama and Daddy always said. She was not into sweet talk. Her dialogue was as plain and unadorned as her battered washboard. Her vocabulary was the same, plain enough for a moron to understand. When she meant “flighty,” she said “flighty.” The upside was you never misunderstood her.

The downside was I knew that day my period of grace was up.

 

My 1950 childhood offered many worlds. But the one that shimmers still on the long-ago horizon is Grandma Melton's domain. I was at once fascinated and intimidated by my stoutframed, pale-haired, ruddy-complected grandmother. Her tightly reigned features belied the iron-sway she held over the family. There was a scruffy dignity about her, a milder version than silver screen's Ma Kettle.

Unlike Ma Kettle, however, Grandma was a stickler for cleanliness. No chickens or pigs wandered inside. Her sanitation index was, due to lack of indoor plumbing, more lax than today's standards, but considering what she worked with, she kept a tidy house.

Every day, linoleum floors were swept clean. On Fridays, they were swabbed and mopped. Before Nellie Jane left the kitchen, following meals, Grandma insisted all be left in apple pie order.

Monday was wash day. I can still smell the Octagon Soap hot water concoction as Grandma's new white washing machine agitated in the backyard. A long drop cord threaded through the window to connect it to the electrical outlet inside. Wash pots still heated the water and were toted by bucket to fill the washer and two large tin tubs chaired strategically beneath the wringer contraption that swung around from wash to rinse
position. I thought of how, at home, Mama had running hot water, simplifying the entire process.

After the rinse was completed by passing each load through two large tubs of clean water and wringing out, I would sometimes help hang the clothes on the strung clothesline and the overflow loads across barbed wire fences to dry. The sheer volume of Grandma's laundry boggled my mind. Later, when she started taking in neighbors' laundry, it really overflowed. If nothing else, Grandma Melton was an entrepreneur.

Grandma Melton also had a unique form of religion. She and Grandpa didn't darken the church's doors, but on Sundays, most of the Melton offspring were spiffed up and sent off to the little country church up the road. Nellie Jane enjoyed it, and I was glad it provided her with a world outside the farm, especially during summer months when school did not afford the same luxury. The boys, until they realized they could refuse, joined her in the weekly trek. When it rained, Grandpa would deliver them to the simple white house of worship, then pick them up at twelve sharp.

Sunday was one day Grandma gave Nellie Jane a rest from helping prepare the sumptuous dinner. Usually either fried chicken or her fabulous, rich chicken and dumplings, prepared from her farm supply, appeared on the long Melton table. She would sometimes add her tasty chocolate-strawberry scratch cake to the fare. It was a unique concoction of strawberry shortcake topped with fudgy chocolate frosting. It makes my mouth water, remembering.

Sometimes, when things got particularly hairy for Grandma, a family death or her constant parade of exotic heart-fluttering physical symptoms, she would get out the huge family Bible and read. True to character, she never made a big show of it, but it was during those times of meditation that I saw an open and gentle side to her. One of faith.

Nobody actually cursed in Grandma's presence. The language may have gotten a bit peppery at times, but in Grandma's estimation, the ultimate wicked utterance was using God's name in vain.

This influence also fell upon the entire household. Her ever-evolving leanings were held in utter reverence. And her odd chest and head symptoms were borne with dignity. I never heard her truly complain. Only during her afternoon rest between dinner and supper would she sit with Grandpa in the front yard – my grandparents had the only two rocking chairs – did I hear her softly relate to her “honey” that she'd felt the chest flutters again.

Grandpa, too, respected her and loved her unconditionally. Great affection abounded between those two.

I realize in these later years just how much Grandma's strength buoyed and prepared me for the future. At that time, however, I was too into the moment to see past my turned up, freckled nose. I didn't see how hard Grandma worked at keeping clothing fresh, clean and ironed for the entire family, including me. I only saw the fun part of hanging clothes to dry in odd places and looking for the next escapade.

Soon the new washing machine novelty wore off and I was off playing somewhere on the farm by mid-morning. Nellie Jane had no such options. She shouldered the chore uncomplainingly with Grandma.

There on the farm, Grandma and Grandpa Melton's nine unmarried kids assimilated us until it was difficult to tell who was who.

“What's a four letter word that means ‘got?'” Nellie Jane asked.

“Have,” I replied.

Nellie Jane and I sat together, squished side-by-side in the scruffy old easy chair, working the daily newspaper crossword
puzzle. Several such mismatched chairs as ours, collected from God only knew where, meandered haphazardly over the main sitting room, one that also provided a sleeping corner for our grandparents' bed. Two other rooms on either end of the dwelling—lean-tos actually—served as bedrooms that slept the remaining eleven residents. Wall-to-wall beds and cots littered the two Army barracks chambers, with mere squeeze-through walking space.

Folks were always telling Nellie Jane and me that, with our dishwater blonde hair and similar features, we passed for sisters – a fact driven home to me quite painfully that day.

“Nellie Jane!” Grandma's voice boomed from behind us as she came out of the kitchen.

“I called you to come ten minutes ago.”

I grabbed my throbbing cheek and swiveled my head to glare over my shoulder in bewilderment at Grandma Melton. “Why'd you do that?” I asked, reeling from shock.

She peered at me for a long moment until her uncertain features emptied. Then quite unapologetically, Grandma said, “I thought you was Nellie Jane.”

Emotions pummeled me as I gazed at her, stricken, confused and for once, speechless.

Seeing something in my demeanor that didn't set well with her, Grandma planted both fists on ample hips and gazed down her flared nose at me.

“Would ya'll look at how she's blarin' them eyes at me – like she could run through me?” she declared to the room at large, indignant as all get out. With a rueful shake of her head, she turned on her heel and stomped to the kitchen.

Nellie Jane kept quiet as a gnat, knowing she'd barely escaped the misguided retribution. I marveled at her good
fortune. For some mystical reason, Nellie Jane's luck nearly always seemed to supersede mine.

I blended too well. My identity got kicked about like a soccer ball.

The flavor of
nonentity
that day was rank pickles.

Pride? I don't remember having any sense of it when that happened. Just that it stung – both the injustice and the handprint on my cheek.

Spring gave way to summer and soon, the newness of change lost some of its sparkle. Yet, my sense of adventure waxed bold.

Oblivious to abject poverty, a distinct switch from my life with Mama and Daddy, I reveled amid kin-kids who were more like siblings than aunts and uncles. Nellie Jane, a full year older than me, smoothly dominated me through her sheer
adultness.

Endless household chores stole her childhood, a fact that, years later, hit me with the impact of a double-barreled shotgun blast. Of course, at the time, I simply held in awe her
focus
and creativity at making fluffy buttermilk biscuits and mouthwatering,
lumpless
thickening milk gravy.

The thirteen-year-old soberly met responsibility head-on, disdaining my frivolity with subtle over-the-shoulder, slit-eyed regard. I pray she spent little effort resenting my freedom, since my daydreaming rapture endures to this very day.

“You'll not read the funny paper till you help with dishes,” was her daily
bossy
litany after we finished our midday “dinner” as it's called in the South. The evening meal was Supper to any self-respecting Southerner. Always. Oh, how I loved to read the next episode of Dick Tracy. He and Tess had a heavy romance
going, and that tweaked something vital and fizzly inside me. Something strawberry-flavored.