Grandma’s House
It was a delightful place to spend a childhood. It was summer days drenched with sunlight, woods so dense daylight could barely penetrate, Cabbage trees taller than a city skyscraper. Clusters of purple grapes dangled from a backyard arbor, lavender wisteria blossoms perfumed the air from the great vines that grew around the yard. Four-o-clocks and gardenias added to the sweet aromas that drifted on the breeze. The cool smell of the river as it flowed over the rocks and made it’s way down to the Gulf. This is the way I remember my grandma’s house on the Aucilla River in the Big Bend of North Florida.
It was nineteen-sixty, and my father had just passed away. My mother had left us when I was only two years old. My sister, brother and I were in a kind of suspended animation, waiting to see where we would end up. Who would take us in. We had been separated, each to a different home. I had lived with my Uncle Fred in White Springs for a short time when everyone thought our stay was only temporary. Now the situation was different. Now any commitment by a foster family would mean a permanent obligation to keep us. As we waited, I ended up at my Grandma’s home on the Aucilla River.
The sounds around her home will always be imprinted in my memory. On days when the men were away at work, I could move through majestic depths of silences around the woods and swamps near grandma‘s house, silences so immense I could almost hear the cattails grow. Under these silences there was an orchestra of natural music playing notes no city child would ever hear. A certain rustle in the cabbage trees meant the squirrels were feeding. The creak of a porch swing told of a momentary breeze blowing off the river and across the yard. A distant splash meant the Mullet were running up the river.
Moving past the old log corn crib as quietly as an Indian, I could hear the swish of a cow’s tail and knew the horseflies were out in strength. As I tiptoed along the muddy bank of the river to surprise a frog, a faint splash told me the quarry had spotted me and slipped into the water. Climbing in the rafters of the boathouse, I learned that tin roofs crackle under the power of the sun, and when I tired and came back to my Grandma’s house, I padded into her dark cool living room, lay flat on the bare wooden floor, and listened to the hypnotic beat of her pendulum clock on the wall ticking meaningless hours away.
Life wasn’t as easy for my grandma. She scrubbed floors on hands and knees, killed and plucked her own chickens, baked biscuits and cornbread from scratch, grew and canned her own vegetables. She patched the family’s clothing on a treadle-operated sewing machine, preserved fruits, picked potato bugs and tomato worms to protect her garden crop, darned stockings, made jelly and relishes. She milked the cows, fed the chickens and hogs, rose before the men in the morning to start the old wood stove for breakfast and pack lunch pails, and still she found time to take me in the little wooden skiff down the river to catch fish for our supper.
At sundown, after supper was eaten, everyone congregated to the front porch to enjoy the cool evening breezes coming off the river and watch the night arrive. Relatives within walking distances would almost always just happen by. The swing creaking, rocking chairs whispering on the porch floor, and voices murmuring has a soothing effect to a young boy troubled by thoughts of what the future would bring.
A boy could learn much wisdom by just listening to the conversations that went on while sitting on that porch. Grandma, presided over the nightfall from her cane rocker, announcing, upon hearing of some woman “over by the rise” who had dropped dead hauling fire wood to the house, that “man is born to toil, and woman is born to suffer.” If one of the children threw a rock too close to the house or boat, Granddaddy removed his hat, swab the liner with his blue bandanna, and spoke the wisdom of the ages to everyone’s complete satisfaction by declaring, “Satan finds work for idle little hands to do.”
If I made the mistake of interrupting the conversation with a question, four or five adults competed to be the first to say, “Children are meant to be seen and not heard.” If a conversation was started about a scandal “over in Lamont” or “out there towards the bar pitts,” it was certain to be silenced by a scowl from Grandma or Granddaddy and a reminder that “little pitchers have big ears.” When the porch light had to be turned on, someone was certain to say to the children, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
I listened to conversations that had gone on for generations on front porches like the one at my Grandma’s house. Someone had a sick cow. The corn or tobacco was “burning up” for lack of rain. There wasn’t enough Mullet in the river to fill a hat. If the sheriff had arrested a local boy for shooting somebody’s cow, “That boy never brought nothing but trouble to his mother, poor old soul.” “Old Mr. Wilmont got bit by a Black Widow spider while sitting in his outhouse, poor old soul.” Ancient Aunt Annie, who lived “down there around the Reams,” had to be buried on a day “so hot the flowers all wilted before they could get her in the ground, poor old soul.”
Granddaddy usually led the departures, for he had to get his boat ready for the nightly treks down the river chasing Mullet or running his trot lines. A quite man in sweat-stained work shirts, and baggy trousers, mostly he fished for a living, did some carpentry, guided on the Gulf and built boats for other commercial fishermen. He was solemn, seldom smiling but always with the same even temperament. Granddaddy could have been my father’s twin they looked and spoke so much alike. I guess that’s the reason I loved to be around him so much. His main passion in life was fishing just as mine, which was another reason to hang around him.
For occasional treats I would be allowed to accompany Grandma as she made her route selling fish out of an old ice box mounted in the back of a pickup truck. For my help, I would be allowed to buy whatever a dollar could bring at the last stop of our route in Perry. Staring up at the shelves in Pates Grocery, I marveled at the bulging wealth of goodies, intoxicating myself inhaling the smell of chewing gum, ginger snaps, and chocolate in all shapes and sizes.
Just as I was beginning to get used to living at Grandma’s house on the river, circumstances caused me to have to move to another foster home. A lonely winter was coming, and I looked toward the future with a deepening melancholy usually reserved for someone much older. The occasional outburst of misery that flickered across my childhood was like summer storms. The sky clouded suddenly, thunder rumbled, lighting flashed, and I would tremble a few moments, then just as swiftly, the sky would turn blue again and I was basking contentedly in the peace of innocence.
It’s been fifty or so years since I lived in her house. Many miles have been traveled, and lots of new places visited. My Grandma has left this world, but she will always live in a special place in my heart and mind. Even now when times are hard, and I need a place to rest my mind, I let myself wander back in time to those days on the Aucilla River with Grandma. I try to imagine myself gathering eggs with her, or talking to her about life’s mysteries while she fights a giant Shellcracker on a cane pole. I always end my thoughts of her with a smile, and life somehow seems just a little easier to take.
