Telling at my parent's home town

I jumped out of bed the next day, eager to get a start on the job at the library. I'd only had about six hours of sleep, but that was nothing unusual. My dad and nephew had already left for my nephew's orthodontist appointment and I was left to my own devices. Usually my dad would make a traditional east Texas breakfast: toast, scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, round sausage patties, and biscuits. My nephew usually eats a sausage stuck between two biscuits with grape jelly. He loves it but it makes me gag a little.
They had departed so, I was left to my own devices. I was already running a bit behind, so I grabbed a package of cinnamon apple pop tarts. I hadn't eaten any in years. I grabbed my backpack and got in the car.
I had allowed an hour and a half travel time. My dad had said it took about 45 minutes to get there. The morning was already sunny and hot. Once I started the car and drove down the freeway, the air conditioning had cooled the car a marginal amount.
I followed the traditional trip that I'd taken for years down the small state highway that connected Houston and my parent's hometown. The highway ran through small towns and the speed limit slowed as I drove through the little cities with decaying stone brick buildings with long painted letters signifying 'City Hall'. Others were prospering communities. The aluminum sided buildings spoke to the city's modernization. They boasted sales the same fashions as in the big cities though a few months behind. Small mom and pop restaurants boasted of catfish dinners and bar-be-que anyway you might want it. The length of each city offered a pause to the monotony of the stately piney woods. One of the stretches crosses the Trinity River. The old steel span bridge still stands as a fishing pier for weekend anglers. The new bridge has a flat four lanes. More expedient, but less picturesque. The river lazes around in slow curves and in the recent heat swampy pockets have formed. A white crane takes slow steps through the ribbon-like water rushes.
As I travel, I look at the clock on the dashboard. I'm not making as good time as I thought I would. I'll be on time, but not fifteen minutes early as I promised. The last big town I encounter, I take the loop around the town rather than passing through the city center. It's the county seat and like many towns in Texas the county seat is built in a square with the courthouse in the middle. All traffic travels in a loop around it and antique stories and cafes offer their wares to passersby.
I make it on time and park underneath one of the massive live oaks outside. The library once was the town's Methodist church. The funeral services for my dad's mother and brother were conducted in it when it was still a church. It still looks the same except for the sign outside which in already chipped letters, proclaims it new status as city library. All the years I had visited as a child, I'd never noticed that the city didn't have a library. In Houston, we visited several different libraries. I participated in the summer reading programs in which I collected stars for the number of books that I read. I always had the most in the family. It was easy. In my youthful generalization, I'd assumed that they'd had a library as well. My friend, Bert had started it after his father died a few years ago. The Methodists had decided that the leak in the roof was irreparable. They'd already built a new church on the outskirts of town. Bert raised the money and bought the church. In less than a year, the library was up and running. They'd cleared out the pews and replaced them with shelves. The dias had been transformed into the librarian's desk. A 100,000 TIF grant had provided them with a computerized card catalog and computer lab. A city that had been established over a hundred years ago now had a T1 connection.
When I arrived, a small had already gathered and I was greeted to, �Well, there he is. We were waiting for you. We can't start without you.� The nervousness in the room was palpable. They'd had summer reading programs before, but never a performer. Bert had asked me to perform, but they had never actually seen me tell stories before and because of my relatively young age, I'm sure they had their questions. �It took a little longer than I thought.� I immediately walked to the room to the left that had been set aside for the kids. It was painted with scenes from Winnie the Pooh and was littered with multi-color bean bag chairs. I set up a chair and started working with the children. I showed them string tricks and started as soon as I could with the stories. The adults who slightly outnumbered the children took their seats on the other side of the small bridge that connected the children's area to the rest of the library. I recognized my mother's sister, Aunt Ann. Mr. And Mrs. Jack Shulls were there as well. Jack had presided over my mother's funeral and had been a friend of our family for a long time. These were some of the town elders, the quiet force that kept this town from slipping back into the dense growth of pines and vines surrounding it.
I told the kids about how Ananisi, the spider trickster got the stories from the Sky god. Jack received gifts from the King of the North Wind. Wily tricked the Hairy Man again. The Brazilian monkey learned his lesson about tricking the other animals when he lost and regained his tail.
The kids were of all ages. They were more used to sitting and listening and participated less than other groups. But they were still and attentive. One girl and her mother arrived late. She pulled up in wheelchair. Her appearance was a sign of the times. I'd never seen anyone in a wheelchair outside of a hospital the years that I'd visited this town. The sidewalks on the main street stories were probably originally poured in the fifties and the buildings were constructed in the turn of the century. The twentieth century that is. Now, this tan, neat girl sat laughing and clapping her hands as the stories progressed. Bert later told me that she was one of the few kids who turned out for every summer reading program session they'd had that summer. �She suits up and shows up,� he said.
After having told so often in the multicultural patchwork of Houston's demographics, I was struck by the monochromatics of the audience. The girl in the beanbag in front of me had straight blond hair, a round face with new adult teeth and the tan of many days spent at the local swimming hole. My aunt had said that she would try to bring one of my young cousins. I wondered if this were her. Blonde hair in youth and dark skin in summer ran in my mom's side of the family. Tow heads we were called as kids.
When the program was finished, I told the children that some of the stories I had told were in some of the books in the library. They immediately set out to find them and stuff them into the plastic, �Reading matters� bags they'd received from Bert's mother. She was 85 and worked everyday in the library. I should wish to be so spry at her age. She was energetic and happy as she passed out the bags to their eager hands.
Folks came up to me and said, �I knew your granddaddy and grandmother, Marvin and Bessie.� I shook their hands and they faded into the background. As I've been making the transition into the professional world of storytelling, I'd been yearning for a blessing. Most of my family are practical, salt of the earth people. Jobs and working is what you do to put a house over your head, food on your plate and clothes on your back. If it's enjoyable that's gravy, but the bottom line is that it's work, whether you enjoy it or not. When you work, you do practical things for practical people to make life more tolerable. Art, and storytelling were from another world. Bert had grown up in Houston and visited this town as a youngster so he wanted to encourage something beyond the provincial world views that filled the town. I had hoped that was part of the reason he'd invited me. Now that they'd seen a little of what I do, I was receiving blessing from rough, work-weary hands.
After most everyone had cleared out, Bert took me to lunch in the county seat. We made the short drive and ate at a small diner on the square. They had chicken and dumplings as the special that day and Bert was eager to get his lips around some. I've never cared much for them. My mother's mother used to make them. Big lumps of soften flower in chicken broth usually with chicken meat, but if my granddad had been lucky with hunting, they'd have squirrel or some other meat included. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich instead. The bun was toasted, which I liked, and the mustard was not honey mustard, spicy brown mustard, or dijon mustard. It was yellow French's mustard. So simple, so yellow. It reminded me of the Spam sandwichs I made growing up: a slice of Spam, French's yellow mustard, and two slices of thin white bread. When we finished the waitress offered us dessert. She rattled off the pies. Bert had chocolate cream and I had key lime. She hurried off. She was the granddaughter of the woman who cooked the chicken and dumplings. Her mauve knit shirt was stretched over her growing belly, but the glint of a small nose piercing still shown from the bright summer light outside. Somethings change, somethings stay the same.
Over dessert we talked about Bert's hopes for the library. He'd like an elevator to improve access and a more complete holding. We talked about Houston. I'm sure that he gets lonely up here living in his grandfather's house all alone. He'd been a mover and shaker in Houston with a wide circle of friends who frequented the opera and shows and art openings. He'd moved back when his father had a stroke and lived in his grandfather's house on the outskirts of town. We talked about the political conservatism of the area, the increase in homeschooling, and the persistence of segregation. How do you talk about something that everyone knows is true, but no one wants to question. The folks on one side aren't in sheets burning crosses, they aunts, uncles, cousins, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. The folks on the other side live in a sort of invisible silence. In Houston, I had friends of every ethnicity, but here I knew of no one else. When one of my cousins married a woman of Hispanic descent, even though she'd lived in that small town all of her life, my grandmother referred to her as 'that little Mexican girl'. Another relative bemoaned the choices of her son who lives in a bigger port city. �He likes those exotic women.� After his divorce, he usually chose to date Thai or Vietnamese women. So it wafts there, invisible, through air like the humid breezes of summer.
We take the trip back to the town and hang around the library a while. They have a basement full of books that people have donated. They talk about having a garage sale to get rid of some and make a little money. It's an active, changing time and they lead each other toward the creation of something novel in the city.
Eventually, I leave and return home. We talk about another visit in October for Halloween. I love telling scary stories and drive away in anticipation.
When I arrive at my dad's house, my nephew and his friends are arguing/playing in his quadrant of the house. A friend once compared adolescent boys to dogs. You never quite know when they're playing and really fighting. They calm down a bit when I arrive. We go outside and enjoy the air as it cools a bit. I tell them some stories and they tell me some. One of the boy's younger tag along sister walks along the wooden railing around the deck. I'm about twenty-five years older than her and wouldn't think of trying to copy her. I contemplate telling her to be careful and not to do it because she could fall and crack her skull open, but I don't. She's happily watching her tan bare feet as they make their way around from one end to the other. She probably wouldn't event think about falling unless I mentioned it to her. Maybe someday she'll remember the pure joy and confidence of making it all the way around.
The sun sets and the sky grows dark. I collect my laundry from the night before and make my way to the car. My dad and nephew protest asking if I can stay another day. It's the usual ritual and their way of saying, �I love you.� I remind them that I have a meeting the next morning. They understand, and the truth is I wish I could stay longer, to relish that boyish lifestyle of the adolescent and the retiree. No schedules, no hurries other than when supper time rolls around, no worries other than who gets the high score on the computer games. Yes, I'd love to stay and fade back into those carefree days, but road has grown dark and the home at the end of story lies miles away.
- posted by Brian Herod @ 12:11 AM