Tell me a story.

Doc Creed said:

A rehashing of an old story I posted on Facebook recently:

The calendar declares September 21st the last day of summer but for many Floridians sandal weather can last well beyond Halloween. At age thirteen my family lived on a canal in Cape Coral and I remember warm evenings after school sitting in the aluminum skiff that stayed at the water's edge. Some evenings our neighbors sat on their screened back porch listening to Perry Como on a phonograph and I could hear them sing along to 'Catch A Falling Star And Put It In Your Pocket'. A crop duster would swoop low like a heron, its drone fading with the mellow music into the chalky pastel horizon, and I'd begin slapping at the mosquitoes; that was my cue to go inside for dinner.
The weekends were brighter and I remember my dad in cut off jeans washing his faded GMC truck and listening to the oldies station. He liked the copper can Right Guard and I still associate him with this peppery smell which has all the subtlety of wood varnish and bourbon. He warned my sister and me to stay in the skiff and it wasn't long before we knew why when dark nubs began to appear in the lazy wake of the tea-colored water; three became six and six became nine. For a brief moment the clouds reflected on the dark surface revealing thick garden hose shapes, golden silt underneath. My neck and forearms prickled as my eyes adjusted to see a dozen water moccasins, stiff and then relaxed as ribbons of seaweed. "Don't move," my dad said and, like Moses, with the flick of a rod on the water the snakes slinked away in silent retreat.
View attachment 22742

Click to expand...

GNTLGNT said:

...again, you have a gift my friend...

Click to expand...

Tery said:

Very evocative!

Click to expand...

not_nadine said:

I got in trouble with ducks once. Actually Canadian geese. But no knives and wheelchairs.

Lived right off a nice pond. Look! Geese. Got into the habit of feeding them. Very pleasant. Had a bag of cracked corn, just for them. Nice way to start the day.

Look more! Gosh there are lot of geese now Ah look! They are having babies! So schweeeet! Little ones.

They turned on me, man. It got to the point that I had to sneak out my own front door. Seemed like hundreds of little babies and the adults running full ducky speed at me. They were waiting. I ran - getting pecked and honked at.

Neighbor complained. Ducky poop all around my front door and the path.

I got a warning from the office.

Click to expand...

Doc Creed said:

Thank you, Tery.

Click to expand...

Dana Jean said:

My first school dance.

I was the "dare" dance. I was the ugly mutt that everyone dared a guy to dance with. He asked me, I said yes. Didn't know I was a joke at the time. Until the end of the dance when all the guys were laughing.

And unfortunately, no matter how many times someone says otherwise, I still see myself as this ugly, little girl.

Click to expand...

Doc Creed said:

A rehashing of an old story I posted on Facebook recently:

The calendar declares September 21st the last day of summer but for many Floridians sandal weather can last well beyond Halloween. At age thirteen my family lived on a canal in Cape Coral and I remember warm evenings after school sitting in the aluminum skiff that stayed at the water's edge. Some evenings our neighbors sat on their screened back porch listening to Perry Como on a phonograph and I could hear them sing along to 'Catch A Falling Star And Put It In Your Pocket'. A crop duster would swoop low like a heron, its drone fading with the mellow music into the chalky pastel horizon, and I'd begin slapping at the mosquitoes; that was my cue to go inside for dinner.
The weekends were brighter and I remember my dad in cut off jeans washing his faded GMC truck and listening to the oldies station. He liked the copper can Right Guard and I still associate him with this peppery smell which has all the subtlety of wood varnish and bourbon. He warned my sister and me to stay in the skiff and it wasn't long before we knew why when dark nubs began to appear in the lazy wake of the tea-colored water; three became six and six became nine. For a brief moment the clouds reflected on the dark surface revealing thick garden hose shapes, golden silt underneath. My neck and forearms prickled as my eyes adjusted to see a dozen water moccasins, stiff and then relaxed as ribbons of seaweed. "Don't move," my dad said and, like Moses, with the flick of a rod on the water the snakes slinked away in silent retreat.
View attachment 22742

Click to expand...

HollyGolightly said:

That was lovely, Doc Creed . My parents were from Eastern KY - Fleming/Neon to be precise. A very pretty little town in it's heyday - a ghost town if I ever I saw one now. The trains don't go there anymore, the mining has ceased. My mom's parents were poverty level - 9 kids, Papaw was a coal miner, Mamaw cleaned houses. My dad's dad was a railroader and they had two houses - one that my Granny ran as boarding house for all the traveling railroaders (my dad had 7 brothers and sisters). When I was a kid she still had the big house they lived in. I swear it was haunted. I never could close my eyes there. Ghosts so thick in those hollers. But the mountains are some kind of beautiful there. God - Blue Ridge Parkway is breath taking. Will you ever go back? I still have 2 uncles and a cousin there. I go back every few years -usually for a funeral. Time stands still there. I know where to hide if there's ever an apocalypse. No one will think to look there.
Here's my dad when he was just a teenager standing in front of that scary old house. My sister had so many photos of Neon on her facebook, but then she left facebook and all the photos she tagged me in went with her.

Click to expand...

Doc Creed said:

Thank you so much for sharing this. I'm intrigued with your Granny's boarding house and I would love to hear stories about it. I think a hotel or boarding house is a convenient device for a writer to show off his characters and promulgate a story. Thomas Wolfe features one in Look Homeward, Angel and so does Jeff Fields in A Cry of Angels; both books are marvelous coming of age tales. Is your father standing in front of the boarding house?
I've seen The Blue Ridge Parkway many times and I'm sure I'll return as well as revisit Kentucky. There is a certain someone I hope to see.

Click to expand...

HollyGolightly said:

#1 Quite true
#2 I'm intrigued, but 10 years ago? Get back, Loretta!

Click to expand...

Doc Creed said:

There are places in Eastern Kentucky that are trapped in time like scarab beetles under glass or smoky topaz. This Spring will mark ten years since I drove through Harlan County into Big Stone Gap, Virginia and I remember easing around hairpin turns, windows down, the cool coal damp rockface breezing by my face. The moisture settled on my arms and neck and in my nose was the river, my car an echo off the hills. Rusted tiers, coal tipples and abandoned trains were enflamed in morning light, dusted in gold and cinnamon for a moment and then swallowed again in mountain shadows. These artifacts were a strange geometry against the steep crevasses and besides the occasional time-washed doublewides that crouched on the hills like mountain lions, clothes lines and strips of tilled gardens, it was a world of curves and stone. These bread box homes and waving banners of sun-bleached linens lent warmth to a place that ceaselessly hungered for sun.
The lady at the shiplapped Quikstop, where I'd stopped for gas and coffee, told me there'd been a late frost but that I could still see the blooming dogwoods along the way. Sure enough, as I hugged the winding blacktop up and around falling shoulders I saw pops of pink and white spray, twice blessed branches, forever reaching for the sky.
View attachment 24736

Click to expand...

Scratch said:

I too would love to hear more stories of the Blue Ridge. My wife and I love roaming it aimlessly though mostly in North Carolina. The story of the old boarding house reminded me of something which happened the first time I showed my new bride my granny's old place.

My wife is psychic. I know you won't believe that but it's true. When our son broke his arm visiting his uncle she knew something was wrong immediately and told me so. I poo pooed it but she knew. She got hold of her mother and found out she was right. She knows things somehow. I have to hide my innermost soul because she might see what a blackguard I am. I'm not always successful. She loves me anyway.

Shortly after we first married I led her around my grandmothers big old Victorian home. My granny was the sweetest most gentle old girl who used to let us kids have the run of the place and we did. We ate her teacakes and drank her cocoa and rattled the floorboards with our running feet in all the rooms but one. We didn't play much in the parlor. About the only thing we ever did there was hold seances because for some reason it was a creepy room. We never went in there alone.

The seances were fun though. It made a good excuse to hold hands with the neighbor girls. We would intone in our most spooky voices for the spirit of a local Indian chief to "give us a sign". Someone would toss a coin across the room or knock over a book and then a hand would creep up a slender back and squeals and laughter would erupt. My cousins are very much like me.

The house was empty as I gave my wife a tour of my old memories. Watching dough made from scratch be flattened by a rolling pin and cut with an empty can to form biscuits that I would split and top with butter and sugar in the kitchen. Playing the Barnabus Collins game in the living room while the belly of a Fatso stove burned cherry red to push back the cold. The bedroom where quilts six deep kept the cold from young giggling boys not willing to let go of a day full of play. The couch where grandma told us morality tales crafted on the spot and as interesting as any in any book made. Just one more grandma. Grandma is tired boys. But she always would. We didn't know she was dying of cancer. I wish I could hear her voice one more time.

While recounting all these memories and walking through the rooms I love so much everything I saw brought forth a flood. I stepped into the foyer where the old Philco cabinet radio stood and looked into the courtyard where the well still stood and recalled the echoing ping of the water cylinder as it made it's way up the pipe and the squeak of the large ornate pulley as the rope threaded through it. I could see it outlined against the sky on it's lintel. I could feel the soft weathered gray rope in my palm.

I stepped across the threshold into the parlor. The old feeling of chill settled on my shoulders. I stared at the fireplace and wondered how long it had been since a fire shed ashes there. I had learned since this is where the bodies of my ancestors lay during wake. My grandmother had lain here looking so alien without the warmth of her smile animating her face. It was the old way to keep them at home until the funeral.

I thought of telling my wife all these things and looked back at where she had stopped short of entering. What was the matter I asked. Why didn't she enter? I hadn't told her anything about this room yet. She had no way of knowing the feelings it conjured. Something in there is looking at me she told me. That's it. That is exactly the way I had always felt about this room but had been unable to put into words. It was so simple and she had pegged it with nothing to go on. I joined her in the foyer.

Click to expand...

Scratch said:

The house was empty as I gave my wife a tour of my old memories. Watching dough made from scratch be flattened by a rolling pin and cut with an empty can to form biscuits that I would split and top with butter and sugar in the kitchen. Playing the Barnabus Collins game in the living room while the belly of a Fatso stove burned cherry red to push back the cold. The bedroom where quilts six deep kept the cold from young giggling boys not willing to let go of a day full of play. The couch where grandma told us morality tales crafted on the spot and as interesting as any in any book made. Just one more grandma. Grandma is tired boys. But she always would.

Click to expand...