Momollie's House on High Street

"Then, like a fart in church, somebody would break that reverent silence and say, 'Hey. I smell dog mess!'" 

♰♰♰

We lived on Lake Street in Tupelo.  Mommollie, my grandmother, lived up the hill from us on High Street and Uncle Noel and Aunt Katie Lee lived behind us on Canal Street.  High Street was the perfect name because Mommollies's house was literally on top of a high hill.  High Street was only 1 block long and it connected Canal Street and Lake Street.

In the fall, the trees on Mommollie's hill would shed their leaves and cover the hillside in front of her house.  Between us five McCoy boys and our cousins behind us, there was a small army of tan, tow-headed kids running around, and most of us were boys.

This was the 1960s and I'm not sure what the deal was but from the looks of the pictures from back then, East Tupelo must have been a suburb of Cambodia.  Now I'm not knocking Cambodia, (I've never been there) and somebody will probably get mad about that comparison, but the pictures I've seen of the children in Cambodia during the Vietnam War seemed to look just like us except we all had blond hair.  From the looks of the pictures of me and my brothers,  if you were under the age of 8, all you ever wore in the summertime was your underwear, a tan, a smile and maybe a baseball glove.  That's it.  Nothing else.

Well, when Mommollie's hillside turned golden with leaves in the fall, we'd all congregate in the yard in front of her house and play in the leaves.  If you've never had the opportunity to play in the leaves then bless your heart.  Ask the Lord to let you before you die because nobody should leave this planet without experiencing that at least once in their life.  And because Momollie's yard was a hillside, playing in the leaves was a McCoy amusement park.  We'd grab old scraps of cardboard and slide down her hillside until we wore holes in the cardboard and our blue jeans.

Usually we'd just sit down on the cardboard and push until we got started and slide as far as we could.  There was a ditch at the bottom of her hill just before you hit Lake Street, and if you made it all the way to the ditch, the whole gaggle of kids would erupt into cheers like you'd won Olympic Gold in the luge.

After a while, somebody would get the bright idea that if you put the cardboard a few feet down from the top of the hill, and if you ran and jumped on it standing up, you should be able to leaf-surf all the way to the ditch.  I gotta say, that sounds right, but I never saw it happen that way.  Usually, when you landed on the cardboard it wouldn't move an inch and you'd go tumbling head-over-heels down that hill OR you'd hit that cardboard and it would fly out from under you like Bambi on ice.  I can still remember feeling that sickening thud and laying flat of my back with nothing above me but Tupelo sky and a bevy of tan, tow-headed McCoys staring down at me laughing while I was sucking in with all my might but for some reason I couldn't catch my breath.  It was terrifying!  Then, just as I was beginning to hear the angels sing the first stanza of Beulah Land and that black tunnel of unconsciousness started to close in on my vision...BWHHEEWWW...my lungs would fill with that crisp, autumn, "Missippi" air.  Man, what a relief!  I remember laying there a minute and rolling around in the leaves and getting my composure back and thanking the Lord for not letting me die there on Momollie's hill.  I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing Him someday, but on that day, if it was ok with Him, I wanted to get married and have sex with a girl before He came and got me.

Well, after a few hours of sliding down the hill, all of the leaves would be at the bottom of the hill and no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn't spread them out back up the hill well enough to slide down anymore.  So Mommollie would give us a couple of rakes and we'd rake leaves into piles as high as your head.  I'm pretty sure we completely buried one of my cousins at the bottom of one of those piles of leaves and never saw him again.  I can't even remember his name, but it seems like one of us is missing.

When we got them raked up, we'd jump in those leaves like it was a swimming pool.  We could do front flips, back flips, swan dives, cannonballs, and even can openers into those piles of leaves and it was like landing on a soft, puffy cloud.  If we found a stick long enough, two people could hold its ends while somebody else high-jumped it into those leaves.  I'm pretty sure we came up with the Fosbury Flop before Nick Fosbury ever unveiled it at the Olympics.

Seems like those days always ended about dusk and we'd be completely worn out.  The jumping would degenerate into "wrasslin" and then just laying in those leaves staring up at the sky.   Hot, sweaty boys, laying in the leaves, not making a sound except breathing and staring up into that Tupelo sky.

It was almost reverent. 

Then, like a fart in church, somebody would break that reverent silence and say, "Hey. I smell dog mess!" And sure enough they did.

We'd giggle and help each other up and pull ourselves out of those leaves and start down the path home in the moonlight.  Walking that windy path, laughing and checking our shoes and our knees and jeans and loving each other.

Just "Missippi" boys in the 1960s, at Mommollie's house on High Street.

The Brown Recliner (Where I Belong)

"I felt small.  Like a vapor, like a mist.  Here today and gone tomorrow.  And now my butt was wet." 

♰♰♰

There's a brown recliner in my living room.  It's my chair.  At least it seems to be.  No one sits in it but me.  It's almost like that's where they want me.  Not in the loveseat by the TV and not on the couch.  They want me right there.  Next to the back door, facing the TV.  It's like, as long as I'm there, all is right with the world.

I seem to sit there a little more often these days.  When the kids were growing up, we were always running.  Running from ballgames to practices to performances to church to events at school.  Always running.

The TV sits across the room and it's on a lot.  Kelly likes to have noise in the house.  Even if she isn't watching, she likes to hear it.  I think the sound of baseball brings her comfort.  I think it reminds her of all those days we spent in the bleachers, burning up or freezing to death.  Sitting there with a knot in our stomach, always silently praying for hard line drives, hoping to find the gap, and computing batting averages in our head just hoping this game raised it a few more points.  It was fun but not like surfing fun, more like Yahtzee fun.  Hoping you win but knowing that most of the time you're just gonna have to make do with whatever roll you get.

When I sit in the recliner, where I belong, I can see out the backdoor window.  If its daylight, all I see is the patio umbrella, our cast iron patio furniture and our pink hummingbird feeder.  It used to be red but the sun has taken it's toll over the years.  Hummingbirds don't seem to mind as long as that thick, sweet, sugar water is there for the taking.

A few Sundays ago, I saw a hawk murder a dove right on my back stoop just outside that door.  Doves hang out there all the time.  They like to get under the stoop so that when you open the door they can all fly up all at once and make that whirring noise they make to try to make you wet your pants, or at least cuss a little.  But on that Sunday, one lonesome dove ventured to the top of the stoop.  I was watching football when - BOOM - something hit the window on that back door and feathers flew.  I sat up in my chair to see what the heck was going on and a hawk about the size of a Cockerpoo dog was staring right through that window at me.  When I stood up, he flew into the yard with that dove still flopping around in his talons.  Then away they both went.  Wild Kingdom right here at Cape Cottontail.

Occasionally though, at night, something almost magical happens.  Some nights, if it’s clear, even through the incessant chatter of the TV or the constant allure of my iPhone, if I happen to look outside, THERE IT IS!  Wow!  I've seen the moon a million times but sometimes, just as it’s rising, it’s spectacular!  It rises over my neighbor's house like a giant saucer of fine china.  A perfect delicate white circle.  And it's BIG.  At first it's really big and then it gets smaller as it rises.

Because it's been raining all day, tonight it was ghostly.  It was big and bright and hung right there in the sky like a galleon on the ocean with the faintest little clouds drifting in front of it.  Like a ghostly king in a flowing robe.  I got out of my recliner, stepped on the wet, wooden stoop in my bare feet, walked down the steps and plopped right down on one of the patio chairs and sat right there and stared at it.

I felt small.  Like a vapor.  Like a mist.  Here today and gone tomorrow.  And now my butt was wet.

I sat a few more minutes and then went back up the steps, across the stoop and back through the door.  Kelly looked up at me from her school work with this quizzical look on her face.  Where had I been?  What was I doing?  Was I ok?  Then, satisfied that everything checked out, without saying a word, she went right back to her homework, with baseball on the TV and I crawled back into that brown recliner, in front of the TV,  by the back door.

Back where they put me. Back where I belong.             

Fishin' Taught Me to Love...Baseball

"That lake and those fish and us, we all belonged to God, and He said it was ok to fish."
⌘⌘

When I was kid, Mommollie would take me fishing.  Mommollie was my grandmother's name.  Well, not really her name but that's what we called her.  And truthfully, I'm not sure if that's the way you spell it.  Her name was only spoken, never written.  Kinda like Yahweh in the Bible.  Spoken but never written.

When I got older I figured out that because her name was Ollie Talitha, what I think we were saying was "Mama Ollie".  But being from "Missippi", that's what we called her. "Mommollie", cause we ain't got time to say "Mama Ollie" just like we ain't got time to say "Mississippi".

I remember Mommollie taking me to the lake.  I don't really know what lake, they were all the same around Tupelo.  They're in the middle of nowhere with just a dirt road running beside them.  You’d pull off the road, pull out your lawn chair and cane fishing poles and those red and white bobbers and that dark brown box shaped like a small ice cream carton with the air holes punched in the top.  You didn't need a license like you do now.  That lake and those fish and us, we all belonged to God, and He said it was ok to fish.

When you pulled the lid off that box, get ready, because the live worms in that box crawling around in that moist potting soil have kind of a sickening smell.  But Mommollie would reach in that box like it was nothing and grab one of those worms and impale him several times with the hook on the end of her fishing line and throw him out in the lake.  It was gross but Mommollie loved it.

Mommollie always wore flowery dresses.  The one I remember was blue with white magnolia blossoms on it.  Those blossoms matched the color of her hair.  When I knew her, she didn't walk too well.  She kinda shuffled along.  Her shoes looked old, but comfortable. She'd cut slits in them right where the joint of her big toes were so her bunions could breathe a little.  She'd bait my line and I'd sit in that itchy grass next to her in her lawn chair with her wide brimmed straw hat and we'd sit... and sit... and sit... and sit... and sweat.

The "Missippi" sun is hot and there wasn't any shade and not a cloud in the sky.  She'd tell me to keep my eye on that bobber and if I ever looked away, which I did about every 30 seconds, she'd say "Look!" and I'd look back at that bobber and it looked exactly the same as it did when I last looked.  How a person could stare at that bobber and not get dizzy, I don't know, but Mommollie could.

The ripples from the wind in the lake made that bobber roll and bob and I couldn't tell if it was a fish nibbling at the worm or just the bobber dancing in the wind.  Mommollie could tell.  If a catfish or a brim so much as licked that worm Mommollie could tell the difference.  But I'd just sit as long as I could, which wasn't very long, and then I'd hop up and start looking for flat rocks along that dirt road.

I loved to throw things and there are an endless supply or rocks along dirt roads in "Missippi".  I think maybe that's why God put me there.  I’d grab a rock and throw it in the lake.  Sometimes overhand, to see how far in the lake I could throw it, and sometimes side-arm to see how many times I could get it to skip, but always throwing. The way I saw it, lakes were made for catching rocks, not for staring at bobbers.

So there we were.  Me and Mommollie in the blazing "Missippi" sun.  Her staring at bobbers and murdering worms and me throwing rocks.

I loved Mommollie and she loved fishing and fishing taught me to love...BASEBALL!

The Lonesome Road

"Their clothes are tattered and their skin is leathery brown, but their eyes are as deep as the sea."

I've always wanted to be a writer, kind of, but I've been busy - and happy.

For me, writing takes time and its a lonesome road.  Like the dusty, dirt road you see in movies leading out of town with the one blinking yellow light that swings over the intersection in the sweltering midday Texas heat.  The only sound you can hear is the click of the light as it blinks on and off and on again.

You know if you head down that road it'll make you thirsty.  Not the kind of thirst that goes away but the kind of thirst that burns your throat and makes your lips crack and bleed.

You're not sure exactly how far down that road you can go, but you'd love to put one foot in front of the other and head out of town.

The dust on that road is so thick it chokes you when you breathe and your shoes almost disappear because they're caked so thick with it.  Every shuffle of your feet stirs up another red, dusty cloud that makes your eyes water.

You pray for shade but there's not a tree in sight.  Just some scraggly little weeds that grow up along the roadside and beg for water.

You've seen people who've traveled this road.  They're old now and their hair is long and stringy and gray.  Their clothes are tattered and their skin is leathery brown, but their eyes are as deep as the sea.

No one in their right mind would want to travel this road.  The town's people turn around at the intersection and head back into town.  Back to where the people are.  Where the air conditioning is, and where they can plop down in the diner to escape the heat and drink a tall, cold, sweaty glass of Coke and talk about their day to somebody who cares.

But there are people who travel this road.  And they mail letters back to town to tell of their adventures.

They tell of the dragon they killed with just their bare hands and the love they met and left and lost.  It's almost unbelievable, the stories they tell.

And we can't wait for the next installment because it makes us feel alive.

When their words are sad, we get a lump in our throats and it's hard to swallow.  But their jokes make us laugh out loud.  Sometimes we wish we were right there with them in the heat and the dust on that road.

But then again,  maybe we'll just stay here. 

Here, in the diner, in the cool air, with our tall, cold glasses of Coke surrounded by those we love.