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by Carolyn Foster Spano
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The summers of my childhood were a joyous season in my life. I never fully
appreciated those simple southern summers until I moved north and began to raise children of my own.
There is something missing from my children's lives. I'm not talking about the
dragonfly-size mosquitoes, who would plot in one summers evening to make you look like a helpless victim of a bad case of the chicken pox. Nor am I referring to the fear of going barefoot at night, because you could never be quite sure where a sleek copperhead snake might be stretched out in the soft, warm grass. I'm not even talking about the enormous fleas that the "funny" brother says will rare back and hiss at you if you make an attempt on their lives. I am talking about the freedom and the simplicity of those long ago days in a small southern town.
I grew up in a family of seven children. I was the youngest and the only fair-haired
child out of the whole crop. (Yes, there have been numerous jokes made about my mother and her relationship with the milkman, however, I can assure you, we all came from the same genetic pool.) I was never more sure of this fact than when I saw the look on my husband's face as the "middle " sister jumped with both feet into her kitchen garbage to squeeze in "just one more thing". My husband says it has to be in the genes. Garbage squashing is a regular activity at our house. My motto is "There's always room for more".
I was born to a father who had not yet learned the joy of providing for one's offspring
and to a mother who in her own way, made up for everything he lacked. We were the definition of poor! We were also immaculately clean, though noticeably frayed, and were fortunately blessed with the gift of our mother's pride. Though we were undeniably poor, we possessed greater wealth than many families who could more easily afford three meals a day. The riches in my family could not be measured with money. It required taking inventory with your heart.
The heart is the most dependable of bankers. It keeps a record of deposits and
withdrawals more accurately than any computer. Love, understanding, support and appreciation are the most valuable deposits one will ever make. In our hearts we were rich, although as children we weren't always aware of it.
We children never paid much attention to the sweltering Georgia heat. Unless of
course, it was offering us a new adventure. Such as the time the "middle" sister and her friend fried an egg on the sidewalk. They got their pictures in the Griffin Daily News and became neighborhood celebrities, at least for a day. Now that was a reason to think about the heat!
Those foot blistering Georgia days were the finest reason around for hooking up the
leaky garden hose and spraying each other with the refreshing, cool water as we squealed with delight and sometimes screamed in protest when someone got too close with the prickling spray. There wasn't much need to change your wet clothes after the shower. Your clothes would dry swiftly from the heat, then before you knew it they were wet again from the salty sweat trickling down your back. It only made sense to just leave the wet clothes on and enjoy the cool for as long as you could. In the mind of a child, there was no reason to waste a perfectly clean set of clothes. After all, hadn't you just washed them?
Nothing is more welcome in the south than a good downpour on a sizzling summer
day. You could splash in the rain, letting the raindrops spatter and dance on your sun parched skin. When the short lived relief came to its woeful end you could make cool, slippery, wet mud pies and put them in the hot sun to bake, or you could simply squish the cool red Georgia mud between your toes. When I close my eyes, I can still smell the lush, sweet fragrance of the wet grass. I can see the swirling steam rising from the roof tops, sidewalks and city streets, while pervading our nostrils with a comfortably familiar scent.
The simmering southern heat could also provoke some ferocious thunderstorms.
(Southern thunderstorms are a lot like a two year old throwing a temper tantrum. They come up out of nowhere and before you know it they're gone.) If one was of the mind to sit and observe, it was almost as entertaining as the fireworks on the Fourth of July. I've seen mimosa trees bend over and brush the grass, their dazzling pink blossoms streaking the sky with color as the untamed wind frolicked in the trees. I've seen lightning strike a tree and the tree burst magically into orange and gold flames. However, I must confess, seeing these wonders of nature were never by choice and more often than not you would find me hiding in the bathroom or under a bed trying to elude this ingredient in God's recipe for nature.
The Fourth of July was a day of ultimate excitement in our charming little southern
town. The celebration always began with a parade on the streets downtown. The high school band would march and play, their booming bass drums loud and imposing. There were a group of men dressed as Arabians who walked the streets wearing sparkling turbans and swinging huge silver swords. The loud drums and the menacing swords were frightful to a young child. This was a time when one of the older children from the crop were real handy to have around.
On the lighter side, there were funny clowns tossing candy in the streets and funny
little, horn-beeping cars with big, big men riding in them. On occasion, the reigning Miss Georgia would grace us with a visit. She would ride atop a fancy car, smiling at us like we were the most important people in the world. Once, even the governor of Georgia was in our parade. He rode a bicycle backwards, much to the amusement of all. Old Glory would be flying high overhead and all were proud to be Americans.
Before you could focus on being that good solid American citizen you had to focus
on finding yourself a spot along the parade route that was not under a tree. While our town was blessed with patriotism for the good old U.S.A. we were more abundantly blessed with pigeons. It seemed the pigeons got just a little too worked up with the excitement of the parade. On one occasion, a drop of pigeon excitement hit my niece right smack on the head. I must say after that, she was very excited too!
When the parade was finished the festivities moved to our city park. There was a
greasy pig contest and a greasy pole contest. As a child, I always supposed that the planning committee was justified in assuming our hands would already be greasy from the fried chicken we were expected to eat and they were going to make the most of it.
There was also a watermelon eating contest and a pie eating contest. When you were
finished stuffing yourself for the sake of sport you could dance it all off to the sounds of local bands, if you were bold enough to kick up your heels in front of a crowd.
In the evening of this glorious day of celebration was the opportunity for every girl to
fulfill her dream of becoming either "Little Miss Griffin", "Junior Miss Griffin", or "Miss Griffin". Our pageant committee was so sure our town was filled with beauties that they gave away not one, but three crowns.
I actually entered that contest one year. I longed to wear the crown and the title of
"Junior Miss Griffin" . As I look back now, I'm painfully aware that I never stood a chance of winning. However, when you are young, before you become comfortable with who you are, you wish terribly to be beautiful. You long for people to refer to you as "that beautiful little girl", and at this time of your life being beautiful is far more important than being intelligent. To put it bluntly, I couldn't possibly have won. The girls I competed against already had curls and curves. Unfortunately, my body was as straight as my hair. I guess I knew from the beginning I wouldn't win the crown, but I was still disappointed when they called out the winner's name. I was sure the judges would see my inner beauty and realize the importance of choosing a winner with spirit and spunk. It was the only time I entered the Fourth of July pageant but I would always watch it and long for the crown.
At the close of the days festivities came the long awaited fireworks display and it
was the brilliance of those blooming, night sky flowers that could almost make you forget that you would never be crowned "Miss Griffin".
Making home-made ice cream was another one of our summer rituals. When the
ice cream bucket was brimming with thick white cream, sugar and fresh fruit, and the freezer was filled with ice and rock salt, we would take turns sitting on a folded towel on top of the freezer while someone turned the wood handled crank until it was frozen into rich, creamy, cold ice-cream. As Mama would pull out the paddle, dripping with this freshly made delight, the anticipation was almost more than I could bear.
Being lucky enough to be raised in the south had some other fine benefits. In the
early summer we would take our paper bags and head to the woods. It was plum picking time! I'm not talking about those tame, farm grown grocery store plums, but the tart, firm wild plums that grow at random anywhere a seed was dropped. A bag filled with green plums and a little salt in the palm of your hand for dipping could turn any ordinary day into a holiday. My oldest sister gets "sore teeth" from eating too many green plums and there were countless people who got sore "other ends" from not knowing when to quit. Even now, if I time my summer return just right, one of my older brothers supplies me with a bag of green plums from his own tree. I don't know if he realizes the joy this small gesture brings to me. There is no replacement for those "turn your mouth inside-out" crisp green plums.
There were also neighbors with fig trees and pomegranate trees and front porch
swings in which to sit and eat them. Those juicy, red pomegranates were a very good reason to look forward to the first fall frost. There were elderly neighbors with nothing but time, who taught silly little girls how to play solitaire when it was too hot to run and romp.
There were trips to my grandmother's farm where muscadine vines absolutely
dripped with the juicy sweet fruit. There were crab apple trees to climb way up high so you would be at a safe distance when you provoked the bull who lived in the pasture next door. There were banisters to slide down, hay lofts to hide in and a big outdoor above ground gas tank that could at a moments notice, transform from a beautiful white steed for a knight or cowboy to ride upon into a submarine for exploring the ocean, or a rocket to shoot to the moon.
There were cousins, aunts and uncles. There were sisters and brothers and a
mother who whistled while she worked though she had to be exhausted from cooking for, cleaning for and loving seven children.
There were neighborhood club houses, passwords and sidewalk skates with skate
keys for adjusting them and a mother who bought you the nicest pair on the block even though she likely sacrificed something else so that you could have them. There were best friends who were occasionally enemies. Enemies who drew ugly pictures of each other then hid them under rocks on each other's lawn only to laugh hysterically about it the next day. I must say, I use the word lawn hesitantly because we didn't really have lawns. We had yards. Our yards were a place to run and jump, to yell and laugh, to build with wood scraps or construct high jumps out of bamboo poles from the nearby woods. They were places to set up tents or draw a game of hopscotch in the dirt. They were places to walk on homemade stilts or rake up giant piles of oak leaves to jump into. They were not at all like the well manicured show pieces of today.
There were bicycle rides to grassy meadows for picnics with friends. There was a
shortcut to school through a lovely meadow with a tiny stream running though it with a small waterfall where layers of sedimentary rock were exposed.
There was a whistling mother who was gutsy enough to chase down the thief who
stole your bicycle. The one she, herself had worked hard to pay for. It was a red, white and blue spider bike with a banana seat. She got that bike back the day it disappeared.
There were cool tub baths with a friend or two in the afternoon (our replacement for a pool)
until you started to realize you were getting bumps and "peach fuzz" in particular places and it was time to stop the communal baths.
There were big brothers to ride you to school on their shoulders so you wouldn't get
your shoes muddy on the dirt road after a hard rain and who, when you forgot your school lunch, would run all the way back home to get your banana sandwich for you. There were sisters for sharing a sun bath and for giving you a bad haircut, and then feeling really bad when you had to get all your familiar long blonde hair cut off into a pixie. (It was a really bad haircut!) There were sisters piled three in a bed who giggled and talked in whispers and who took turns gently scratching each others backs while you fell asleep. ("Can you tell what I'm writing? It's a "B". Kill it!)
There was a sister who rode you on the handle bars of her bicycle when you weren't
big enough to ride yourself and taught you to sing your ABC's before you could walk.
There was a brother-in-law who let you slide down his legs, who hid quarters between
checkers for you to find with delight and for whom you had long since dropped the "in-law" in your heart.
There were free Elvis movies at the Rex Theater and the long, scorching walk to get
there and back. There was the standing joke that if you were going to the Rex theater you needed two sticks, one to hold up your seat and the other to beat off the rats. But the movies were free during summer afternoons so you grabbed your two sticks and went off to see Elvis.
There were nights so hot you would leave the front and back doors open, hoping for
a little breeze to creep in while you slept. There were other hot, muggy nights when you had to close things up tightly because the trucks were coming to spray for mosquitoes.
There was the oldest brother who lived far away and whose return visits would bring
cause for a celebration.
There was a brother who was always protective. The caretaker, whose strong
gentleness was all the charm he would ever need.
There was a brother with music, a little electric guitar and a voice to reach the sky.
There was harmony in our lives and in our music. We sang "How Great Thou Art" while a tear moistened the whistling mother's eyes.
When I return to that "not so small" Georgia town for a visit, (I am now the one who
brings celebration) we still sing and the whistling mother still cries.
I have many memories of my southern childhood. They're not all perfect ones, but
they are all a part of the puzzle that when pieced together, becomes me. The wife, the mother, the daughter, the sister, and the friend to those I love. I don't think I whistle (well maybe sometimes), but I sing and I laugh and I love deeply, from the bottom of my soul.
I wonder sometimes if what I sense is missing from my children's lives is the south.
Could it be the special "take it easy" feeling that comes from living with people who may take ten seconds to say a one syllable word if they so choose, or could it be the whistling mother and the house full of children whose music, noise, and laughter so joyously filled my childhood?
There was a sister who taught me how to wish upon a star.
"Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight.
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have this wish I wish tonight."
Guess what I'm wishing now.
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