A Childhood Memory

It is one of those lazy summer afternoons. I am sitting on the back porch steps. I look around and think about the story my Dad tells of Granddaddy building the house. It is an old, run down house now. Sometimes it seems as if would be better to tear it down and start over.
Granddaddy built it with the lumber from his sawmills. So, like most of the older, cheaper southern homes, it was built with “fat lighter”. One strike of a match and it would go up in flames. Too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter because I do not think Granddaddy knew what insulation was. Now that I think of it, I do not think my Daddy does either because after about 55 years it still doesn’t have insulation.
As I am sitting on the porch, in the distance I can see the dark clouds moving in for that godforsaken evening thunderstorm. In the south that is one thing you can count on…that thunder booming, lightning striking thunderstorm. The wind begins to blow with a cool touch to it; which is amazing because of the high heat and humidity. The smell is in the air of the rain coming. To me it always reminds me of freshly cut grass.
The storm moved in quickly. Before I knew it, it was on top of us. Clouds dark, wind gusting, and the hard cool rain drops falling hitting the sun-parched grass, plants and trees. The grass begins to glisten and perk up as to say thank you for this drink of water that it desperately needs. The only thing that was really going through my mind is, damn with this rain the grass is going to need to be cut again.
As I listen to the thunder, and watch the streaks of lightening as they cross the sky and as I listen to the rain it seems to put me into a trance and I seem to float back to memories of my childhood. A time when everything was so simple and you didn’t have a care in the world. Sometimes it would be nice if life were that way again.
I start to remember playing with my cousins. How we loved it when it rained because we could go out afterwards and play in the field across the road in all the mud. We would high tail it to the field, start digging and playing in the mud. We didn’t even care that my Grandaddy had some type of corn, soybeans, tobacco or whatever planted there. We just wanted to play and get dirty.
We use to chase each other through the wet and sloppy mush. Sometimes it was so wet and saturated from the rain that our feet would get sucked under to our ankles and sometimes to the bottom of our calves. When we tried to pull our feet out, it would suck our shoes right off. They would go so deep that we could not find them. We didn’t care about losing them because we would rather be barefooted anyway. Not to mention we knew that our Mommas would take us to the BC Moores and get us new ones. Hey back then we thought money grew on trees….didn’t it?
The real kicker is when we would go into the house, when Momma was not looking, grab a few Dixie cups and teaspoons out of the drawer and go back to the field and make our version of mud castles. Pack those paper cups with mud, hold then in between our hands and roll the cups to loosen the sides. Then we would turn them upside down and let it come out. Hey, the start of our first tower of our castle. We would have these mounds all over that there field. We would do this until one of our Mommas called us in and tell us we looked “throwed away” and needed to get cleaned up.
The only time we got in trouble for playing in our own personnel field of mud would be when we had company over for supper. Momma would cook and tell everyone to come on into the kitchen and fix their plate. She would reach in the drawer to get the teaspoons and run short for everyone to have one. She would say, “Tammy, Robbin , and Carol!!! If y’all don’t stop using my spoons as shovels, I am gonna beat y’alls butt. Money don’t grow on trees ya know!” (MMMMMMMM…that just contradicted my earlier statement.)
Thinking of this simple memory brings back even more of our so-called simple life. It reminds me that we didn’t care if you had money or not. It didn’t matter if you wore designer brand clothes or the color of your skin. This was a feat in those days in the South because racism was so prevalent. In my book, if you can play a good game of kick ball and make me laugh, by God you were my friend. I do believe to this day it has made me the person I am. I still don’t care about the color of your skin and definitely don’t care if I have designer clothes. Armani and Gucci…. Who? As long as I wear my jeans well I am good to go. Jeff Foxworthy would call me a redneck…but I am thankful for a Wal-Mart.