Backseat Memories

Music has a way of jogging the old memory circuits. The other day, I heard a song by Neil Sedaka and it more than jogged, it jolted a very real recollection from my distant past.

As a freshman in college, I met a girl with whom I had attended high school. I will call her Miss B. I was attending Northeast Louisiana, she, a small Baptist college in Pineville. I would call Miss B when I came home on weekends and we would usually go out if she were also in town. She lived in the tiny nearby town of Hosston.

Her dad was a Baptist deacon. Baptists don’t dance and they don’t drink alcohol. Still, there are many Baptists in the world and it’s not because they are opposed to having sex. She and I usually spent much of our many dates making out in the back of my parent’s yellow Pontiac. We never really did the deed, but we came close.

I probably wasn’t Miss B’s first love because she already knew the best “parking” spots in and around Hosston. Our favorite was the Hosston grade school parking lot, but we also knew a few secluded oil leases that worked in case our favorite was in use for some function, or other. One such parking incident stands out in my mind.

Miss B and I had double-dated with my close friend Tim and his date at the time. We had gone to a movie in nearby Atlanta, Texas. Miss B and I sat in the backseat of Tim’s Chevy (at least I think it was a Chevy). Miss B was as hot as the proverbial west Texas summer wind, and practically tore my clothes off on the drive back to Vivian. Worried about his date, Tim took us to a rural churchyard and turned out the lights. It was the night that I thought I was going to get lucky.

Miss B and I were going at it hot and heavy in the backseat of Tim’s Chevy when someone knocked on the car’s rear window. Tim rolled down the fogged front window to see a Vivian cop.

“This place is off limits. You need to go home or I’ll have to run you all in.”

“Thanks, officer,” Tim said, cranking the engine and moving out smartly, none of us bothering to ask what the cop was doing so far out of the city limits.

The incident put a pall on Miss B’s ardor. She adjusted her skirt and blouse and crossed her arms tightly against her chest. She didn’t even give me an inkling of a kiss when I dropped her off at her house.

The next week, I got a letter from Miss B. She had, it seems, found a boyfriend, the new love of her life, at the college in Pineville. He was a Baptist and I was not, and I was suddenly out of luck.

As I listened to the Neil Sedaka’s Laughter in the Rain, I wondered about Miss B. Did she marry her new Baptist beau and have a dozen kids? I hope so, but I guess I’ll never know.

Fiction South

Wide Eyes and Gloomy Skies

Thanksgiving was one of my favorite holidays while growing up in northwest Louisiana. My Mother had three sisters and a brother. My Grandparents lived but a few blocks from our house and most of my Aunts, Uncles and Cousins would usually come in for the holiday.

My Grandparents, the Pittman’s, usually had Thanksgiving at their house. I loved all of my cousins, but was closest to Cousins Ken and Angela, about the same age as I am. I have lots of younger cousins, and at least one that is older, but I mostly remember Ken, Angela and my brother. I remember one Thanksgiving holiday in particular.

While there weren’t many inclement winters that I remember while growing up in north Louisiana, a certain November was particularly dark and gloomy. For some reason we celebrated that particular Thanksgiving at my parent’s house.

The Pitt’s all loved politics. Whenever they congregated, you could bet there would be a spirited discussion on the subject. It did not matter what half of the group believed, the other half would dispute it, Grandpa Pitt always leading the charge. While the parents argued inside the house, we kids were having fun in the back yard.

None of us kids cared much for politics, and this included my cerebral, and very pretty cousin Angela. We were busy outside, amid a blue Louisiana gloom, thinking only of ways to have fun.

Jack and I were the country cousins, Ken and Angela from Shreveport and Houston, respectively. Jack and I had both had BB guns, bow and arrows and knifes since we were old enough to know better. Ken and Angela had never even popped a cap.

Fireworks weren’t illegal in Vivian during the fifties and sixties. Two-inchers and M-80’s were as legal as they were potentially deadly. Jack and I had made pipe guns, plugged on one end, with a stock for holding and aiming. You would drop a lighted two-incher down the barrel, followed quickly by a marble, aim and wait for the explosion.

Ken and Angela were slathering at their mouths to shoot the guns. Finally, Jack and I acquiesced. The two City Cousins held the barrels in the air as Jack and I dropped two-inchers, followed quickly by marbles down the barrels. They pointed and the resulting explosion was deafening. Jack and I watched with open eyes as the projectiles blew out the windows of my Dad’s garage.

Angela and Ken were oblivious to what they had just done but Jack said, “Oh, shit!”

My own rear end began to pucker.

Jack and I knocked out the remaining glass from the windowpane and discarded the broken shards in the trash. With Thanksgiving festivities in full swing, we got a bye for a few days before my Dad realized what had happened.

When he finally discovered the transgression, he failed to give us the whipping that we anticipated. Instead, he took away our marble guns, and our fireworks. Angela and Ken never received any punishment, and I do not suppose they should have, neither having a clue as to what they were doing when they blew out my Dad’s garage windows.

Yes, Thanksgiving is still one of my favorite holidays. I miss hearing my parents and relatives discussing politics, but mostly I miss those blue Louisiana days when skies were gloomy, and our young eyes wide.

Gondwana

Stealing From the Dead

As I sat out by the pool tonight, playing with my pugs, I recalled something from my past when I glanced up at the full moon partially covered with pregnant clouds.

I have mentioned many times that Halloween is my favorite holiday. There was little or no crime during my childhood in Vivian, Louisiana and the parents allowed us to stay out until the wee hours on Halloween night. Despite the darkness, I can only recall being frightened on one occasion.

Darkness comes early in late October and it was well after dark when Rod, Wiley and I left my house, intent on collecting lots of candy and treats. Parents didn’t accompany their kids when I was young. They didn’t need to. The three of us had hit every house on our block. We were moving east when we first encountered a church group engaged in a scavenger hunt.

“We have to get a flower from the cemetery,” a girl’s voice dressed as a witch told us in passing.

“Let’s get that piece of obsidian from the graveyard,” Rod said. “You’re not scared, are you?”

“Not me,” Wiley said.

“I ain’t scared,” I said. “But we shouldn’t steal from the graveyard just because it’s Halloween.”

“You’re a wus, Eric. You wait here and Wiley and I will get the obsidian.”

“You ain’t going no place without me,” I said. “We’ll see who the wus is.”

Louisiana is always humid. Halloween night had a rare full moon that year, but rapidly moving clouds covered much of the stars and moon. Vivian is hilly, the town cemetery at the top of the highest hill. The pumpkin moon had just disappeared behind a cloud when we reached the top of the hill and headed for the obsidian grave. When we reached it, we found something unexpected.

There is no obsidian in Louisiana, at least not natural obsidian. Someone had placed a large chunk of the rock at the foot of someone’s grave. As an amateur rock hound, I lusted after it. I had talked about it so much that both Rod and Wiley also coveted it. Stealing it from the dead was another matter. I had the big hunk of obsidian in my hand when I noticed someone kneeling in front of the headstone.

The person looked like a witch and at first I thought it was the girl on the scavenger hunt. When the person stood and faced us, I realized that it wasn’t.

I was close enough that I could smell the dank fabric of the dark clothes the woman wore. When she turned to face me, I thought she was wearing a mask. As I stared at her, I realized that she wasn’t.

Rod and Wiley didn’t hang around; they ran away when they realized the person was not a trick-or-treater. I looked at the ugly old woman, my heart racing, still holding the hunk of obsidian in my hands. When she raised her hands over her head and took a step toward me, I screeched at the top of my lungs and started running. I didn’t stop until I was at the bottom of the hill where I found Rod and Wiley.

“Did you get it?” Rod asked.

“No thanks to either of you.”

I kept the hunk of obsidian for two days, but my conscience wouldn’t let me keep it. I returned it to the cemetery, placing it at the foot of the grave where I had found it. I forgot about the old woman until tonight when a full moon cloaked by pregnant clouds reminded me again.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Mayhaws and Other Wild Louisiana Things

Growing up in northwest Louisiana, I recall trekking to Jeems Bayou in search of wild mayhaws so my mother could make mayhaw jelly. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this is the fruit of a variety of Hawthorne bush that grows profusely throughout the south, especially in swampy environments. Jeems Bayou, near Caddo Lake is a perfect spot for the elusive mayhaw.

Mayhaw jelly is thought by many to be the finest jelly in the world. I can’t argue with that sentiment. If you can find a jar, buy it and try it. You won’t be disappointed.

Mayhaws grow ripe in May and June, a time of abundant vegetation and wildlife, including snakes, in the area around Jeems Bayou. Once, far from the car and deep in the heavily vegetated area where mayhaws abound, my mother crossed paths with a snake – probably a harmless grass snake. It didn’t matter. It may as well have been a boa constrictor. My mother screamed bloody murder and didn’t stop running until she reached our brown and tan 1950 Ford.

My brother and I found the scene pretty funny but we didn’t laugh when we learned that we had also missed out on mayhaw jelly for the rest of the summer.

Fiction South

The Little Room Where I Grew Up

The last time I visited my parents in the house where I grew up, before my Mother died, I sat on a stool with my laptop on the bed. This is the room where I lived for seventeen years of my life, the first fifteen along with my older brother Jack. The room is small, sixteen by fifteen, or 240 square feet. These days my brother and I get along very well. Now I know why! If we didn’t, we would have killed each other long before either of us ever graduated from high school. And the room seemed much larger than it does now.

I don’t remember getting along with my brother. Just the opposite. Memories of torment filling every waking moment abound in my mind, torment that usually lasted every single day until one or both of us fell asleep at night. If that’s true, then how did we keep from killing each other?
As I sat there, staring at the walls now decorated with pink print wallpaper, I wonder – did my Mother secretly want girls instead of boys? Even the sheets and comforter on the bed are pink. Yeech!

Now there was a queen-sized bed in the room. Jack and I each had our own beds, small beds. I remember moving them around like forts, taking the plungers out of our BB guns and having cork wars, shooting at each other until my Mother would hear us and race into the room screaming, "Your Daddy’s going to whip your butts when he comes home. Now stop it right now and straighten up this room."

My Father worked in construction and was away from home a lot. When he returned on weekends my Mother would meet him at the door with a belt. We almost always got a whipping before we got a hug. He never hurt us; the whippings were always more bluster than substance.
After pondering this great mystery of life, I’ve decided three things – the way we remember people we once knew is probably totally wrong, our memories of how things used to be are likely completely false and, last but not least, size only matters to adults.

One more thing bothers me, though. Am I wrong about the pink wallpaper?

Fiction South