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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781481746403 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 1 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Cosmos Screen
By Perry Kelly
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2013 Perry KellyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4817-4642-7
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE ALABAMA EXPERIENCE
The year of the "cosmos screen" was 1930, the time of my earliest memories, before which all was prehistory and after which, for me, came new realities. Cool shades of pastel cosmos blossoms swayed in a breeze high above my head. The space around the house, called the yards, were white sand swept clean with brooms of dried branches. Rural Barbour County, Alabama, a stretch of sandy farm country, like the rest of America was entering the horrors of "the great Depression." At the time, my father was a very poor "sharecropper" tending land owned by Mama's uncle. A "sharecropper" is one who rents land with the promise of sharing the farm products, usually fifty percent, with the landowner. Unfortunately, the sharecropper usually had to borrow money for seeds and fertilizer so that he more often than not had nothing left after the crops were gathered!
The house in which my family lived sat only a few yards from the cosmos flowers in the middle of this white oasis. It was a simple, unpainted frame structure facing east and the unpaved sandy road. The house had a front porch, a main room, a second room to the rear, and a "dog-trot" across which one entered the kitchen-dining room. The main room had a fireplace and two double beds. The second room had only two double beds and a closet for clothes. We had carefully wallpapered each room with newspapers and magazines for insulation. The kitchen had a wood-fired cook-stove around which we gathered for meals, for wintertime family conversation, and beside which we often bathed in a metal washtub. It seemed that this last room always served as my retreat to Mama and the smells of country cooking. The center piece in this room was a long hand-hewn table with benches on either side which served as dining table, as study table for my older brothers, and as the family center. There was also a tin-front "safe" that held dishes but more importantly it contained cooked food and pies! It was called the "pie safe." The stove was warm and comforting in winter, hot in summer, but always ready for another family meal. The "warmer" above the stove nearly always concealed warm baked potatoes or fresh cornbread.
Several kittens, a couple of dogs, and sometimes a few chickens dozed under the house or huddled there in winter weather. Occasionally it was also the retreat for a wandering pig or hog that would enter the space amid ensuing noisy opposition.
The "smoke house" was located just to the rear of the kitchen at the edge of the white sand yard. It housed the smoked or salted winterkill of meat, a few gallons of sorghum syrup, and often a little golden corn whiskey "for Daddy's cough" or for wintertime sore throats. We stacked firewood under the eve of the smokehouse for use in cooking and heating the house. Of course, there was no electricity in rural areas at that time. The garden and the small barn with its single cow stall, a place for our one mule, and the adjoining pig pen sat just to the rear west of the smokehouse. We kept the cow that provided all of our milk and butter, and the few hogs that would come to the table in their own time, in this small enclosure throughout the summer. In the fall they were free to forage over the farm during the day, and we would round them up each night. It was customary for neighbors to help each other to keep up with these unmarked animals as they roamed the open fields. Then only a few feet from the barn, at the edge of the corn field, one could find the "outhouse," privy or toilet. We had no plumbing.
Still farther west through the field and down a steep incline into the woods, the cool clear water of a spring gurgled from beneath the bank at the foot of a large tree. The stream was a delightful place for us to play while Mama did the family wash beside the spring. She boiled the clothes in the big iron pot above a wood fire. Afterwards she would beat them with an oak paddle on a nearby wood block. She used the soap that she had made from pork fat and lye. It was from that spring that all of our water came, for use in the house as well as for the animals, bucket by bucket up the well-worn path.
Except for the garden to the rear of the house, in every direction from the house were fields of cotton, corn or peanuts. The dirt road ran through the farm past our house. To the north it crossed a cool stream in the shade of spreading oak trees. To the south the road passed the church with its graveyard, or cemetery, and continued past the home of my aunt and then on to the school; only grades one through eight. That road was a symbolic path from the cosmos screen to what was to become my world. That tall stand of cosmos became the screen that separated what I was from that which I was to become.
For a boy of five this was a sensuous place filled with new experiences and simple pleasures! I loved the cosmos. I loved having my bare feet in sand warmed by the sun or cooled by the shade. I delighted wading in the cool stream. I enjoyed the closeness of family, the beauty of tall corn, and the rough tongue of the cow as she licked my hand. We had a great tom turkey that I liked to see strut and gobble around the yard. I also liked to frighten him so that he would gobble noisily! However, one day I jumped from the porch to scare him, only to fall too close to the turkey. The darn bird jumped on top of me and terrified me with the terrible flurry of those huge wings! Daddy rescued me, and I respected that turkey's space thereafter.
At that age, it seemed to me that everyone was either in my family or "kin" to me. Everyone outside my immediate family had the title of uncle, aunt, or cousin. We learned to use those titles when referring to, or addressing people. It was always Uncle Victor or Aunt Callie or Cousin Mary! By the age of five, my world had expanded from the cosmos screen. I then knew the way along the road past the church and graveyard, past the house of Uncle Lijah and Aunt Callie, all the way to Uncle Victor's house. All of this was a distance of about four miles. Close to the edge of our farm, in the shade of tall oak trees, stood the white frame building where everyone I knew went to "church" when the preacher came one weekend each month. Often Grandpa would come from Georgia in his big, black, high-top Buick to preach and then to visit us. Man Pitts was Grandpa's driver, and he was the first black person that I remember seeing. Grandpa lived about sixty miles away, which was somewhere beyond what I could grasp; but I really liked that big car! It was the largest car at church, and I was not allowed to play in it as we kids often did in the smaller model T Fords in the area. It was during one of those visits and in Grandpa's service that I first saw the men washing each other's feet, while the women sitting on the other side of the room, were doing the same. During this act, the congregation continued singing, and often many of them began crying. On one particular day at church, a terribly frightening thing happened. After the regular service, everyone got into the cars, wagons and buggies and drove north of our house to a wide place in the creek. There Grandpa, accompanied by Daddy and Mama dressed in their Sunday clothes, waded over waist-deep into the water. Then, with singing and some words from Grandpa, he pushed Daddy and Mama, one at the time, under the water! The other church members stood on the bank and continued to sing. Then we all went home to Sunday dinner. For me that was a frightening event. I later learned that this activity was part of their joining the church ritual called "baptizing." To this day, I still do not like the idea of someone putting me under water for any reason.
The church benches were hard and too high for my feet to touch the floor. I often became restive during the service which could easily last two hours afterwards. My sister Louise and I were then allowed to go outside to play with other children. We would often climb into different wagons, buggies and even some of the cars. Sometimes my oldest brother, Marvin, would just sit in one car with a girl, and he would not like it when we came to that car. Jay enjoyed shooting marbles in the sand, where he would win a lot of marbles. Once each year Grandpa and Grandma came to the church for the Communion. The members brought food that they would set out on a long table made of wire fencing stretched beneath the oak trees. I remember that I liked the fried chicken and especially the chocolate cakes. I also knew who made the best of each! I later learned that these were special days for "communion" that included the foot washing ritual. I do remember that Grandpa gave very long sermons.
The school that my two older brothers, Marvin and Jay, attended was about one mile from our house along the same road and east of the church. Often they would let me go with them. The trek was long for me, but there was always time to play along the road, to explore bird nests, or to just shuffle my toes in the dry sand. In winter, the ice spewed up along the road, especially in the clay banks, and it was fun to crush it with my bare feet. Next year 1931, I will be six years old. Then, I will go to this school daily.
The wood-frame schoolhouse had three rooms. There were two rather large classrooms, each containing desks, the teacher's desk, a chalkboard, and a wood-burning stove. Two students would share each of the double-seated desks, and as in church, my feet would not touch the floor. A third room contained firewood along with our coats, and brooms for sweeping both the floors and the yard. It was in this room that we also kept our lunches that we brought in tin buckets. It was also in this room that the teacher kept the ever-threatening switch that I witnessed the teacher use on Jay one day while I was there. It scared me, and I ran all the way home. It was always a standing rule at our home that if one of us got into "trouble" at school we would be in trouble with Daddy when we got home. Of course, Daddy, as promised, used a switch on Jay when he returned home!
Older students were taught in one room while the younger ones were in the other. Students in this school could go as far as the eighth grade and then transfer to the bigger school in the town of Clayton, unless they had to work on the farms. For me the idea of going anywhere beyond the immediate area of home was a strange idea. Since I was so close to the cosmos screen, I only knew that this road went to the church with its cemetery, to the school, past Uncle Lijah's and to Uncle Victor's house.
From the school I could look north and see the house across the fields where Uncle Artis and Aunt Alice Benefield lived. Aunt Alice was Mama's aunt. They had several children. One of them, Cousin Faye, was about my age. She often came to play with my sister Louise and me. Faye's mother never grew cosmos or other flowers as did Mama and I would get very angry when Faye picked flowers in our yard. Mama told me that everyone should grow flowers just as we grew vegetables.
Aunt Callie, who lived near the church, often had headaches and took many aspirins every day. She was a big person who made biscuits larger than any I have ever seen. That was the way Uncle Lijah wanted them for his syrup or gravy. More importantly, she baked big sweet potatoes that oozed sweet candy from each end. She would give me a few anytime I would go the short distance to her house for them. She seemed to get them ready much too near the dark of night, and I passed the graveyard hurriedly. It seemed never to be fast enough. Sometimes I would tremble and turn cold as I ran past the graveyard at dusk. Mama always assured me that nothing would bother me there, but Jay would laugh and tell me that "nothing but a ghost" would get me. Anyway, the sweet potatoes were good, especially if I could get them home before dark. It was customary to bring such foods, or even candy, home to be shared.
In the summer of 1930 the corn beside the cosmos patch and back of the barn was very high and dark green. The shadows were cool as the long blades swayed above my head much as did the cosmos blossoms. One day, a female cousin of my age and I came here to play and, as it often does, play became exploration and learning! Anyway, we were exploring our anatomical parts just as my brother, Jay, came around the corner of the barn and saw us. He immediately made it seem that what we were doing was very bad and he sent my cousin home. He said that it was so bad that Daddy would "skin me alive" if he learned about it. However, he promised that Daddy would not know about it if I would never do it again, and if I did what he told me to do. Even though I did not understand, I did not dare refuse his offer, a threat that he held over me for a long time. I later had nightmares about this incident that, strangely, included me being in my wedding to an objectionable person.
In the house north of us, beyond a strip of woods and a creek, there lived a rather large family. I really did not know them because, like us, they had just moved there, and they were not kin to us. Daddy said that they were good folks, and we sometimes did play beneath their peach and pear trees. Early one morning in the fall when the weather turned cold enough for a fire in the fireplace, one of the boys in that house used what he thought was kerosene to start the fire, only it was gasoline! The explosion was awful, and the boy died. The house burned, and the family moved away. That was my first knowledge of death. The loss made me very sad.
That September, Mama was sick, and Aunt Callie came to help her. Grandma also came from Georgia. It was then that my brother Clifton was born. Even to this five-year-old the new baby looked so very small. Daddy said that I also was once that little. Now our family consisted of Daddy, Mama, Marvin, Jay, me, Louise, and Clifton. Daddy said that we needed a larger house.
The Christmas of 1930 was a big event in our house. Aunt Callie sent a big pan of those sweet potatoes, Grandma made a bowl of ambrosia, and Mama made some eggnog. Marvin added extra coconut to the ambrosia, and everyone laughed when Grandma added some rum to the eggnog while Grandpa was outside! Santa Clause left apples, oranges and long striped sticks of peppermint candy through which I learned to suck juice from the oranges.
Jay had developed a habit of sleepwalking, and he would sometimes wet the bed. Mama stopped scolding him. Instead, at night she would put a sheet around his waist, knotted in the back, so that he would not sleep on his back and thus not wet the bed. No one seemed to know what to do about his sleepwalking. Once in his sleepwalking Jay placed some large rocks on the front porch but he could not lift them by himself the following morning. Marvin had to help him remove them. There were later episodes of sleepwalking for Jay. Some years later he dreamed that he was swimming and dove from the foot of the bed into the floor!
Daddy did find a slightly larger house and a farm that he rented as a sharecropper located only about three miles south beyond the farm of Uncle Victor and Aunt Ollie Baxley. It was winter of 1931 and time to prepare for the new crops that Daddy said would grow better there because the soil was less sandy. Relatives came to help us to load our things onto the wagons and to move us. Thus I left behind the cosmos flowers, the cosmos screen, after which life would be forever an expanding experience with perpetual references back to that screen.
A New House: A New World
Our new house, about three miles south of our former home, was not a new one at all, and it was very similar to the one we had just outgrown. It was the same aged gray wood. It really did seem larger, and the kitchen was in the house rather than being set apart as the other one was. The house faced west, overlooking the same winding road of white sand that crossed a creek just a short distance south of the house. A porch extended across the front of the house, beyond which there was a large room with a fireplace as in the older house. This served as both the front room and a bedroom with two double beds in it. Back of that room were two other bedrooms, then the kitchen and dining area that opened onto the back porch. The roof was made of metal and I loved to hear the rain falling on that roof.
Mama and Daddy said that, because the former occupants were not clean housekeepers, we would have to take everything out of the house and clean for bedbugs! They assigned tasks to each member of the family, and we scrubbed everything with water brought from the spring a short distance from the rear of the house. We scrubbed the walls with lye made from oak ashes, and we scrubbed the floors with lye, soap and sand. Even the yellowed newspapers, which had been pasted on the walls to keep out the cold, were taken down and replaced. The house was cleaned, and it smelled very fresh. The wide boards of the floor were beautiful. They were almost white with deep wood grain. The surface of the wood, due to age and use, was a little fuzzy and soft to the touch. I enjoyed the feel of the floor to my hands and bare feet. Sometimes I would just lie on the floor with my cheek on the cool smooth surface and smell the clean! Of course, we were all nervous about the bedbugs until Mama assured us that we had killed all of them.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Cosmos Screen by Perry Kelly. Copyright © 2013 by Perry Kelly. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Travel.................... xiii
Introduction.................... xv
Chapter 1 THE ALABAMA EXPERIENCE.................... 1
Chapter 2 A TIME BEFORE THE COSMOS SCREEN.................... 19
Chapter 3 THE GEORGIA EXPERIENCE.................... 25
Chapter 4 THE FLORIDA EXPERIENCE.................... 57
Chapter 5 THE MILITARY EXPERIENCE.................... 67
Chapter 6 THE UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE.................... 87
Chapter 7 THE ORLANDO EXPERIENCE.................... 109
Chapter 8 THE DOCTORAL STUDY.................... 147
Chapter 9 RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA.................... 163
Chapter 10 CULLOWHEE, NORTH CAROLINA.................... 175
Chapter 11 INTO RETIREMENT.................... 247
Chapter 12 EPILOGUE.................... 317