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ROY
DAVIS
Roy
Davis is an artist/craftsman based in Murray, KY. You can see
his custom built wooden coffins and crematory urns at his web
site www.vintagecoffins.com
The Pruitt Sisters
Listen to the audio of this commentary here.
I’ve already told you a little bit about Aunt Bell and Aunt Emma Pruitt. You know, the two spinster ladies who lived next door to Grandma Schroeder? The ones who were not really my aunts and who made me afraid of dogs? And how they calmed me down by feeding me cold, homemade biscuits?
I spent a fair amount of time at Aunt Bell and Aunt Emma’s. Whenever Mom needed a break, she took me across the yard to their house where they lived with their nephew, Bryan. He worked somewhere and they cooked and kept house for him. I liked going there because of the change in surroundings and because it smelled different than Grandma’s house. Not better. Not worse. Just different and I liked that.
I always took along a toy or two – usually little cars – because the only things they had to play with were library books. They went to the library often, walking blocks to get there and back, carrying bags full of books both ways. There were always stacks of books by the sofa in their living room and they let me use them as I saw fit – as long as I didn’t mistreat them. The books became mountains and tunnels for my cars to climb and explore.
I don’t remember many details about their place, except for the kitchen – where the biscuits were kept – and their dining room. Their dining room table sat near a double window. It was always set for the next meal and covered with a sparkling white sheet to keep the dust off the plates. I loved the way the sunlight played on the crisply starched sheet.
In the kitchen, they kept a permanent supply of huge biscuits in the bread drawer of their big roll top kitchen cabinet. The biscuits were as big as saucers. They used big tin cans to cut them instead of a water glass like Mom and Grandma used. And they were delicious, even when they were cold. By the time I was three, I was hooked on the Pruitt sisters’ biscuits. Any time I wanted one, all I had to do was climb the steps to their front porch, knock on the screen door, and ask for one.
Mom didn’t like it. She said it ruined my appetite at mealtimes. But I couldn’t resist Aunt Bell and Aunt Emma’s biscuits. And Mom -- happy, I suppose, that her finicky-eating son was at least getting something in his stomach -- was too soft-hearted to put her foot down -- until one day when she dropped by to find me helping the sisters make jelly from cherries picked from their backyard cherry tree.
Aunt Emma was dumping a bucket of cherries, straight off the trees and unwashed, into the big pot on the stove. Aunt Bell was busy with an earlier batch that had been bubbling on the stove for awhile.
Mom asked, “Aren’t you going to pit those, Aunt Emma, and pull the stems off?”
“Oh, no Marguerite. That’s just extra work. They come out when we strain the juice.”
Striving for delicacy, Mom asked, “Well -- uh -- don’t you check them for worms?”
This time Aunt Bell piped up. “Ah, naw, you don’t have to do that. When it all comes to a bile, the worms float to the top and you just skim’em off. See?” She ran her wire skimmer through the steaming foam and proudly displayed a dozen or so tiny, bloated, dead worms.
At that, Mom remembered something she had to do at home. Excusing us both, she led me out the back door. On the way across the yard, she told me, “You are never, ever, to eat another thing at Aunt Bell and Aunt Emma’s. Do you understand me?” I didn’t really, but the picture of the stiff, boiled worms was still unappetizingly vivid enough that I agreed with no further argument.
I don’t remember whether I kept the agreement or not. In 1944, Grandma Schroeder died and my family moved to Bowling Green. I didn’t see Aunt Bell and Aunt Emma again until I was eleven or twelve years old. They had moved back to their hometown, Junction City, just outside Danville. It’s also where I was born.
Aunt Bell, the short one, was bedridden and dying from a stroke in a tiny, smoky little house that smelled like kerosene from the heater that made the room way too warm. Her gray hair that I remembered had turned completely white and was brushed down over her shoulders. Her skin was yellow and her eyes had a film over them. Mom said, “Aunt Bell, do you remember Buddy?” At that, Aunt Bell grinned a big, toothless grin and reached both hands toward me. All I could do was take her hand and murmur a weak, “Hi.” She scared the hell out of me. I needed a biscuit bad.
Me, Dad, and Grandma Schroeder |
Riding Tiny
Listen to the audio of this commentary here.
In the picture, my sister Alice Jane and I are perched atop a fat pinto pony with silver studded halter and harness. On the stirrup are the pony’s name, Tiny, and the date, 1941. Tiny belonged to a traveling photographer who walked Louisville’s neighborhoods snapping pictures of smiling youngsters right in front of their houses. In the background is my Grandmother Schroeder’s house. We lived there. Alice Jane was five. I was only two, but I remember the whole experience.
Some people tell me it’s a gift to remember back that far, but I’m not so sure. I’ve never been able to edit my recall – to erase the darker memories. I’m certain my mother saw the photograph as an opportunity to capture a happy moment in her children’s lives. Alice Jane was certainly excited about it. She couldn’t wait to get in the saddle. And I was excited, too. But when it was time for the photographer to lift me onto Tiny’s back, I balked. I twisted away and said, “No. I don’t wanna.” Mom urged me to get on. “Come on, Buddy. Tiny won’t hurt you. Look, isn’t he pretty?” But he didn’t look tiny to me. He looked as big as a house. There was foamy slobber around his mouth where the bit was. And he constantly bobbed his head up and down and shuffled his feet. I thought he might run away up the sidewalk. “Yeah, Buddy,” my sister chimed in. “Don’t be a baby.”
That was exactly the wrong thing to say. I muttered another “No! I don’t wanna!” and ran behind Mom. She shrugged and told the photographer, “Well, I guess he doesn’t want to. Just take one with his sister.” I guess the photographer had run into my type before. Without a word, he just stepped around my mother, grabbed me under the arms and swooped me into the saddle. Before I could say anything, he stepped behind his big camera and disappeared under his big black cloth. And Tiny – with no signal or command from the photographer – arched his neck and set a pose as solid as the Rock of Gibralter.
In a blink, it was over. Alice Jane and I were back on the ground and, while Mom was filling out the order form, Tiny was already clopping up the sidewalk to the next encounter. But I was not happy. Partly because I was afraid of Tiny, but truth be told, I was afraid of a lot of things and I already had a reputation as a scaredy-cat. Mom blamed it on Aunt Bell and Aunt Emma Pruitt, who lived in the shotgun house next door. They weren’t really my aunts. We just always called them Aunt Belle and Aunt Emma. Both of them wore their hair parted in the middle, pulled straight back, and tied into tight buns behind their heads. Dad called them old maids, but Mom said they were spinster ladies. Aunt Bell and Aunt Emma doted on me. They loved for me to come visit them. They let me play with their library books. They fed me homemade biscuits with butter and jelly. And they took me for long walks up and down Brandeis Avenue, stopping to talk with neighbors, bragging about me as if I were their own flesh and blood. I don’t remember the walks well, except that their sole purpose seemed to be to look out for dogs – big, mean dogs. And Aunt Bell and Aunt Emma seemed to believe all dogs were big and mean. It made no difference if a dog was six feet or six blocks away. Their response was always the same. “Oh! Buddy!” they’d say. “There’s a big mean dog. He’s gonna bite you!” Then they’d rush me across to the other side of Brandeis and scurry back home, then clucking and twittering, and me screaming and shaking. To calm me down, they took me in their kitchen and fed me cold biscuits with butter and homemade jelly.
Eventually, my family bought a new puppy, Peanuts, into our family and I got along with him pretty well. But, even though Peanuts and I became tight friends, it took me a long time – several years – to shake my fear of strange dogs. It took even longer to think of myself as something other than a scaredy-cat. And it’s only now that I realize that all that fear had been misplaced. Someone should have warned me to beware of well-meaning spinster ladies with a bottomless bread-drawer full of homemade biscuits.
Me and my sister riding "Tiny" |
First Memories
Listen to the audio of this commentary here.
Most people remember events from the age of four or five. Some much later. My wife is a member of an elite number who have very early memories. She can clearly recall, as an infant, lying outdoors in her pram on a sunny day, looking up at the trees. And today she can even describe in detail what she was wearing then.
My conscious life begins at Grandma Schroeder’s house in Louisville. 453 East Brandeis. I lived there with my mom, dad, and older sister Alice Jane. I was ten months old when we moved in with Grandma following the death of Grandpa Schroeder in 1939. My mother had been born, and grew up, in that house. It’s the first home of many that I remember.
One of my earliest memories is having my picture taken astride a pony named Tiny. I know that I was two years old then because I have the picture, and on the stirrup cup is Tiny’s name and the year, 1941. I can also clearly recall sitting on Grandma’s lap as she cleaned my fingernails with a bobby pin while, on the radio, Judy Garland sang “The Trolley Song.”
Grandma’s bulk and rheumatism caused her to move around the house slowly, like a stately but listing ocean liner. The hem of her baggy, print house dresses always hung lower in front than in back. And her big, floppy house slippers made hissing noises on the linoleum floors.
Mom constantly worried about her mother, who didn’t accept aging well and struggled to maintain a semblance of self-sufficiency. One time, while walking from the kitchen to her daybed in the dining room, she took a short cut by squeezing between the wall and the parlor stove. The sleeve of her rayon bed jacket brushed the hot stove pipe and caught on fire. She smacked the fire out with her hand and hid the bed jacket under her mattress. Of course, Mom found the jacket when she changed the bed and she scolded Grandma like a child. I watched the whole thing and felt embarrassed for my grandmother.
I remember all that – especially the warmth and comfort of Grandma’s lap and bosom – but I can’t remember the sound of her voice or anything specific she said to me.
My mother, Marguerite, was the baby of her family. She had a sister, my Aunt Mary, and two brothers, Uncle John and Uncle Claude. Another sister, Ethel, had died just five months before Mom was born. Ethel’s grave is in St. Stephen’s cemetery, right across the alley behind Grandma’s house. I used to go in the cemetery with Mom and the two ladies from next door. They all took butcher knives and trimmed the grass around the edges of the graves and gravestones. Sometimes the neighbor ladies whitewashed the rows of round rocks that outlined their family plot.
I learned from an older cousin that Grandma Schroeder never fully recovered from Ethel’s death. For the rest of her life, she frequently went to the alley to look through the big iron fence near Ethel’s grave, and wept inconsolably.
This unresolved grief led Grandma to be overly protective of my mother. As a result, Mom spent her entire life uncertain of her capacities to cope, at the mercy of her own quixotic and unpredictable temper, and constantly convinced she had some vague but serious illness. Finally, at the age of sixty-two she died of stomach cancer, no doubt feeling she had been right all along.
Today, she shares one of those low, cast bronze headstones with my father. Family members no longer have to bring butcher knives and whitewash to the cemetery; the big lawn mowers just roll right over. The cemetery calls it perpetual care. The epitaph my father chose says, “Together Forever.” I think Mom would have preferred, “See? I told you I was sick.”
If she were alive today, my mother’s symptoms would be recognized as depression. Today’s therapy and modern medication would have given her some peace of mind. Instead, she struggled through convinced she was ill; afraid she was crazy; certain she was unworthy of my father’s patient, unwavering devotion; and cruelly vindictive when he, or anyone failed to meet the demands of her fragile, ravenous ego.
I don’t see these as unkind thoughts. Recollections of childhood – happy and unhappy – are the ripest, most pungent memories of all. We prefer the ones who make us smile. But our darker memories contain lessons that add the patina of wisdom.
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