Now I ain’t sayin’ it couldn’t easily consume a man. I’m just saying that part of me thinks it’d be worth it.
Also, the Chunnenuggee district is a little ways from Union Springs proper, so it’s a bit displaced from the check-cashing places and the “Big Ballers’ Poolroom.”
Sampiro I am not an Albeeny native (Praise Be!) but what I’ve been told is that during the 70’s and 80’s the city, in its infinite stupidity went on a tearing down old buildings rampage. One of the premier older homes in the city, the home built by the very founder of the city, was bought and moved out of the city to keep it from being torn down. They also tore down a huge block of the central business district and replaced with that monstrosity that is the “Guvmint Center.”
Also, though I have the thrill of working out of Albeeny, I live in the next county. Of course living in the next county in Georgia ain’t no big thing seeing as we have 159 of em so nothin’ is that far from anything. Heh! I live in a different county but I’m actually closer to Albeeny than I am to Leesburg, the capitol and queen city of Lee County!
And the home of SCHOOLS OF EXCELLENCE as I remember. (I used to go through Leesburg all the time when I was in Americus for a year.)
I worked at Phoebe whatever whatever Hospital in Albany. The main thing I remember is that they have one of the most gorgeous and most gay physical therapists anywhere in captivity, though I think he was a “not gay by virtue of Jesus” crowd. Such a waste…
Best thing I’ll say about Albany is that they have the best privately owned gym I’ve ever joined anywhere (Tony’s: regular weights and machines, of course, plus yoga courses, aerobics, heated indoor Olympic pool, wonderful hot tubs, saunas, etc. all for $38 per month.)
That would be Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. Or as it’s known round here, “Phoebe.” The man who originally put up the land and the money for the hospital did so on two conditions. One that it treat “colored as well as white” and two, that it be named after his mother, dear ol’ Phoebe Putney. Do you still have your blue blazer?
Don’t forget the Meemaw.
See, I was all laughing and saying to myself, “Yup…that sounds like a Tuesday” until that part. :eek:
I don’t know how common that endearment is, but I’ve never met anyone else with a meemaw or peepaw before.
Sampiro, Any relatives out of Chipley or Destin?
Any Babcia’s or Dziadek’s in the family? 
I had a Meemaw!
Right, so, I lived in Albany for a good chunk of time, until I moved up to Athens for college. This thread makes me reminisce, not so much in a good way . . .
Have you heard all those scandals surrounding Phoebe lately, swampbear? I find them quite amusing . . .
And I remember the Ryan’s next to the gay bar! In the vicinity of the Winn-Dixie, no?
Gestalt the Albeeeny Herald exists just to print stories about Phoebe and how rotten the school system is. Yep that was the Ryan’s/gay bar. Right there at the intersection of Dawson/Old Dawson Roads. The other gay bars I know of were on N, Cleveland Street and then on (I think) 8th Avenue. As far as I know now, Albeeeny is gaybarless. Not that I am all that concerned. I got my friends and a squeeze to keep me company. 
As a matter of fairness to my mother, I’ll post one more story before I let the thread shuttle off this mortal board. This one makes me look a whole lot worse than it does her. It’s from when I was a little bitty kid growing up in my father’s house (Locksley Hall) in Weokahatchee, Alabama (population then: 12/ population now: dead or otherwise gone).
My sister, who has seen only one episode of The Family Guy, says I should sue over the character of Stewie “cuz that thing is you when you were little”. That may help if you need to visualize.
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When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child and I really liked Mr. Potatohead’s as a child.
I inherited my older sister’s brown bag of assorted Mr. Potato Head parts. It’d be worth a considerable amount now (well, had she kept the original boxes, which being a kid-worth-knowing she didn’t, and had they remained in mint condition, which they did for about a day). These weren’t the puny little tubers of today, this was the Lost Greatness of Macchu Picchu generation of Mr. Potato Heads.
This was when Mr. Potato Head had hands… little bitty Caucasian hands that hooked into his arms, because this was also when Mr. Potato Head had a body.
This bag was from when Mr. Potato Head had a family: his children, Yam and Spud were in the bag.
This was from when Mr. Potato Head was multicultural and had friends: Mr. Orange Head and Mr. Cucumber Head were his friends, each with their little orange and green respectively plastic heads (and Caucasian hands).
There was even Great-Grandpa Potato Head, the last member of the clan who had a body and hands and feet, but no head. The oldest Potato Head in the bag was actually from an era few remembered even in my generation, from the time when you had to supply the potato yourself. It looked odd when I assembled the family and there were plastic citrus, plastic gourd, plastic tubers and one organic potato with horrible eyes in the midst, but that rotting Idaho provided the roots that made possible the rest. These were the Potato Head Olmecs, the great ones who surpassed anything since, the knowers of the Potato Head secrets. They’re all gone now. They were mostly gone by the time I turned seven.
By then time the Potato Head Halcyon Days were no more and even their physical relics were reduced. Mr. Orange Head’s little plastic orange head was stepped on by somebody, I don’t remember who. Mr. Cucumber Head’s plastic cucumber head was chewed to pieces a St. Bernard named Bobo (the same one who died on his wedding day with the worst dog death timing ever, but that’s another story) and he never was right again, dented and torn. He lingered but finally we pulled the plug.
The flesh colored little sticks on the ends of the hands broke off one by one till none were left and the felt moustache fell apart. The ranks were diminished, there was only the memory. Occasionally I’d put a real orange or a real cucumber on the bodies of Mr. Orange and Mr. Cucumber Head and it would bring them back to life for a few minutes, the organic channeling the plastic, but it was gross. And vegetables and fruits weigh a helluva lot more than plastic and broke the bodies. Two more relics go to the garbage pit.
And the horror- there was no way to replace them! They weren’t making anything but the regular staid Potato Heads anymore. There were no more fruits or vegetables, not even Spuds and Yams, only Potato Heads. All was lost. The late 60s and early 70s was a time of death in the Potato Head line, a time suspiciously coincidental with the first release of Dr. Atkins’ book, and the surviving Potato Heads had but the tales of the golden years, like a 1970s Sioux boy hearing tales of the Great Plains or a 1970s Muscovite boy hearing tells of the Tsars, a land that would not and could not be again. There was a Potato Head famine in the land.
Until 1973. That’s when it was released. I saw it on a commercial during a cartoon. A new Mr. Potatohead was on the market, TWICE as big as his forebearer and with just as many accessories (except strangely no hands and no body but that didn’t matter). The line would continue and continue to evolve! There were new spuds! This was the next wave, the new life, the new model, and I had to have it, not so much for me as for the few surviving remnants of the Potato Head Utopia that had once lived in that bag, to restore their spirits and make them whole again. This wasn’t for me to bring joy to a plastic tuber that the spark had gone out of, it was a divine imperative, so I asked my mother for the new one, “like now would be nice… “.
“You got two B’s and four C’s on your last report card… not one single A”
Yes I did. I got an A in conduct…
“Conduct doesn’t count. I’d rather you get a B in conduct and an A in your other subjects. Until you have As in the other subjects, there is no new Mr. Potatohead.”
I kept pleading but she wouldn’t relent, except to say maybe for my birthday (“When is that?” “Six months.” “But the Old Mr. Potato Head can’t w-a-i-t that long!”).
My allowance was $2 per month. I’d never save enough for the new one. And did she know just how hard it was to dodge that many conduct checks? I deserved some recognition of that A in conduct…
She didn’t appreciate me, she didn’t appreciate how much the Potatoheads needed their genetic line jump started, to smell the scent of a new box and a new giant potato they could look at with glee. It might even be worth bringing Mr. Orange Head and Mr. Cucumber Head back to life just for a day to see him. But how.
Then I kicked my brother in the stomach during an argument, I don’t remember what about. But I remember my punishment.
“Go to your room and stay there! NO! Don’t go to your room! That’s where all your stuff is anyway… you go to me and your Daddy’s room! And you stay there! And you are NOT going with us when we go to town and go shopping today!”
Sending me to her room was at least a good stroke on her part. There was nothing to do in there, no TV, just a bunch of old cloth. No books worth looking at- her Bible was a falling-apart King James looseleaf rather than the true translation, The Children’s Bible, with its full color illustrations (and strangely Aryan Jesus). And her purse on the chair, with her wallet sticking out…
And from the wallet… there was sticking out… a five dollar bill! (Well, sticking out is relative… it was plainly visible from the outside of the wallet, if you opened it.) If the hand of God had ever been more clearly evident then Weekly Reader must have missed it (and Peanuts and Jocko had pretty sharp investigative skills).
I took it for the omen that it was. This wasn’t for me, this was for the Potatoheads! They would have heirs! They would have nova viva! New life!”
The logistics of how this would happen weren’t formed yet. I’d have to sneak away while in a store, buy Potatohead, hide it in the car, get back into the store, sneak him into the house and house him in the closet… or… could I convince them that I saved my money? That might work… but they knew I was broke now and it would take three months… BUT in that time new Potatohead could stay in the closet under the stuffed animals, where she wouldn’t check, and then after three months I could swear I’d saved enough and bring him out into the open… there were problems with this one too, but I had three months to work them out. I folded the five dollars and put it in my pocket.
Kitty and Carrie were old maids, for good reason. Their father, a man who read the Bible and mail order tracts, had logically deduced that identical twins must share a brain, and halfwits shouldn’t marry, so they didn’t. (Their father had been dead for 60 years by this time, but by the time he’d died they were in their late 20s and who could conceivably have wanted a woman that old, especially a halfwit?) So they still lived in “the Homeplace”, the century old double-cabin where my father was born and reared. It had grown over the years courtesy of folks armed with scrap lumber and a complete ignorance of architecture and had was electric light (all courtesy of cords dangling from the ceiling that shocked when touched) and one base-plug in each room. (The one in the main room powered the oldest still-operable black and white TV set in captivity, watched by them and their Moses-clone Confederate grandfather staring with his fat and somber wife from their cardboard photo on the mantel; the base plugs killed on average one cat per year). The furnishings were all turn-of-the-century poor-white Bama cotton-farmer, save for the cast offs from a century of other relatives, and Kitty and Carrie still had scarred hands 40 years after they’d last chopped cotton.)
The walls in the two big rooms were hewn logs that had been whitewashed a few world wars ago. I’ll always remember the top log, where the water had leaked over the century- the pattern looked just like some long dead script, a tusked ancestor of Hebrew perhaps, but more than that I remembered the smell of two people who hadn’t bathed since Taft and who had made their home a sanctuary for cats so inbred some of them were now weasels. But I loved going there. I genuinely loved Kitty and Carrie, and I hadn’t reached an age yet where the lack of a toilet (or running water) bothered me. I even filled their water bucket whenever I went out of shear enjoyment of the way it felt drawing it up.
While the 80 something twins watched the news and babbled, I had full run of the rest of the house and the harem of less-loved-but-not-yet-completely-out-of-favor toys I kept there for these times. In their wobbly dining room, where your feet literally crunched from the cat and dog food poured directly onto the floor, I pulled out my five-dollar-bill and smiled, then danced with the nearest cat while singing “I have got five dollars! I have got five dollars! I have got five dollars! I have got five…”
“What’s that you say, Little Jon?”
I turned, the cat ran away, and faced Kitty.
“Uh… I said… that…uh… “ why lie, this five-dollar bill was altruistic in the extreme? “I said that I have got five dollars…”
“Where on Earth did a little boy your age get five dollars?”
“Uh…” alright, now’s an okay time to lie, “I found it in my closet.”
Silence
More silence
Then
“Alright then…” and she went down the wildly uneven stone steps to pee in the woods. Crisis averted. Kitty was cool. She was always the spunkier, the wiser, the prettier of the twins, and I knew that she understood I had a mission. I switched cats and resumed dancing.
I was taking a nap when the family returned but woke up from the floors shaking when my father entered the house. “Came to get the boy… hope he wasn’t too big a deal for you to handle…”
“Aw no… we’ve all been sleepin’ for the last little while…”
“C’mon get in the car. I already dropped off ever’body else at the house and they reminded me you were here.”
So I sleepily enter the dogtrot hall and walk down the (wildly uneven) front steps into the waitin
“Little Jon… show your daddy what you… found…in…your…closet…”
No… she didn’t know what she was say… could she have been so blind that… did… she knew what she was doing! She’d sold me out! That sagging-socktittied old heifer had sold me to the Gestapo for a handful of radishes!
I spun around and looked at her, gray eyes penetrating from behind Woodrow Wilson era glasses… and for lack of an exit plan, I complied, but not before returning a message with my own eyes:
“Pray you, old woman…pray that I am not free again before you go to that place which is inevitable for all and, in your case, long overdue…”
The memory is a fabric our mind embroiders when its bored or simply wants more and different colors. The fabric itself remains unchanged with the enhancement, but sometimes it becomes difficult to remember what the original pattern looked like.
There was no body of water larger than a small stream on my father’s farm, I know that, and his car at that time was the white Cadillac with the blue roof, and that’s almost surely what he took me back to Locksley Hall in, so why do I distinctly remember the oarsmen translating me across the waters that were so strangely lightless considering there was a full moon? And he had no reason to stop between Kitty the Informer’s house and our own, so whose voice was it that I remember calling out “Who comes?” and his own, in a Cockney accent, responding, “’er majesty’s pris’ner!”, and the gateman saying “Come then… kyrie elaison”. Whatever the reason, indulge me a false memory when I recall the moon, and how it’s reflection occupied what would on a chessboard be Queen’s Bishop Two in the checkered board formed where the portcullis was reflected on the waters.
And I’m willing to concede that in all likelihood my brother and sister really didn’t meet me at the quay (or sidewalk) singing “Take him to Pilate! Take him to Pilate! Take him to Pilate take him to Pilate!” It is absolute fact, though, that they not only beamed and squealed with happiness when they learned the Queen’s Favorite was going to go under the lash, but they went outside and brought in their favorite dogs to watch the festivities as well. (Totally true.)
It’s almost universal that we remember the rooms and houses of our childhood as so much larger than they really were, for we were smaller then, not just in size but in so many other ways, so it’s not surprising that I remember the room of judgment as huge. There were probably less torches in reality than there are in my memory, though, and I honestly don’t know where the grim faced eunuch guards come from. My mother frequently got compared to Bea Arthur’s Maude in those days, so it’s possible she was wearing a flowing blouse like that character, though I doubt that the breastplate was as heavy at the time as it seems in my memory, or that her voice sounded quite as much like Brando as Kurtz when she said
“Anybody… who would steal… would kill. And anybody who would kill would do anything… a thief is WORSE THAN A KILLER!” (No more Brando now, just pure pissed-off Mama.) “Killers usually act in an instant, a moment of passion, a moment of desperation, but thieves… they don’t CAH-YUH! THEY’LL LET YOU GO OUT AND WORK, AND GO WITHOUT THINGS YOU WANT, THINGS YOU NEEEEEEED… just so you can put a little something on the table, and have some clothes for your back… and then the thief will come in and just TAKE IT! HE’LL TAKE IT AND SAY ‘YOU GET NOTHING BUT SCREWED! YOU ARE LESS THAN DIRT TO ME! I DON’T CARE FOR YOUR FEELINGS FOR YOUR NEEDS FOR YOUR WANTS FOR MINE ARE MORE IMPORTANT! A THIEF IS LAUGHING AT THE MISFORTUNE OF OTHERS, AND HE REJOICES IN THEIR MISERY, BECAUSE TO A THIEF ALL THAT IS IMPORTANT IS WHAT THEY WANTTTTT! HOW COULD YOU HAVE DONE THIS!
[She’s in tears now, but tears of rage…]
“Why? I want you to tell me what was so important…”
“I… uh… “ [try cuteness charm] “nuffin’…”
“DON’T TRY THAT ONE ON ME I TAUGHT IT TO YOU! YOU TELL ME NOW… NOW… WHAT WAS SO IMPORTANT TO YOU THAT YOU’D STEAL… S—T—E—A—L— THE MONEY FROM YOUR OWN MAMA’S PURSE, THE FOOD FROM YOUR OWN FAMILY’S TABLE, SO IMPORTANT TO YOU THAT YOU WOULD TAKE A KNIFE AND STAB ME IN THE HEART!
”I didn’t stab you Mama…”
“No, you didn’t stab me… you did worse! For to stab is to KILL AND AS WE’VE ALREADY ESTABLISHED, THIEVING IS WORSE THAN KILLING! WHAT WAS SO IMPORTANT TO YOU THAT YOU’D KILL FOR IT!”
“I… I… I just wanted…
You…wanted… what…” The ice from this killed the monkey-grass that surrounded the house.
“I wanted… I wanted… I’m sorry Mama…”
“Oh, I can guarantee that if you aren’t now, you will be… take off your belt.”
My brother and sister are barely in puberty and yet they’re both lactating by this point. This is the first time they’ve seen full rage focused on me (and frankly, they have reason to be pissed- as they’ll still remind me today, I could be quite power mad in my role as the favorite, though as I remind them, I was SEVEN]).
I comply and take off my white belt, and drop my pants without being asked, hoping this cooperation may purchase some mercy. I won’t say that it didn’t, but if it did… then without dropping the pants I’d still be on a feeding tube.
This one counted. Not to have been a flat-out felony, this one counted… no “shame whippin’”. I was turned upside down by a former lady wrestler and my little butt was worn the hell out with such energy that the room was filled with feathers and dander from George the Cockatiel’s screaming and trying to get out of his cage in the same room because he thought there was a storm happening. The dogs were barking, the siblings were barking louder, my father was in his non-reclining throne with his cigar wondering when this would be over so he could listen to Grand Ol’ Opry in peace, and my backside was flaming enough that to this day, more than thirty years later, when I hear the phrase “good ol’ fashioned ass whoopin’”, I have visceral context. This was primo. Not even my siblings, who had waited for years to see my fall and to fill the subsequent power vacuum, could say she held back.
She was tired now. And panting. But still furious, now in white anger as opposed to red (always the more dangerous- red will blow away, white will grow roots and set on the porch for a spell). Interrogation, colder now but no less damning, resumes, and the belt is still in her hand.
“What… did…you want…”
“I wanted… I wanted… aaahhhhh ahhhhhh…”
“You wanted what? What did you want… that you wanted bad enough… to steal… to kill… you tell me… I want to know…”
More than thirty years later I still don’t know where the answer came from. I honestly don’t. I just opened my mouth to squall and I challenged it from a loose vocalization on a balmy street in hell…
“I wanted…”
“What did you want!?”
”I wanted to buy you a new Bible… because yours is falling apaaaaaarrrttt!”
The siblings: Oh… shit…
More than thirty years later, my mother’s voice still breaks when she relates the story.
“I knew I had to punish him… I knew I’d done the right thing… but oh my God… I just felt smaller than a termite… oh… that was the guiltiest I ever felt about anything….”
My punishment lasted five minutes for the yelling, another five for the whipping, and more than thirty years for the guilt. I had such guilt when I got the Mr. Potatohead a few days later that I couldn’t play with it. (At first, anyway- an hour later I was fine with it.)
One day I’m going to have to tell her the truth.
It won’t be today. Or tomorrow.
Maybe when she’s senile and I need something to stir the embers and bring out the fire one more time.
Even then I’ll have a fire extinguisher ready just in case.
Beautiful. —dabs with tissue—
OK, my mouth literally flew open when I read that spoiler box. I have to say that that was the. best. damn. use. of. a. spoiler. box. evah! You weasel! What a perfect thing to say!
Ok, actually, my first thought was: “you’re going to hell for lyin’ to yo’ mama!”
Genius. Pure Genius!
HARRY POTTER & THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE SPOILER:
When I read the scene in which Harry
uses the Sectumsempra spell on Draco, not knowing what it does or how powerful it is
I actually thought back to this moment.
Pure, unadulterated genius! Not the story (thought that was good), but the reason you gave…you sure your family isn’t Catholic? I thought we were the Gods of Guilt. Apparently there are contenders amongst the unlettered Protestants…
though that was good… sigh
iPleeeeeaaaassse* publish that. It’s got to be worth a Pulitzer.
Pleeeeeaaaassse publish that. It’s got to be worth a Pulitzer.
Dang, Sampiro, you’ve got us all laughing so hard we can’t code properly.
You may not have to publish. If people do what I did and send a link to their friends. My SO in the UK was, “falling about” over this story (which is, apparently, a good thing). So now you have an international audience. OK, being on the SDMB you already have an international audience but then he’s not a doper so it’s different some how.
Though I think you should publish. I agree…they’ll never recognize themselves.
When’s your sister’s birthday again???
Oh, god. Please don’t make me beg.
Oh. My. Lord. That was brilliant!!! I laughed so hard I cried real tears.
I have lurked in silence through this entire thread (except for the laughing like a hyena and falling out of my chair occasionally parts). I felt another slavishly admiring compliment would just be a distraction. But I’ve got to say
Sweet Jay-sus on a unicycle, these are the funniest damned stories I have read in many a long year.
Two things crossed my mind after reading The Great Potato-Head Caper;
1.) Tom Sawyer’s spirit is alive and well!
2.) “The Patter of the Shingle”, [Author Unknown], Best Loved Poems of the American People, Fellman, Hazel (Ed.), 1936, Doubleday & Co.
(snip)“Holy Moses and the Angels, cast your pitying glances down,
And oh thou family doctor, lay a good soft poultice on.
And may I with fools and dunces everlastingly comingle,
If I ever speak another word when my mother wields the shingle.”
(/snip)
And, as absolutely EVERYONE has already said, you must publish. Your narratives deserve to be enshrined in leather bindings; to be required reading for 2nd year lit classes, sandwiched between Saroyan and Steinbeck; to be discussed on Oprah. Truly, I have not one single molecule of literary talent in my body, but I can certainly recognize and appreciate it. Write the book and dedicate it to your mother.
