Dedicated to the memory of Lula Walthall

The Smuggy Face

Doctor Ruff thought perhaps he should retire, he was past the age when most doctors did.  It crossed his mind that he possibly should have let one of the younger doctors work on this young woman.  He'd done a tubal litigation on her after he'd taken her second son, but it had failed.

He'd told her at the time it would be hazardous to get pregnant again, but she had.

Over the course of the last two years, his hands had begun to palsy, and it had steadily gotten worse.  It was a tragedy to grow old.  Everything had started to deteriorate; Eisenhower's recessed economy, his own mind, the country, and his body.  The world had started to run down.  American society would collapse as surely as had those before.  He wondered briefly if the school system hadn't doomed modern civilization when it taught the young knowledge only from empires that had eventually fallen into rern' (ruin).

He stuck his gloved hand into the womb he'd opened surgically, felt a pair of legs, and pulled out a baby girl.  He tied off the umbilical cord, then cut it purposely long.  The excess would flake off, and leave an 'outee'.  His nurse reached in afterwads, and retrieved the placenta.

In the prescience, it would be saved.

The afterbirth had a potent serum antigen in it.  In the first three quarters of the 20^th century, it was discarded as biological waste.

Doctor Ruff flushed out the wounded womb and readied it for closure.  He was glad he had become a doctor.  Life was so much easier for white collar trash, than it was for any other color collared trash.

All this gore looked like a terrible highway wreck.  He'd not miss it.  He was ready to get away from handling genitalia and digital rectal examinations.  He hated to feel up women and hold scrotums while their owners coughed.

As he threaded biosoluble line through a short needle that would be held by hemostats, he realized that for the first time, the prospect of retirement appealed to him.  After he sutured the innermost dermal layers, he switched to nonsoluble catgut, and stitched up the surface skin.  "Done good on that", he thought as he washed up.  This could be one of the, if not the, final operation(s) he performed.  He went toward the waiting room where the young lady he'd just cut on's mother was.  She was a small woman, not quite five feet tall.  He liked telling folks they had an addition to the family, as much as he disliked telling them the outlook was grim.  In the case of a death or impending death, it was best to just do it.  Don't hold anything back.

He hadn't quite got to her when his nurse accosted him and urgently hissed something in his ear.  They walked briskly back into the surgery theatre.  In less than 5 minutes, he emerged alone and ashen.  He shuffled to the waiting room.  He dreaded the words he knew he must speak.  He racked his brain to try and conjure up verbiage that would allow a thread of hope, but he knew there was none.

"There have been good and bad developments", he told the mother.  "The good news is you have your first granddaughter.”  He had delivered her first grandson nearly 6 years ago, and her second almost 3 years before, both also by Cesarean.

"The bad news is somehow,” he told her, "some embiotic fluid from your daughter's womb has made its way into her bloodstream, and…"

'Say it!' his mind screamed, 'Buck up man!'

"It's life threatening.”  There, he'd said it, but not all of it.  He knew there was only one way the womb's fluid could have gotten into the blood.  He had to have cut a little bit deeper than he should have.  Enraged because of the knowledge he knew could never be known by anyone but him and the erudition that it would haunt him the rest of his life, he snapped, "Her vagina is blacker than soot!"

'Hell, it's not her fault', he thought.

He softened his tone, "I know you want to help.  I know both you and your husband have the same type blood as her.  She's going to need blood.”

'Yeah, she'd definitely need blood to replace what hemorrhaged out every orifice in the advanced stages of toxemia,’ he thought, then said, "Contact your man, get him up here, and y'alle give blood.”

As she tried to fathom it all, the elder mother went upstairs to hematology in a state that resembled shock.  She felt, then noticed a nurse prick her finger, put a drop on a glass slide, and put another thin pane on top of it.  The same nurse then gave her a form to complete.  She fell into a chair and began to fill out the form:  name, address, phone exchange, etc.  She checked the “No” box in reply to the, “Have you ever had: venereal disease, hepatitis, polio, diptheria, smallpox, and other unsavory maladies” question.  She woodenly arose, then walked back to the desk to turn in the form.  A lab-coated technician looked up from a microscope and said something to the nurse.  The nurse told the grandmother, "We're not going to be needing yours, hon.  No nigras and very few dogs have your type blood."

After their mother passed away, the brothers and their newborn sister lived with her parents; their grandparents, and began to call them 'Mama' and 'Papa'.

Mama's daddy had been an Irishman.  As a boy, his feet were turned inward, so it interfered with his gait.  His mother massaged them nightly `til the bones popped, then bound them tightly around makeshift splints she'd made out of cardboard.  He limped his whole life, and was once described by a fellow looking for him as, "That man who walks like he's got a sacka' meal on each foot."

Papa's father was a Scotsman who was widowed after his wife had four kids.  He remarried, and had one more by his second wife.

The burg Mama and Papa lived on the outskirts of was the county seat.  The County Courthouse was smackdab in the center of town.  The main thoroughfare split, and ran around it in both directions.  Once a driver hauling a load of pigs deep in the night dozed off at the wheel, and ran into the courthouse steps.  The impact flung some of the porkers onto the parapet.  A few landed in the balcony's ornamental concrete chairs.  They were killed, but looked as if they were sitting down, taking a break.

Papa's younger brother was in the local VFD (volunteer fire department) during the oil boom and great depression, in the 1930s.  The technology to fight fire lagged behind petroleum production.  Then, it wasn't known that water shouldn't be put on certain fires, like some chemical, electrical, and hydrocarbon phlogistons.

Lightening had stricken and ignited a pair of tanks that contained crude oil.  When the VFD arrived on the scene, the man who pumped the lease begged them not to put water on it.  When he saw that they were going to anyway, he turned and ran.  He may have known what would happen next.

The VFD's men squirted water on the blaze and were instantly blanketed with steam.  The steam smothered the fire out but at an awful cost.  All the men, even the one in the truck with the windows open, were burnt to a crisp.  Only three survived, one was Gaston, Papa's kid brother.

One of the survivors wandered around in a daze at the scene.  He asked those he encountered to help him remove his clothes.  All his clothes had been consumed by fire.  The only thing he wore was a belt.  He was dead on arrival at the county hospital.

Gaston was burned everywhere but on the belt line, and the soles of his feet.  Medicines were injected through the bottom of his feet.  Sulfa drug (Mama called it 'sulfur drug') hadn't been around long, and was used on the two survivors.

Gaston was in and out of consciousness.  Each time before he blacked out, he'd say, "I'm goin' now, but I'll be back.”  The last time he went, he didn't come back.  If he did, it was to another dimension.

He left a widow and three chirrunz'.  The two eldest were boys and the youngest was a girl.

Gaston's widow suffered extreme loneliness and isolation.  Perhaps because of those things, she became what some would call slatternly.  She got pregnant by one of her boyfriends and gave the baby up to be adopted.  The couple she gave the child to left town that evening.

A few months after that, she was out in front of her house engaged in festivities with a cracker salesman in his car.  The eldest boy came out with a double barrel, ten gauge shotgun and ran him off.

So shook up was the lethario, that before the boy's mother had completely disembarked the vehicle, he sped off into the night, and motored into a creek.  Although it was shallow, the man was so panicked, couldn't swim, and wasn't able to disentangle his trousers from the pedals; he drowned (in American Near Eastern dialect, a two syllable word:  drown dead).

Mama said a schoolbus full of kids rolled by as the deputy sherrif opened the driver side door.  He'd extricated the automobile from the creek.  The cracker salesman's shorts, and pants were knotted around the clutch and brake pedals.  He still wore a prophylactic.

Mama had wanted to be a nurse as a teen and told that to the family doctor.  He told her to come to the hospital on a day when he did surgery, don a mask, then come in and watch.  "If the sight of blood revolts you," he said, "simply turn and leave.  Nothing will ever be said about it".

She did so and didn't become nauseated.  He promised her he'd call her the next time he needed a nurse.

He eventually called, but her conservative Methodist parents feared she'd see something inappropriate, so didn't tell her.  She, and two of her sisters became schoolteachers.

Papa attended a trade school in Chicago in the 'roaring twenties' and was an electrical wizard.  He was a botanist extraordinaire.  He had a big garden every year.  One year his garden was being raided nightly by critters unknown.  He encircled it with two wires, one barely off the ground, and the other about three feet high.  He rigged an old neon light fixture so that it electrified both wires.  Snakes, and small animals were electrocuted at once when they touched it.

One day he was in his shop, and saw a mule approach the wire.  He said it got up to the wire and cautiously extended a wet nose to smell it.  When the wet nose got about a half inch from the wire, a bright blue and white spark leaped from the wire to the jackass' snout.  The donkey farted and snorted loudly, then beat a hasty retreat at a full gallop.  He finally unhooked it because it fried several neighbors' dogs.  Even after it wasn't hot any more, the marauders didn't return.

Papa may have been a genius.  He excelled at everything he did.  He was a crack marksman.  One year the deer had bedded down with his cattle regularly, and were pilfering their feed.  Papa hid by the feeding troughs one day in ambush.  Just before dark, the cows and some deer came to the troughs.  Papa bushwhacked them, and dropped three, all head shots.  At least one of the three deer was on the run when he shot it.  He got the trio through open sights, no scope.

During the depression, a guy from out of town, who didn't know Papa was a sharpshooter, bet him $50 he couldn't hit a quarter at a hundred yards.  Papa saved the quarter.  He had hit it dead center.

In the same depressed economy, squirrel mulligan was often the dish of the day at Mama and Papa's.  He'd take a .22 rifle into the woods and bring out a mess of squirrel.  Mama would help him clean them.  They never had to dig for lead:  all were headshot.  He said about every three or four years he'd bag a big, solid black one.

The boys had three dogs of dubious pedigree.  The trio was of mixed ancestry and worthless mongrels.  The boys thought they were magnificent hounds and gave them dynamic names that implied adventure.  One was called 'Danger,' another 'Thunder,’ and the third was known as 'Trigger'.

The twins had a red wagon that Mama put their baby sister in every day, and they all walked down the blacktop road that bordered the farm.  It was named 'Nathan Bedford Forrest Road'.

About half a mile down the road was the cemetary where Mama's daughter, the grandkids mother, was buried.  One, two, or all three dogs accompanied them on each trip.

One such sojourn was made on a crisp autumn day, when the trees were resplendent in their magnificent auburn gowns.  On the return leg of the trip, a behemoth sedan hit Trigger.  He lay in a crumpled heap in front of the car.  At least the leviathan hadn't run him over.  There was absolute quiet.

Everyone:  Mama, the baby girl, and the twins, looked on in hushed silence.  An older black man opened the driver side door and got out.  He came to the front of the car, and took off his sunglasses, revealing yellowed eyes criss crossed by hundreds of red vessels.

He reeked of what the kids would later learn was wine.

He bent down to peer at the dog.  At the point the man's face was closest to the animal, it sprang up, snarling like a lion.  Trigger had an exaggerated underbite that was plainly visible, `cause he came up with teeth bared.

Joe Louis would have been proud of the way the man feinted to avoid getting bit.  He took to his heels and couldn't get back in the car fast enough.  Trigger chased him back to it on three legs.  The guy spun the tires as he fled from the beast.  Mama put Trigger in the wagon, and they all went home.  Papa examined him, put iodine on his scrapes, then pronounced him fine as frog hair.

On the fourth of July, Lester and Leslie saw their first ever fireworks.  Mama referred to them as 'am mannish shun' (ammunition).  For youths not yet five years old, it was impressive.

Twenty first century fireworks were like the current paper money:  they weren't what they used to be.  Nowhere was that comparison more valid than in the area of Roman Candles.  The modern day ones barely fizzled and rarely threw fireballs over 19 feet up.

Papa got some small, heavy gauge, glass pop bottles and jammed The Roman Candles in them.  They could have served as maritime distress rockets, star shells, or target flares they went so high and were so brilliant!

That fall, county judges, sherrifs, constables, and justices of the peace came up for election.  Leslie once overheard Mama and Papa talking about politics.  She told him, "A man up fer' 'lection can't have any secrets.  If he's ever wet the bed, it'll come out."  She didn't vote.  She'd not participated in politics since The Eighteenth Ammendment was repealed.  She was very much protemperence.  Her parents had instilled in her an unwavering Protestantism in which alcoholism was seen as a great menace, possibly an antichrist, or at least the worst scourge on the planet.

Lester and Leslie moved with their dad, and expectant stepmom to a nearby township.  Their younger sister stayed with her grandparents.  The boys visited for weeks at a time; a couple months when their half sister was born.

When their mother had expired, their dad had told her parents the little girl was theirs to raise as their own.  The little girl's mother had been the only child Mama and Papa had that lived.  Her three siblings were stillborn, and she herself didn't reach 30 years of age.

In the early years of the 20^th century, forceps were common.  A natural birth was preferred, but if the mother's pelvis was too small, or the infant too large, the forceps were employed.

Forceps were a cross between slip joint pliers and bakery tongs.  If an au naturale birth was impossible, like if both the mother's and child's lives were in jeopardy, out came the forceps.

They went in, clamped onto the baby, and pulled it out.  Most of the time the mother was saved, but verily often, the infant didn't make it.  Everyone hoped for the best.  Hope was sometimes cruel.  All four of Mama's were forceps babies, and only one survived the ordeal.

She (Les' mom) had a forceps jaw cut on her outside left eye socket near the temple.  It was feared that the orb would never open.  It did.  After it opened, it was feared there'd be an unsightly scar there, but it receded into the scalp as she grew, and was undetectable by adulthood.

After she gave birth to her boys, her tubes were tied, and she was told not to get pregnant again.  She did.  In the third Cesarean delivery, some of the womb's fluid got into her bloodstream.  Toxemia developed and was fatal.  One of Mama's favorite tales was about how her daughter was given the wrong type blood.

The farmhouse she grew up in, and that temporarily housed her chirrunz', had a big, screened in back porch with an artesian water well on one end of it.

Perhaps 50 feet away was a four car garage that Papa had turned into a shop.  At the far end of the shop was an olden fig tree and a large pecan tree.  At the other end was the vegetable garden.  Behind the shop was an orchard that contained both apple and pear trees.  In back of the house was a crab apple tree, and behind it was a henhouse bordered by several muscadyne grapevines.

Papa raised poultry commercially, in two immense chicken coops behind the hen house.  He had so many fresh eggs, he had to give some away, and he had a bountiful source of fryers.

Most birds ate meat as well as grains.  When chickens died, if he got to them fast enough, they were fit for human consumption.  If they laid out too long, or if there was any question about it, he fed them into a machine similar to a tree limb chipper.  It would shred them, then sling the pieces back into the coop for other chickens to consume.

Paleontologists have said birds were the ancestors of dinosaurs.

When company was expected, Mama would get a half dozen fryers in a burlap bag, pin their scaly yellow feet to the clothesline, then go along with a sharp knife.  She'd behead them and unpin each after she cut their heads off.  The headless chickens would hit the ground, get to their feet, and chase after the terrified grandsons.  Blood squirted from their necks.  They ran as if they could see until they dropped.

Mama would then gather them to pluck and dress.

As she decapitated the birds, Mama would throw their heads out into a field.  They'd lay there opening and closing their beaks as if trying to speak.  Leslie and Lester found that out when they went to the barn one day after Mama readied some mature yardbirds for the freezer.

The barn was a spooky place, full of shiny, black, long legged spiders with splotches of yellow on their bellies.  It was a rude surprise to walk into one of their webs, especially if there was one of them on it.

When their daughter had passed away, Mama and Papa had their attic turned into a room for the boys.

Mama could rattle the pans better than any TV chef.  For breakfast she'd whip up a farmer's fare.  It started with oatmeal mixed with raisins swimming in butter and melted sugar.  Any food she prepared was tasty.

The day came when the boys moved to an adjacent state with their pop, stepmom, and infant half sister.  Their dad decided he wanted the girlchild he'd given to her grandparents back.  He took it to court, and since he was the girl's only biological parent still alive, he got her.

The judge decreed that the grandchildren would spend summers and X-mases at their grandparents, but the court order didn't extend past the borders of that state.  As such, it was not heeded.

The next time Lester and Leslie saw Mama and Papa was when they came to the grade school they attended in the state they'd moved to.  When word of that visit reached the boys' dad, there was strife.  Legal action was threatened if there was a repeat.

Christmas and birthday gifts came, but were returned to sender unopened.

Lester and Leslie may never have seen their grandparents again if they'd not taken it upon themselves to leave home and travel at the age of 17.

Over a decade after the impromptu reunion at the elementary school, the boys rode their thumb to the Northern tier of the American Near East.  For a while, they went into the woods, lived off the land like mountain men, then emerged from the thicket, and started back towards the Southern Near East.

When they went through Illinois, they bankrupted themselves at seedy motels.

Hoofing it through Kentucky, they caught a ride with a guy whose Pop had four fields of what he called 'Divina' (tobacco) ready to harvest and needed some help.  The two hired on for a spell to get up some walking around money.

The farmer had a spare house Leslie and Lester stayed in.  They took meals with the family.

When the tobacco seeds were sown, wooden sticks 1 inch square by 5 foot long were dropped between the rows every 6 feet or so.  Watermelon seeds had been sparsely sown at that time also.  Once the tobacco got grown a few feet, it shielded the young melons from the sun.  By the time the tobacco plants were full grown, so were the melons.  The ripened vegetables were collected as they were found and stacked under a shade tree where the crew took breaks.  The breaks were long and frequent `cause it was so hot.  At each break, a couple melons were torn open, and the slices distributed amongst the workers.

The work was so strenuous, plus the heat so extreme, a guy who didn't stop to blow and take on water pretty regular would fall out.  There were a lot of melons left over.  They were either given away or sold.

Cutting was a two man job.  The cutter grasped the plant stalk, bent it over enough to get a clear whack at it, and cleanly severed it with one chop.

The man behind him (called 'the spiker') got one of the sticks and slid a hollow, funnel shaped, conical steel point onto it, sharp end up.  When the cutter hacked the plant from the ground, he handed it back to the spiker, who impaled the plant stalk on the sheet steel point.  Four large plants, five mid size, or six small plants went on a stick before the spike was removed, the full stick dropped, and an empty stick bespiked.

A cutter and spiker working together in harmony was something to see.  Leslie and the owner's youngest son got a fluid rhythym going.  They could mow a row down quicker than any of the other duos.

One day they got it going too fast.  The boss's son spiked with such gusto he accidentally ran the point through his hand, and required stitches on both sides.

After all the plants were cut, and on sticks, a flatbed trailer was pulled across the field by a tractor.  The stick borne plants were stacked on it, then it was pulled into the drying barn for storage.  In the cold of winter, after they were dried completely, they'd be retrieved and the leaves pulled off, bundled up like newspapers; then readied for sale.

Cigarette tobacco plants grew taller, and fuller than cigar or pipe tobacco plants, which were not only smaller, they were a much darker green.

The drying barn was about five stories high.  It was honeycombed inside by 4 inch beams that ran vertically at approximate 10 foot intervals and horizontally at roughly 4 ½ foot intervals, kind of like the inside of a mine.

After the loaded trailer was pulled into the barn, a worker got on each level, one atop another in a perpendicular row, hands and feet on a lateral beam.  A man on the trailer handed each plant laden stick up by one end, the man on each level took it, and handed it up `til it reached the top.  There, both ends were placed on right and left horizontal beams.  After each level got a stick, the man below it, rather than hand the next stick up, placed the ends on both horizontal beams, then moved back a step.  In this manner were all sticks in alignment vertically, and as many plants as possible crammed in the barn.  Leslie started out on the trailer and soon learned it was unwise to look up as he handed the loads upward.  Minute particles of tobacco got in the eyes and burned like fire.

The hands rotated after a break.  Leslie got on the very top.  It was worse.  He had always been afraid of heights.  Groups of wasps and yellow jackets continually buzzed by.  Seasoned hands put a foot on each beam and used both arms to seize and place or pass the over hundred pound sticks up, momentarily balanced just on their feet.  Not Leslie... he kept one hand clamped on a beam in a death grip at all times.

The boys might ought to have stayed longer, but after a fortnight there, they drew their pay and hit the road.  Southbound again, they headed for the town their grandparents lived in.  They almost blew it off at the last minute but instead looked them up.  The grandsons stayed with them for a week.  Everybody laughed a lot.

Mama told them about a humorous incident that had taken place the previous week.  She said the telephone began ringing deep in the night.  She reached onto the nightstand to get it.

She said, “Hello?  Hello?” but it continued to ring.  By that time, Papa had gotten to the light switch.  He turned it on, and it revealed she had picked up a flashlight.

When she finished, Papa growled, “I thot’ I told you not to tell that to anyone.”

It could easily have been that Mama and Papa never saw their grandkids again.  The stopover paved the way for future visitation.

In later years, Papa had a serious accident with a chainsaw.  The blade bounced off a log while it ran, and cut an artery in his leg.  He survived, but it was the beginning of the end.  He never regained control of his health again.

In his first really bad spell, Mama summoned Lester and Leslie.  They hotfooted it up there, stopped and got her, then went on to Capital General Hospital.  Les asked her, "Does Papa know we're comin'?"

An expression came on her face she'd called 'smuggy faced' when worn by other people who were a little too satisfied with themselves, and she replied, "No, he dud'n".  She had gambled that when he saw them, it would inspire a rally from within, and it did, but only for 6 months.

The last time they saw him alive was later that same year at Union Capital Hospital.  The militants in Persia had stormed The American Embassy and taken all the diplomats in there hostage.  Papa was delerious.  He insisted that if he were allowed to take action, he would secure the captives' release and  kick the shaw's (The Shah's) ass.  He was also worried about Orteger' in Nicaraguer' (Ortega in Nicaragua), Norieger' in Panamaw' (Noriega in Panama), and Castroe' in Cuber' [(Castro in Cuba) comma'nist dastards!].  His heart gave out that evening.

With Papa gone, Mama was both alone, and lonely.  The boys lived faraway in Dalice.  She wanted them to make the 400 mile drive every weekend.  Both were married and had kids.  They were often unable to go see her and routinely blamed it on fictitious car trouble.

They wrote and corresponded by telephone regularly.  In her letters, she'd always add the postscript:  You boys need to get yourselves a good car.  The words 'good' and 'car' were underlined three or four times.

The dialect spoken there was a hodgepodge of ocallay, idgenpay.  It blended redbone and creole.  It was still English (locally called 'Anglish') but distorted like the Australians and British alter American.  Some words were borrowed from other lingos, like axe (ask) from Ebonics.

There was a song in the 1960s about a bull with knappy, wool like hair.  The vocalist may have been the world's first rapper.  At one point he shouts, "Watch 'im now, watch 'im now!" then, "Here he comes, here he comes!", but it sounded like, "He come, he come".  He would have fit right in Mama's township.

It was easy to get confused when one listened to a group of locals who spake the regional brogue.  Certain words had their first syllable accented hard.  Not merely inflected.  Landed on with both feet; for example: Police, Repair, Escape, Hello, Eclipse, and more.  Most countries' names were said that way; Iran, Iraq, Itlee', and others.

Roar was “rower,” and soar was “sower,” house was “hay ows,” mouse was “may ows,” sound was “say owned,” like hound was “hay owned.”  All words that ended in ouse', ound ', ore, and oar were subject to such aberration.

No syllable distinction was made on any words.  Most often, the native pronunciation gained syllables, but not always.  For example:  oil could be said with one (all' ), two awl (aw will), or three oil (aw we all).  All words that ended in oil, or oyal ' (eg. & ie: soil/sawl'', toil/tawl'' loyal/lawl'', royal/rawl'', etc) could be accorded an extra.

Sometimes short words mysteriously gained a phonic (as described above):  like air, said “aye yer',” in “ee' in,” form “foe arm,” out “aye yowt',” bass “bay ass,” and so on.  All words that ee' and (end) in ass (aye yes), in (ee' yen), ear [ee' yer' (as in bear bay yer', or smear smee yer')], and are [(such as hare hay err), and bare (bay err), and (ay end) scores (sco' weres) of others did].

How now brown cow would be:”hay ow nay ow bray own kay ow.”  The days of the week were:  Sundee', Mundee', Toosdee', Whensdee', Thirzdee', Frydee', an' Saturdee'.

Some words had an incorrect pronunciation that was acceptable throughout The Near East.  In the case of a two word hybrid, the resultant product meant both the root terms,  like:supposably' (a compound of supposedly, and probably).  Remember and memorize were spliced into rememberize'.  Similar and simulate mixed were simular'.  Sewage, and sewer made sewerage'.  Rummage and scrounge foe erm' (form) scrummage.  There were a lot more.

Some words were traditionally mispronounced because they always had been; like escape (eck' scape), nuclear (nukuler), rotting (rottening), anaconda (andaconda), rinse (wrench), drink (drank), eggs (aigs'), legs (laigs'), etc.  Les overheard Mama tell someone on the phone she had a bronnicle' (bronchial) condition.

It was acceptable for certain words to lose the first phonic.  For instance: electric `lectric, abandon `bandon, eliminate `liminate, the aforementioned emergency `mergency, and America `Merica, jes' (just) to name a few.  It was hard to say which was harder to learn, English, Chinese, or 'Anglish.  Chinese had thousands of letters (their 'rithmetic must really be tough!).  'Anglish has, until herein, remained completely unwritten.  Other than this miniature (men uh chure) glossary, it will remain unwritten.

There was no singular form of license, it was always said 'licenses', even when there was only one.

Les once, outside a grocery market, heard a tourist ask a pair of local yokels for directions.  One of them told her to turn at a store.  The other guy told him that stow were (store) was no mow were (more), in the native lingua:  "Way ell', hay ell', they at stow were was toe urn day own oh ver' a ye ear uh' go!"  (translation: Well hell, that store was torn down over a year ago!)  The woman thanked them politely, then drove off looking perplexed.

There were certain words that had an i (which sounded like an e).  It could be silent like deteriorate (dee' tear ate), experience (ex' peer ence'), serious (sear us), and serial (sear all), material (mat tear all), excoriate (ex core ate), and ameliorate [(uh' meal or ate) those last two weren't used much in The Near East.]

Some names dropped a consonant, usually an ell' (not always, however) and utilized ebonics further, such as Elvis (Eh viss'),  Elmer (Eh mer'), Eldon (Eh dun), Weldon (Weh' dun), Terry (Taye).  Lottery, pottery, and military became: (Lot tree, pot tree & mill it  tree).

While was said wall, as in uh wall ago (a while ago).

She visited with a couple of her married sisters who didn’t live too far away.  One of the sister’s husbands was infamous for driving slow.  He was responsible for an incident Les found amusing.  It may have been Mama’s narration of the circumstance he found comical.

Mama and her sisters seemed to think regular defecation was the secret of life, and if they were at all tardy in their bowel movements, they would be in search of laxatives.  The more overdue their morphology, the more frantic was the hunt.

On one of the visitations when she had tanked up on cathartics, as outrageous fortune would have it, the purgatives took effect on the homeward leg of a journey.  Her laggard brother in law was driving.  Her sister urged him, “Hurry up!”

Mama told Les, “He did’n speed up not one whit.  I coulda’ got out and run faster than he drove.”

In time, Mama had to have a live-in nurse.  Once, when she was by herself she fell and broke a hip.  It was completely replaced with a titanium implant screwed into the pelvis.

She recovered from that and lived at home for another 2 years.  She developed a fetish for the discussion of grotesque topics at the dining table.  During one meal when Lester and Leslie were there, she told them of a ladyfriend of hers who'd gone to a proctologist.  The man told her she'd "drankt' so much fiber laxative her colon was blacker'n the ace of spades".  The same woman's husband got to where he couldn't urinate, so she took him to the 'mergency room.  An x-ray was taken, and at lunch during one visit, Mama recited verbatim what the doctor had said.

"The reason you can't urinate is because your abdomen is packed full of fecal matter.  It's like rocks in there, and it's pressing on and holding your urethra closed.  Everything you've eaten the last few days has liquified, dripped down between those rocks, and set up like concrete.  You'll hafta' be manually decompacted upstairs.  We don't do it here in the ER.  For now, we'll catheterize your bladder..."  There was more, but Leslie was off in a daze and in something like shock that produced temporary deafness.  He thought what a prestigious occupation a manual decompactor must be.  It would just about have to pay good.

At another mealtime, she detailed a childhood incident when she'd gotten a kernel of popcorn lodged in her ear.  She forgot it until she got an earache in that ear.  Her mama took her to the doctor, who reached in with some kind of medical instrument and pulled it out.  In her words, "the pus just flew!"

At times she'd get them at the table and lull them into a false sense of security, then, when the meal was underway, innocently bushwhack them.  In one such instance, she began to talk about how her daddy had loved ham gravy and voiced her suspicion that it had clogged his arteries and contributed to his early demise.  It sounded safe, so the boys continued to eat heartily.  Out of nowhere she mused, "Daddy had such pretty white teeth...  The dentist pulled them, and there was a pus pocket at the root of ever' one!"

During one meal she began to recount the time her brother Arthur had come upon a dead horse carcass.  As he watched, it began to move slightly.  A possum crawled out of it.  It had been in the rotten corpse eating despoiled meat.  Bad meat must be spicier than good.  Leslie had read that the technique of barbecue had originally been contrived by The Spanish in Tejas to mask the taste of spoiled beef.

Arthur captured the opossum and brought it home.  He asked his ma to cook it for him.  After he told her where it had been, she refused to cook it unless he penned it up and fed it non-rotted food for 2 weeks to get the equine out.

Mama didn't realize she was making inappropriate dinner conversation.

She once sat at the table with the boys and told them, "Y'alle go ahead and eat, I'm not hungry".  Soon, neither of them would be.  She started off innocent enough, and told them of a field full of blackberry bushes not far from her childhood home.  One day when the bushes were heavy with fruit, she got a pail and struck off to pick a peck.  The first hint of trouble came when she said she didn't yet wear a brassiere.  The meal ceased altogether after she cooly interjected, "and I had a boil right on the end of my nipple."

She went on to say that her dress (calico?  gingham?) was made of very coarse material.  About 10 minutes into the walk, the dress began to rub, the boil burst, and naturally, "the pus just flew!  The whole front of the dress got wet!"

The boys must've worn appalled expressions, for she came back to the present, and said, "I didn't mean to rern'" (ruin) "your dinnahs'" (dinners).  To this day Les wondered if it had been a ploy to make them not overeat.  If it was, it worked splendidly.

On another visit, a meal was underway.  She'd already reported to them the health woes of all women and most men in the county.  Les asked her exasperatedly, "Mama, can we please not talk about sickness and death here at the table?"

"Oh, yes," she said, and apologized profusely.  Within 5 minutes she began to talk about some guy who "had to have a colostomy and came home with a drainage bag that hung at bedside.  It looked like it had some big ol' blood clots in it."

The next morning, breakfast was underway when she said, "I know it says on that dumpster not to throw dead animals in there, but people do.  I looked in there the other day, and someone had thrown two big ol' fish in it."  The same meal, she commented, "They say that you can't catch aids like the measles or chicken pox, but," she flashed the smuggy face, and in her best mitation of a well known crusade minster said, "I KNOW good and well you can. You can get it off a toilet seat too.”

That night everyone bedded down early.  Leslie was separated from his wife and slept alone.  It seemed like he had only just closed his eyes when he was awakened by Mama's voice.  "There's an airplane out here in some kind of trouble,” she said. "Do you reckon we're under attack?"

He murmured, "I would'n think so Mama.  Lemme' come see."  He went into her bedroom and listened at the window for a minute.  It did sound like a propeller driven airplane that circled low.  Papa had probably been telling her since Pearl Harbor that the Jappers would one day hit the mainland.

He looked and listened.  In a moment, the mystery solved itself.

One of her neighbors had decided to mow at night and avoid the daytime heat.  He had a couple dim headlights on his riding mower and an exterior halogen vapor light to see by.  If there was a muffler on it, it was kaput.  As he'd wind around the back of the house, the din would fade, then as he came around front there'd be a crecendo in the roar.  The sound was a close imitation of a small aircraft that circled, and looked for a clear spot to set down in.

He shut the window and noted it wasn't even 9 pm.

He kissed her cheek, hugged her neck, then went back to bed.

She cultivated an acute 'negrophobia' towards the end of her life.  "Nigras,” she'd call negroes.

Mama once told a story she'd been told as a child to explain to white kids why there were blacks amongst them:

When Noah was on the flood swollen main in his ark, he one day got “drunk as a lord” (an anachronism Les'd not heard before... Lorde Kalvert maybe?), "and passed out on deck naked as a jaybird.  Two of his sons (one of whom was called 'Ham') got something to cover him with.  They held the cover up before them, they went to drape it over him".  There was a story kind of like that in The Hebrew Bible.  She continued with more of the tale that wasn't.  "One of them,” possibly to make sure there were no obstacles to trip on, "peeked.  Noah stirred from his drunkeness long enough to point at the peeper, and say, 'All thine descendants shall be black.'"

The boys both burst into laughter.  It was probably the most ridiculous thing she'd told them since shed informed them the dogwood tree was once a massive timber.  After Jesus was crucified on one, god blighted it into its present dwarfed form.

There was just as good a chance that spacemen came to earth to mine uranium a hundred thousand years ago, got lonely, and had unprotected sex with Neanderthal Women, then told them, "All thine offspring shall be Cro Magnon."  That would be an anthropological explanation.

She kept a massive bible by her chair and drug it out daily to read some.  When the boys were there, she read aloud.  Once she recited a passage about wine bibbers.

"All that wine back then, Mama.  Do you reckon there were any alcoholics?" Les asked.

She stuttered a few seconds, then said, "Well, it was more of a ritual then."

Both boys drank socially, but hid that from her.  Once Leslie was visiting her by himself.  He had gotten a glass of 'coke' (in the Southern Near East, all soft drinks were called 'cokes' regardless of whether or not they were colas) and gone out to his car to add a dollop of 'nervine' [(the hair of the dog) curfur] to it.  Mama had a nose like a bloodhound.  She came outside, was talking with him, flared her nostrils, and suddenly said, "I smell alcohol!"

He girded his loins, finished the drink with a monstrous gulp, and asked, "You mean, like, rubbing alcohol?"

"No... demon rum!"

There was a donut shop in town that specialized in honey dipped donuts.  The donuts were so scrumptious, they always sold out quickly.  Mama said, "The nigras would just swarm in there as soon as they opened, and buy 'em out."

Whoever decided to call different peoples races made a grave error.  'Race' implied competition.  "The Human Race" couldn't be won... everyone lost,

Races were different to be sure.  Colored peoples in general seemed to be more exuberant, and fervently enthusiastic than Caucasians.  Minorities seemed to be drawn to loud, garish colors, and 'rap (rap wasn't music.  It was a syncopated limerick.  Sometimes, it was just conversation with a backbeat, and a simple string accompaniment) muzak'.  More often than not, it was offensive to white folks.

Mama said the civil rights movement had given blacks more freedom than whites.  There were jobs, and loans (just to name two) minorities had access to but whites couldn't get at.

"If Mexicans were Hispanic Americans", she said, "Orientals were Asian Americans, Blacks were African Americans, and Injuns' were Native Americans; why weren't Caucasians European Americans?  They all came from Eurasia."

It was said that during the 21^st century, whites would become a minority.  "Would Caucasians then be eligible for the select freedoms like affirmative action then?" she wondered.

To combat loneliness, Mama became heavily involved in the church.  On one visit Les went there with her.  She introduced him to one of her crone friends who drew him aside, and whispered conspiratorily, "The gangster nigras are takin' over, and I don't mean maybe."  The same old girl would fold a note, and put it in with her 'tithe'.  It said: "I don't want any of this money to benefit the nigras."

So much for the song that says, 'red and yellow, black and white'.

Les didn't attend church regularly or even on Easter and Christmas.  Seemed like all churchgoers had something in common.  If they came upon a guy that had recently imbibed spirits, chased women, or done anything that might be interpreted as sinful behavior, would look down their nose at them, and take on the 'smuggy face'.  The look said, "This guy is gonna' fry like fatback in the hereafter.”  Not a very christian attitude.

He thought deus could be fathomed by no mortal, and that verily uncertainty was the cause of the majority of the world's conflicts.  People came to America to escape religious turmoil, but it was making its way here.

There was a young, white divorcee in town who was a member of the flock before her separation.  Her ex stayed in the fold, but she quit the church.  She became known as a harlot, and was excommunicated shortly thereafter.  She soon became the target of malicious gossip.  Mama once said the woman "used to go over to nigratown and dance naked with those nigras."

Mama had a million stories to tell.  She once told him about a gal, a distant relative, who was homosexual.  Her and her significant other decided they wanted a child, but didn't want to have heterosexual sex involved in the process of fertilization.  They consulted a sperm bank, and the cow of the duo underwent artificial insemination.  The sow lesbian's mama wanted to know who the father was, and to that end, contacted the semen repository.  "All they would tell her," Mama had said, "was that he was a college student, the captain of the varsity squad, and the valedictorian of his class."

“A likely story,” Les thought with a smirk.  “Most likely it was some wino they found wandering the alleys, and paid him $3 for his services.”

Les once watched a TV program with her that featured an abundance of scantily clad women.  A few of them wore tops they threatened to bounce out of.  Mama told him, "I don't think that's right, them showing their bosoms, and all."

About at the halfway point in the drive there from Dalice, was a gas station where Lester and Leslie always stopped for gas and to use the tawlet' (toilet).  There were five or six condom machines on the wall, on one of which someone had etched, “Don't buy this gum; it tastes like rubber.”  Instead of paper towels, the washroom was equipped with an abysmally ineffective blower type hand dryer.  There were three steps inscribed on it:

                          1)Wash hands

                          2)Push button

                          3)Rub Hands briskly under nozzle

And someone had scratched in a fourth:

                          4)Wipe hands on pants,

As youths in junior high school, Lester and Leslie had worked in a home for the aged.  Lester called it “The Fossilage.”  A lot of the inmates there had lost their power to reason, which was a good thing.  They weren't aware of the indignities heaped upon them.

It was almost as though they were being penalized for living too long.  At all times there, a bitter struggle was being waged between the sharp odor of pine disinfectant and other fragrances.

The boys balked at the prospect of Mama being in one, but they had no selection.  She had almost set her house on fire when she used a plastic bottle of charcoal fluid to start a blaze in the fireplace, then absent mindedly put it on top of her steel hearth insert.  She'd then sat down and fell asleep.  When the fire heated the insert, it melted the bottle.  The fluid ignited as it ran onto the linoleum floor.  If she'd not woken when she did, she'd not have ever awoken here below.  As it was she got a bad case of smoke inhalation.

She had also forgotten to take her medicine on more than one instance and wasn't eating right when she was alone.  Lester and Leslie checked her in the rest home, and got her cable TV.  They had to have The Nigra Channel and The Coitus Channel scrambled.

She had lived 87 years, and for 85 of them could get up, and go anywhere, anytime.

She had a stroke and went into a coma shortly after she entered the facility, then slipped away on her dead daughter's (Les' mom's) birthday.  Leslie thought it was like one of those turtles who came back to the beach where it was hatched to lay its eggs or a salmon that swam upstream to its birthplace to spawn.