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.