The Place Was a Poem for the Boy

It was a place of eternal fascination for me as a child.

My grandmother in Shreveport had a small house with a detached one-car garage. The garage was where she parked her 1940 Ford, which was 20 years old by the time she and I would go the grocery store or the bank, and the car inevitably breaking down. The garage had no door.

But the parking area was only half of the structure. The other half, probably a good 15- by-30-foot space, was kept locked and untouched, until I would come for a visit. At some point in the visit, my grandmother would invariably say, “You know where the key is.” And I did – it hung on a string on the wall of the garage.

I’d unlocked the door (the lock was a padlock type), swing it open, and spend a few minutes simply staring.

It was my grandfather’s workshop.

I never knew either of my grandfathers. My mother’s father died of a ruptured appendix when my mother was 12; all I knew of him was a few stories and a very few old, fragile photographs. My father’s father died when I was nine months old, and I was part of his deathbed scene – until my parents could travel in from out of town, the only thing he said that anyone could understand was “I want to see the baby.” We arrived, they put me on the bed with him, he touched me, and then a few hours later he died.

There were more stories about him than my maternal grandfather, but he had also lived longer. And one physical expression of who he was – his workshop.

My grandmother would not clean it out. She left it exactly as it was the day he died. I remember the smell – wood and motor oil. And dust everywhere. The two small windows had become dirty enough that only a little light filtered in. It was definitely a gloomy place, but it was also a magic place for me.

I imagined him sawing wood – the saw, rusting, was still there, and numerous pieces of old wood. His toolbox was right where he left it, and it contained several hammers, a file, screwdrivers and the usual assortment of tools. These were the tools he used to build the house for my grandmother and himself.

I could see him hit his finger with a hammer, and unsuccessfully trying to stifle a swear word or two.

I can recall a box of old bottles, too, with the necks of several liquor bottles sticking out. A couple of old calendars hung on the walls. Boxes were haphazardly stacked in a few places, as if he just hadn’t had the time to sort it all out yet. And the peg on the wall where he hung his broad-brimmed hat.

This was the place he came to think, to be by himself for a time, and to worry. This is where he’d debate and argue with himself, and where he’d work out problems by working with wood.

I never moved anything, but I think I probably touched everything in the place. That dusty workshop was the closest thing I had to a grandfather, and sometimes, if I listened intently enough, I could hear him speak.

The key hangs on a string on a nail

on the wall, waiting until the boy

returns for the mystery. The lock

springs, the door creaks open,

the dark interior, a masculine womb,

beckons as always. Smells of wood

and oil and dust mingle with remnants

of cigarette smoke and a small pipe

or two. The tools carefully rust

in their box, tools worn and old but

still tools, still useful. It is here

the boy imagines the man; here

the man imagines the boy.

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry today, we’re continuing our discussion of poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge. There were numerous assignments we could choose, and I selected the one that said to “think of a place that has the mystery or beauty of a poem to you.”

The workshop had both mystery and beauty, and it was the poem of part of my grandfather’s life. When my grandmother died, someone – aunts, cousins – had to clean out the workshop before the house could be sold. I hope someone kept at least some of the tools, but it doesn’t ultimately matter, not really. What I have instead is the poem of the grandfather I never met, but whom I think I knew.

You can see and join the discussion by visiting Tweetspeak Poetry.

Brennan Manning and Ice Cream

My favorite dessert in the entire world is vanilla ice cream. If I had to name a favorite brand (aside from homemade), it would be Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla.

But there was one day the vanilla ice cream tasted bad.

From the time I was six or seven to the time I was 13, I spent a week each summer with my grandmother in Shreveport. She lived on the western side of town, in what would then have been called a middle- to working-class neighborhood “out the Greenwood Road.” Church was an important part of her life; she would play piano and sing both with the choir and solo. She even sang a solo on her 90^th birthday.

I loved being with my grandmother, but the neighborhood was largely devoid of other kids. One boy my age, named David, lived next door to my grandmother, and his family was as active in the church as my grandmother was. David and I always paired off whenever I came to town.

The church pastor lived a block away. He and his wife had taken in two foster children, brothers just a year or two younger than I was. For some reason, they always looked like they had been rolling around in mud. But they were friendly kids in a neighborhood where three boys were the entire universe of children.

It was always hot in the summer in Shreveport, and many homes didn’t have air conditioning. My grandmother had a window unit that she used for her bedroom and the one I slept in next to hers. Next door, David’s family hadn’t gotten air conditioners yet, but they did have large electric fans.

The four of us boys had been playing; it was early afternoon and blazing hot. We all likely smelled rather poorly. David had a brilliant idea – to get some ice cream from his freezer. He went inside to his kitchen and we waited outside.

A few minutes later, he called for me to come inside. I went into the kitchen, and saw two bowls of ice cream on the table. And I turned and saw two faces peering through the kitchen’s screen door. I asked David where the other boys’ ice cream was. “They don’t get any,” he said. “They’re foster children.”

We sat at the kitchen table. David began to eat, and I stared first at my bowl and then at the screen door. “Can we give them some?” I asked.

Clearly aggravated, David stomped to the freezer atop the refrigerator, got the ice cream, and scooped out small portions in two bowls. He brought it to the two boys at the door with a rather superior “Here’s yours.” He came back to the table and rather glared at me. “They’re dirty and no-account,” he said. The boys heard him but in the joy of eating the ice cream, even outside in the heat, they didn’t seem to care.

It was the one time in my life I can remember thinking the ice cream tasted bad.

This came to mind while I was reading Brennan Manning’s The Furious Longing of God. “In human beings,” he writes, “love is a quality, a high-prized virtue; in God, love is His identity.” We humans desperately want to be loved; we have a more difficult time with being love.

I wasn’t a hero the day the ice cream tasted bad. I was motivated by guilt; how could I enjoy something when it was being denied to those two brothers right in front of me?

The two boys were likely used to this kind of treatment; they didn’t seem surprised by it, nor did they protest. They were going to sit there outside the kitchen door and watch us eat our ice cream, like we deserved it and they didn’t.

The joy on their faces because of two small portions of ice cream was itself something miraculous to behold.

And the ice cream suddenly tasted remarkably better.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing The Furious Longing of God. To see other posts on this chapter, “Unplanned moment of prayer,” please visit Sarah at LivingBetween the Lines.

Sunday afternoons, summer

North Louisiana summer hot

hot on a Sunday afternoon, 4 p.m.,

and we would walk the short block

to the red-brick church, the open field

behind it, to the prize all eyes

turned to, the white-painted

cinder block building for

the lawn mowers, the mowers

removed to make space for

the tables of ice cream, homemade,

ice cream swirling in ice and

hands still turning the cranks and

pouring the salt, with every flavor

that could be imagined but I went

straight to the vanilla, and we’d run

across the open field behind

the church, clutching our bowls

of ice cream, hoping all the while

they wouldn’t remember if we crept

back into line for seconds.


This is another in the series of poems on growing up int he South, suggested by my friend Nancy Rosback.

My Uncle and the Neighbor's Cats

On back porch steps facing

the garden and an open field,

I’d sit next to him,

a lanky compilation of gruffness

and garrulousness, saying little

because you weren’t supposed to,

this was serious business, waiting

for the neighbor’s cats to jump

the fence. He was so fast and his aim

so sure that the rifle would catch

the cat in mid-leap before I knew

he’d pressed the trigger.

The neighbor, his son’s in-laws,

had lots of cats. My uncle, like

Robert Frost, believed in fences.

He didn’t believe in cats.

This is another poem in the series begun this week on growing up in the South, Suggested by Nancy Rosback at A Little Somethin’. Although she probably didn’t envision a poem quite like this one, which is entirely true.

Photograph: Cat Behind the Fence by Jiri Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Norms and Culture are Personal

Donald was a Baby Boomer, born and raised in a suburb of New Orleans. And while no suburb of New Orleans could ever be truly Americanized, this one was as close it got. He grew up with children whose last names reflected the region’s French, Spanish and Italian heritage (and accents), and children whose fathers came from all over the country to work at the huge NASA assembly facility. His friends had names like Hebert (pronounced A-bear), Melancon and Sardelli, and also names like Clark, Pollock, Phelps and Miller.

His own family reflected the same dichotomy. His mother was born and raised in New Orleans, from a large family with French, Cajun-French and German ancestors with both Catholic and Lutheran overtones. His father had been raised in Shreveport, in a family that was hard-shell Southern Baptist and still fighting the Civil War.

Both of Donald’s parents had been married before, his father twice before. He had a half-brother who was part of his family and a half-sister who both was and wasn’t. He was the first child of this new marriage, and he eventually had a younger brother. What both of his parents prized and extolled for all of their children was the virtue of hard work. All four of the children would exhibit and practice the same belief, although each would learn that hard work was no guarantee of personal success, and that other factors could play a large role as well.

His father was something of a family black sheep, and often the despair of his grandmother. His father struggled with authority issues his entire life – the Baptist church, his parents, his employers, the Navy, the government, local New Orleans police officers looking for protection money. That struggle translated into a suspicion of all authority by the children, including Donald.

He spent more time with his mother’s family than his father’s, but his father’s family had the relative Donald loved the most – his grandmother. Every summer, from the time he was 7 to the time he was 13, Donald spent a week with his grandmother in Shreveport. He adored her, and she adored him. He was many things his own father was not – studious, respectful, never getting into trouble, among others. His grandmother often wondered how Donald could have been produced by her son, and decided that while he looked like a carbon copy of his father, he must have been more influenced by his mother. Donald loved Shreveport; it evoked a sense of the almost magical because of his grandmother.

And that was true. Donald’s father worked hard and worked long hours, six days a week, trying to make a go of his small business. When a small child, sometimes weeks would pass before Donald would see his father, getting up after his father had left for work and going to bed before his father got home. And what he learned from his mother included a strong sense of romanticism; he substituted as his mother’s movie partner because his father just didn’t care for them.

When Donald began dating in high school, the girls were varied in background. Some were natives of New Orleans; others had moved with their families to the city and were from all over the United States. Most came from a similar middle class background; a few came from wealthy families who lived on prestigious streets. But there was no longstanding high school sweetheart.

For college, he attended the state university, whose student body drew a majority from Louisiana but had a significant number of foreign and out-of-state students. His dating patterns, however, varied little from high school, and he found himself dating girls mostly from the New Orleans area, until his senior year, when he met and started dating a girl from the magical city of Shreveport. And this would be the girl he married.

Over at The High Calling, we’re reading The Social Animal by New York Times columnist David Brooks. Today we’re covering three chapters – on norms, self-control and culture. These three chapters are about Erica, who comes from a lower economic class family in New York that is Chinese-American on one side and Mexican-American on the other,

 The Social Animal is a non-fiction book largely told by telling the stories of fictional characters. My post today is an example of how Brooks has written the book, illustrating his fictional stories with numerous psychological, sociological and other scientific studies. The “Donald” is this post is based on my own experience.

To read more posts on these chapters, please visit The High Calling.

Christmas Biscuits

Last week, for Bonnie Gray’s blog carnival at Faith Barista on faith, I talked about the aluminum Christmas tree we had when I was growing up in New Orleans. While most of our Christmas celebrations were in New Orleans, we would occasionally head to my father’s hometown of Shreveport.

Shreveport was a magic place for me. My father’s family was much smaller than my mother’s, but they all lived within 10 minutes of each other. My father’s oldest sister and her family, in fact, lived directly across the blacktopped street from my grandmother.

I was born in what my father called the “great divide” in his family – all of my cousins were either considerably older or considerably younger. I spent a week almost every summer from the time I was 8 to when I was 14 with my grandmother, and those visits are some of the best memories from my childhood.

The first thing that was exciting about Christmas in Shreveport was the temperature. It was cold. New Orleans could get cool in December, but Shreveport, 325 miles to the northwest, could get cold.

The second exciting thing was how we had to divide the family for sleeping arrangements. My grandmother had a two-bedroom house, so my parents got the double bed in the second bedroom. I slept in a rollaway bed in the dining room. My older brother slept at my aunt’s house across the street; she also had a two-bedroom house.

I envied my brother, but not because I didn’t want to stay at my grandmother’s house. I envied my brother for culinary reasons.

When I’d wake up in the dining room, my grandmother would already be puttering around the kitchen, and she’d feed me eggs and bacon while my parents slept in. Then she’d send me across the street to my aunt’s house for – the biscuits.

My brothers and I (my little brother came when I was 10) all still talk about my Aunt Rubye’s biscuits. They were something akin to perfection, and I know that I will get to eat a plateful in heaven.

She’d work up the flour and water and whatever else went into them as she’d talk to us in the kitchen. We wouldn’t budge from our chairs at the table. Nothing could make us move, not even getting to watch my Uncle Revis shoot at cats with his rifle while he sat on the back porch step. Nothing could deflect our attention from Aunt Rubye’s biscuits.

The smell from the oven, of course, came first. We knew what was coming by the smell. The kitchen would be permeated with that wonderful scent of those biscuits. My brother would eye the molasses syrup, thinking about pouring it on a hit split biscuit. I was the purist; a little butter and I was good to go.

“Mother’s making them biscuits again,” my uncle would say loudly from the back steps. “Must have company.” And then we’d hear the POW of the rifle.

My aunt would pull the tray from the oven, and the smell would intensify; our saliva would be intensifying in direct proportion. The plate full of wonderful would be set before us. And the first bite of the floured and kneaded and rolled concoction would find its way into our mouths.

The recipe has been lost, because there wasn’t a recipe. Aunt Rubye made them from scratch, and the only recipe was the one in her head. Daughter-in-laws and nieces tried to duplicate it but none succeeded.

And in a way, I think that’s a good thing. Those biscuits have never been equaled, in reality or memory. I can see and hear her now, standing at the counter, working the dough, talking in that no-nonsense Southern drawl she had.

"Mind the crumbs," she'd say, watching us eat. And she'd be beaming.


To see more posts on faith, visit Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista.

Photograph: Coffee and Biscuits by Donna Cosmato via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Mourning the Sheep

I’ve been reading Wendell Berry lately – That Distant Land: The Collected Stories (see the post immediately before this one); A Timbered Choir: Poems; and Leavings: Poems. And this has all put me in mind of – a sheep.

From the time I was roughly 8 or 9 to 12 or 13, I spent time each summer with my paternal grandmother in Shreveport. I never knew my grandfather; he died when I was nine months old. But these visits were special, for a number of reasons. I was able to spend time with a grandmother I adored, away from my parents, and, either coming or going, I got to fly in an airplane. This was the time when air travel still had something glamorous about it, and you dressed up to fly.

My grandmother lived in a two-bedroom house in western Shreveport, right across the street from my aunt and uncle. The house had been built by my grandfather for their retirement. The front yard by the road was edged with crepe myrtle bushes; I loved popping the buds open. There was a pecan tree in the front yard and a pear tree on the side.

A frame house painted dark tan, it sat on piers and had a combination garage and workshop out back. The garage side of the structure contained an old Ford that my grandmother tooled around in (and our escapades in that vintage automobile should be and likely will one day be a separate post); the workshop side was largely unused but left almost exactly how it had been when my grandfather still used it.

It was a large yard, close to an acre, and part of it was fenced. To keep maintenance costs down, my grandmother kept a sheep in the enclosed area that grazed the grass. Once a year, she had a man come by to sheer the wool. And my job, whenever I was there in the summer or for Christmas or holiday visits, was to throw stale bread over the fence to the sheep.

I don’t recall if it was a male or female, but I think it was a male. I seem to recall it being generally disagreeable, downright ornery, in fact, unless you had something to feed it.

It was that sheep that kept coming to mind as I read Berry’s stories and poems. That sheep was part of a place, a time, of people long gone, and on a piece of land anchored in my memory.

Berry writes a lot about place and land and memory. He also rails against “industrialized aliens” who have forgotten the land and are severed from it – those aliens largely being commercial interests or people with overbearing commercial proclivities or, worse still, people ignorant of what the land truly means (in contemporary society, that's most of us). In one story, he has a character named Wheeler Catlett, an attorney, look at the main street of the town of Port William, and see how much decline there had been, how much there had been that had disappeared, deteriorated and not replaced. It is a kind of mourning scene, mourning at the loss of what once was.

My grandmother died in 1984. My uncle had died before then and my aunt several years later. Both properties were sold. The last time I saw my grandmother’s house, the neighborhood was in serious decline; her house was boarded up and had graffiti sprayed on one side. The fence that had enclosed the sheep was gone, as were the pear and pecan trees and the crepe myrtles.

And I find myself mourning that ornery sheep.


Related:

There must be something in the air. Rod Dreher at BeliefNet blogged Monday on “The Impermanence of Things.”

Sheep image courtesy of Martin Junius via Flickr; used with permission.