Ma was the disciplinarian in our family. We didn’t have many rules in our family. I was in college before I had a curfew. There is a qualifier to that because we didn’t if it did not present a problem with Ma’s one rule. The rule was simple and yet sometime very difficult to keep.
Ma’s one rule was “You could do whatever you wanted as long as no one in the family, their friends or our neighbors knew.” It was why when my brother Jimmy and his friends put cherry bombs in the Waynesville Police station while the cops were at the diner across the street got no punishment simply because he wasn’t caught. My brother Joe and his high school friends one night in the early 60s skinny dipped in all the hotel swimming pools in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They were not caught. Joe didn’t break Ma’s rule.
My brother Gary broke it when he talked down to Ma which is a subsection to that rule which basically means do not piss off Ma. He bought all these eggs to raise praying mantis to sell, and they began to hatch. Hundreds of little tiny praying mantis bugs were hatching. They were everywhere, and Gary argued with Ma which led to her getting angry, and saying to him, “Gary, shut up and get rid of the bugs NOW.”
Needless to say, being her most difficult child, I broke this rule of hers all the time and even went into subsection concerning about don’t make her angry and even another subsection better known as “I have a good mind to send you to China or Africa or India or whatever country she thought might be far enough away she did not have to see me.” But I learned if I did not brazenly do things and learned to hide things meaning I went to other towns to do them. Ma was fine with whatever I did.
She did get back at me from time to time. Jackie was a dark curly haired boy with dreamy brown eyes. We were about twelve years old. We rode bikes together and jumped rope together and we planned to scare the little children inn the neighborhood. There was an abandoned house down by a creek that Jackie and I like to go to all the time. We decided to rig it up to say it was haunted. Jackie and I plotted our plans with another friend Nancy from New Jersey who was visiting her uncle around our dinner table. Ma heard us. She made her own plans.
The day arrived for us to pull off the big scare. Jackie went down to pull the ropes we had rigged. Nancy from New Jersey and I were bringing the little kids down the hill when Jackie came running up the hill. His eyes wide. “There’s a ghost. A real ghost,” he said breathless.
“What do you mean a real ghost?” I wasn’t buying it.
“I am telling you there is a real live ghost.”
I told the others to wait there while I go check it out. I grabbed Jackie’s arm and began to drag him down to that house. Everyone followed us. We grew up playing “Ain’t no buggerman out tonight ‘cause Daddy kilt them all last night.” We were mountain kids; nothing scared us.
We got to the house and Ma came out. She was doubled over laughing at us. Tears were rolling down her face. I was trying hard to be angry with her, but it was too funny that the joke was on Jackie, Nancy from New Jersey and me. There was no punishment except that she had outsmarted us. The lesson I learned from this was to keep my plans secret from Ma.
I learned early on to have two lives. One quite acceptable and one that was on the edge. If Ma didn’t clinch her jaw, I was fine. I grew up rambling wherever I wanted. I cut school every day for the first six weeks of first grade whenever my class went out for recess, I left, and I did not go home. She worked out a deal with the principal and I was made to read to him for recess every day. I was in the first grade but the books he gave me were third grade books to start and I worked up from there.
After college and we had moved into what I came to call the Aunt Inquisition. Who are your boyfriends? And I kept my tongue because not even Ma knew who they were. I wasn’t going to marry any of them.
The other thing that got me in hot water with the aunts and I had to face the Aunt Inquisition more than once was I did not have a steady job. I worked in some very odd jobs even had one with the “mafia” once… another crazy story. I would make a little money take a trip meaning going somewhere not actually taking a drug trip. I never did drugs. I would come home and make a little more money. It was a great four and a half years. I got tired of people making comments so if you asked me what I did, I would say, “I am a bum.” Shut them up every time.
One of my aunts was especially hard on me and if a woman spoke to a man when it was not under supervision they were a loose woman, a slut, floozie, hoochie mama… Ma got frustrated with her sister one day and told her, “Nelle, You would call me all those names because men came and had coffee with me alone all the time. They were waiting for Joe to get home to talk to him.” My father’s office back then was our dining room. I grew up with men in my house all the time. My aunt sputtered and spit for in her book a woman never allowed a man into her home if she wasn’t’ having sex. Ma simply said to her sister, “Nelle, get your mind off sex.”
My Aunt Nelle became a thorn in my side. When I would not give details on which man I was seeing because every southern girl knows that she must have a diamond on her finger before she was twenty-one years old. I was not that kind of southern girl. I am terribly independent. Never thought of marriage as an option. When her inquisition of me got no results, she spread the gossip that I was a man hater… nothing could be farther from my thoughts. I loved men. I grew up with men around me. I found them less complicated than women. Ma told me to hold my tongue.
I decided to seek revenge. Unlike the time with Jackie, Ma would have no idea what I was planning. Over the summer months my cousin was planning her wedding. I was in the wedding party. My aunt’s nephew by marriage came to visit from out west. A Place among many of my relatives as being some exotic place. It was just a place on the map for me. He was nice enough. I asked him to join a friend and me for dinner a movie, etc. He was game.
My Aunt asked me, “When will you have him back?”
I responded, “Before Sunrise.” She did not know I meant it.
To protect the not so innocent, this man was Ralph (not his real name.) We stayed at my friend’s until about one in the morning. On the way back to my aunt’s, I said, “Let’s go down to the dam.”
Ralph and I talked and laughed and had a spitting contest off the side of Hartwell Dam. I didn’t win, but it was fun. I didn’t tell him what was up. Poor Ralph was my pawn. Around three I decided it was time to go back to my aunt’s house. I parked under the light in their yard. Making sure we could be seen. Poor Ralph didn’t realize that I was using him. We made out… no need for details. I walked him to the door about an hour or so later… and kissed him one more passionate kiss while grabbing his buttocks and squeezing them. I heard my aunt squeal.
I got home and my father who said nothing when I came home after six in the morning the week before was fussing. My oldest brother and his wife were visiting. Ma was more than pissed. She refused to speak to me. I didn’t care. The telephone was burning up with my dear aunt telling everyone what a slut, floozie and hoochie mama. I was. Ma got calls from relatives and friends. Ma got even more pissed, but this time Aunt Nelle was the culprit.
It did not mean that I was off the difficult child list. Ma glared at me for weeks. I could tell she was fed up with the relatives talking about me. One day my aunt called Ma and asked her to come and give her daughter some sense. Ma spoke to me, and said, “You are driving me up to Aunt Nelle’s.”
I was shocked that she had spoke to me because I had had the silent treatment for weeks, but still I said, “I don’t want to go.”
Ma had her jaw clinched when she said, “You don’t have a choice.”
We got there and Ma said to me, “Go in first.”
I walked into the den and my aunt looked at me with accusing eyes, and I knew how Scarlett O’Hara felt when she was pushed into Ashley’s house wearing that red dress. I call it my Scarlett O’Hara’s Red dress moment. There was my cousin sitting in her boyfriend’s lap and I was the scandalous hoochie mama here.
My cousin reported that her mother would not let her ride out of state for a day trip to North Carolina. They were getting married in a month. My aunt looked at me and pointed out how easy a reputation can be ruined. I am thinking you did the ruining of mine.
Ma sat there and I saw that sparkle get in her eye, and I knew something was up. She looked at her sister, “Nelle, they could go up to the Holiday Inn up in town if they wanted to have sex much easier than going to North Carolina. How do you know they have not been doing that?”
Aunt Nelle sputtered and spit and her daughter grabbed Ma and kissed her and said, “Thank you Aunt Louise.”
On the way home, my mother began to laugh until tears rolled down her face, we never mentioned my way of getting back at my aunt. From then on, my aunt refrained from asking me about boyfriends. It just wasn’t a safe topic.
I will say this, when I decide to break a rule. I do it with style and I loved every minute of it. I admired Ma that day. She was a gutsy lady with lots of class. It is one of the reasons I miss her so much. I will also say that I grew to love my Aunt Nelle very much. I never regretted what I did, but my Aunt Nelle had a difficult life. I am sad that it was that way for her.
Ma’s one rule was “You could do whatever you wanted as long as no one in the family, their friends or our neighbors knew.” It was why when my brother Jimmy and his friends put cherry bombs in the Waynesville Police station while the cops were at the diner across the street got no punishment simply because he wasn’t caught. My brother Joe and his high school friends one night in the early 60s skinny dipped in all the hotel swimming pools in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They were not caught. Joe didn’t break Ma’s rule.
My brother Gary broke it when he talked down to Ma which is a subsection to that rule which basically means do not piss off Ma. He bought all these eggs to raise praying mantis to sell, and they began to hatch. Hundreds of little tiny praying mantis bugs were hatching. They were everywhere, and Gary argued with Ma which led to her getting angry, and saying to him, “Gary, shut up and get rid of the bugs NOW.”
Needless to say, being her most difficult child, I broke this rule of hers all the time and even went into subsection concerning about don’t make her angry and even another subsection better known as “I have a good mind to send you to China or Africa or India or whatever country she thought might be far enough away she did not have to see me.” But I learned if I did not brazenly do things and learned to hide things meaning I went to other towns to do them. Ma was fine with whatever I did.
She did get back at me from time to time. Jackie was a dark curly haired boy with dreamy brown eyes. We were about twelve years old. We rode bikes together and jumped rope together and we planned to scare the little children inn the neighborhood. There was an abandoned house down by a creek that Jackie and I like to go to all the time. We decided to rig it up to say it was haunted. Jackie and I plotted our plans with another friend Nancy from New Jersey who was visiting her uncle around our dinner table. Ma heard us. She made her own plans.
The day arrived for us to pull off the big scare. Jackie went down to pull the ropes we had rigged. Nancy from New Jersey and I were bringing the little kids down the hill when Jackie came running up the hill. His eyes wide. “There’s a ghost. A real ghost,” he said breathless.
“What do you mean a real ghost?” I wasn’t buying it.
“I am telling you there is a real live ghost.”
I told the others to wait there while I go check it out. I grabbed Jackie’s arm and began to drag him down to that house. Everyone followed us. We grew up playing “Ain’t no buggerman out tonight ‘cause Daddy kilt them all last night.” We were mountain kids; nothing scared us.
We got to the house and Ma came out. She was doubled over laughing at us. Tears were rolling down her face. I was trying hard to be angry with her, but it was too funny that the joke was on Jackie, Nancy from New Jersey and me. There was no punishment except that she had outsmarted us. The lesson I learned from this was to keep my plans secret from Ma.
I learned early on to have two lives. One quite acceptable and one that was on the edge. If Ma didn’t clinch her jaw, I was fine. I grew up rambling wherever I wanted. I cut school every day for the first six weeks of first grade whenever my class went out for recess, I left, and I did not go home. She worked out a deal with the principal and I was made to read to him for recess every day. I was in the first grade but the books he gave me were third grade books to start and I worked up from there.
After college and we had moved into what I came to call the Aunt Inquisition. Who are your boyfriends? And I kept my tongue because not even Ma knew who they were. I wasn’t going to marry any of them.
The other thing that got me in hot water with the aunts and I had to face the Aunt Inquisition more than once was I did not have a steady job. I worked in some very odd jobs even had one with the “mafia” once… another crazy story. I would make a little money take a trip meaning going somewhere not actually taking a drug trip. I never did drugs. I would come home and make a little more money. It was a great four and a half years. I got tired of people making comments so if you asked me what I did, I would say, “I am a bum.” Shut them up every time.
One of my aunts was especially hard on me and if a woman spoke to a man when it was not under supervision they were a loose woman, a slut, floozie, hoochie mama… Ma got frustrated with her sister one day and told her, “Nelle, You would call me all those names because men came and had coffee with me alone all the time. They were waiting for Joe to get home to talk to him.” My father’s office back then was our dining room. I grew up with men in my house all the time. My aunt sputtered and spit for in her book a woman never allowed a man into her home if she wasn’t’ having sex. Ma simply said to her sister, “Nelle, get your mind off sex.”
My Aunt Nelle became a thorn in my side. When I would not give details on which man I was seeing because every southern girl knows that she must have a diamond on her finger before she was twenty-one years old. I was not that kind of southern girl. I am terribly independent. Never thought of marriage as an option. When her inquisition of me got no results, she spread the gossip that I was a man hater… nothing could be farther from my thoughts. I loved men. I grew up with men around me. I found them less complicated than women. Ma told me to hold my tongue.
I decided to seek revenge. Unlike the time with Jackie, Ma would have no idea what I was planning. Over the summer months my cousin was planning her wedding. I was in the wedding party. My aunt’s nephew by marriage came to visit from out west. A Place among many of my relatives as being some exotic place. It was just a place on the map for me. He was nice enough. I asked him to join a friend and me for dinner a movie, etc. He was game.
My Aunt asked me, “When will you have him back?”
I responded, “Before Sunrise.” She did not know I meant it.
To protect the not so innocent, this man was Ralph (not his real name.) We stayed at my friend’s until about one in the morning. On the way back to my aunt’s, I said, “Let’s go down to the dam.”
Ralph and I talked and laughed and had a spitting contest off the side of Hartwell Dam. I didn’t win, but it was fun. I didn’t tell him what was up. Poor Ralph was my pawn. Around three I decided it was time to go back to my aunt’s house. I parked under the light in their yard. Making sure we could be seen. Poor Ralph didn’t realize that I was using him. We made out… no need for details. I walked him to the door about an hour or so later… and kissed him one more passionate kiss while grabbing his buttocks and squeezing them. I heard my aunt squeal.
I got home and my father who said nothing when I came home after six in the morning the week before was fussing. My oldest brother and his wife were visiting. Ma was more than pissed. She refused to speak to me. I didn’t care. The telephone was burning up with my dear aunt telling everyone what a slut, floozie and hoochie mama. I was. Ma got calls from relatives and friends. Ma got even more pissed, but this time Aunt Nelle was the culprit.
It did not mean that I was off the difficult child list. Ma glared at me for weeks. I could tell she was fed up with the relatives talking about me. One day my aunt called Ma and asked her to come and give her daughter some sense. Ma spoke to me, and said, “You are driving me up to Aunt Nelle’s.”
I was shocked that she had spoke to me because I had had the silent treatment for weeks, but still I said, “I don’t want to go.”
Ma had her jaw clinched when she said, “You don’t have a choice.”
We got there and Ma said to me, “Go in first.”
I walked into the den and my aunt looked at me with accusing eyes, and I knew how Scarlett O’Hara felt when she was pushed into Ashley’s house wearing that red dress. I call it my Scarlett O’Hara’s Red dress moment. There was my cousin sitting in her boyfriend’s lap and I was the scandalous hoochie mama here.
My cousin reported that her mother would not let her ride out of state for a day trip to North Carolina. They were getting married in a month. My aunt looked at me and pointed out how easy a reputation can be ruined. I am thinking you did the ruining of mine.
Ma sat there and I saw that sparkle get in her eye, and I knew something was up. She looked at her sister, “Nelle, they could go up to the Holiday Inn up in town if they wanted to have sex much easier than going to North Carolina. How do you know they have not been doing that?”
Aunt Nelle sputtered and spit and her daughter grabbed Ma and kissed her and said, “Thank you Aunt Louise.”
On the way home, my mother began to laugh until tears rolled down her face, we never mentioned my way of getting back at my aunt. From then on, my aunt refrained from asking me about boyfriends. It just wasn’t a safe topic.
I will say this, when I decide to break a rule. I do it with style and I loved every minute of it. I admired Ma that day. She was a gutsy lady with lots of class. It is one of the reasons I miss her so much. I will also say that I grew to love my Aunt Nelle very much. I never regretted what I did, but my Aunt Nelle had a difficult life. I am sad that it was that way for her.