You know, at this rate we’re going to demand copies of the DVD…
I remember the the first time I saw a Sampiro story thread. I was like, “What the hell is this guy on? There’s no way I’m gonna read all this, it’s too effing long!”
Oh how the times change.
Man oh man, Cousin Luna reminds me of just about every female character in a Jimmy Buffett short story. You need to keep her around…
Hmmmm, maybe he could YouTube it. 
This is torture. Where is the DVD link?
YES!! This must be done!
My sister has a friend.
The most important letter in the above sentence is a. I did not say “one of my sister’s friends” or “my sister has a friend who is a…”, but my sister has A friend, meaning my sister has one (1) (this many / } friend.
His name, for this, will be Gary. He is the extent of her close friends.
Needless to say she can’t stand him.
An aside: as I mentioned, a phalanx of my friends came over while my mother was ill to watch the house, take care of her accursed bird (who I gave to the Muslims next door shortly after the funeral), take care of the lawn, etc., and immediately upon hearing she was dead they came over to clean the house, leaving the upstairs neat and the common areas downstairs spotless. After the funeral and at the reception a couple of them appointed themselves “unseen hostesses”, meaning they washed dishes and cleared tables and the like, particularly the ones I’ll “my occasional fiancee Jessica” and “Marie the Nipple Slayer” because that’s their names and distinctions and because I’m eternally in their debt. After they left my sister was just incredibly impressed with them and asked me
“How do you make friends?”
I interpreted this as “how did you meet these people?” so I mentioned “well, I know this one from work and this one from a book club and this one is the husband of this lady I know from…”
“No no no” she cut me off. “I mean, how do you make friends? I’ve never really understood the process. How do you actually get people to be your friends, not you specifically but in general?”
It was very sad. But “start by not being a condescending byotch who will tell people ‘That’s boring let’s talk about something else’ and it helps”. What she got from this is “most of Jon’s friends are people he met at or through someone he knew at work and I’m retired and when I worked I was the boss, so I guess I’m just screwed”.
I advised her to use her church which, as I attended a service with her there [a whole subject in and of itself involving discovering the church she described as “in an old strip mall” meant “inside an old Wal-Mart that has been expanded and adapted to include everything but an IMAX screen for it’s ENORMOUS congregation and high-tech Fundiesurround sound”, though I have to say first, middle and foremost that whatever my 9,901 objections to their beliefs may be, the church does exceptionally good works with the poor, illiterate, drug addicts and Katrina victims, tis pity they also believe there are half a million homosexuals in Fort Worth trying to bring about the anti-Christ by giving heroin to the chirren, but I digress; the point is her church, I know from having been there and read their bulletin, has a “supper club” program where they’ll match people who are new to the area and haven’t met anybody (or in my sister’s case people who have been in the area for 25 years and haven’t met anybody) up with people who have common interests and similar ages and the like for dinner and social gatherings. I suggested she avail herself of this.
“Yeah, but there’s no way of telling who they’re gonna match you up with. I don’t want it to be women my age with kids and grandkids cause that’s all they’re gonna wanna talk about, and I don’t want it to be women who were housewives cause they’re the most boring people on Earth, and I don’t want it to be people who are rich cause they’re gonna wanna talk about nothing but investments and how they made their money” [like my sister and her husband] “and I don’t want it to be poor people cause if they find out I’m rich they’ll be calling me to borrow money… it’s happened.”
I thought about it a little more and told her “Looks like you’re just kinda screwed then.”
“Well, for now. When we adopt a third world orphan… I’m thinking Chinese or maybe Ethiopian… then we can talk kids. Course the problem is that we’ll be 50 with a baby and the others will be 22. And when they learn I’m rich they’ll wanna borrow money. Especially since they have a damned baby.”
I don’t really think she’s ever going to go through with her threats to adopt a Third World orphan, but it’s a bee that gets in her bangs from time to time. I’ve tried telling her frankly that having a child to take care of you when you’re old (one of the big reasons she wants one) is probably the single worst reason to adopt, because I’ve known more than a few people who ended up putting off retirement until they were half-senile feeble “Granny Littlestains” because of the kids who were supposed to take care of them in old age, sometimes cause the kid had special needs and couldn’t but more often because the kid was just sorry. (I could cope with a special needs kid if I had to; a sorry one would have to be drowned.)
But the point is that my sister has A friend and his name is Gary and he’s a pentecostal preacher (at a church my sister doesn’t go to) on the Styx River.
Yes, the Styx River. That is a name that has not changed. The Styx River in South Alabama was named by early settlers to the swamps and floodplains of the region and it wasn’t because they couldn’t spell “sticks” or because they came from a place called Styx River back in France. The snakes and the occasionally flaming swamp gas and the alligators and the more snakes and the sulfur smell… you get the idea. But it does have a pentecostal church, and Gary is their pastor. When he’s not working at one of his other jobs, which includes janitor at a huge outlet center and housesitter, for Gary excels at sitting. He can even do it silently, and usually does.
Incidentally, the first time I heard about the nominal irony of Gary’s church I said to my sister “It’s on the Styx river…”
Her: Yep, I know.
Me: S-T-Y-X Styx?
Her: Yep. I know.
Me: That’s one of the rivers that runs through…
Her: Yep, I know. Gary doesn’t. Don’t tell him. Besides, he preaches on the Alabama side of it. Pass the fried corn.
Gary has, I think, Aspergers. He is a semisentient disruption of empty space. I don’t dislike him. I don’t like him. He’s just there. ALWAYS. He has surgically attached himself to my sister and her husband. HE IS ALWAYS FRIGGING THERE.
He’s low maintenance. He rarely talks, he just sits. If you speak to him he’ll politely look at you with a look of very fixed concentration to ensure you he’s ignoring you and bob his head up and down in a vaguely nodding motion like the novelty plastic flowers and Coke cans that move whenever there’s music playing but it’s absolutely clear he only heard the “power words” and personal pronouns and even those are still processing because Gary is a 286 in a Pentium VI world and fiercely proud of it. Whether he’s retarded or not depends largely on a complicated formula involving his last meal, room temperature and Earth’s distance from Mars and Ceres at the moment.
“Stupid and excruciatingly boring but well intentioned” is the handling fee for the first installment on the beginnings of an escrowed down payment on a description of Gary, a 50 year old virgin who preaches to a congregation largely comprised of elderly trailer dwellers and Vietnamese fishermen on the Alabama side of the largest river in Hell. He’ll NEVER desert you, no matter how hard you plead, and he’ll do anything within his power for you, though aside from menial tasks that power ain’t much, but to say he’s loyal is akin to saying “John Merrick had a skin condition”, especially if loyal is described as omnipresent (and stupid and excruciatingly boring but well intentioned).
I’ve used lots of celebrities before now to describe people, mainly Charles Durning for the grave salesman, Dick Cavett for Luna’s third husband, etc., but because they are general types. There’s a far greater resemblance between my father and Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan in ‘TOUCH OF EVIL’ than to most of the celebrity comparisons here, but there are only two “dead ringers”. One is comparison of my aunt to this lady when she was young and this one now and the other is this one: Gary looks JUST LIKE an old time movie star, specifically the one I named my dog for, Oliver Norvell “Babe” Hardy, only without the magnetic eyes and raw sex appeal.
Or at least he did until he had the gastric bypass. Now he looks like an Oliver Hardy somebody sucked the air out of and his clothes, once filled to the brim and to quote my mother “Makes me scared everytime I see him that one of those buttons is gonna pop off and hit me in the eye”, now hang on him but are held tighter by safety pins from the clip on tie that tacks on to the shining synthetic white shirt all the way down to the white tube socks he wears below his black patent leathers. (This is his “all the time” outfit- I’ve seen Gary on the beach, and this is what he was wearing.)
Must leave for work so more later, but the point is, “Guess who was appointed to preach my mother’s funeral?”
I intend to but not until
1- I’ve edited it to a “Best of”
2- The estate is officially through with probate. 
Two things I meant to include as endnotes for the Luna Modules:
1- Re: Aunt Joey/Uncle Joey: while I’ve changed their names, they really did both have the same first name and it really was a man’s name. (For Aunt Joey, obviously, it was short for her full name.)
2- **Mustang’s Meltdown over the Matter of Luna **
It occurred about a year before he died when the news finally reached him. He was washing/drying dishes with my mother during one of our weekend visits.
“Did Luna and that man of hers split up?” he asked my mother.
She considered lying to honor her sister’s wishes, but decided to level with him. He was 85 and would probably be able to handle it, and if not it’s not like it would take that much time away.
“Yeah… I’m afraid so. They’ve been divorced for about a year.”
Mustang’s devastation voiced itself.
“I figured they must have. I hadn’t seen him around in God knows when. Good riddance if you ask me. Always struck me as lazy and stupid and smelled of reefer.” He continued drying and never mentioned the matter again.
He’d probably seen enough miserable marriages in his 85 years [including his own] to recognize “dissolution” as more than just a pretty word.
Another Gary story (there are many): When he came over on one of his daily visits to my mother while I was staying with her he was interested in the book I was reading, The Other Bible.
“What’s that there? Like Living Bible and other translations side by side?”
“No, it’s…” [how to explain] “…it’s… apocryphal writings…” [his head is bobbing up and down to indicate I’m talking but there’s clearly no familiarity with ‘apocryphal’ whatsoever. “The books that… were written but… they were rejected by the men who compiled the Bible because they were repetetive or…” nod nod nod “…or they weren’t sure if they were authentic… other reasons. They didn’t make it into the 66 books of the Bible that we know.”
He nods until the intake is completed.
“So, like… devil worship?” he asks in complete earnest.
“No… just… you know how on a Hollywood movie DVD you have the deleted scenes? These are” (believe me, I know how much of a simplification to the point of inaccuracy this is, but I’m working with tabula rasa here) “these are the deleted scenes of the scriptures. Or the extras.”
The information is nodded in, searched for valuables and discarded.
“You know it’s fascinatin’… you got all these scientists and atheist folk… they say the Bible ain’t real, but if it ain’t real, then why would the devil go to all the trouble of makin’ sure those things get kept around over 2,000 years later just to confuse people like that da Vinci mess?”
It was clear that he had a point. Early the next day it finally rose to a head and he was able to pop it. There was a little bit of blood and just a second of pain but afterwards his skin looked just as it had before.
I shall not rest easily until I am able to put this magnificent turn of phrase into use. Just. Day-umn. Brilliant.
Gary Gary Gary… my brother calls him “a guy with simple tastes”. I call him a frigging tard and this is from somebody who has great respect for the retarded. I don’t despise him but I’ll admit I’d rather see his (now saggy) butt getting further away from me than his (clipon) tie coming closer to me.
He really was the obvious choice to be the officiant at the service. She didn’t know any other ministers, after all.
I honestly can’t say what my mother’s religious views were exactly. She grew up Southern Baptist, had a minority of Jewish ancestry (though she never knew a member of the family who practiced and from my research there hasn’t been one since the 1830s at the most recent) and that informed her thoughts quite a bit as well; she had an inordinate attraction to Judaism and studied it frequently at one time, though she also thought the Nazis were kind of cool (which of course always bothered me but… I’ll concede she was right when she said they were sharp dressers, but that’s only because they employed Italian designers). She converted to Presbyterianism when she married my father (who was brought up by his Jehovah’s Witness aunts, Episcopalian grandmother, nominally Baptist mother and his “the difference ‘twixt a preacher and a moonshiner is one works for a living and sells something that might do you some good” father and settled on Presbyterianism for its simple dignity and insistence on an educated ministry when he chose a religion).
I know that she did not like church, though she attended for more than half her life, because she was ultimately burned out by the hypocrisy and the politics of the congregations she had known (and later claimed it was also due in part to the fact that “sooner or later they’d ask about children and what am I gonna tell them when they ask why you aren’t married?”, but that she finally dropped after about a year and after some of my replies; 1997-98 was a bad bad bad bad time in our relationship.) I know she believed in evolution and detested Fundamentalist interpretations and thought the Essenes were pretty cool and loved the Holy Land (“For the first time I felt I was home”) but she also believed in the Virgin Birth (sometimes, other times she didn’t) and kept a copy of The Jefferson Bible in her bedroom. She believed in reincarnation, ghosts, life on other planets and the like but also in Hell- sometimes. And during the 97-98 blackout she’d use the Bible in attack, but then dropped it. I did once here her say “most old people get rigid in their beliefs but I’ll admit… after 60 something years of going back and forth and studying it and thinking about it and not thinking about it I’ll finally just give, I don’t know what God wants and sometimes I think He hasn’t made up his mind yet either.”
Ultimately I suppose she was a Judeo-Christian motherboard with lots of pirated software and a need to believe for comfort but the firm conviction that God had a lot of explaining to do and she didn’t want to hear platitudes when he did it. A chart of her religion would probably resemble the Ptolemaic universe ca. 1600 with its myriad epicycles and loop-the-loops and other square pegs shoved through round holes but ultimately it was more the whole parable of “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you and the rest is commentary”. Warts and all, that’s what she practiced. (Please don’t ever think you know here just from what I’ve written on these boards- she was an incredibly complicated person but even my ex, whose life was threatened by her more than once, acknowledges that “add up the credits and the debits and she came out heavy on the plus side.”
Anyway, while she was sick and in Gulf Shores Gary came to see her daily. He’s rather like a stray cat- you don’t have to talk to him or even acknowledge his presence, he’s just there. He doesn’t add to the conversation other than the nodometer to indicate to the deaf it’s still ongoing. When he’s ready to go, which may be when somebody is in mid-sentence or after half the house has given the hint they’re ready to go to bed by going to bed, he’ll stand and announce “I gotta be headin’ on, but just lemme lead y’all in pray’r” [rhymes with there] “as I go”. Everybody joins hands (Gary has little bitty ones that feel like oatmeal) and Gary intones some appeal to the Almighty that has a lot more “justs” than He’s probably used to and manages to plead for divine intervention on everything. Actual example:
“Heavenly father, God Almighty, we your humble servants just beseech ya to just look over us and just be with us, make sure we’re all doin’ good and just kinda be there for us. Be there for Mama Sampiro as she has her cancer and just make sure it doesn’t get any worse, and be there for [everybody’s listed individually with any ailments, and then, I swear he did this {and so’s you’ll remember, Mardi’s my mother’s dog}] and just reach down your han’ and touch Mardi so that whatever is makin’ his bowels loose will heal up and he’ll be back to normal and be with Ollie also as he tries to get used to bein’ round Mardi all the time and just adjaj aoiduioau oaiju aopij aoij aohuhruhaiojuioad fa dfadf basket hanger auiud aoiu wuhuhe oar a the waera aoiuihuh lady in the red trailer with hemmorhoids and the cheatin’ husband aoiuiou ouqeo iru just iauouid oau f aa stqer abqqe just oiuowu a and we ask these things in the holy name of your son who you killed for us amen.”
But, as he was nothing if not completely loyal and persistent in coming to see my mother and keeping her “company” and he is an ordained minister and the only one she knows at that, he was the logical choice.
My sister had a few simple instructions for Gary:
“Alright, this is how the fun’rals gonna go. All we need ya to do is just open up, we’re gathered here yadda yadda, then there’ll be a hymn then you get up and introduce D” [our brother, who art in south Alabama] “who’ll give the official eulogy, and when he’s done you’ll wrap up with another prayer and there’ll be a hymn and we’ll go. Very quick. Keep it very short.”
My sister will be in her 50s before the decades out and is extremely intelligent in many ways, but she honestly thinks there’s such a thing as telling a Pentecostal minister to “keep it very short” and imagining he’ll comply. Oh, he may keep it short by his standards, but that’s a pretty heavily qualified statement.
The Other Luna is my mother’s oldest friends (in terms of tenure, not age, and her name isn’t Luna but she has the same name as my cousin). They’ve known each other about 40 years, their husbands went dying together 25 years ago, and though they rarely saw each other (two or three times a year) either would have identified the other as “my best friend”. She called me the night before the funeral and asked if she could read a eulogy of her own and I said sure. I’d considered doing one myself but had ultimately decided it wouldn’t be wise and it would be profanity laden and with a lot of dark humor and that just wouldn’t go over well.
And then my cousin Luna called again. Mama hadn’t dropped in on her anymore but she was appalled at “that idiot” being the officiant and my brother giving the family eulogy. She had no problems with The Other Luna but “I want to give her eulogy too. I’ll give her one that will be more in keeping with how she was and what she meant to people. Your brother barely knew her and Luna just knew her as a friend, I knew her all my life. Her flaws were some of the greatest things about her… I want to speak too.”
Fine, I said. I’ll let the others no. (Their response of course was “Oh…good….God…. she does know this isn’t to be the Luna Gilmer Bibb Ulman Whatever Whatever Whatever Newman Variety Hour at least? I mean, she’s not going to embarrass is us she?”
What went through my head was
[FIRST SORDID LIVES REFERENCE] Latrelle (when the lounge singer played by Olivia Newton John takes the pulpit at her mama’s funeral): This isn’t open mike night![/FIRST SORDID LIVES REFERENCE].
But instead I simply gave my sister my absolute assurance and word of honor that “I have no idea”.
So I mentioned Crazy Lou Ida and the other Graea having the coffin opened when I got there. I may not have mentioned that she brought three (3) disposable cameras with her and was flashing them at anything that moved or looked familial and took the opportunity to go for the 82nd time into how much she likes the bed that my brother took from “my aunts place” (never mind that most of my father’s life was sacrificed taking care of those aunts and he earned any damned thing he took from the house) until my brother told her, sweetly but acidly, “If you want it that much you can come to my house and get it because I’m tired of hearing about it”.
Not the least offended she said “I’m not sure when I can get down there and get a truck and all. It’d cost me more to rent the truck almost than that bed is worth… now if you could bring it up to me I’d pay your gas…” to which he responded “I’m not legally allowed to drive in Elmore County until the trial”. A totally non sequitur lie but at least she shut up when people turned to other “mourners” other than to come through periodically and ask us to pose for another family photograph. She was miffed that we absolutely refused to pose around the open coffin.
Since the funeral she’s been majorly cussed out by me and by my brother. You’d think I’d feel guilty for cussing out an 80 year old woman and using a sexually explicit anecdote in my father’s Foghorn Leghorn like voice to do it, and you’re welcome to think that, but also inaccurate, but for that story another time perhaps.
I greeted a few of the early mourners. My back was turned as I spoke with one of my mother’s co-workers when a not so gentle tap on my shoulder blade called my attention. I turned around to look face to face with a character played with understated brilliance by Jack Palance. Jack Palance looked me in the eye (I’m 6’0 even) and said “I’m Mattie Ruth Barraclaugh.”
“Who the hell said you weren’t?” is the comment of my mother’s that went through my mind but I didn’t vocalize. (She told me this was always the first statement she heard in her head when somebody introduced themselves, though only rarely did she actually say it.) What I said was “Hi, how are you?”, extending my hand and getting a Palance worthy return handshake.
“You gotta be one of hers” she said mirthlessly. “Didn’t have to ask a soul who were her children.” No smile or warmth, just a wizened Jack Palance smelling of cigarettes (I’m a smoker and I could smell them) and wearing a vaguely female if you wanted it to be pinstripe pantsuit.
“Yes ma’am. I’m her youngest. Jon.”
“I’m the youngest in my family too” she nodded. “There were four of us. Just me and my brother now” she informs me.
Apparently I was supposed to say something back but I wasn’t sure what that was, so after a polite silence she overlooked my gaffe and continued.
“I’m a little older than your mama. I remember her well, though. We were really good friends in elementary school, even when we were teenagers. You could probly say I was her best friend for a few of those years. We were in the same grade. I’m a year older though. I had the measles and got held back a year and started late.”
“Really?” Oh, okay, it clicks. Billingsley. Barraclaugh…
AH- the Barraclaughs of Billingsley, of course… and the synapses fire and send my neuro-eunuchs running with a torch through the papyri laden basements of my mental Alexandria crying out to the noseless chained scribes “PULL THE BARRACLOUGH SCROLLS! THE MASTER NEEDS A BRIEFING! STAT!” and they did.
Ah, so this was Mattie Barraclaugh, who was indeed my mother’s high school friend and who, according to my mother, “grew up to be the dyke what am”. My mother never told the full story and I’d certainly never know it now, but evidently Mattie once made a pass at her while she was engaged to my mother and was mortally embarrassed by it later. She later became a nurse and lived for many years in Texas and D.C. and other places before coming back in her late 50s with a “woman art teacher from somewhere” and settling in Prattville. There was no mention of said roommate today.
The Barraclaughs- that’s not their real name (though it’s easily enough found) but yes indeed my mother talked about them. They were the family that spawned the most famous woman from Billingsley, for a while the most famous woman in the world perhaps And this was Mattie the Dyke. Let’s see, she also mentioned a Mister Claude and a Miss Lucy and a Berenice… Berenice would be Mattie’s sister wouldn’t she? And Mattie’s brother is
“Butch, my brother, is out parking the car.”
I nodded.
“How old was your Mama?” she asked non sequiturly.
“Seventy. She would have been seventy-one next month.”
“I’m older than her. I remembered that. I turned seventy-two last month. I’ll be seventy-three in July.”
In the silence I did the math. If she was telling the truth, that was a year older than my mother. About. I submitted it to the Math Tower in the Alexandria of my cortex and after sufficient peer review it was confirmed. This woman I was addressing, the she-Palance in heeled cowboy boots) was indeed older than my mother. About a year.
“It’s very nice to meet you. Mama mentioned you often, and your brother and your family…”
“Yeah, we were in school together. Same class even though we were different ages.”
Mattie’s a year older than my mother, and from a quite interesting family that my mother really did speak of often, though this was the first time I recall having met a live Barraclaugh.
“I knew your daddy too. Steve” she told me.
“Did you?”
“Mmm. I was in the English class he taught at Billingsley High School. Same as your mama. That’s how they met. You knew that didn’t you, that your dad was your mama’s 9th grade English teacher?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Good. Wouldn’t want to have told you if you hadn’t. My brother Butch oughtta be in d’rectly. He’s parking the car.”
“Great… well, thanks for coming, it was very nice to finally meet you…” and my getaway was blocked by the arrival of Brother Butch Barraclaugh, who is everything you’d expect a she-Palance’s brother to be.
In an odd casting choice the Almighty decided to just reach down with his Almighty hand and let the role of Butch be played by old Tony Curtis 9 séries de TV e do cinema inspiradoras sobre negócio e finanças – Cidade Internet , but only the body, because the role was voiced by none other than **[SECOND SORDID LIVES REFERENCE]**Leslie Jordan ( http://www.suzelanier.com/images/portraitsL/men/guy-001.jpg) [/SECOND SORDID LIVES REFERENCE].
“Lorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd at the heet!” he exclaimed, a handsome if obviously enhanced old man with a voice that was neither, wearing a somber and perfect for a funeral well cut black suit and lavender shirt and tie with white rose boutonnière. “Hey, I’m Butch Barraclaugh, I’m so sorry ‘bout your Mama. How’d I know she was your Mama you’re wonderin’, I’ll tell you that I took one look at ya that’s how I knew I could look at this whole room and point out which ones are your Mama’s children there’s that one and that one and those two too little to be hers but must be the grandbabies and that one over there could be but she only had three didn’t she well one of the ones I pointed out must be your Aunt Joey’s cause she and your Mama may notta looked just a like but they all marked their kids with those Traywick blonde hair and eyes now I got ‘em all right and you know who I specially knew was your sister cause if I hadn’t ever laid eyes on your Mama I’d know Sophronia Traywick Gilmer’s granddaughter anywhere I laid eyes on her cause Miss Sophronia only had the prettiest head of blonde hair in all Autauga County Alabama and I should know cause I used to cut it! I cut hair for a living for yah-ears and yah-ears until I went into nursing and even then I still cut it on the side and for the patients they used to ask for me if they were in the hospital for a long time and needed a haircut cause I knew what I was doing and listen to me just goin’ on and on and on about nothin’ you don’t care about this old man used to cut hair in hospitals when your Mama’s layin’ over their dead I’m so sorry to hear about her I didn’t know her but a little but I used to babysit her b’lieve it or not and I knew your Daddy too even though he was a little after my time at Billingsley High School but I thought the world of your grandmamma and grandpapa and they were always good to me even when other people wasn’t and so was your mama though I didn’t know her but a little. Mattie here knew her better than I did they were in school together I think Mattie’s a little older but she was held back cause of the mumps…”
Mattie: It was the measles!
Butch: ‘Like it makes any difference this boy” [I’m 39] “isn’t gonna be going home and wondering if it was the mumps or the measles. Hey, how are you, I think I’ve said my name but if I haven’t I’m Butch Barraclaugh! George Talmadge Barraclaugh but everybody’s called me Butch since I was a boy, I’m 78 years old now and they were calling me Butch during the Depression ever since I fell on some rocks and they said I took it like a Butch but I’m sorry about your Mama.’
THE FOLLOWING IS ONE OF THOSE READ ONLY IF INTERESTED IN OBSCURE SOUTHERN FAMILY STUFF THREADS, THOUGH I SHOULD PERHAPS ADD THAT IF YOU’VE ANY INTEREST IN LATE 20TH CENTURY HISTORY OR SORDID GOSSIP ABOUT THE RICH AND FAMOUS INCLUDING A BARELY-BUT-STILL LIVING WOMAN WHO WAS ONCE MOST FAMOUS WOMAN ON EARTH AND ANOTHER VERY FAMOUS WOMAN WHO SHE MAY HAVE HAD A RELATIONSHIP WITH (AND BY RELATIONSHIP I’M TALKING KINSHIP) BUT PROBABLY DIDN’T READ ON AS THERE’S A PAYOFF; otherwise skip it and you’ll miss nothing
SHE WHO WAS ONCE THE POOR SCHOOLTEACHER’S NOBLE WIFE (and I’m not talking about my mother)
When it stopped I was shocked for a moment and knew I was supposed to say something. He’s Butch Barraclaugh, the same Butch Barraclaugh who got out of Korea by OH, names…
“Hi, I’m Jon Sampiro. Blanche’s youngest. And you’re right, that’s my sister over there and that’s my brother and the other guy is my cousin Joe, Aunt Joey’s son…”
Butch: “Is she here? Your Aunt Joey? Oh Lorrrrrrrd honey I wish you could go back in time and have seen that woman when she was your age” [I’m 39, Aunt Joey left Billingsley when she was 18] “she was a sight to behold dropped into that town by angels with wings she’d turn heads for twenty miles, the beauty of the county, our own homegrown Lauren Bacall I’ll tell you what! I’m younger than she is I’m seventy-five years old she’d be eighty thereabouts I’d reckon but I still remember being 10 and 12 years old and the way she dressed even then with the rations and what not in the war, then when she’d come back, most of the women from Billingsley they wouldn’t have known a Givenchy from an old croker sack but she was just smoking with fire… is she here, your Aunt Joey?”
“Yessir, she’s…. well, she’s here. I don’t see her at the moment.”
“You don’t know who the hell we are do ya? You can be honest, admit it, I won’t be offended…”
“Well, I don’t believe we’ve met but I’ve heard about you and your family…”
Quite a bit. Daddy referred to Butch as “that little sissy Barraclaugh boy” but, strangely for a man who was not a liberal socially or in any other way, he respected him for one thing and so did Mama.
This is a portion that even if you’re reading this post you can skip as it’s a treatise on a southern phenomena I’ve mentioned before
I’ve mentioned before the Southern oddity that I’m sure exists throughout the country if not the world but here it’s with a very specific dialect: the Queer Paw-Paw™ (QPP). QPPs are old effeminate Southern men who are super identifiably gay but they grew up in a time and a place where gay was simply NOT an option or even a recognized lifestyle. Consequently you’ll see them now, grey haired prissy old men with impeccably pressed shirts and a voice that perfectly blends the redneck patois of the pre- mass media softened dialect with the stereotypical (but largely extant in reality) nellie gay guy accent that I can affect perfectly in conversation but not so well phonetically, though I’ll try:
“Me and Ima Jean was settin’ around the how-issss lath Tuesthday and ya know who came in to see us? Ire lil grandbaby Bonita! And I said, Bonita, what’d Paw-Paw tell you, you can play anywhere hee-ur but don’t trample Paw-Paw’s day lilies or you’ll be in big trouble little mithy!”
They often have wives who either drink heavily or look a lot like Winston Churchill. Some QPPs actively avoid any conversation about gay issues, some are the most intolerant bigots on gay rights you’ll ever meet, and I know with one who seems to be absolutely BUSTING at the seems to finally come out even though he’s been married 50 years- he’ll tell you how hot he thinks Tom Cruise is even if the conversation’s about the Ford-GM merger; ‘geneous’ is not one of the ways in which they’re homo-, but if you’ve lived here you know them.
I have a lot of sympathy for this group; I’m not particularly effeminate myself but I’ve often wondered had I been born in the generation of my parents (1920s/1930s) would I have married and raised a family. I don’t know. I’ve often wondered that if you sat a scientific sampling of QPPs down and, with truth serum or absolute anonymity and the promise of a lifetime subscription to malepayperview dot com you asked them “had you your life to live over again but with the norms and mores of today, where being openly gay can’t be called “easy” but is certainly far more so than in your time, would you have married? On the one hand they’re men who for an entire lifetime either completely suppressed their natural desires or, arguably worse, secretly indulged them in closet assignations that if exposed would at very least socially destroyed their families, and that can’t have been easy and has to have caused all manner of self loathing. On the other hand, in their 60s and 70s and 80s they have something most openly gay men that age simply don’t, their own clan of grown children and grandchildren and the joys and social respectability that go with same, so there is compensation.
Of course there’s also the QPPs of Tomorrow, men 60 and younger who do the same things, but they’re not as funny or as interesting in general. When you get down to the QPPs of the Day After Tomorrow, men in their early 40s and below, I’ve no sympathy as most are doing nothing more admirable than being cowards.
But the whole reason I mention QPPs is so that I can tell you what my father and mother, strangely enough, respected about Butch: he’s not one. Butch was openly gay from the time he was a teenager in the late 1940s. You gotta admire that type of guts. He lived with a much older boyfriend in Montgomery and used his homosexuality to excuse himself from military service in the Korean Conflict. Eventually he went on the hejirah that gay Alabamians still make, spending time in Atlanta and other big cities. That’s about the extent I know about his private life (other than a couple of anecdotes about his openness), but I still have to give this guy the great respect he’s entitled as a queen and elder statesman even if I’m not in a place where I can do it openly. (If you’re wondering about his sister, I’ve no idea if she was open or just obvious.)
But enough about nellies and let’s get back to Butch (which really is his nickname).
Resume reading here if you’re reading this post.
Butch: You’ve heard about us? Uh-oh! That might be worse! Hah hah hah! But true or not it’s sweet of you to say…
Mattie [to her brother]: He said he’s heard about the family. I bet I’ll know who he’s heard the most about too. [To me] And she’ll always be Claudie to me, I don’t care what that old colored woman and everyone else called her. She’s not someone we brag about.
Butch: Mattie hush, he’s just trying to be polite…
Actually the Barraclaugh papyri had arrived and been read alive in total now and I could tell them a lot more than they thought I could. I knew who “Claudie” was (the WORLD knows who Claudia was, and- let me check Wikipedia- thought so- who she is) though they may not know the Billingsley AL connection and how it
“I don’t know if you know who Claudie is or not but it doesn’t make any difference. She’s our cousin and she’s famous and Mattie doesn’t like her never has even though she’s a lot younger than Claudie and hardly knows her, knew her husband better than she knew Claudie believe it or not! Claudie’s named after our Uncle Claude.”
Their “Uncle Claude” (which is his real first name) was famous in my mother’s childhood for sitting on his roof calling to passing children and saying “Little girl! Don’t look up here! I’m nekkid!” as he “took the air and light” by sunbathing nude on the flat roof that had once been a cupola of their 3 story plantation mansion (the plantation to which was long gone). God, I’m probably the only person under 70 who knows that story, or how Butch who I’d never met before got out of Korea, or why they hate Claudie so much or the rumor about Claudie’s “sister”… wait, Butch is still talking and I’ve missed the last few sentences reminiscing about memories that aren’t my own
“…about two years ago well I just couldn’t take the traffic anymore so I sold everything and moved back and me and Mattie she was alone too so we bought the homeplace. Now the homeplace, hell, that hasn’t even been in the family since 1942! The Endicotts bought it from us and it’s sold a half dozen times since then but it was just kinda nice to have it back and it wasn’t but $34,000 and what’s hard to believe is that place was built in 1860 and it cost almost that much then! $29,000. That’s what my granddaddy paid to build it. He was from Kentucky. Look at me I’m just going off again and you don’t even know where I’m talking about!”
“Yes I do, actually” I tell him truthfully. “I know exactly where you’re talking about… it’s the big three story house next to the Baptist cemetery. I was at the cemetery just a few months ago and… I hope you don’t mind, I took some pictures of it. It’s such a beautiful old house. I’m glad somebody’s bought it.”
“That’s it exactly! Yeah, me and Mattie and our sisters were all born in that house but they sold it when we were kids cause the family had all moved by then, mostly to Texas but we stayed for a little while cause our daddy died you know and our Mama’s people were all in Billingsley…”
“My grandmother, Sophronia, used to tell me about that house. She said when she was my age, I was about seven at the time, she and her baby sister…”
“Reediana! Lorrrrrrrd I knew Miss Reed! Is she still living…”
Mattie: God Butch she’d be over a hundred!
“She passed some years ago. Nobody knew her real age… she lived with a man who thought she was 10 years younger than him and she was about 15 years older than he was…”
Mattie/Butch: That’s Miss Reed.
“…anyway, Meemaw said she and Aunt Reed used to love come to your house and slide down all the staircases, the one that went up to the cupola and the other ones…”
“Oh yeah, Grandmama used to tell us about that and so did Daddy. Did you know that your grandma used to babysit for Claudie?”
“Oh yeah… I did.”
Mattie: You just have to bring that old buzzard up don’t you? He likes to namedrop. I just don’t have much use for the woman, never did, not since they asked her for a donation to the church they named after her own grandparents and she sent a damned ashtray!
Here’s what to know about the Barraclaughs (not their real name) and why they hate Cousin Claudie:
The Barraclaughs were a very, very wealthy family at one time whose plantation took up most of what’s now Billingsley. They lost most of the land in the Civil War but unlike most rich planter families they not only made the fortune back but they increased- multiplied it- with investments in natural gas and peach orchards and Birmingham real estate and steel mills- so that by the early 20th century they were, at least collectively, bonafide millionaires in a town with a population of around one hundred and which at the time had an average income of a few hundred dollars per year.
Unfortunately the family produced two generations of sons who between them covered all the Seven Deadly Sins and some of them single-handedlv. The milder, such as Uncle Claude, just covered sloth as he rarely pretended to work but indulged his penchant for nude sunbathing and other weird health regimens he swore by as the fortune dwindled. (Actually Mr. Claude tried to invest his share of the remaining fortune buying shares of the company that made the weird and radical health food products he special ordered for his self designed diet but his family talked him out of it- in the first place the makers were Yankees and who the hell wants to eat “corn flakes”, and Kelloggs sounds a lot like a Hun name.)
Others were a lot less passive, preferring gambling and fast horses and faster women and, particularly, black women. My grandmother and mother and aunt all told about the Barraclaugh men (which includes some cousins and uncles not named Barraclaugh but who had shares of the fortune) and I remember it coming up the last time I went with my mother to Billingsley when she went to see her favorite and last surviving teacher, herself a distant cousin of the Barraclaughs [not their real name] , Miss Vera, who was almost 100 in the 1990s and died a few weeks after we visited.
Continued from above (continue to skip if uninterested, will not affect funeral story)
Miss Vera: And you know my aunt went with Clive Barraclaugh who had the colored woman down on Smoky Row and he was engaged to my aunt Vivian but she figured he’d change once they married but you know what he did, that Clive Barraclaugh? He…”and almost a century later she whispers as she tells my mother, who already knows full well, “…he jilted Aunt Viv and ran out on his family and he took that colored gal down to Cuba and he married her! He MARRIED HER! Serves him right that he probably got shot up by Castro. Least I’m guessin’ that’s what happened to him. We never heard from him again.”
And while the men squandered the fortune on fast living the women married very poorly.
Miss Vera: Sweet little Miss Minnie, that’s who your Mama Miss Sophronia liked, oh she wasn’t bigger than a minute and didn’t have enough to throw a shadow. [Sparkle in her eyes] You know what Mama Lunie, old colored woman used to nurse me, know what she used to say ‘bout Miss Minnie? I heard her say, ‘She sweet as can be but ain’t got enough ass to last her til breakfast tomorra… hehhhheheheheh… lord I miss Miss Lunie… she was second Mama to me… but Miss Minnie, she was so tiny and delicate and took up with that sorry piece of trash Charlie and… oh, his family was good, won’t here me say they weren’t, but he was trash… He killed Miss Minnie as far as I’m concerned, and you know how he met Miss Minnie? [Another conspiratorial whisper] Cause he had a colored gal himself whose sister was shacked up with Minnie’s brother! That’s how he got to know the family so well! And you know he had yella children with her and then with another [racial pejorative, though not the one you’re thinking of, though it does mean ‘African-American’] even after Miss Minnie died, and you know who one of his colored daughters is? I’ll tell ya who…. Put your ear over here… and she whispered it in my mother’s ear.
Of course my mother already knew the name, the woman locally rumored (and probably without an ounce of truth) to be Miss Claudie’s half-sister.
But the point is that Miss Minnie, either an aunt or the cousin of Butch and Mattie (I’m not exactly sure of the genealogy), married “that sorry Charlie” who took her to another state where they both had family and he didn’t have as bad a reputation. They had three children in a very short time and delicate Miss Minnie died shortly after “Miss Claudie” was born, whereupon Mr. Charlie sent her back to Billingsley to live with her grandparents and maiden aunts and debauched uncles. I find no record that he ever returned to Alabama for any significant period of time, let alone had time to father an illegitimate biracial family, let alone one of them being Coretta Scott and growing up to marry Martin Luther King, but I can speculate on the origins of the rumor. I mention it here not for any truth content (which is probably nonexistent) but as a matter of folklore and rumor from an era that is dead and should be but, give it it’s due, it was interesting.
Later Minnie’s maiden sister, Miss Effie, moved in with Mr. Charlie herself but not for sordid reasons, strictly to take care of her niece. As Miss Effie, unlike her brothers and cousins and uncles, had not squandered her inheritance and had in fact invested it wisely she was the richest member of the family, and when she died (herself quite young- in her 50s perhaps) she bequeathed it entirely to her favorite niece, “Cousin Claudie”, which infuriated the rest of the family including Butch and Mattie’s parents who tried to sue and share the wealth but it was thrown out of court.
Meanwhile and 81 years later and at another funeral:
Mattie: “…and that’s where the money came from you know was through Aunt Effie. Sure wasn’t from that sorry daddy of hers and that even sorrier… yes, I know, I said it, and I know who he was, b’lieve me I know who he was… sorry husband of hers. He only married her for her money, and her money was Aunt Effie’s money.
Butch: There’s Joey! Hey Joey do you know who I am it sure is why lord I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays you’re still looking pretty…
Me: Well it was nice to meet you…
Mattie: You too. I’ll go pay my respects.
I “mingled” or whatever you want to call it with the other visitors and mourners as long as I could stand it, the friendly hands on the shoulders that irritated me, and whenever I could I took a smoke break. Usually it was with Luna or her younger son (who used to be DiCaprio cute but got over it about twenty miles back going ninety with his ass hanging out the window as he did it- boy ain’t aging well at all). The last time, or 10th cigarette that hour, the other person smoking was Mattie.
Mattie: “I’m sorry again about your Mama. Me and her used to be good friends back when we were teenagers. Real good. Some would say best friends, though that was fifty-five years ago or more.”
Yes, I wondered.
“She was a little younger than me, ‘bout a year or so, but we were good friends… and now it’s just me and one or two others.”
“Yes ma’am, she still thought the world of you” I lied. “Spoke of you often.”
“She did? Hmm. Wish I’d known that. I thought of calling her a time or two in the past few years, cause I saw her at a reunion a year or two ago. Wish I had. Wish I had.” She lit another from the end of the last.
“She ever tell you your grandmamma used to babysit the great cousin Claudie?
Me (honestly): Yes ma’am, she did. And that Meemaw thought Miss Minnie was wonderful.
Mattie: I didn’t know her of course, she died fifteen, twenty years fore I was born, but that’s what my daddy always said. ‘Why can’t you be like Minnie?’ he’d say, ‘…stead of something the cat drug in’, heh. All skinny and proper, like the family was when it had all that money they pissed away. Heh heh. Well, he got left out in the cold on that one I reckon…
Me (not sure what else to say): Heh heh…
Mattie: And your Aunt Reed, reckon that was your Mama’s Aunt Reed really. She used to go over to the house too. My Daddy was kinda sweet on her for a while and remembered her well. And she used to play with Claudie and Claudie’s brothers, they were closer to her in age.
“Well…” I said, for it’s clear Mattie already knew about Aunt Reed’s open relationship with the truth, “According to Aunt Reed, but love her though we did you know she had an open relationship with the truth, she was the one who was babysitting her and first said ‘Claudia eats just like a little bitty lady bird…’”
Mattie: Well, I can tell you that ain’t true. It was out in Texas, her nurse out there, but only a few family called her that. Lyndon’s the one started calling her nothing but Ladybird. ‘Bird!’ he’d say… I loathed that man. You know he tried to make a pass at my sister when she wasn’t but seventeen years old!
Me: No ma’am…
Mattie: Didn’t on me though… many times as he saw me he knew better than to try that shit with me, specially married to my cousin, married at all.
[silence]
Mattie: Well, I better go inside find Butch.
Me (sincerely): It was very nice to meet you again, and put a face with the names…
Mattie: Not much of a face these days but… thank ya. You ever in that cemetery c’mon up to the house, we don’t bite. Might not be there, house can’t be lived in yet so we’re staying in a trailer over by the lake, but we’re working on it. You take care son.
- No letters or angry carrier pigeons, please: I know, I know, not all gay men are effeminate and not all effeminate men are gay, but I would say most effeminate men beyond a certain level are gay and I make no judgment- it’s because of the ones who simply too identifiably gay to be closeted that we have anything like a gay rights movement and so in a sense all freedoms from Lawrence v. Texas to Doogie’s revelation The View are ultimately the spawn of Nellie men, but it’s a simple truth that some gay men, regardless of their libido or social life, are a lot more identifiable than others.
PS- In the post above, since I decided to mention the name of ‘Cousin Claudie’ rather than just hint and I used her mother’s real name, I’ll use her father’s real name too. It was Tom, not Charlie (Thomas Jefferson to be precise).
Also, on the subject of the Coretta/Ladybird gossip mill, there were similar rumors connecting MLK to Herman Talmadge of GA, sometimes the bastard daughter was Coretta’s mother Bernice (which would at least have the added veracity of a suspect who was conceived while Tom Taylor was actually in Alabama, etc., everybody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew the white girl who spurned MLK who decided to take his revenge on White America (a rumor almost identically copied for Osama bin Laden), etc… While I don’t believe a word of the gossip (though it IS true that LBJ was widely said to have married Ladybird for her money which was inherited from her mother’s family [her father also came into money through marriage but was evidently a very good manager of it] and her mother’s family did live in Billingsley AL and my grandmother really did babysit her and the old people in town really did remember her and her uncle really did sunbathe nude according to many reports, etc., and Butch and Mattie {who died last month} are cousins who now own the house and the funeral experience happened as cited, I want to go on record as saying I don’t speak to the truth of any hearsay and all evidence contradicts it (though I’ve no problem believing LBJ would hit on a teenaged cousin of his wife, particularly if she was attractive).
And don’t do drugs.
You know, for the first time in a LONG time, I’m looking forward to a Monday. I know Sampiro will be writing more of this beautiful, descriptive, involving, and damn interesting story this weekend… and on Monday, I’ll get to read it.
Sampiro… I’ve missed your stories so very, very much…
Why are the Google Ads for “egg donors for gay couples”?
Anyway…
My whole point in going into the ultimately missable and gossipy part about the “Barraclaugh” siblings is that it drove home a realization.
I miss my mother greatly in her own right, of course- she was my Mama, bigger than life and seemingly unbound by it, and I’d had my breakdown the next day that dissipated, as so many things do, while lying on my back looking at leeching limestone in the long silent tourist graffiti covered gun barrel of a Confederate fort. But this was one of the first great aftershocks to hit me of the things less tangible and less emotional that I’d also lost. I’d lost her stories.
I’d listened to them many times. Over the past few years whenever I was with her I always got her to talk about “the old days”= her childhood, wrestling, Montgomery at the time of MLK and Rosa Parks, integration, the people she knew and of course above all herself. I begged her to write down anything she could remember- “Don’t worry about the style just get the bare boned facts on paper or silicon, we’ll pretty it up later”- and she did, about 60 pages worth that I’ve found but to every story there’s another story and to that one another and all. I heard so much about the people from her childhood in that weird little “Whistle Stop With a First Lady and a set of Conjoined Twins” hometown of hers, Billingsley, with its incredibly complex race relations and acts of total barbarism and total goodness you just don’t see anymore but exactly how it all fits together- “Who was Mrs. Dickinson’s mother again? Why did Peck set the chicken on fire? And the dog who could count change was the grandson of your rat terrier Trixie, right? Who was the lady with the teething ring? And the Wonders, Poles who had their names changed at Ellis Island because they couldn’t speak English and the agent said “I WONDER what the hell they’re saying?”- when and why did they come there and was that the family where one of the members died from eating a buzzard in the Depression? Who was the one who used to crack his bullwhip and scare people into thinking the black people were armed and going on a killing spree? Your great-uncle who avenged the rape of his illegitimate biracial daughter by dragging the men behind a horse until they were dead, was he the one who lost his leg or the one who lost his arm? What did Gramma Becky look like? Big Mama’s morphine habit, did you know about it as a child? What do you remember about her withdrawal when Mustang tied her down, or about when she was given the needle again when she died of cancer and smiled- when did…”
ALL THESE STORIES and those are just the ones I know bits and pieces of, GOD ALMIGHTY how many stories died with you? And of course the ones you never told and never were gonna tell- when did you know you hated your husband? Or that you loved him? Did you ever fool around as a teenager? Was Mattie Ruth a friend in “that” way at the time? Who was Joanna that you threw up to Daddy in a fight that made him turn cold but then wouldn’t talk about- and did you know or care about his “friendship” with Alexandra? Why did you say this about that and when did you really…"
The Library of Alexandria burns again when anybody dies. I saved a pitiful few fragments.
Anyway, I’m off to Atlanta and may or may not post this weekend but when I return I promise without further ado…
THE FUNERAL
And I have to say with modesty, this one’s to be a keeper.
This whole thread makes me feel weird. On the one hand, I’m so sorry for your loss, Sampiro. On the other hand, I just basically said to myself, “Oh, YAY!! A new story about the funeral next week!”
Love the stories and your writing, Sampiro. Thanks for being willing to share it with us.
What (s)he said…
Have a relaxing weekend, Sampiro. We’ll all be here when you get back.
Sampiro, I love your stories, as we all do. My wish for you, is that in the telling, they are giving you an outlet for your grief.
I’m waiting with bated breath for the next installment, and hoping it’s leading you to an island of peace.
Be well,
M.
Yanno, I HATE to be a me-too’er, but well, umm … [sub]me too.[/sub]
No, really! I was so going to write something just like that, only pathetically less well expressed. Thanks, picunurse for saying it so that I could “me too” it.
And Sampiro, you do realize that we’ll never stop hounding you to write a book if you don’t stop enthralling us with these incredible, inspiring, funny, poignant and strange, yet strangely familiar stories, don’t you?
p.s., If you have a list of people who want to be notified the moment the galleys go to the printer, please add my name to it.
If you don’t have such a list, please start one, and put me at the top of it.