....Continued See The Small Children ....

Momma and I use to go to church early on Sundays, ya know to get a good seat; momma use to say we needed a good seat near the front, by the alter so we could be closer to God.

I use to like to sit near the front so as I could see what was going on; besides it just seemed that's where all the kids from my seventh grade class use to sit with their parents.

There was Jason and Mr. and Mrs. Cumberlink, Mr. Cumberlink when he was in town. He travelled a lot selling vacuum cleaners, it always seemed to me they were rich, but momma said having money didn't make you no better than anybody else and that Mr. Cumberlink didn't really have a very respectable position in the community because he was always travelling. Momma said to truly be respectable you ought to be home at the dinner table with your family.

There were Mr. and Mrs. Beetle and Jimmy Beetle. Jimmy had pretty long curly blond hair for a boy and a kid our age. All the teachers liked Jimmy, they use to say what a handsome boy he was; come to think of it everybody seemed to like Jimmy. He was real funny and real smart and captain of the football team. All the guys use to tease him cause he was so popular, but not too much teasin, because even though Jimmy was a lot of fun he could get real mad if you kept the teasin up. I once saw him take his clenched fist right up to Herman Miller's face and threaten to drown Herman dead in the creek one summer if Herman didn't do exactly what Jimmy said.

Herman was our star quarterback for the football team; they said he was real good. I don't know, cause I never liked football or any of the other sports. In fact I hated sports. I hated to run and I hated gym and I hated that we didn't play with a real football cause we didn't have enough money to buy one, instead we use to get a sturdy stick and toss it around and tackle each other to make a touchdown. Momma said it didn't matter if I didn't like sports, long as I studied, learned my lessons well, grew up, got married, had a few kids and got a respectable job I'd do ok. I remember one crisp fall day when daddy suggested he and I go out to toss around the stick, I didn't want to play football, he was ok with it, seemed a little surprised and confused but he didn't say much, just put his arm around my shoulder and said son, if you don't want to play you don't have to, maybe you'll want to bat the ball a little this Spring... to be continued...

....Continued See The Small Children ....

Momma and I use to go to church a lot, bout three times a week, always on Fridays, once bout the middle of the week, usually the same day we had pot roast and of course on the big day, God's day, that being Sunday. Daddy never ever went, said he didn't believe in God and use to tell momma she'd be a better use to any man especially him, if she spent less time wrapping her fingers around those stupid beads and more time learning about the needs of a man. He always said God didn't write it nowhere in his book that a woman's hands were only for pleasin the rosary beads and a cookin and a cleaning and a washin of brats, and that if momma would pay more attention to what God really said, which was that a woman was made for pleasin a man, that she and daddy would be a lot better off. Oh, momma would get so upset when he would say things like that; she would sit at the kitchen table with her teacup and our grey and white striped cat curled and sleeping on her foot; she would wrap her finger over and over, round and round her blonde curls and between a tear here and there that would sneak out and take what seemed forever to roll over her large cheekbone she'd say - don't listen to your father, he is tired, he works so hard, he is a good man; go work on your lessons; or in the warmer months she'd say, why don't you call Mrs. Cumberlink's boy Jason and a few of the other kids and go swimming down the creek. It seemed the whole town showed up at church, even if they didn't go on Friday or bout the middle of the week, ya know pot roast night, or maybe they ate somethin different on that night, they all showed up on Sunday. ... to be continued

....Continued See The Small Children ....

Never really liked kids much; didn't like em when I was one, didn't like em when I was all growed up. Mama use to say kids was a nuisance, had a bathe em, would smell if ya didn't and momma knew, she was smart like that; ya hadda feed em, check their teeth and they made a lot a noise, momma always said and she was right like that. It was always very quiet around the house, momma made sure of that because she said daddy needed his sleep, he worked real hard during the days and just as hard getting those corks off the whiskey bottles during the evening time.

Daddy was the ice man for everybody in the town; he was real nice to all the ladies where we lived when he would deliver their ice in that big truck of his. Sometimes he was nicer to them than he was to me and momma, and those ladies ~ well they sure did a lot of smiling at daddy. Momma didn't like those ladies, she never made any friends with those neighbor ladies as she called them. She use to say those ladies were dirty rotten pigs, and the only reason they smiled at daddy was because he was so handsome, and that they had married dirty - no good men, and daddy was a respectable kinda man and they was jealous that they didn't have a good man like momma did; but daddy well, he did a lot of smiling back at those ladies and sometimes when I would go delivering the ice with him in his big ice truck, sometimes he wouldn't finish work until way past eight o'clock, when we was supposed to be finished around four on a early day and five on a later day.

I hated those late days, because you never knew when they was going to happen; it seemed hard to plan a day. In the wintertime I hated it because I missed ice skating down the creek with all the kids. In the summertime, sometimes we'd go for a swim after baseball.

Anyways it always seemed after one of those ladies, one in particular named Mrs. Cumberlink, usually the one that smelled so nice, sort of like the lily of the valley that growed in mommas garden, she would ask daddy if he would step inside and take a look at her icebox; it often seemed once he got inside Mrs. Cumberlink's icebox that he would poke his head out and say to me, "boy wait in the truck"; I'll be out in a little while; sometimes I would be out there in the truck bout an hour. It was on those days when daddy and I would finally get home that our house would be smelling like smoke and momma would be down on her knees rocking back and forth with her fingers shaking, clasped round her rosary beads saying over and over forgive him lord, he knows not what he does, he is a good man; and there would be our dinner black as coal in a pot on the stove, and I would most times miss whatever was going on at the creek that day.

to be continued ....

Do you see the Small Children down by the Creek? Legend has it they Never Really Lived?

To Be Continued ...