Copperous Water

I noticed during the years I lived in smalltown that people who lived outside of smalltown seemed to grow up quicker than they did where I lived. I don’t know for sure, but I think there was something in the local drinking water that caused this problem. There were some people in smalltown who were in their fifties and still hadn’t grown up beyond their teenage years. Of course, everyone in smalltown had an opinion as to why this was so, but I always suspected there was something in the drinking water. My thought was that some of that old greenish blue copperous water from the local coal mine had gotten into the ground water, and from there, it had gotten into their wells. I don’t know what the copperous water would do to a person’s insides if they drank it, but it worked wonders on my cuts and open sores.

You outsiders might be wondering what is copperous water? Well, copperous water came from the water the local coal mine used to wash their coal and then let it feed into a small ditch near the mine and that water eventually made its way into a small river a couple of miles away. The water had a beautiful greenish blue tint and it was clear. You could look down into it from up above and see the bottom of the river, but it was deadly to the fish habitat. I didn’t miss the fishing in the river too much, all I ever caught out of it were big ole Carp before the copperous water came. Like I said, it killed all the fish, but it worked wonders on cuts and open sores.

I learned the copperous water had healing powers one day when I went swimming. I had a large old pus filled wound in my side that had festered and turned an ugly purple. I got the wound from toting a large fellow on the handle bars of my bicycle. His weight caused the handle bars to break off from the front forks and then the sharp metal of the broken fork punctured my right side just above my belt leaving a large round hole about the size of a quarter. It festered up something terrible and pus was oozing from it. Because the wound had been oozing pus for a few days I hadn’t been down to the creek swimming cause my mom told me it would get infected worse. But on this particular day it was very hot, hotter than normal, and I decided I was going swimming to cool off. If my sore got more infected than it already was, it would just have to get more infected. I went swimming in that copperous water in the creek, and by the next morning the pus had stopped oozing from the wound and the skin around the wound had turned a light pink and was beginning to heal. That was when I learned that copperous water had healing power and was a miracle sent from God. After that incident, every time I got a cut or abrasion, I went swimming in the creek. Some years later I got the bad news from home; the EPA had gotten involved because of the copperous water situation and the mine was closed putting several hundred smalltown people out of work because a few fish couldn’t live in it. Don’t the government ruin everything for us poor folks when they get involved? Now when I hurt I have to find a doctor to care for me and they most always want an arm and a leg in return for their services. Healing down at the creek was free. You just had to be aware of the snakes that called that place home. OTBP

“Preparing for Life is a lot like Planning a Vacation”

Hanging out with the old men in front of Ed Department Store in smalltown was like a second classroom for me. Second only to Miss Wilma’s classroom at smalltown elementary and being present at Mom’s kitchen table at suppertime where she taught us the importance of manners, respect, and how to treat other people. The learning atmosphere in front of Ed’s Department Store was special for a tweenager who was all ears and eager to learn about life. When I wasn’t listening to the old men spread their backwoods wisdom, I was thinking about baseball and what I was going to do with the rest of my life. At night after all the old men had gone home to go to bed, I used to sit up on main street in smalltown and watch the lights of the big trucks roll by on the highway just outside of town and wonder where they were going. And one night as I sat watching those big trucks roll by; I made a decision that just as soon as I turned eighteen, “I was going to see the world.” After listening to the old men of smalltown talk about the places they had been and the sights they had seen, I knew the world was a lot bigger than the smalltown I was living in, and I would think; “Somewhere out there – there is a place for me in this world, and I intend to find it.”

It was along about that same time I learned that preparing for life’s journey is a lot like making plans to take a vacation. As Cooch the Barber said to me, “The time to start making preparations for that time is now. No one ever got to where they wanted to go in life unless they knew where they were when they started, and what they would need to get them where they wanted to go. What a person finds when they arrive at their destination is usually not what they expected. So if you plan on leaving smalltown some day, take an inventory of what you have, what you will need for the trip, and what you plan to do once you arrive at your destination. If you don’t take these simple steps of preparation, you just might find your life journey a little bumpier than you expected.” OTBP

“An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure”

Some of life’s lessons are truly hard to learn and this was never made more clear to a sixteen year old youth than on the local baseball field in smalltown Illinois. But, before I get into that story; let me begin by saying, I truly enjoyed spending the hot, lazy, summer afternoons of my youth in smalltown with the old men who hung out in front of Ed’s Department Store chewing tobacco and telling lies while they waited for the afternoon mail truck to arrive. I often sat and savored that ‘country flavored homespun wisdom’ flowing out of the mouths of Jim the Mailman, Cooch the Barber and Doc the Dentist, like a long drink of cold water pouring forth from our old pitcher mouth pump on a hot July day. But, I, like most young people my age had not fully developed a real appreciation for the wisdom of those old men, but that all changed one Sunday afternoon down at the baseball field. I was the catcher for the smalltown team and while catching a game of baseball with our high school basketball coach on the mound, I learned a lesson I have never forgotten. He threw a particularly sharp breaking hard slider that skidded off of the back edge of home plate, careened up and hit me in a particularly vulnerable spot just below the belt line and where the legs join the upper torso. I wasn’t wearing a protective device that was designed to prevent injuries to that particular area of my body, and as I lay writhing on the ground in unbearable pain, understanding of the old timers sage advice; “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” pulsated throughout my aching body. I might have been a little slower than some kids my age before that dastardly pitch, but I can truthfully tell you, “I was quicker than most by the next one.” Lightning didn’t have to strike me twice. No sir! Once bitten by the d-u-m-b- b-u-g was enough for me. I continued to play baseball for a number of years after that day, and most of it was pain free because I never again left that $2.00 ‘ounce of prevention’ lying in my equipment bag in the dugout. OTBP

“Auntie, Uncca Bubba, and the Big Bad Wolf”

We had just unloaded the last truck load of furniture into our first home in smalltown when I heard a knock at the front door. It didn’t take me long to realize it wasn’t the Welcome Wagon representative coming to welcome us to smalltown. I immediately recognized the person when I saw sunlight reflecting off of the new gold tooth Doc the Dentist had put in Uncca Bubba’s mouth a while back. And I remember thinking so clearly, “Oh, God, how in the world did Auntie and Uncca Bubba find us so soon. We haven’t even began to unpack the boxes and here they are standing at our front door.”

I know there will be some people who will read this story and would argue they have relatives more notorious than mine. I don’t think so, but if you do, may God have mercy on you. Folks back in smalltown said, “My Auntie was trouble spelled with a capital T, and Uncca Bubba should of spelled his name B-a-d N-e-w-s” because Trouble and Bad News just seemed to follow them wherever they went. I know most of us have learned to handle trouble in whatever form it comes, but is anyone ever really ready for Bad News when it comes knocking?

As I relive this trying episode in my young life and how we finally dealt with Auntie and Uncca Bubba; a story as told by Cooch the Barber comes to mind. He would tell his version of the story of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ this way. All of the three little pigs knew a Big Bad Wolf lived in their neighborhood, but unlike his two unwise little brothers, the smart little pig understood a wolf is a wolf and no matter how he talks, or how he dresses, or what he drives, he will always be a wolf, and sooner or later his actions will prove it. The smart little pig built a brick home because he knew it would take more than wood or hay to keep the wolf out of his house should he ever decide to come calling. And sure enough just as the smart little pig expected, one day the wolf came knocking on his door with evil intentions in his mind, but the smart little pig was prepared. He had a pot of hot boiling water ready for just such an occasion. Cooch would conclude his story with this statement, “We all know how the story ends. The smart little pig cooked the Big Bad Wolf’s goose and rid their neighborhood of a menace.” Cooch would say the moral of the story is this. “If you want to eliminate a foreseeable future problem that could threaten your well being, the time to do something about that potential future problem is now. If you wait until the wolf is at your door threatening to huff and puff and blow your straw house down, you’re probably going to end up like the two unwise little pigs. Lunch for the Big Bad Wolf.” OTBP

“Pastor Pearl”

After living on back street in smalltown for a few years, we moved upon a hill in the middle of town. This was a good move for us for two reasons. One, we moved to a place where the backwater that invaded our town each spring didn’t reach, and, two, we had indoor plumbing for the first time. That meant I didn’t have to pump water, or take baths in the number three wash tub, and I didn’t have to use the outdoor privy unless I wanted to. It just so happened that our home upon the hill was located right across the street from the front door of the smalltown Baptist Church and that brings me to why I am writing this short story about Pastor Pearl who was hired along about that same time.

There was one thing about Pastor Pearl that still sticks out in my mind above all others. He could preach his congregation so close to the fires of hell that I could feel the heat of it across the street on our front porch. Now at that time in our little community no one had air conditioning, therefore they kept the church windows and doors open to let in any breezes that might be blowing during those Sunday sermons. So I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must have been for a lot of them folks inside that church. Our house across the street was surrounded by trees on three sides so the front porch was always in the shade but there was many a Sunday morning after the church service was over that I went in for dinner only to discover that my face was flushed and the hair on my head was singed.

Pastor Pearl wasn’t a bad fellow as people go, and some people might even say he was a good preacher, but to make a long story short, “he scared the hell out of me”, as well as a lot of other folks in town and I guess that’s why his congregation dwindled a little rather than grew during his tenure at the smalltown Baptist Church. Now my daddy was a fearless man and hot-headed as all get out, but even he didn’t go near Pastor Pearl when he was wound up and preachin’ good. I’m not rightly sure how long Pastor Pearl was at the smalltown Baptist Church, but it wasn’t a long time. As I recall, their next preacher was a little calmer when he preached and as far as a young boy of thirteen could decipher, I think the congregation was a lot happier and a little more relaxed after Pastor Pearl left town. As I recall, they were once again almost friendly to those of us in smalltown who didn’t attend church on a regular basis. OTBP

“Miss Wilma”

One of my favorite people of all time is Miss Wilma. Miss Wilma was my teacher in the little three room elementary school I attended back in smalltown. She walked with a cane because she had been born with a birth defect that caused her to be bent forward at the waist. Despite her physical frailness, Miss Wilma had a passion for children and took great delight in helping them prepare for a brighter future. I heard her say many times, “It’s not where you come from in life, but it’s what you choose to do in preparation for the future ahead of you that’s important.”  Though I had teachers before her, I credit Miss Wilma for giving me an insatiable desire to learn. She taught me how to do longhand math,  how to read and write and to understand that it is what people do, it’s not what they say, that determines whether a person is trustworthy or not. That last lesson was a difficult lesson for me to learn because I was a little rascal of a boy so to speak, but Miss Wilma understood me perhaps better than any other person I have known. Despite my shortcomings, she never gave up on me and treated me as if I was a perfect child. I had an opportunity a few years later to tell her face to face how much I appreciated the love and patience she showed  me during my learning years.  A few short years after our face to face meeting she went home to be with her Lord.

Since leaving smalltown behind, I have traveled across America from one coast to the other and have made a couple of observations concerning changes in education that I am not altogether convinced were good ones. Call me old fashion if you like, but one such change I observed was the invention and later subsequent use of mechanical devices for the advancement of scholastic skills in our modern day classrooms. I’ll bet some of you older people have noticed too, that many young people who seek solutions to math problems using a mechanical device that does the thinking for them have a difficult time making correct change.

The subtracting of a lower number from a higher number without the aid of a mechanical device with a digital readout seems to confuse them. It is my belief, “the skill of mental calculation was lost during the transition period between doing math by longhand and learning to use mechanical devices that does the thinking for us.”

I think most of you will agree the mechanical method of solving math problems is quicker than the longhand method because mental calculations require thought, and thinking requires time, and since a lot of people today say, “they don’t have time,” leads me to believe, that a lot of people have pretty much quick thinking for themselves.  OTBP

“Mr. and Mrs. Rolley”

As a youth I lived in many of the small towns that dot the map of southern Illinois and in one of those small towns our next door neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Rolley. I was about seven years of age when we first moved in next door to them. Mr. and Mrs. Rolley didn’t have any children of their own, but they loved children very much. I would spend almost as much time at their house during the warm summer days as I would at our home. Mrs. Rolley loved to bake and she did so quite frequently. I was a little blond haired, brown eyed, rascal of a boy, but Mrs. Rolley loved me dearly and on ‘baking day’ I could smell the sweet aroma of her freshly baked pies gently wafting on the light breeze of those lazy summer days. She would sit them on the window sill to cool and after a short while I would hear her calling my name to come over. When Mrs. Rolley baked pies she always baked a little cinnamon pie crust coated with sugar just for me. I loved those cinnamon and sugar pie crust and still do today.

It was while living next door to Mr. and Mrs. Rolley that I first learned to ride a bicycle. It was also there that I lost my two front teeth to a big tree in our front yard because I didn’t know how to stop the bicycle using the brakes and slammed into the tree to stop it before I ran through the fence that surrounded Mr. and Mrs. Rolley’s pig pen. It was also there that I learned pigs will eat coal. This didn’t set too well with my father after he learned I was throwing the coal he used to heat our home with in the winter time over into the pig pen for Mr. Rolley’s pigs to eat. It was also there that my older brother and I scared the crap out of my little brother one day by imitating bull sounds and thrashing noises in the woods so much so that he two and one half years younger than I took off at a dead run for home to get away from the bull that wasn’t there and dove head first through two strands of a barbed wire gate without touching either strand of barbed wire. My brother and I laughed so hard we could have cried, but crying wouldn’t have been manly even to us boys. It was also there that I learned just how strong and hard my daddy’s right hand of correction was after he learned what my older brother and I did to the younger one.

It was there next door to the Rolley’s that I learned how to make a sling shot and shoot a bow and arrow, make our own kites to fly, bait my own hook and hog fish down in the creek just below their house. It was also there that I learned you could catch a black snake by the tail and twirl it around your head in bull whip fashion – snap it sharply – and the snake’s head would fly off. It was there that I learned you cannot catch a pitch before the batter hits the ball. I still have a scar on the crown of my head from the piece of wood we were using for a bat to prove it. I also learned I bleed pretty easy and my mother didn’t appreciate having to take me to the doctor to be stitched up and leave the other children at home while doing so. It was there I experienced a death in the family when my brother eight years older than I lost his wife and baby in childbirth. She was diabetic and knew she could possibly die if she got pregnant, but she chose to try and bring a baby into the world anyway. I don’t think my brother ever completely got over losing her and the baby at such a young age. He joined the Army a short time thereafter “to help him focus on other things”, he said. But I really think he joined the Army to get away from the memories and the home they shared together.

The three years we lived beside Mr. and Mrs. Rolley were filled with many wonderful experiences and I wouldn’t change any of them even for a million dollars. I don’t have to tell you I was greatly saddened the day mom and dad told us we were moving to yet another small town. But, I have since learned that kids are resilient and rebound quickly from bad news. After the move I didn’t get to see Mr. and Mrs. Rolley much, but my world was expanding even though I didn’t realize it at the time and a whole new group of people and experiences were waiting for me – just three miles down the road. OTBP

“Growing up in America”

I grew up in America during a time when families were large and most every family had four or more children. That was in a bygone age before abortion became legal and the family shrunk to less then two children per family. According to present day national statistics there are now 1.11 children per family in America not counting the illegal immigrants that are swamping our country and keeping that magic number of children at 2.1 per household that is needed for a country to survive another fifty years. In my particular family there were nine children and I was eighth in the birth order. Back then every mother I knew with the exception of a few who were teachers or secretaries worked in her home caring for her family. I was fortunate that my mother worked in the home.

I called our home, “Mom’s University” because that is where each of her nine children received their education in manners, responsibility, and how to treat others. It was during the evening meal and around our supper table that most of mom’s teaching took place because that was the time of day when every family member was present. No one in our family missed supper and the time mom spent teaching her children right from wrong. My mother didn’t have a teaching degree or a PhD in Education like most people must have today to prove they are qualified to teach in their field of expertise, but she was the smartest person I knew. Where did my mother get her unique teaching abilities? At her mother’s knee, just like her mother had before her. Back then family values were passed down from one generation to the next. Mother’s didn’t depend upon public television to teach their children how to read, count, or share. They took that responsibility upon themselves and the older children assisted them.

I took my daughter on a trip back through time last Father’s Day and visited all the houses I lived in during my childhood that were still standing. After visiting the last one, I asked her, “Did you find any one thing all of these houses had in common?” She was quick to tell me, “They were all very small.” Which was true. I never lived in a big house during my childhood. Most houses were small and families were close back then. No one I knew had their own room to escape to if we didn’t like what was on the radio or television. We went outside and invented a game to play to keep ourselves amused. We didn’t have air conditioning to cool the house in the summer, or a thermostat to turn up the heat in the winter if the house was too cold. Most people didn’t have indoor plumbing, they had a number three wash tub to bathe in and when nature called we used an outdoor privy some fifty feet from the house. Somehow we all managed to survive our meager surrounding and grow up to become responsible adults. In the summer we went barefoot and wore shorts and took our baths in the local swimming hole and no one thought we were strange. And on those long winter nights we slept three to a bed to stay warm – and on the really cold nights we added another blanket or two on the bed to ward off the cold wind that blew through the cracks between the weather boarding. The next day we added an extra layer of clothing before we went outdoors to play or do our chores.

We were tough kids and patriotic to the bone. We loved to fight, baseball, and mom’s apple pie. We were taught to be respectful and on parade days when the American flag went by, we stood up straight and watched it until it turned the corner out of sight. We respected our teachers and recited the Pledge of Allegiance everyday before classes began in classrooms where we were taught how to think for ourselves. Every boy owned a GI Joe toy soldier, a cap pistol and holster, and a BB gun. We didn’t shoot out too many of our friends eyes with them and the whippings we received on our little behinds with those willow branches cut off the tree in the yard did nothing to harm our little egos. We were America’s youth and damm proud of it! OTBP

“Zeke”

Shortly after my family moved from next door to Mr. and Mrs. Rolley to another small town in southern Illinois; I met a person who would be my best friend for many years. His name was “Zeke.” Zeke wasn’t his real name of course. He didn’t like his real name because his dad had the same name and Zeke and his dad got along like hot grease and water. One day out of the blue someone called him ‘Zeke’. He liked the name so much it stuck. Zeke and I hit it off right away and were like two peas in a pod. We liked the same things, chased the same women when we got older, and even fought with each other over the least little thing, but we never stayed angry with each other for very long and it wouldn’t be long before we would be best buddies again. We were wild and carefree kids by nature and didn’t care who knew it or liked it. It seemed like most of the young people liked us well enough because we were never without company for very long. I can’t say the same for the older generation because they never knew what we would do next. My parents generation called us “rebels” and “hell on wheels” an “accident waiting to happen”.

When things became mundane in our little town which was most of the time, Zeke would go to great pains to create some excitement. This often resulted in his dad receiving a late night phone call telling him, “Zeke did this”, or “Zeke did that”, “you need to come down here and get him before he gets into real trouble.” His dad would crawl out of bed and go get Zeke, take him home, whip his butt, and tell him not to do whatever it was that Zeke did that time. The older generation couldn’t see it, but the only problem Zeke had was he believed life was his castle, and he lived every waking moment of his life filling every room with laughter and joy. This sometimes irritated my parents generation because they had forgotten they had once did the same kinds of things. Now that they were older and past the fun stage of their life and had become critics of his antics instead of enjoying the pranks he would do.

Zeke may have been funny to our generation, a headache to my parents generation, but to me he was a great teacher in his own right. He may not have known he was teaching those of us who were observers of people and studied why people do the things they do. I learned from Zeke that you don’t have to settle for the better off forgotten mundane things life throws your way. With a little creativity on your part you can grab the bulls in life by the horns so to speak and change any situation into a meaningful experience that will be long remembered by your family and friends. OTBP