In Love with Defeat. H. Brandt Ayers
as perfect and predictable as Saturday afternoons at the movies. Dinner, cooked by Mildred and served by Eli, was at 6:30 sharp, when conversation was suspended to hear the radio commentary of Quincy Howe from Boston. Then Mother and Dad would discuss the events of the day. Countless times Dad punctuated the discussion with favorite quotes. “Noblesse Oblige, to whom much is given, much is expected.” “Duty is the sublimest word in the English language, quoth Robert E. Lee.” “He who fails to take heed of events far away will soon find trouble near at hand.” Whether or not those aphorisms were meant to instruct his children, they stuck with me and helped shape my view of the world.
Sunday dinner, served after church, was always fried chicken—a Mildred specialty: juicy meat covered with a golden brown crust. Often during the war, soldiers would be at the table, knights in khaki. In those days, before air-conditioning, the house was always dark in summer and the basement fan perpetually stirred the moist air. On rare occasions, Stephen Foster melodies would float from outside through the closed blinds into the dining room. The family would leave the table and assemble on the front porch to enjoy the serenade by a trio of black musicians who did not ask for but received a gratuity from our parents. The sound carried on the humid Alabama air was sweet; the memory is sad. They were the last troubadours of a dying civilization—a society with a rotten legal core but which had its charms.
Dad’s words may have been more memorable, but Mother was at the center of family life, planning meals, birthday parties, grown-up parties, and family vacations. Perversely, every August just as the hurricane season started our family headed for the Ponte Vedra Beach Resort and Club in Florida (welcomed “home” by the familiar staff). Mother was the producer and stage-manager of a series of birthday parties at which I, as guest of honor, got the prime slice of chocolate cake, “the chicken coup,” so-called because it was a corner piece with icing on two sides as well as the top. The calorie and cholesterol content could have measured in megatons. One birthday, she organized a midget baseball game at which she pitched and our then-butler-chauffeur-gardener, George Hillman, was the catcher. Bushes obscured the whole scene from neighbors across the street—except for the pitcher and catcher—and next day our across-the-street neighbor, Mrs. Miller, called to ask Mother if she enjoyed her game of catch with Hillman.
Christmas was Mother’s pièce de résistance, the beating heart of family ceremony. Christmas was also a celebration of community life. Before the boom times down South, before suburban sprawl brought us developments with names nearly as pompous as “Grande Dame Estates,” before malls and multiplex theaters, Noble was the main street. Crowded with Christmas shoppers, the vital pulse of commerce beat from Gus “Nick” Nichopolous’s community-central Sanitary Cafe to the Commercial National Bank presided over by big, friendly Marcus Howze and quiet, sweet-natured Guice Potter Sr. We even had our own Lilliputian Macy’s Day Parade. Children wedged and squeezed through the forest of adult legs to get close to the grand progression of high school bands, including the high-stepping Cobb High (black) entourage, capped by the appearance of a magnificent Santa—sowing the fields of spectators with wrapped candies, children grabbing at them in the air and scurrying to rescue fallen pieces.
At home, Mother’s much-anticipated production began with the ritual gathering of the smilax, which meant a perilous ascent of an extension ladder to clip the vines from trellises on the side of the house. Smilax was a main feature of Mother’s decorations. Lush garlands snaked up the banisters of the hall stairway and were draped over all the pictures, including the flat likeness of Grandfather, his white VanDyke beard above white tie and tails that set off three colorful medals awarded by Chinese presidents for his public health contributions to that poor nation—objects of awe, envy, and mystery to me. His picture was faced by a lovely portrait of Mother, painted by cousin Ted Mohn, hanging above the fireplace mantel on the opposite wall of the living room. The two paintings were silent witness to the ritual Christmas Eve. The perfect, undeviating sameness of those evenings, with their constant moral core, took on an almost sacramental quality. The evening began with a scratchy 78-rpm recording of Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” starring British actor Basil Rathbone as Scrooge. Its undisguised message—the evils of greed and the joys of charity—were taken seriously by our family and we never failed to be moved when Tiny Tim piped, “God bless us, every one!”
Next in the order of service came family carols, an uncertain chorus of Dad, Elise, and me, accompanied on the piano by Mother, who, as the family musician, played with firm confidence. The only flaw in the ceremonial reenactment was the perfectly awful Christmas Eve dinner of backbone—a fat, greasy, barely edible black mass whose roots in tradition are lost, a tradition to be honored in the breach. Because there was no strong pull of anticipation associated with that meal, the family listened with patient appreciation as Dad found the Second Chapter of Luke, beginning with: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus . . .
“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room in the inn . . . And there were, in the same country, shepherds abiding in the field, . . . And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were sore afraid.”
The majestic language of the original King James translation awakens a cluster of powerful feelings of home, family, happy times during the delightful irresponsibility of childhood. Modern versions, which substitute “strips of cloth” for the magical “swaddling clothes” and the shepherds were “frightened” for “sore afraid,” trigger no emotion but regret. Mystery has been robbed to achieve a too-familiar accessibility. Important traditions are not improved by modern-day tinkering. It’s the faith of my father, King James, for me, and I never found any version of Dickens’s classic quite as satisfying as those old, scratchy recordings. I can’t explain why those Christmas Eves rank in my memory above the exquisite torture of the following morning’s anticipation—Dad’s interminable breakfast—which kept us from the treasures under the tree in the library.
Nostalgia plays funny tricks but it must know what it is doing. Its authority cannot be disputed
Turning twelve and entering sixth grade was a milestone. It meant leaving the familiar habitat of Woodstock School. My all-white grammar school was a place of happy memories, minor disappointments, and one great crime. Heroism and celebrity were near-misses in those years. I had a chance to score a touchdown during recess tackle football games—a signal achievement for a slow, chubby boy who was not a favorite receiver—but Jimmy Hannon’s bullet hit me in the mouth and I dropped the ball. Neither did I get the coveted appointment as captain of the Safety Patrol—the white cap and belt with the silver and blue badge—opening car doors as they delivered children at school and, grandly stopping tenth Street traffic for students crossing. I was merely fire chief, with a red cap and belt and red-rimmed badge.
Woodstock was also the setting for my brief and inept criminal career. The summer after graduation from Woodstock, Tommy Butler, Ronnie Hicks, and I were camping out in an army tent in the side yard. We relieved the boredom by egging neighbors’ houses—not very cleverly leaving my house untouched. Next, we targeted the school. We crouched behind a row of hedges separating the west side of the building from a rocky, unpaved alley where ammunition was plentiful, smooth throwing stones. Among the most delicious moments of childhood is that instant after launch when you wait to hear if your missile hit brick—or, ahhhhh, glass! Bold and invisible in the dark, we moved closer, concentrating fire on the office of the feared principal, Miss Meigs. She used switches on malefactors and always held a handkerchief in her hand—to cover a missing finger, clear evidence of sinister doings. Suddenly, a light flashed around the north side of the school. Like two dumb, frightened deer—one skinny, the other chubby—Tommy and I fled due south, up a rise where, at the front of the school, we were stabbed by a constellation of lights. We froze, while Ronnie smartly veered off to the west and escaped. The cops took Tommy and me to the station and put us in a cell while they made the fateful calls to our parents. Elise was at home and described the scene. Mother took the call, heard the news, and dramatically held the phone out to Dad, “Harry, your son is in prison!” Dad’s recommendation was to leave me there, which meant the police had to take me home. Among the physical and financial punishments that resulted was an audience with the Mayor Himself, the Honorable Ed Banks. Worse,