No Excuses. J. Larry Simpson I
the lady said in excitement.
I stared at her because she had an Indian-lookin’ face, all brown with some long-twisted hairs hanging from her head.
“She’s just got ’em. That’s the way she likes it,” Grandma Mac said softly as I looked bug-eyed at her and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and ran out the door.
“I’ve got a baby brother. Jeanie, we’ve got a baby brother. Barbara, Alice we’ve got a baby brother!”
And around to the rest of the family, I announced this amazing news. Everybody clapped and said words of excitement.
This three-week stay in Arkansas was a time to be told even at this late date. James, my uncle, was thirteen years old; Alice and Barbara, four and two years older than me; and Carolyn was younger than me; all were there along with two skinny short-haired hound dogs. Their ears hung way down, and they “panted” a lot in the Arkansas furnace. I learned that word panted’ from Uncle James.
Now as we whooped and hollered on the front panel porch, the hound dogs stood on the bottom step and joined our celebration howling, barking, and whining with their tails justa fly’n.
James and I became close friends forty years later when we could travel to see each other. He was a lanky, strapping, muscular, tough kid with whom I rode horses in the west many times before his passing in 2006. He treated me like a brother.
My sweet aunts Alice and Barbara thought of me as a baby brother, wagging me around on their hips. They spoiled me until I was seven or eight with my feet scratching the ground. I guess, eventually, I got too heavy, but they, thankfully, tell those stories today as delightful almost eighty-year-old women.
Carolyn and Jeanie were close to each other, and she still has the sweetest, brightest smile and soft voice this side of heaven.
This combination of little humans with me born “ready” was a catalyst for excitement.
“Are you ready?” Alice would say after breakfast, and away we’d go to the wonderland beyond the steps of this old plank sharecroppers’ house.
Arkansas was hot in that summer of ’49. Humidity was sweltering in the delta, hilly countryside, on top of the red dirt. Cotton was standing big and tall with the “white” beginning to fluff up.
The house was small and, of course, with only fans to circulate the ninety- to ninety-five-degree wet air. Four or five rotating fans with one big window fan, provided by the farm owner made the hot air fly. Flies, green, brown, and black ones flew through the house with Grandma Mac being the fly killer.
“How’d you get so good at killin’ flies?” I asked as a little sweat ran down my left chin.
“Practice, son, practice” was all she said, but I remembered those words, “Practice, son, practice.” And it stays with me to this cold day in March.
Rockin’ chairs were necessary in those days, not just a pleasure.
Granddaddy said one hot day, “Who can stand to just sit in this weather if you don’t have a rockin’ chair and a hand fan?”
And there were on the old church bench and chairs, fans for the hand, mostly form funeral homes or banks. They got worn out pretty fast, but that didn’t matter. They still got used.
“How come there’s so many swatters in here?” I asked Grandma Mac.
“Well, son, they are for killin’ flies!”
I got it. Direct, simple, and funny. Why else? Of course, to kill flies! Those were good, hot, fly-killin’ days.
This setting was perfect for outside adventures as Alice said, “Let’s go,” and away, I, Alice, and Barbara would fly. Hogs in the shaded hogpen with lots of hard dry mud until it rained, a barn to climb up in, two hounds, and a small dirt road beyond the fence laying to the west called us.
The barn had a loft that I loved to sneak over to, to climb the ladder and look out, for which I got in trouble.
“Boy, get away from that loft,” I heard many times, and “Do you want to break your neck?”
Well, of course, I didn’t, but I did want to see the world below and out “yonder.”
For the first day or two, I would stand and look down that long dirt road and wonder. The earth would move beneath my feet.
In adventure, questions, mystery, new things, my world…the earth moved beneath my feet. I did, and it does.
“Larry, you ready to go.”
“Yep.”
I’d gleefully go back to Alice. Always, she, Barbara, and I would say anything to be with one another.
“Let’s travel the old dirt road,” the sisters said.
“Ready, let’s go.”
It’s been my motto for these years: “Ready, set, go.” Did it come from those days? Yes, and more like ’em.
It seemed to this five-year-old that we walked a long way, especially as the time flew by, looking, climbing, and talking.
We came to our first barbed wire fence and carefully went through it. We then crossed another and another.
“How far have we come?” I asked.
“Oh, about a half mile.”
“Will we be in Texas soon?”
“Texas?” Alice replied. “No, not yet.”
I had a cowboy book about the Texas Rangers, so I thought, It’d make me sound “big” to ask such a question.
“Let’s climb this tree,” one of them said.
So up we went, as high as possible. We looked all around. Up high! Three kids. Warm breeze blowing at 9:00 a.m.
Coming to a place, as the sun got high in the sky, where some blackberry bushes were growing, we went over to see if any were ripe.
“No, they’re still too green,” Alice said, when suddenly, Barbara yelled out, “A snake! A snake!”
We swirled around, started to run, and what do you think?
“A blue racer! A blue racer!” Alice shouted. “Run! Run!”
Turning back down the little road that split the huge farm, we lit out.
“What’s a ‘blue racer’?” I yelled.
“A snake that chases you.”
I pumped my arms all the harder, but they kept up with me.
The blue “killer” followed. As I looked over my shoulder to see the varmint, it seemed to be closer and closer, making a continuous “S” figure in sailed along. It wasn’t afraid of us! Surely, it would swallow us up!
“Faster, or we’re sure ‘goners’!” Barbara barked at the top of her voice.
The prospect of a snake with huge teeth biting my rear end was scary indeed!
“Up this tree!” Alice cried out, and we scrambled up like monkeys. Now I don’t want to belittle monkeys, but from the bottom, looking up it looked like that to me as we ascended to our safe spot.
Gasping for the Arkansas morning warm air, we swallowed in gulps. “Look, look at that! The thing is climbing the tree!” Barbara barked out.
It did raise up a little and looked up at us as if to say, “Now there, this is my country.”
Then he swerved slowly back toward the blackberry patch as if he had another accomplished mission.
Alice, sweating profusely, said, “Let’s get down and get on to the house.”
We