Ethyl Surmises: Mark Twain

Mark Twain said, "The lack of money is the root of all evil".
What that Bible verse, which is often misquoted as 'money is the root of all evil', actually says is, 'the love of money is the root of all evil'.
There is a big difference in the two statements.  Money is necessary to be able to live with a reasonable degree of dignity in today's world, but the love of it, and the obtaining of it at any and all cost, is indeed a precursor for evil actions.
Two thousand and ten is a big year for Mark Twain... This year in April he will have been dead one hundred years, and also this is the year he has a new book published.  It is the unabridged autobiography of his life, which he left to those he could trust with the firm instructions it was to be published a hundred years after his death.. His reason; "By then I will be dead and unaware and indifferent and therefore able to speak my whole frank mind".  And speak his mind Twain did, but so often what he said was so cloaked in satire that the persons who were self righteous, pompous, and full of themselves never got his true meaning.
Case in point is his novel 'Huckleberry Finn'.. It has been dubbed the great American novel, and in my humble opinion, it is.  But as well loved as it is today it was not received well by much of the established literary guild of his day.. Many writers who were well known and accepted as the top brass of their generation criticized Twain for his style of writing in the vernacular of the time. But the public, the people in general, loved it.  And the subtlety with which Twain laid bare the hypocrisy and self righteous attitudes of the slave owning hierarchy of his time is not to be matched anywhere in literature, and that includes 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
When my middle son was ten, he and I read Huckleberry Finn together, and I will never forget his reaction to Twain's use of the word 'nigger'.. In our house our sons were never allowed to use that word to refer to anyone they knew.  It was on the same level with a curse word and it just was not acceptable to refer to fellow humans in such a derogatory manner.  When Huckleberry referred to Nigger Jim, my son's mouth flew open in surprise and he asked how the writer could use such a word in a book that would be read to children.  I explained to him Twain was merely writing as people in those days talked, and it was not meant to degrade anyone.
When Huckleberry decides he will not turn Jim in but instead help him escape we are all brought to a defining moment in the narrative, for the boy is sure he is going to Hell for his actions.. It is just wrong to steal and in a sense he is stealing from the Widow Douglas, but he loves Jim and he is going to take that chance.  Twain's condemnation of the ideas and accepted beliefs of his era are brought to the reader's attention in a way no one else in literature has ever done before, or after, for that matter.   It was wrong to hide the property of someone else, but not wrong to keep a fellow human in bondage.  A classic moment in literature!
Another incident when we are brought face to face with the fact that all humans are basically the same is when Jim cuts himself and Huck sees him bleed.. Huck's response, "Why Jim, your blood is red too", is never to be forgotten.
Twain in many ways was the most outspoken civil rights advocate of his day, but that fact was so well cloaked in his literature, many unsuspecting readers never got his point.
Something he talks about in his autobiography is an occasion when he went to his publisher accompanied by his black butler.  Their being seen out in public together caused a minor outrage that resulted in embarrassment for the butler, but Twain took it all in stride.  His comment on the matter, "It seemed justly proper for him to accompany me, for in every way he is my equal, and in many ways my superior". 
Such was the great wisdom of Mark Twain.
In musing over the writings of Mark Twain, Ethyl has thought about some of her post.  Are they phonetically sound, grammatical proper, written in the style of acceptable writings.  Most assuredly not!   But that is not the purpose of my writing.  I wish to tell a story and relate certain happenings as I remember they occurred.
Mark Twain's foremost objective was to tell a story, and if that was good enough for the best American writer who ever wrote a line of prose, well then, I guess it's good enough for Ethyl.  Nuff said!

Ethyl's Poetry: Observations of a Facebook Addict

It's early morning and coffee's a'brewing
When I open facebook to see what everyone's doing.
There's a lot going on, that's plain to see
And a lot of new news for someone like me.

What's this I see, she's just heading out
To visit her grand kids, what's that all about.
And this one just moved, a new chapter begins
She busy sorting out life's odds and ends.

And here is another who seems to be ready
For her new arrival, just hold it steady.
Oh me, oh my, we're waiting for baby
And we're all hoping she'll come today maybe.

Oh look, what's that I see
A little one walking, as proud as can be.
Can you tell she's just learned and is still quite new
At this wonderful thing she just learned to do.

And here on this page is a little boy and a girl
Who's waiting for Grammie to brighten their world.
Because she's so special and they love her a hunk
And especially the toys she has packed in her trunk.

And here on this page are two who are stewing
And swearing and shouting at what their players are doing.
Because football's their game and here they are at it
Each filling their roles as football fanatics.

Oh, so sorry, a note of sadness is here
Someone is losing a loved one that's dear.
And we all send our heartfelt condolences now
And words of comfort the best we know how.

Here's an old friend from many years past
A dear old friendship, the kind that will last.
So very good to hear from you, dear
And to know though you're far, you're really quite near.

This one is sick and so is her spouse
And they're both stuck at home and alone in the house.
Some hot chicken soup and a good book will do.
And maybe tomorrow they'll feel good as new.

Oh, look, what have we there
A pretty young girl with a head full of hair.
Oh wait, we say with a grin
As eight inches disappears from off of the end.

What's that you say, you've just returned
From seeing so many new places you've yearned
To see all your life. And now it is true
You finally have done what you wanted to do.

You're on vacation, you say, and you're bored
So cooking and eating will be you're reward.
Or building a snowman or playing with Rover
Until work calls you back and your free time is over. 

This one is playing Wii with her son
and he's kicking her rear, oh my, what fun
And another is planning to shop till she drops
And then we all hope she eventually stops.

And here is a home schooling mom
Who's tired of the house and is hoping to come
Out to the greenline and ride her new bike
Wanting the cold weather to go take a hike.

This one sends love and best wishes to all
And this one is chipper and this one's a brawl.
This one is good and this one's a mess
And this one has something new to confess.
This one is spiritual, a new verse every day
...To strengthen and encourage and help on the way.
This one is serious and this one is funny,
And this one is gloomy and this one is sunny.
Oh, what an assortment there is to be had
But all of them dear and none of them bad.
Thanks so much and I'd now like to say
How very much I look forward each day.
To reading and peeping and afterwards knowing
What it is that keeping your worlds a'going.. 

And now in conclusion may I say
To all my good friends, 'have a nice day'

Carol: Wow,  you certainly have a way with words!

I wish I was as good at poetry as you,
But I'm sure no poet, and we all know that's true.
But you, my friend, are certainly quite the poet,
...And now, thanks to Facebook, all your friends know it! :-)

(Can't believe I actually came up with that; it is one of my FEW attempts at poetry.) :-)

 

Thanks, Carol..
I once had the notion to be a great poet
But that I am not, and now all my friends know it.
I think what you refer to is my fractured verse
Poetic license you see at it's worse.
...But you will see with my rhyme that it in time mellows
And my feet show my talent, for they are Longfellows. Hahaha.

Rebecca: This was great Aunt Faye! Made me smile :) (as usual)

Ivy Shea:  LOVE it!!


Jan:  You have epitomized almost everyone on fb! So observant Missy!

Ethyl Remembers: Family Fun

December 24,  Memphis, TN

It's winter time and the weather is cold here in Memphis.  When I say cold I mean anything under fifty degrees.  So that means it's chili weather. 
Rich, thick chili with three different types of beans and plenty of chili power.  And corn.  And peppers and onions and garlic and tomatoes.  Thick and rich, and oh, so tasty.
This morning I made a crock pot full and yesterday I cooked a crock pot full of brown rice to go with it.  Then for lunch today I had a bowl filled with brown rice, cheese, chili, and a dollop of sour cream on top.  And it took me back... Back twenty seven years ago when my sons were young and Liberty-land was still open and operating in Memphis.
Elvis made Liberty-land famous.  He loved it and he loved it's roller coaster, The Zippin Pippin'. It was said that some nights Elvis rented the entire park and he and his entourage rode the rides until morning.  And his favorite ride was the Pippin.  It was an old wooden roller coaster and man, was it fast.  The first time I rode it I was sixteen and on a trip to Memphis from Iuka.  When the ride ended and we disembarked, a friend of mine who was nearby laughed and said my face was gray...  I don't doubt it.  I was scared to death.
After we moved to Memphis, in the summer time every year we had a family outing to Liberty-land.  After six o'clock in the evening the prices were greatly reduced until it closed at ten o'clock, and our family always took advantage of this bargain..  Four hours were usually all my husband and I could take of this version of fun, and the boys could ride the rides until their hearts were content.  A great many of the visitors to the park had left by this time, so the lines were much shorter and the temperature was cooler then.  The temperature was cooler but the attendants were not.. The closer it got to ten o'clock the more anxious they were to end their day and go home, so they were usually in no mood to accommodate anyone.  Once when we were in the park at night I wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel.  The problem was it was going on ten o'clock and the attendant was ready to close it down.  We were the only ones who wanted to ride that ride and he was hesitant to take us up.  After some persuading he did grant our request, but then he stopped the blasted thing with us at the very top and let us sit there for what seemed like an eternity before he brought us down... Be careful what you wish for, you may get it..  I have a problem with heights and I though I would die before I got off that thing.  I have not ridden a Farris Wheel since.  Not even the London Eye and you are totally enclosed in that one.
But back to the matter of the chili and rice with cheese..  We had taken the boys to the park that summer evening and we planned to eat dinner there.  After some deliberations on the part of everyone involved we settled on the Mexican restaurant.  Studying the menu carefully, I finally ordered the chili with rice.  This was the first time for tasting that particular combination, and it may have just been extra delicious because we were starving or maybe it was the atmosphere in the park outdoors, or maybe the happy time with the family,   But whatever it was, I never forgot that particular evening with my husband and my sons and the happy smiles and camaraderie we shared as a family.  Now whenever I have chili and rice with cheese and sour cream it takes me back and I can hear the laughter of my sons as they thrill to the Zippin Pippin.
The park is now closed and the Pippin is no more.  Neither is Elvis.  And my sons are now grown men, out on their own..  And I thank God for them and for the happy times we had raising them.

Ethyl Relates: A Hundred Years Ago

************ ********* ***********
The year is 1910
One hundred years ago.
It was the year the Ford Model R car came on the market.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1910:
************ ********* ************ 
The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
Fuel for this car was sold in drug stores only. 
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower !
The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.
The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year,
and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.
Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which
Were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard.'
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
The Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas , Nevada , was only 30!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and 
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores.
Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,
Regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health'
( Shocking? DUH! )
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A. ! 
   
I am now going to forward this to someone else without typing it myself.
From there, it will be sent to others all over the WORLD - all in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years. 
IT STAGGERS THE MIND

Ethyl's latest laugh.

Meet me at the River.

This is a hoot, but I suspect the minister
didn't appreciate it.
A minister was completing a temperance sermon.
With great emphasis he said, "If I had
all the beer in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river."
With even greater emphasis he said,
"And if I had
all the wine in the world, I'd take it and
pour it into the river."
And then finally, shaking his fist in the air, he
Said, "And if I had all the whiskey in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river.."
Sermon complete, he sat down.
The song leader stood very cautiously and announced
With a smile, nearly laughing, "For our closing song,
Let us sing Hymn #365,
'Shall We Gather at the River.'"
Smile, life is too short not to!
If this brightened your day
Don't let it stop here
Pass it on with a smile
Keep spreading the Cheer.
See you at the river

Ethyl Remembers: Characters

One thing was true about Tishomingo County: It was full of characters.  There was the neighbor who lived just down the road and came every morning for coffee.  He had never married and he shared a house with his two sisters.  One of them was a maiden lady and the other one was divorced with a son, so neither of them were up to the morning task of seeing to if he had coffee.   Instead of making a pot for himself, he always showed up at our house at breakfast time for coffee.  For fifty years until a massive stroke disabled her, my mother made biscuits every morning of her life.  There were always eggs and some type of breakfast meat, either ham, sausage or bacon.  My dad had a smoke house and every winter he killed a couple of hogs and cured the meat.  I thought all people had an ample supply of country ham and bacon and sausage.  Funny the things you take for granted when you're a kid.
Dick, our neighbor,  was always invited to sit down and eat with us, but he always declined.  He just came for coffee.  If he didn't show up we knew he was sick or something bad had happened to him.  The front door was never locked and he never knocked.  In summer we would hear the screen door on the front open and close and we knew it was him.  In winter he opened the wooden door and came straight through the house to the kitchen, pulled up a chair and my mother would always jump up and get him a cup of coffee.
Another thing I remember about Dick was his dog.  That dog went with him everywhere he went.  It would ride beside him in his pickup when he went to town.  In the summertime the windows would be down and the dog would sit up front with his head poked out and his tongue wagging.  When someone made a comment to him about how he pampered that animal he replied, "Be quiet, I don't want to hurt his feelings.  I haven't told him he's a dog yet".
Then there was my daddy's friend who made moonshine and sold it to buy food for his family when his crops failed.   Once when he was apprehended by the law and dragged up before the judge, his honor said to him that if he would just promise that he would never make illegal whiskey again, he would just fine him and let him go.  What he said to the judge has always amazed me.  "Your honor, I appreciate what you say, but I can't lie to you.  If my family gets hungry and I have no money I will make some shine and sell it".  He would do what he had to do to see that his kids didn't go hungry, but he wasn't going to lie about it even if it meant going to jail.  Such honesty is in short supply in today's world.
When telephones first came into the country homes, my mother and her siblings thought it was imperative that my grandmother who lived alone had one.  In those days there were few phone lines so the neighbors shared what was called a party line.  More than one household was on a phone line, and it was possible to pick up the phone and listen to what was happening to your neighbors.  One little old lady in our country was notorious for listening.  When the phone would ring and you would answer it, in a moment you could hear a little click and you knew Louella was on the phone.  Some of the very best rumors in the country got started from that party line.  She had a very high pitched shrill voice and I used to love to call her and lay the phone aside and listen to her screech and scream and demand who was on the other end of the phone.  Thankfully I never got caught.  Also it was great fun to call the little county store and ask the owner if he had Dr. Pepper in a bottle or Prince Albert (chewing tobacco) in a can.  When he would proudly announce that he did, we would laugh and tell him to let him out before he smothered.  Another screamer was to call an unsuspecting neighbor and tell them we were the power company and then ask if their refrigerators were running.  They would always assure us they were, and then we would laugh and tell them to catch it before it got out the door.
Then there was the grumpy old man who lived by himself in Iuka.  He hated all small animals and children, so some of the neighborhood boys decided it was time to retaliate.  They gathered up a large fresh cow pile and put it in a  paper grocery bag, which they deposited at the bottom of his front porch steps, then lit a match and set the bag on fire.  On boy knocked hard on the front door after which they all made a run for it and hid in the shrubbery.  When he saw the burning paper bag and ran down the steps to stomp out the fire with his feet, the rest is history.
Our world for the most part was simple and the pranks we played were harmless and funny.  What would not have been funny were the consequences if our parents had caught us.   They might actually have cared that we were harassing the neighbors.   How different so many parents are today whose kids "do no wrong" and the mischief is not only aggravating but downright harmful in many instances.  Tishomingo County was a good place to raise kids in the fifties and sixties.

Ethyl Surmises: How things Appear

I love Gilbert and Sullivan.  Their plays make me happy.   But more than that they make me think.   W.S. Gilbert was every bit as much a genius with words as Theodore Geisel.  The main difference is Dr. Seuss aimed his repartee at children..  Gilbert's target was adults.   And lambast them he did.
One of the main themes of his operettas is the fact most things are not as they appear.  In H.M.S. Pinafore he penned the famous lines 'things are seldom as they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream'.  The expression 'it's not over till the fat lady sings', originated because of a Gilbert and Sullivan play.  Gilbert always had one song toward the end of the production in which he had a rather portly older woman sing, so that when she came on stage everyone knew the play was almost over.
So often in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta there is a total switch of characters at the end.   Those who have assumed the position of high and mighty are revealed to be of lower rank, and so often the ones who were maligned because of their low status are proven to be the real upper crust.   Of course they are only theatrical productions, but it's amazing how often that proves to be the case in real life.
The English were great at class distinctions, and from that fact Gilbert drew much of his satire.  He was a real master at poking fun at the British upper classes.  So much so that one of his plays angered Queen Victoria, and as a result she knighted Sir Arthur Sullivan, who was the librettist, but she refused to bestow the same honor on Gilbert.  He didn't receive that distinction until years after Sullivan, when in actuality he probably deserved it more.
It's amazing to me how many people think money gives them the advantage of being upper crust.  So often they feel so proud of the expensive clothes they buy to cover their outsides when the true measure of their worth is on the inside.  Their time, energy, and effort would be so much better spend improving their personalities instead of trying to impress someone with what they're wearing.  They often times spend money they don't have to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like.   And the end result is that anyone who would happen to be impressed by such an outward show is just as vain and empty as they are.  So in the end what do they have.  Vain, empty, haughty people impressing other vain, empty haughty people just like themselves.   And I can tell you from personal experience.  That class of people do not make good companions.
There is something truly delightful about a person who is down to earth.  Someone who knows who they are and can accept that without question.  Honesty, integrity, truthfulness are such refreshing qualities to find in people that they are worth taking the time to seek out and draw close to.  And to be loved and respected by the ones in our lives who are the closest to us, who know us the best, is the most important thing in the world.  The rest really do not matter much at all.
Gilbert was born to privilege and received a gentleman's education, but yet he was able to see through fake pretentious individuals.  Some one made the comment about him his pen was his sword, and he definitely had the ability to cut away snobbery and pretentiousness, going right down to the meat of the matter.  A rare insight in today's world.

Ethyl Remembers: The Barnyard

Growing up, we had a barn with a hallway that ran down the middle and stables on each side.  The compartment at the end on the right was not a stable but a corn crib, which was composed of two rooms.  When you entered the crib there was a compartment that housed all the paraphernalia for the horses such as bridles and so on, and also a large old machine for shelling corn. There was a window with a wooden cover on the side of the corn crib leading to the outside.  It's purpose was to facilitate the depositing of corn into the crib from the truck bed.  It also was rather handy for children who were playing hide and seek to climb through when they were on the verge of being detected by their playmates.  The back room of the crib was piled high with ears of dry corn, which was used to feed the animals, so it was a rather easy thing to climb to the top of the corn pile and climb out the window to the ground beneath.  The other five compartments in the barn were stables for holding the animals, and above it all was a large loft with a ladder in the middle of the hallway and an opening in the floor leading up into a large open area usually filled to capacity with hay.  Much of the hay was in bales, but there was always some loose hay that made the perfect housing for nesting bantam hens and rowdy children on rainy days.  In other words, our barn served three purposes: It housed the horses and cows and also their food, but most importantly to us, it served as a large playhouse in which to climb and scuffle and jump in the hay.  We had a regular chicken house in which we kept the laying hens, but all around our barnyard were these little hens called bantams.  The country folk referred to them as "banty hens".  They were just like regular hens, only smaller, and they ran wild in the barnyard and nested in the hay loft. 
One of the most delightful sights was to come upon a little banty hen and her brood of new born chicks.  Once I discovered a hen with at least a dozen of the cutest little yellows chickens that had been newly hatched in the hay loft, and I wondered how in the world she was going to get them down from there.  I watched in awe as she maneuvered them to the large opening at the center of the loft and gently pushed each one to the ground.  They landed, bounced around a little while, then took off running.  One after another she sent her brood to the ground, and then she joined them.  They immediately scattered all around the barnyard.  Cute little fur balls of the palest yellow, peeping and scamping about.  Then I beheld another sight that was just as touching.  Her chickens had scattered all around the barnyard when suddenly a couple of cows appeared, ready to enter their stables for the night.  The mother hen started cackling and flapping her wings and the babies ran toward her from every direction.  She swooped them up one by one and deposited them, at least a dozen, under her wings and then sit down on them.  To all appearances she looked like a big fat chicken sitting on the ground.  As soon as the cows were in the barn, she rose and the chicks once again scattered hither and thither.  Such a beautiful picture.  Every time I read the account in the Bible where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and uses the illustration of how he wanted to gather her children together like a hen gathers her brood under her wings, I think of that sight.  And then I realize that Jesus must have seen the very same sight as a boy.   It always elicits such a sense of wonder.
When I was a little girl I always thought how nice it would be if I could just catch one of those cute little yellow chicks and love it.  I wanted to hug it and feel it's soft warmth in my hands.  One day I found one in the hay and with a great sense of delight I picked it up and squeezed it.  It was so soft and fuzzy and I just had this overwhelming urge to caress it.  My intentions were totally harmless, but I found when I released it my caress had been too hard.  It lay lifeless and limp in my hands.  Immediately I begin to cry, realizing what I had done.  All my life I have remembered squeezing the life out of that tiny chicken, and the total devastation that flooded me when I realized what I had done.  As I've grown older I've also come to realize what a great analogy that is for life.  If we want to hold onto someone, don't hold them so tightly you squeeze the life out of them.  Give them room to breath.   And even if our intention is only to love them, we can still do harm if we don't give them the freedom to move around and be themselves.
Such was the life lesson learned one day as I played in the hayloft.  It has stayed with me forever.

Ethyl's Rainy Day Thoughts

It's a slightly cool rainy November Saturday in Memphis,  the place that has been my home for the last thirty plus years.  The kind of day that elicits memories and daydreams.  There are projects that have long been put on hold, but it just does not seem the day for doing them.  I am listening to the Seekers sing 'Cast my Fate to the Wind' and dreaming of other rainy days long past.  Days when my restless soul needed to constantly  be going and doing and moving.  How times have changed.  Now it is so nice to sit upstairs and look out my window at the peach tree that's losing it's leaves and from which hang the random drops of misty rain, and think and remember and to subsequently write about the thoughts I am thinking.
When I was young we had neighbors who were old.  For as long as I could remember they had been there and they had always been old.  And they spent a great deal of time in the summertime sitting under the massive oak trees in their front yard on old wooden yard furniture and watching the road in front of them.  They seldom moved, other than just ever now and then to gently rock back and forth.  They just sit and watched the road.  Most of the cars that went past were neighbors they knew far too much about.  As the cars went down the road there would be the exchange of waves,  sometime accompanied be a nod of the head.  Never much movement on the part of either party, but just a kind acknowledgment from both.   What would really elicit the stares and excitement would be when the occasional car speed by in which the occupants were not known.  There would always be much conjecture as to who they were, the fact they were not part of us, they were from 'off'  and just what on earth could they be doing in our country.  As if they owned it and foreign people needed permission to drive down our gravel road.   And by foreign people, I mean anyone who was not from Tishomingo County.  They knew them all.  They had known their parents and sometimes even their grandparents.  And then there would be talk of who they had married, how many kids they had, both the legitimate and otherwise, and whether or not he drank too much, stayed out late, beat his wife, or whose wife he might have intimate knowledge of in addition to his own.  As far as the wife was concerned, was she a good housekeeper, were her children heathers or otherwise, did she gossip too much and stick her nose into other people's affairs.  Such was the enlightening conversation of a summer afternoon.  My little brother and I went almost ever day to their house.  We could always come and go, most of the time never even knocking if they happened to be inside.  Sometimes in the summer we joined them under the large old oak trees and listened to their chatter about who ever happened to be in the few cars that went down our road.  Funny what you learn about people from just listening.  How much of it happened to be factual never crossed my mind.   What I used to wonder about is how they could sit still for hours on end.  Now I think I understand.  There is a quite reflectiveness that comes with sitting still.   Sitting and just thinking and watching the drops of misty rain as it touches the leaves on my peach tree.

Ethyl Recounts: Yikes!! Snakes

One thing Tishomingo County seems to have plenty of is snakes.  At least that was the case when I was growing up.  From the time we were old enough to walk we were always admonished, 'watch out for snakes'.  Snakes were just part of growing up in the rural south.  We were taught to hate all snakes on sight, and that included both the harmless and the harmful.  In retrospect that was probably so we wouldn't take a chance and get too close to a venomous one, but looking back, it does seem a bit unfair to the members of that family who did no harm to us. In fact, they probably provided a useful service.  But no matter.  If it crawled and slithered, it was doomed on sight.
I remember once when I was young my brother who was four years older than me came up to the house all excited because he had caught a pet snake.  He picked it up on a sixteen penny nail and put it in a quart fruit jar.  In the majority of instances it would have been a harmless grass or chicken snake, maybe a black racer.  When he presented it to Mama, she turned white.  It was indeed a small little snake, maybe four or five inches long, but it just so happened that this particular snake was a pygmy rattlesnake.  One little nip could have done a great deal of damage.   And to just think he had actually picked it up on a long nail a few inches in length!!  When it was suggested to him that he would actually have to dispose of it, he loudly protested.  A neighbor happened to be at the house that day and he told my brother the snake needed some rocks to lay on to be happy.  My brother agreed to placing some small rocks in the jar.  "Now he will need some water to drink", he said.  So the jar lid was removed and the jar filled with water.  Within a very short time the snake had drowned.  Thus ended that terrifying saga.
When we were young every snake we encountered was a rattlesnake.  Of course, most of them were just black snakes or racers, but to us they were Rattlesnakes!   So Mama paid very little attention to us when we reported to her we had seen a snake.  "What kind was it", she always asked?  "It was a rattlesnake", was almost always our reply.  We had neighbors who lived a few hundred yards down the road from us, an old couple we referred to as Uncle Lee and Miss Addie.  They were not, in fact, kin to us, but we were constantly running back and forth to their house.   This particular day my little brother and I started off down the road for our daily visit when we encountered a snake lying in the middle of the gravel road.  We ran back to the house and told Mama there was a snake in the road.   "What kind is it"? came the standard question, to which we gave the standard reply, "It's a rattlesnake".  She left her kitchen chores and walked down the road with us to see what she thought would be an ordinary black snake, and a look of total shock came over her face.  Lying in the middle of the road where we had first encounter it was a three foot long diamondback rattlesnake.  Needless to say, she made the trip back to the house to get a hoe much faster than she had made the trip from the kitchen to the road.
My next major encounter with snake-dom came when I was a teenager.  We had little bantam chickens at the barn, and they made a habit of nesting in the loose hay in the barn loft.  On this particular day I was baking cupcakes and realized we were out of eggs.  A trip to the hen house produced naught, so in desperation I decided I would try the barn loft.  Bantam eggs were small, but if you had enough of them they would work just fine.  We had a ladder in the middle of the barn hallway that lead up to the open loft, and for a spry young girl of fifteen it presented no problem to ascend.  So basket in hand, I climbed up in the loft and begin my hunt for eggs.  Eureka!   I found a nest that had fourteen.  I gathered them all and started down the ladder backwards, carefully holding my basket so as not to spill its precious contents.  I happened to look straight down the ladder and at the very bottom of it, curled in a nice lump, was a humongous snake.  As it happened it was a chicken snake, on it's way up into the barn loft to look for eggs or baby chickens. But at that particular moment it mattered not the least what kind it was.  It was a SNAKE.  Paralyzed with fright, I hung onto the ladder for what seemed an eternity, although in reality it was probably not more that a minute or two.  How could I get down the ladder and past that snake at the bottom of it?  He wasn't moving, that much was for sure.  After considering my options, I decided to jump, hoping with everything in me I could totally clear the snake and not splash my eggs all over the barn hallway.  One, two, three.  Here goes. 

Well, the story did have a happy ending.  I cleared the snake, kept my eggs in tact, baked my cupcakes and the rest is history.  But I do have to say, it took the rest of the day for my poor shattered nerves to return to normal.

Ethyl Says: Life's Reflections

I posted a picture on facebook today of my nieces when they were little girls, and I couldn't help but reflect on life and the years that have come and gone.  On thing about it, time as we know it only moves in one direction, and that is forward.  The youthful innocent has been replaced by adulthood and a coming to grips with reality, and I have been left to ponder how often the dreams of childhood are left in the dust behind us.
In a way it's a sad thing when the simplicity of youth and childhood gives way to the complexities of grown up life.  To the realizing that happy ever after does not exist. That the most we can hope for is a measure of happiness and compatibility with the person we have chosen to spend our lives with.   That we will face responsibilities and failures and tears and pain and in some cases, the deaths of those we love.  That we will have to work when we don't feel like it, that we will have to care for our children and nurture them when all we really want is to still be nurtured ourselves.  That marriages we entered into so hopefully, sometimes despite our best efforts, simply will not last.  They will come to an end because of infidelities or bad financial decisions or simply the fact we can't go on like before.  Or perhaps if the marriage itself endures, we may have to deal with the sickness or emotional distress of a beloved mate, and feel the total helplessness of being able to do absolutely nothing to relieve the distress.  And if the marriage should be blessed with children, and we are given to privilege of watching them grow to adulthood, we are going to have to watch as the same trauma happens to them.  When they suffer divorce or emotional disaster, it will be the same as if it were happening to us.  Becoming a mother is the single most important decision you will ever make in your life, because it means for the rest of your life you will walk around with your heart outside your body.  The umbilical cord is the longest cord in the world.  It stretches forever.
That having been said, none of us would wish to remain children forever.  There is so much pleasure in experiencing and seeing and feeling and doing that to miss out on that would be the greatest loss.  To move forward in life, even if sometimes we do it painfully and without really wanting to, is a great treasure.  To travel and be able to say, 'hey, I've seen that.  I've been there and done that', is wonderful.  To not just dream about but to actually do some of the things you've dreamed about.  To be able to see the expressions on the faces change from youthful innocence to grownup knowing is mind boggling.  And to grow stronger from the disappointments and failures we experience, for by so doing we learn they are not the end of the world, nor do they define who we are.  That we can bear up and endure and in the end experience that mingling of pain and pleasure somewhere deep inside ourselves that will truly define us.  And in the end to become  much better persons than we ever thought we could be.  To feel for others, to have deep faith, to sincerely wish the best for those we love without any hint of jealousy, to know in our minds how it feels to be tired or disappointed or hurt or sad beyond words.  And to also know that we will weather this storm and any others that may blow our way.  If life has taught me anything it is that you simply can not get from ten to forty any other way but to live it.  And if we are wise, we will live it with the idea in mind that despite all the heartaches and setbacks, we are going to suck as much pleasure from simply being alive as humanely possible.

Ethyl Remembers: Going Home

Thomas Wolfe wrote 'you can't go home again'.  And the older I get the more I think he's right.  Oh, yes, you can go back to the physical place you originated.  And you can refer to it as the old home place.  But it's not the same.  The people that were there when you were young are all gone.  Death has claimed them.  The person sitting in the porch swing or in the big front porch chair is not the same;  maybe the same blood line, but at least two generations removed.  The young have claimed the spot inhabited by the old.  Life has entered the second, and sometimes even the third, phase of existence.  Even the paths in the pastures, which the cows and horses had worn into the earth, and which you walked so often as a young girl, are long since gone.  They have grown over with new vegetation.  There is a melancholy to being there, to realizing that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
And you begin to realize as you age just how important it is to have roots.  To have somewhere you are from.  When I was young I thought the best thing in the world would be to leave that place behind.  To get away and not come back.  But I did come back, and often.  I never really went too far away.  At least never so far away that I could not return whenever I pleased.  I remember coming back when my boys were small and camping out in the pasture.  Sitting up a big orange tent and then building a bonfire in the red clay gully down below it.  Of an October night and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows on the campfire, and watching as a thousand stars became a thousand points of light in the cool, clear fall night.  My mother joined us at our bonfire.  In the pasture there were no power lines or buildings to obstruct the view, and the night sky literally came alive when the sun went down and the stars came out.
A maple tree had grown from a small sapling on the banks of that gully, and my mother loved that tree.  She looked forward every autumn to the days when it would change colors.  We build our fire there, underneath the tree.  After she died, I walked back over the hillside and looked at that tree.  It had begun to deteriorate too.  Parts of it had died and in the fall it no longer had the brilliant colors it once displayed.  It was almost as if it realize she was no longer there to admire it so why bother to put on it's show. 
My sons have long since grown to adults, but sometimes I wonder if they remember camping out in the pasture, tossing a football with their dad or flying a kite in the open field, savoring grandma's sweet tea, her banana pudding, or all the junk she kept on the kitchen table just for the pure delight of her grandchildren.  When we would leave Memphis and head to Iuka ,they would begin to contemplate what goodies she would have for their anxious little mouths. And then never leaving to head home without a brown paper sack filled to the brim with cookies, moon pies, and fourteen different varieties of candies.  The youngest child always got to control the sack, but with the firm instructions it was to be shared with the others. She was a grandmother extraordinaire, the type every kid dreams of having.
The neighbors that lived on each side of us are also dead.  The houses they inhabited are literally falling down and going back to the elements.  But our house is still standing, inhabited by members of our family.  In actuality, it's in better condition that it was when we lived there.  When I walk around in the rooms, I wait for my mother to pop out of her kitchen, laugh her little 'whee' laugh and tell us all to hurry and come to the table before the biscuits get cold.  Thomas Wolfe was right.  You can't go home again.

Ethyl Remembers: Smells

It's amazing how this time of year is so ripe with smells.  You can actually smell Fall in the air.  There is a certain scent that seems to be carried on the wind.  And sometimes smells can take you back to your childhood, back to a time when all you had to worry about was whether you were going to be able to get that English theme ready to turn in on time, or whether you had time to finish the skirt you were sewing for Home Economics class.
I remember the skirt I made in tenth grade Home Ec. class.  It was a straight line skirt in light green wool.  I really liked it and wore it a lot, and I really enjoyed learning how to sew.  It has been a skill that has served me well in my life, whether it was making shirts and jeans for my boys, or neckties for my husband and my brother, or curtains and table cloths and throw pillows for my home, or stuffed animals and puppets for my grandchildren and nieces and nephews.  I have really appreciated learning the basics in school, and then adding to them as the need arose down through the years. 
I can remember that stupid theme report we had to compile before we could graduate from high school.  We had six weeks to write it, and I did mine the last weekend before it was due on Monday.  My husband to be came down to Iuka and spent the weekend  helping me get information together and typing it up at the last minute.  We were not allowed to pick our own subject.  We were all assigned to write a theme paper on alcoholism.  It was a contest with the winner getting a grand prize.  Can't remember what that award was, I only remember I placed third.  Nothing short of a miracle, considering how little time I put into it.  Oh, well, to make a long story short, I did graduate, but I have always wondered if I would have without my boyfriend's help.
But back to the subject of smells.  It's really funny how all school cafeterias smell the same.  When my sons were in school, occasionally I would go to school and eat lunch with them, and whenever I walked into the cafeteria it always took me back to lunch time as a teenager.  Especially if they were having soup that day.  I think there must be a standard recipe for school cafeteria soup.  Nowadays, the lunches are brought in by an outside firm; they no longer are prepared in the school kitchen, and I must say, they usually are a sorry excuse for anything that would appear to be half way edible.  I remember when I was in high school we had home made yeast rolls at least twice a week, and you could smell the wonderful aroma of bread baking  all the way into our classrooms.  What kid gets that today?
There was a pulp wood mill at Counce, TN.   For all those of you who have never smelled a pulp mill you will be hard pressed to understand what I'm talking about, but the odor is somewhere akin to a person who has a really bad problem with too much fiber in their diet and over-ripe rotten eggs.  Most of the time we were oblivious to the presence of this particular mill, but in the fall when the wind turned around and blew our way, it at times was overpowering.  It didn't just come and then drift away on the wind.  It came like a huge black cloud and just hung there.
My aforementioned boy friend usually came down to Iuka to see me on the weekends and we did the biggest part of our courting in the front porch swing.  It was a simpler time, and those evenings in the swing were a perfect time to talk and get to know one another.  Looking back on them, I realize just how valuable they were.  We discussed any and everything, so that by the time we did marry, we knew how the other party felt on just about any subject you could bring up.  We decided we would have two children, a boy first and then a girl.  We even picked out their names.  Not only did we not have two children, we had three, and they were not a boy and a girl, we had three boys, and we didn't use any of the names we had picked out.  But in the end it made no difference.  The important thing was we both wanted them, and we knew that about each other before we married.
My father was a huge Grand Ole Opry fan and every Saturday night he sat on the couch in our front room and fiddled with an old white radio that had seen better days until he could half way pick up Nashville and have that old timey country music blasting all over the hillside.  That was just part of our Saturday nights.  When the weather started getting chilly the old man would always build a fire in the wood stove, and the smell of wood smoke was intertwine in the crisp fall air with the sound of Kitty Wells and Porter Wagoner and Little Jimmy Dickens and the then stars of the Opry, and when the wind blew a certain direction, Counce would add it's pungent odor to the mix.  And in the midst of it all, two love sick teenagers would snuggle together in the front porch swing and dream of the day when they could ride off into the sunset together, to happy ever after and beyond.
We traveled to Pine Bluff, Arkansas recently where there is a pulp wood mill.  Ten miles from the town, you could smell the thing, and my husband of forty plus years looked at me and winked and said, 'You know what, that smell always makes me feel romantic'.  It's really amazing how some smells can  touch your heart so deeply.

Ethyl remembers: The Sixties and the Beatles

Today is Saturday, October, 9, 2010.   If John Lennon were alive, he would be seventy years old today.  In fact, they are having a celebration in New York and erecting a monument to honor him in Liverpool on this day in history.
There is no doubt he made a lasting impression on music in America.  I can remember the first time I ever heard of the Beatles.  It was February, 1964 and they were landing in New York for their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.  I was in the bathroom at Iuka High School standing at the sink washing my hands and a friend of mine said something about the Beatles coming to America.  I immediately thought 'hey, man, we don't need any more insects.  Didn't the bowl weevil do enough damage to these farmers around here'.
She then explained to me they were all the latest rage on the music scene.
It was the fashion in the sixties for all the girls to come to school in dresses or skirts and blouses, and the dress of choice for the girls was the moo moo, along with a bubble style hairdo, also known as the beehive. For the boys it was trousers or blue jeans with their shirt tails tucked neatly inside always accompanied by a belt and neatly cut hair with their ears properly showing.  Little did we know what an impact John and the Beatles would have on all that.    I remember when the first boy in our class let his hair grow out long enough to cover his ears completely and hang somewhat down to his eyebrows.  I thought that was the most outrageous thing I had ever seen.  Looking back on those old pictures in our 1967 school annual, his hair would be considered short by today's standards.
They came again in 1966 for an American tour and by this time everyone knew who they were.  They even played in Memphis at the Mid South Coliseum and some of my school mates managed to get the much coveted tickets to the concert and headed off to the big city in what could be described as a state of total euphoria.  I heard it later reported you couldn't hear anything for the screaming and crying, which made me extremely glad I wasn't in that crowd.
John Lennon had recently made a statement to the news media that in his opinion the Beatles were now bigger than Jesus Christ, or something to that effect.  You can imagine how that statement was received in the Bible Belt.  A member of the Klu Klutz Klan in Memphis threatened to kill him.  There was much apprehension, to say the least.  The afternoon performance went off without a hitch, but during the evening show some wise-cracker threw a fire cracker on the stage.  It sounded like a gun shot.  But everyone revived and the show went on. 
Looking back on those days in the sixties little could we imagine where they would lead.  A young man could even be expelled from school if he persisted in wearing his shirttail out of his pants.  Today it's not a matter of a flapping shirttail in the wind, it's a matter of wondering whether he is going to completely lose his pants if they happen to slide down past his underwear.
And the subject of hair is another matter altogether.  It can be worn any way imagined on both males and females.  The females can shave their heads and the males can sport pony tails.  Just what ever floats their boat.
Any sense of order and discipline has all but disappeared from the schoolroom.  Teachers and students both sometimes have to attend class where their very lives may be threatened.
John Lennon sang about peace and all men living together in harmony and imagining a world without war.  How far we are from that today.  Just can't help but wonder how he would react to the world of today.  Just can't help but wonder if he would realize he was part of that great change that took place in the sixties.

Ethyl Says: Friendships

What is it that makes us draw close to another human, that moves us to seek to know them, to understand them, and finally to love them.
I love the movie 'Driving Miss Daisy'.  Must have watched it a dozen times, in whole or in part, and I keep asking myself why does this movie appeal to me.  It's not the story line, although it is a good story line.  The story line is a familiar one.  Retired teacher can no longer drive herself so her son hires a chauffeur.  She protest, as older people often do when the feel their independence is threatened, but finally accepts the situation and in the end, grows to enjoy it.
The thing I find so intriguing about this movie is the friendship that develops between the old woman and her servant, who in every way possible seem to be total opposites.  He's a man, she's a woman.  He is black, she is white. He's a Christian, she's a Jew. He is poor, she is rich.  He is illiterate, she's a well educated school teacher.  He's from one social class, she is from another.  She is the master, he's the servant.  So just what is it that binds these two together, so that is in the end, when she is so all alone and totally vulnerable, she would reach out and take his hand and say, 'Hoke, you're my best friend' to which he replies, 'Yes um'.
I'm thought about this a lot, and what I think is that both of them were totally at ease with who they were.  There was no pretence of trying to be something they were not.  He knew he was the employee and he always kept to his place.  And yet, he was totally  comfortable with that.  He never tried to step out of his role in life and be something he wasn't.  In the scene after Idelle dies and they are in the kitchen together preparing lunch, they are totally at ease with each other, yet when it came to sitting down and eating, he serves her in the dining room and he eats his meal in the kitchen.  And yet, he never appears to resent that arrangement.  He accepts it just as it is, and he never holds his position in life against her.  On the other hand, she was never able to intimidate him into being less than the man he really was.  When he heard nature call, he went, regardless of her time schedule or how she felt about it.  He would never stoop to being uncomfortable in order to pacify her.
She, on the other hand, was much the same.  She would not stoop to placate others just so she could have their approval, or do business with them, like her son did.  If she didn't want to do business or socialize with somebody, she didn't.  She was who she was, and I think she totally understood who she was.  She was born on the poor side of town, and she still considered that was who she was.  As she said, 'nobody could ever accuse her of  'putting on airs'. 
So why do close, binding, lasting, friendships sometimes develop between the most unlikely people.  I think it has to do with being comfortable with who we are.  Of not trying to be something we're not.  Of just accepting things in life for what they are.  No pretence, no outward show, 'no putting on airs', as Miss Daisy would say.  If we can be totally comfortable with ourselves, others find it much easier to be themselves around us.  Nothing to hide, nothing to conceal.  Just trust and talk and grow to depend on, and, in the end, grow to love.

Ethyl Says: Woods

Sometimes you need to go to the woods to smell the smells and view the beautiful fall leaves and feel the wind in the treetops, but more than anything else the woods are also a place to think.  Just think.  And think.  And then think some more.
Think about how you are spending your life.  Also about how you have already spent a large part of your life.  And why you are spending your life the way your are. 
Robert Frost loved New England, and he wrote about it profusely in his poetry.  He wrote abut going to clean out a pasture spring so the cows could drink, about swinging on birches, and also about snow on the trees in winter, but one of the most though provoking poems he ever wrote was about two roads that converged in a yellow wood and how he decided to take the one less traveled.
It occurred to me just how few people take that road.  Stands to reason that is why it's called the road less traveled.  The herd instinct is strong among humans, very few of us tend to be mavericks.  And the ones that are, often are rounded up and forced back into the herd.  Humans, by nature, go with the flow.  If we step outside that flow and offer thoughts or ideas that are different or at times even revolutionary, someone is usually there to slap us back into line.  Good case in point was Galileo.  He knew he was right, yet he was forced to recant at the very threat to his life.  Time proved in his favor, but what good did it do him.  By that point he was dead.  Another case was Sir Issac Newton.  One of the great minds of all times, yet he kept his work secret because of fear of how he would be treated if he published it.  And Newton couldn't stand criticism.  He also knew he was right, but because of his reluctance to accept the smirks and jeers of his fellow scientist, he kept quite.
Which brings me back to the subject of thinking.  Just thinking.  I've come to the conclusion that the majority of people do not think for themselves.  They are told by others what they should wear, eat, where they should live and for the most part what they should think.  I remember in the seventy when the layered look became fashionable.  We had the layer look for years at home.  It consisted of putting on just about all the clothes we owned in order to keep warm in the winter.  Then suddenly some fashion guru somewhere, heaven knows where, decided it was just the way everyone ought to dress.  The days of the well ordered wardrobe were passe.  And just about the time I finally got to the point where I had enough resources to afford one. I have found in my life I have usually been about a decade behind the rest of the world when it comes to fashion.  And at this point in my life I have decided 'who cares'.
So I have decided I will go home and try to put in practice all the great lessons I've learned from my week in the New England woods of Northern Vermont.  I will be Robert Frost and think and do what I like.  And I will go home with that resolve, hoping this mind set will last more than a couple of weeks or a month at the most;  hoping I don't end up falling back into the old mindset.   Hoping my circumstances in life will not sap the adventure and sense of wonder from me, and that I will not look around one day and find myself on the same road traveled by so many.,  And if this should be the case, here's hoping my circumstances will  once again allow me to set off for the woods.  And think, and think, and think.

Ethyl's thoughts: The Great Lie

It is the great lie of our age.  The belief that happiness is dependant on what we are able to gain possession of in our short life spans. Also the thought that a person's worth is determined by what they own.  In fact, a person's personal possessions are often spoken of as their net worth. 

When you think about it, some of the greatest, most significant, people who have ever lived on earth have been worth very little financially.  The best example, of course, is Jesus Christ.  He said foxes have dens and birds of heaven have roost, but the son of man has nowhere to lay down his head.  When he died the only thing he possessed of any value was an outer garment.  The soldiers cast lots to determine which of them would get it.

Another person of great talent and artistic ability was Van Gogh, yet he died penniless.  In fact, in his entire life time he only sold one painting, and yet today his artwork sells for millions of dollars.  Makes you wonder why the value of some people is determined only after they die.

Our age could rightly be termed 'the age of materialism'.   So often today people spend money they don't have to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like.  And in the end none of it makes them happy.  They end up with a bunch of junk that will either go in the garbage or to the good will store in a few years.  And the great lie continues.  "I will build a house and it will make me happy".  In a short while the new wears off and then the lie goes one step further.  "I will build a bigger house, and that will surely make me happy and fulfilled".   Cycle continues.  In a few years, "I will build still a bigger house, surely that will do the job".   It stands to reason that somewhere along the way they would get smart and determine their pursuit of happiness had somehow taken a detour.  No matter how big a house you build or how fancy a car you drive, it's not going to be long before someone comes along with a bigger, better model.

The first year my husband and I were married we had a little green Corvair sports car and everyday going to work we passed a car lot that had the car of my dreams.  It was a 1968 Chevy Caprice.  And everyday I would remark to my new husband just how much I would like to own  that car.  I didn't realize how bad that made him feel.  It was years later when I finally realized how much he wanted to buy that car for me.  In a couple of years we did trade up to a Chevy Impala, but it was years later before we finally bought a Chevy Caprice.  By then the body style had changed so much it didn't even look like the same car.  Anyway, to make a long story short, we passed a junk yard some time later and there was a car exactly like the one I had pined for in our early years together.  Sitting in a junk yard, rusting and returning to the elements.  And suddenly I realized something that has stayed with me the rest of my life.  Things don't last.  Knowledge can stay with you a lifetime, so take the time and effort to acquire knowledge of worthwhile things.  Relationships can last a lifetime if they are properly cultivated and nurtured, so take the time, energy, and effort to develop as many friendships as you can with people whose friendship is worth having.  There are three kinds of people on earth.  Superior people focus on ideas and principals, they have deep spiritual values, are morally upright and trustworthy, unselfish, and truly interested in the other person.  Ordinary people are more interested in things: things they can buy and sell, things they can accumulate, things that can be owned.  They may or may not have your interest at heart.  That will depend on how the outcome will effect them personally.  And thirdly, there are people who need to be avoided at all cost.  People who are self centered and arrogant, interested only in themselves and what you might be able to do for them.  Avoid such people at all cost.  They will literally suck all the happiness and life out of you, and then after they have totally used you up, throw you away without a second thought.

When I was young the thought that someone might not approve of me or like me was of great concern to me.  As I've grown older I've come to realize no matter how hard I try there will always be people who simply don't like me or approve of me.  And you know what.  It just does not matter in the least.  I guess that is one benefit of growing older.  You come to be at peace with who you are and what you are.  And I also discovered another amazing thing.  The people who decided they did not want me to be a part of their lives did me a great favor by removing themselves, for they were, for the most part, arrogant, selfish, self centered individuals I would not really want to be friends with anyway.

Those that have remained over the years have been people I would put in the first class.  Superior people of moral integrity, honest, loyal, and trust worthy.  Don't grieve over the ones in your past who are no longer a part of your life.  There is a reason they didn't make it to your future.  As you age, you learn what qualities to look for in people and how to identify the ones you want to remain in your life.  And I have been so blessed, for my life has been filled with many such ones.

The old man and the doctor

The old man was at the doctor's office for his routine check-up.  He began by telling the doctor of his urinary problems and of his frequent night time visits to the bathroom. 
"But doctor, I am proud to say God has been very good to me.  When I have to go he turns the light on for me and when I'm finished He turns it off", he announced proudly.
When the old man's wife inquired of the general state of his health the doctor told her of his complaint but then added that the old man believed God had been good to him by turning on and off the light.,
"Oh, my Lord," she exclaimed.  "We have to get home right now.  He's been peeing in the refrigerator again".

Ethyl Remembers: Muscadine Time

It's Autumn.  Well, not quite, but there is a change in the weather that lets you know it's coming. And in my opinion, not nearly soon enough.  The oppressing heat that marked this summer in Memphis for all intents and purposes is past.  It's still in the nineties here today, but believe it or not, it actually feels somewhat cool after the summer we've had.  And there is just a feel in the air.  Can't quite describe it, you just have to know the feel.  Change is on the horizon.

Which brings me to the next memory.  Muscadine time.  I mentioned muscadines to the owners of an inn we were visiting in Nova Scotia and, to my surprise, discovered they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.  Growing up in Tishomingo County, muscadines were as common as ants at a picnic.  They grew wild in the woods, climbing to the tops of massive trees and producing their sweet, tart, tangy fruit in abundance.  And the Fall was the time for gathering them. We gathered them in large milk buckets and pails, and collected them in our skirt tails, and whatever else we could find to put them in.  We often returned home with the skirts of our dresses permanently stained from where we had bunched them up to our waist and filled them with the deep purple fruit of the muscadine.  After all, just a walk in the Autumn woods was enough to come upon an undiscovered vine, and there was no way we were going to let it's succulent fruit lay on the ground underneath and rot.  It would be gathered and taken home, even at the expense of the few dresses we possessed.

Once home these wild grapes of the woods would be turned into preserves and jelly and even wine.  My mother had a large churn in which she brewed her sweet intoxicating nectar from the fruit of the muscadine vine.  Once properly distilled, we children were allowed to take tiny taste of the sweet spirits.  Never very much, just tiny sips.  It was a taste like no other, totally impossible to describe unless you've experienced it.  Sweet, yet tart,  stronger than cultivated grapes, but resembling them in nature, brisk and uplifting, yet never overpowering. 

The preserves were unique too, in that they were made from the hulls of the muscadine.  Unlike commercial grapes, the wild muscadines had a tough outer peel,  so when the fruit was to be eaten it was placed between your teeth and then the inside popped into your mouth, at which point you spit out the hull and savored the tart, tangy sweetness of the pulp inside.  Jelly could be made two ways.  You could boil the whole fruit and then strain the juice to make dark purple jelly, or you could divide the hull and the center by popping each fruit separately between your fingers,  at which point you could make preserves from the hulls and light colored jelly from the juice of the centers.  When I was growing up, I much perfered the dark jelly.  Not only was it more robust, it also saved us the time and bother of having to pop out all those juicy pulps by hand.

The woods around our house were always a place of delight in the fall.  The smell of leaves just before the decay sets in, pine fragrances lingering in the brisk fall air, heavy, yet refreshing; colors to please even the most discerning taste;  tiny little chill bumps on our arms and legs from the breezes that blew among the trees.

The sheer joy of finding wild muscadines among the fallen debris covering the ground. 

Such a nice memory to call up and reflect on.  Back from the days of long ago.  Days when we gathered the wild bounty of the woods,  took it home, and preserved it for the coming winter.  As I said, such a nice memory.

Ethyl remembers Mama

My mother passed away eleven years ago today.  Once when I was a newly married teenager, an older friend I worked with told me no one would ever love me like my mother.  I was so in love with my young husband at that time to consider the possibility I might ever be that important to anyone else was just beyond me.  Caught up in the wonderful thrill of at last having the young man I was so enamoured with, I had little time to consider such statements.
Two years later when I gave birth to my first child, my friend's words begin to take on more meaning.  I found what it was like to be called on at two o'clock in the morning when I was so sleepy I literally staggered into the baby's room, because his pitiful cries summoned me to produce the fluid he so desperately needed at that moment.  No putting it off and going back to sleep.  No calling on someone else to do it for me.   No one else was available to perform the task.  It fell on me, sleepy or not, sick or not, want to or not.  I had entered the world of motherhood, and at last it dawned on me just how much my own mother had endured, not only to give birth to me, but to also sacrifice her own comfort and well being so that I could have what I needed.
It pains me now to consider just how unappreciative I was of her over the years.  Young and immature, selfish and self centered, just like so many teenagers, the foremost thing in my life was having what I wanted.  Looking back, I don't believe she ever chided me for that, or ever resented it, to my knowledge.  She did what all good mothers do and tried to get it for me.   
When I was happy and things were going my way, she smiled and enjoyed it too.  When I became a teenager and started to correspond with the boys, I would always hand my letters to her and let her read them.  Once I had received a letter from a boy, and when she expressed interest in what it said, I snapped at her.  She didn't always have to read my mail.  She turned away with a hurt look and said nothing.  I felt remorseful and took the letter and handed it to her, telling her to read it, and she just shook her head no.  Remorseful and sad for my actions, I turned and walked out the door to take a little walk and think things over.  In about twenty minutes I returned to find her laying across my bed reading my letter.  She looked up with a shy little grin, just like the bird that caught the canary.  We just smiled at each other without saying a word.  There was no need.  We knew exactly what the other person was thinking.
I also knew she never went totally asleep until all her children were home and accounted for.  That fact seemed to totally escape my brothers.  They never saw the need to account for their whereabouts.  If they knew they were alright, they expected her to know that also.   It never occurred to them she might worry.  Once when my brother and I were talking, I made that statement to him.  He looked at me in total disbelief.  He loved her more than he loved anyone else on earth. He just never considered the fact his actions might be a cause of great concern and worry to her.
Females are different.  I know that fact is not going to surprise the majority of you, but it applies in so many other ways than just the differences in anatomy.  Males and females exist on entirely different planes when it comes to feelings and expressing those feelings, thinking, ways of doing the same thing, and so on and so forth.
The Apostle Paul told first century Christian men to love their wives as their own bodies.  It's interesting he did not say the same thing to the wives.  They were instructed to show honor to their husbands.  Paul knew that a woman by nature would love, whereas a man had to be instructed to do that lest he forget.  I'm not saying that a man can not love and cherish his wife and children, but by nature a woman seems to be equipped for the enormous task of motherhood. 
As the years passed she grew old, and eventually became totally dependent on her children.  It fell to me and my wonderful sister in laws to care for her in very much the same way she had cared for us.  Giving baths and changing diapers, the once cared for became the care givers.  Maybe, just maybe, we were able to return in small portion some of the self sacrificing love she had extended  so unselfishly to her family.

Ethyl Muses: Growing old

It's funny how much your view of life changes as you age.  When you are young you give no consideration to growing old.  You are going to live forever.  Oh, you know someday all humans die, but when you're young that does not apply to you, or else it is so far down the road you never even stop to consider it.  That remains the case until you hit your mid forties, more or less.  Then the mid life crisis sets in.  You must come to terms with your own mortality. You have to deal with the realization that now that particular fact does indeed apply to you. 
When you are in your twenties or even thirties, for that matter, and you see a middle aged man jetting around town in a new bright red convertible sports coop, getting a hair transplant, sucking in his gut, doing everything in his power to look like he's still in his twenties, the tendency is to laugh at the sheer foolishness of the entire process.  The same applies to women.  The gray strands are exchanged for platinum blond, the breasts are surgically enlarged and firmed up, the sagging jaw line and the bags under and around the eyes are removed, the falling derriere is lifted. And sometimes, with either sex, the dead beat drag of a marriage partner is also disposed of  in the process.  They enter into a quest to find themselves.  They both are trying to recapture the youth that has already been spent. 
Life is like money.  You use your time on earth to purchase experiences.  To discover.  To locate that which brings you enjoyment and to dispel that which fails to please you.  And you do have to spend time to collect that knowledge. There is simply no way to get from birth to forty without living it.
Many people fail to understand the difference between knowledge, understanding and wisdom.  Knowledge is the accumulation of information, facts, data, etc.  Understanding is when you begin to see how that information can apply to you, and wisdom is when you begin to apply that understanding to your life in such a way to benefit yourself.  And in order to arrive at the point where wisdom enters in, you have to spend some of your precious life garnering  knowledge and understanding.  It is a sad fact of life, though, that with certain individuals, wisdom does not always come with age.  Sometimes age comes alone.

Ethyl observes: Words

People in general are a queer lot.  I use that word in the same way a sixteenth century Quaker would have used it.  On meeting his friend for a morning stroll one old Quaker said to another, "Everyone be a bit queer excepting me and thee, and sometimes I have serious concerns about thee".  Funny how words have a way of evolving into completely new forms, just the same way a person over the course of a lifetime can evolve into a totally different personality.

The word queer is a prime example.  Three hundred years ago it referred to something that was not quite the everyday, slightly off what was considered to be ordinary and out of sync with everything else around it.  You seldom hear it used that way today.  It almost always refers to people whose sexual orientation differs from the norm.

Another word that comes to mind is apocalypse.  The word originally referred to a foretelling of future events, a revelation, so to speak.  The Biblical Apocalypse was to be source of great joy and happiness, deliverance for the faithful and wonderful future blessings. Thanks to Hollywood and the movie industry, today it has come to mean a global conflagration of the highest order.

The King James Version Bible and the works of Shakespeare are rife with expressions that have changed greatly over the course of a few hundred years.  Case in point is the account in Genesis where Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew.  The King James Version Bible says in Genesis chapter 25 and verse 29, 'and Jacob sod pottage', which means in today's English that Jacob was boiling up some stew. 

Another case in point is found in the Bible book of 1 Corinthians 10:25 where the Apostle Paul is advising the Christians that it is alright to eat meat sold in the meat markets although some of it may have been left over from the sacrifices that had been made to idols earlier that day.  The scripture in the King James Version reads, "Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake".  I have often wondered if our word today referring to a shabby ill kept resident could have derived from the condition sixteen century butchers kept their shops and meat stands.

Many words today mean just the opposite of what they meant four hundred years ago. Suffer in the sixteenth century meant to allow, let meant to prevent, and raise meant to tear down.

Even Mother Goose suffered as a result of time.  When Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her curds and whey, today that event would be translated as Little Miss Muffet sat on a footstool eating her cottage cheese.  And pot porridge hot, pot porridge cold, pot porridge in the pot, ten days old, is referring to left over oatmeal that has been continually reheated for ten days.

I can't help but think how similar people are to words in this respect.  They can change so much you wouldn't even know them if you met them forty years after they graduated from high school.  I remember how we wrote in each others yearbooks 'you are my friend forever, I will never forget you.  Today I have trouble remembering  the names of at least half of the students I graduated with.  They ceased to be important to me when I ceased to have daily contact with them.. Just like words and their meanings are forgotten when we stop using them in daily life.

A word my maternal grandmother used to use was carn.  Once when she put out some poison to kill a mouse in her kitchen and it died in her wall the smell was horrible.  I remember her saying it smelled like carn.  I never really knew what she meant until I was helping my son with his Spanish lesson and we came across the words 'carne asada'.  It literally means roasted meat.  I suddenly realized grandma was saying the smell was so bad it smelled like rotting meat.  That was a word I sometimes heard my mother say, but one I have never heard used since.  Just like some people in my life who were no longer there on a regular basis, so this particular word was put back in the recesses of my mind, only to resurface very seldom, if ever.

Sometimes I think how much I have changed over the last forty five years.  Things I desired greatly, such as having every one's approval, no longer matter in the least to me.  I have found that most of the people who did not want me in their lives were for the most part people I would not want in mine.  They did me a great favor when they removed themselves, although when I was young and vulnerable, I certainly did not think so.  I also discovered that when it comes to friendship, quality is far more important than quantity. It is a great blessing indeed  to have a few people in your life who really care, who are loyal and trustworthy, and who would really mourn the loss of you if you were not in the world.  Those people could be compared to the benefit of a few well spoken words at the right time, as contrasted with so much prolific verbosity, spilling forth from certain mouths and cluttering up your world with needless chatter..  The majority of people you know in your life do not really care that much.  They will be friendly and pleasing to be with, but if you died tomorrow, they would come to your funeral, shed a few tears, feel sad maybe for a few days and then in a month's time go back to their lives and after a few years forget you ever existed, for the most part.

Certain people are just like certain words we have pushed to the back of our minds.  One time they were there, we knew them, even enjoyed  them sometimes, but now they are no longer important.  Sometimes the meaning of such people, like certain words, has totally reversed itself.  Instead of longing for their friendship, wishing for them to be a part of our vocabulary, so to speak, we are perfectly contented to carry on without them, even happy to a certain extent we no longer have to deal with them.  After all, there is almost no word that is irreplaceable.  We can almost always find a substitute in the English language for any thought we wish to express.

So don't grieve over people in your past.  There is a reason they didn't make it to your future.

Ethyl Jokes: Famous Quotes

"The happiest marriage I can picture...... would be the union of a deaf man and a blind woman".  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Television allows you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn't have in your home".  David Frost

"Good breeding consist of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of others".  Oscar Wilde

Ethyl Remembers: Thunder Storms

It rained in Bartlett last night. The storm came complete with thunder and lightening. Still, I went to bed and slept soundly. Such was not always the case. For years, even after I married and moved away, when it would storm and there was thunder and lightening I would always have an unsettling fear I had left something important out in the rain and it would be ruined, completely destroyed.
I could never figure out why this was so. What was it about thunder storms that made me tense and apprehensive. Why did they bring on such an overpowering feeling of gloom and doom.
I don't know what it was that triggered the memory, but one day I remembered the tornado that blew away our barn and killed one of Daddy's cows. The same storm took the roof off the front of the house, and I remember my mother standing at the front door with a broom frantically trying to keep the water out. It made no difference. The water came flooding in.
When she finally decided her attempts were futile and there was a very real possibility the entire house might go, she woke my little brother and she took me by the hand and we made our way to the neighbor's storm cellar, just down the road. The storm house, as it was called, was merely a hole dug in the side of a red clay hill with some protective planks and tin serving as a roof. It was dark and damp and smelled like earth, and I always had the fear a snake or two might try and seek shelter with us. The furniture inside consisted of wooden planks placed on concrete blocks pushed firmly against the walls. The only light we had was a kerosene lantern that glowed eerily inside the dark tomb. I remember being a little girl of about six and sitting silently, listening to the destruction going on outside our damp, dark refuge.
Then I remembered what I had feared for so many years. The fear I had left something important outside. In our hurry to leave the house, I left behind my one doll. Her name was Janice, and Mama bought her for me at the dollar store. She was the most cherished possession I had at the time, and I was so afraid the storm would blow her away. Never mind the house, just don't let my doll get blown away.
Once I remembered the storm, I no longer had the feeling I would lose something dear if it rained. In fact, in some cases I could even enjoy the storm, as long as it didn't seem too powerful.
Which leaves me to wonder. How many things do we experience in our childhoods that shape our outlook on things even when we are grown. How many have we forgotten, and yet are still haunted by them. Why are we the unique individuals we are.