Aunt Willie and me were in the garden picking green beans. Uncle DH planted Kentucky Wonders that had vines as big as me. Moma said they weren’t fit to eat; she planted White Runners. Willie was pushing the vines aside with her cane but I thought I would show off and let her see how nimble my little fingers were for moving the vines without mangling them up. Moma taught me about picking green beans in a very stern way ! “Just pick the beans! If you tear up the whole row, you won’t be eating this winter.” Anyway, those big old KY Wonder beans were as tough as Moma said but I was still scared to death I would pull up the whole row. Willie did not seem to mind one bit and she kept thrashing the thick vines with her cane. We got a mess of beans after a bit and headed back to the kitchen to break them up.
I held the screen door for Willie as she hobbled in holding the dishpan of beans. It was steamy hot in that kitchen and I dreaded having to sit in the heat by the wood stove to break beans but Willie did not cotton to staying out in the sunlight.
Uncle DH was inside and even with my little brain I knew that was unusual. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a small block of wood on the oilcloth. I don’t think he said a word to Willie and me but he might have.
There was a window behind the kitchen table but it faced north and was situated right in front of the coal house.
The black coal dust had coated that window for years so looking out or looking in or seeing a beam of sun just didn’t happen. Plus all the grease from the big wood cooking stove that never went out, as far as I know, was stuck on the window too.
Willie sat down in the chair opposite of DH. She told me to get a bucket to throw the strings in from the beans. The bucket was behind Uncle DH.
I peered around the crook of his arm. He had a very small piece of fur on the chunk of wood. Without much fanfare, he handed me the larger piece of fur from the table. It was the softest thing I’d ever touched in my life. “What do you think about that?”
I am not sure what I said.
I was mesmerized with that small black piece of softness.
“Come here and I’ll show you what I’m fixing.”
DH pulled up a pair of Aunt Gladys’ clip on earrings. They had twirls of tiny sparkly stones that I couldn’t take my eyes off. Moma did not have anything like that, but Gladys had a town job and could buy things that sparkled and shined.
And, she didn’t have six mouths to feed. Moma said that all the time.
DH took my hand and put one of the jewels in my hand. The back had a little trap on it to snap on the ear! DH told me not to fool with it, so I didn’t. But I wanted to. He was meticulously cutting out little rounds of mole fur and putting them on the trap so Gladys’ earlobes wouldn’t get red and sore.
He had a little container of Elmer’s glue and Grandma’s little lap work scissors! I knew this was important work because no one had touched Grandma’s sewing basket since she died a few years back.
Nothing much happened in the old house and this day was no different.
I got the bucket and went back to breaking beans. Just like the coal dust windows, things never seemed to change in the kitchen until:
Part 2
I was walking home from Caney Fork School and decided I was brave enough to walk right by Leonard Girdler’s house and on up the hill to see Aunt Willie on my way home. Willie would sometimes give me one of Gladys little round store bought cookies but Gladys caught on and started counting them daily.
At least I could count on getting a peanut butter cracker.
As I got near the old apple tree I could see a big truck right in the middle of the dirt road.
Two men and Uncle DH were leaning against the truck jawing. I decided it was best for me to climb the rock wall and walk around by the magnolia tree to the back door. The screen door was pushed wide open and I couldn’t see Willie. I walked into the kitchen and right in the middle of the floor was a huge white contraption. I could not go forward and I was afraid to go back out where that big truck was wedged on the road.
I called out for Willie and she called back to me, “I’m in here.” I was stuck behind that big white thing that was taking up every inch of the kitchen.
I decided to crawl on the straight back chair and then hoist myself over that thing and dash to the sitting room to the comfort of Aunt Willie. Just as I got my legs over the edge of the white thing my fingers grasped a coiled something that I tugged on to pull myself up and over to the other side.
Just that moment, DH and the two men came through the door and there I was, skinny as a pencil, draped over the new electric stove holding the coiled burner with my fingers.
I don’t remember much of the kerfuffle of getting me down or anyone scolding me. The men had moved out the tall bench that held the water buckets and in no time flat they had scooted the new electric stove in the corner by the pantry. Moma said you couldn’t cook anything fit to eat on a stove like that.
That seemed to be what my Aunt Gladys figured out. The stove got covered in coal soot. There were a few canning jars lined up on one side and an old dishpan covered the cooking burners. The dishpan was filled with jar lids, clothespins and some old rags.
The wood cooking stove remained the source of cooking food for my two maiden aunts and Uncle DH. That white electric stove never boiled a pan of water after a few months of being there and the newness wore off.
Across from the wood stove was the kitchen table. It had a faded blue and yellow oilcloth spread over the top.
Two chairs sat on each end. DH sat near the door and Gladys sat near the newfangled electric stove. Willie had to get her chair from behind the pantry door. Gladys would drag it across the linoleum floor to the table. Willie’s back would almost be against the wood cooking stove but I guess her old bones liked being warm. There was barely enough room on top of the table for three plates. Across the back of the table was a sugar bowl, a salt cellar, a jar filled with spoons, another jar with forks, several jars of jelly with little rounds of green mold on top and a jar of peanut butter. One corner of the table held four mismatched coffee cups. I wondered if that extra cup was for my grandma. I never twisted up the courage to ask.
There was a dough board cabinet next to the table on the opposite end from the electric stove. I never in my entire life saw that cabinet opened. Over the years so much stuff was piled in front of it, you couldn’t get to it anyhow. So whatever was in there, I guess they just left it to the mice and mold.
And mice! I always liked mice and never considered the havoc they could wreak. I loved finding a moma mouse nest filled with tiny mouse babies. I would let them run up and down my arm. The mouse moma didn’t have to worry about me. I always put them back carefully and covered them in a little mound of mouse fur.
But when those little rascals got in the pantry right off the kitchen of the old house, it was a sight to behold. Willie sent me in for a dipper of cream. I had the cream pitcher clutched tightly in my hand so I wouldn’t drop it and break it in pieces.
I pushed open the pantry door, it was so heavy I had to push with my shoulder. A faint bead of light ran across the center of the floor. The mice were running to and fro trying to get back in the corners for safety. I pushed on in because I had a task to do and besides, I wasn’t afraid of mice.
I went to the cream crock and carefully lifted the plate from the top. A dipper hung on a big nail beside the crock. I took it in my right hand and shifted the cream pitcher to my left. I was being careful not to overfill the cream pitcher because spilling cream is bad luck. And plus, you might get fussed at for making a mess.
In the dim light I could barely see anything but when I drew the dipper back out of the crock there was a dead mouse as plain as day. I wasn’t very good at quick decisions or I would have put that mouse right back in the cream crock or flung it into a far corner. Instead I dropped him in the creamer pitcher and took him in the kitchen to ask Willie what to do! Oh lordy me, what happened next was screeching and flailing and I couldn’t say a word or ask anything. I just stood there, cream dripping on the floor and a dead mouse in the bottom of the cream pitcher and Willie fit to be tied.
Finally, she heaved out the words, go throw it in the fencerow. She didn’t say which fencerow so I trotted back toward the barn and threw the dead mouse into the honeysuckle and blackberry briars. I did not break the cream pitcher and I felt proud of that.
When I got back to the kitchen, Willie had regained her senses and gave me one of Gladys round cookies with a hole in the middle. We didn’t clean up the mess or get any cream, we just went in the sitting room. Willie turned on the tv and some people were talking that I did not know one thing about. I asked Willie if we could watch Queen for a Day but she said it didn’t come on until 3:30. Willie was plum tuckered out from all the carrying on in the kitchen and she promptly fell asleep.
I wanted to turn the tv up real loud so I didn’t have to listen to the tick tock tick tock of the mantle clock. I didn’t have one notion about how to turn up the tv anyway.
I guess I could have gone ahead and walked home but who knows what awful stuff might be waiting for me to do once I got there so I decided to just stay there dangling my legs and rock back and forth in my grandma’s rocking chair.