What Happens on Choctaw Ridge Stays on Choctaw Ridge

A Facebook friend reminded me this morning that today is the third of June. A few quick mental calculations later, I realized that it has been nearly fifty years since Billie Joe McAllister, for whatever reason, jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Singer/songwriter Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" hit the charts in the summer of 1967 as I was car-hopping at our local A & W and grinding the gears between my freshman and sophomore years of high school.

Many of my ilk and era cut their teenage molars on this memorable tune and its ambiguous Southern Gothic lyrics. Basically, it tells of a young Mississippi girl who, along with the rest of her family, learns of Billie Joe's demise during a dinner-time respite from their plantation chores.

As the narrative proceeds, it becomes clear that the girl (the song's narrator) and Billie Joe had a "thing" going on. Further, we learn that, according to the young pastor there on Choctaw Ridge, there is a better than fifty-fifty chance she had been seen previously at the same bridge with Billie as the two of them were "throwin' somethin' off" it.

Speculation about what that "somethin'" might have been ran rampant back in 1967. Some thought it was a ring, while others advanced the darker suspicion of an aborted baby. Of the numerous possibilities that have been suggested, I would like to propose those I, after careful consideration, consider to be the four most likely:

• Brussels sprouts. It was no secret that Billie Joe detested them. The girl, too, much preferred a meal of black-eyed peas, biscuits, and apple pie--although Bobbie Gentry documents that, on the particular June 3 in question, she purportedly didn't eat much.

• Clari-tabs. These were water-clarifying tablets that Billie Joe had concocted earlier that spring in his chemistry class. The Tallahatchie River was known to be extremely muddy, and the young couple was merely trying to clear up the water there. Billie had a penchant for catching frogs and putting them down people's backs at picture shows, and the mud made them so much harder to spot. Billie had great hopes for his invention, and a patent was pending when he met his untimely demise.

• Billie Joe's senior term paper, plus the research he had painstakingly hand-written on fifty unlined 3 x 5" index cards. Miss Gogglesnit had given Billie an F for the project because the cards were supposed to have been lined and 4 x 6". Further, she had criticized his illustrations for the paper, the topic of which was "The Fascinating Mating Habits of Fruit Flies." Billie thought he would get a whoopin' if his parents found out he had failed an assignment, so he and the girl decided to destroy the evidence.

• Zeke Delaney. Zeke was the Carroll County bully. Years ago, when they were both children, he had convinced Billie Joe that it was fun to pee on an electric fence. Earlier that week, he had stolen a kiss from the narrator that had lasted a full five minutes. Billie Joe thought that was the last straw, and it was his turn for revenge. The girl didn't think it was that bad, as kisses go. 

Personally, I am torn as to which of these possibilities seems most credible. They all seem equally plausible, wouldn't you say?
   

A Bosom Buddy for Beenie

Beenie is coming to spend the night with me tomorrow, and this time he won't be going home alone. There in his bag--tucked amid clean clothes and diapers, conspicuous among the animal cracker crumbs and random playthings--will be something old and brown and hairy and--yes--ugly.

Finally, after living here at Googie's over a quarter of a century, son Teebo's much-loved, much-mauled replica of the infamous Gordon Shumway is going home to be reunited with his original owner. Tired of sitting on the top shelf of Teebo's old bedroom closet, Gordon is striking out to seek the companionship of a new generation of little boys.

You may remember Gordon better by his nickname, ALF. With his name derived from the acronym for "Alien Life Form," Alf was an extraterrestrial from the planet Melmac in the NBC sitcom aired in the late 1980s.

Perhaps resembling an aardvark more than anything else, Alf was a wise-cracking, cat-eating creature taken in by the Tanners, a typical middle-class American family, when his spaceship crash-landed in their garage. Despite his cynical one-liners and voracious appetite, Alf managed to endear himself to his TV family--and to many kids growing up at the same time in real American families such as ours.

When Teebo got his 18"-tall Alf doll, the two of them were inseparable. It was not unusual for him to tell me things like, "Alf and I went for a wagon ride," or "Alf and I picked some strawberries."

I became quite accustomed to hearing from Teebo that he and Alf had done this or that, even when it came to a little boy's imaginings. "Alf and I went for a ride in his spaceship," Teebo would say, and I would smile, say "That's nice," and go on with my vacuuming.

In first grade, Alf would often accompany Teebo to school, and I heard about many of their adventures at recess. So I didn't think anything about it when, on the day school pictures were taken, Teebo came home and told me, "Alf and I had our picture taken today."  Once again, I just said, "That's nice" and smiled--that is, until I saw this:

Sure enough, Alf had stuck his long, hairy nose into Teebo's first-grade picture! Fast-forwarding to what this was going to mean come Christmas card time, my mind screamed that surely this was some kind of joke. I shuffled frantically through the envelope for the real pictures, but what I saw was what I got: "Merry Christmas, everyone, from our family--and Alf!"

Well, I managed to live through that Christmas, and "The Time Teebo Had His School Picture Taken With Alf'" lives permanently among our well-loved family stories. So much so that Alf, decked out in the pomp and circumstance of mortarboard, graciously served as centerpiece at Teebo's college graduation party.

That's why I was struck the other day when I saw Alf lying listlessly on the closet shelf. It was obvious that he again longs for the companionship of a special little boy, and I know just the one to fill the bill.

Beenie, Alf is going home with you. You guys have fun together, and be sure to take good care of him. Because in about four years, he needs to look his best for your first-grade picture.

Teddy Bear's Alphabet Tea

Last week my friend Faye set a kitchen timer for five minutes. "Freewrite until you hear the bell," she told us. "The subject is 'teddy bear.'"

Some twenty years ago or more, Faye was a student in my creative writing class. Now, with the tables turned, she instructs a group of writers who meet once a week at our local senior center.

The following children's poem exists as a result of that activity. I hope you will read it to a little person you love, and tell me how it went. (And thanks to Beanie Baby "Miami," who agreed to pose here for purposes of illustration.)

Teddy Bear 's Alphabet Tea

Teddy bear,

Find a chair.

Grab that one right over there.

A-B-C

Sit with me,

And have a cup of tea.

Teddy bear,

We're a pair!

How we love to sip and share!

D-E-F-G

This can be

Such fun, as you will see!

Teddy bear,

I don't care

If you just sit there still and stare.

H-I-J

We can play

This party game all day.

Teddy bear,

If there's a tear

Upon your head below your hair--

K-L-M-N--

I can mend

The hole for you, my friend. 

Teddy bear,

Where oh where

Is heaven, and can we go there?

O-P-Q-R

Can we go far

And wish upon a star?

Teddy bear,

Do you dare

To let me see inside your lair?

S-T-U-V

And will there be

Vast treasures hidden there?

Teddy Bear,

A lovely air

Is lilting 'round us everywhere.

W-X-Y-Z

I hear and see

Magic when you play with me.

The Morel of the Story

Maybe some anonymous doorbell-ringer left a basket of flowers on your doorstep today in celebration of May Day. That is a nice enough tradition, I suppose.

But, truth be told, many of us here in mid-Missouri would gladly skip the flowers in favor of a mess of morel mushrooms. I get the whole thing about blooming and fertility and all that, and I can appreciate a colorful, aromatic bouquet of flowers as well as anyone.

But despite their noble effort to totally monopolize the five human senses, flowers score a three out of five at best. Granted, they get high marks for the senses of sight and smell, and maybe a C+ for touch, but that is about all they can realistically accomplish. We have no choice but to give them zeroes for the senses of taste (in the normal human diet, at least) and hearing.

Morels, on the other hand, are a five-ring sensory circus. It is a pleasure to search them out in the woods and watch them rise layer by layer in your bag or bucket. No other feeling rivals that spongy softness as you cradle them gently in one hand while slicing them off at the ground with the knife you are holding in the other.

A day or two later, after numerous salt-water soaks and rinses, you are still on a sensory high as you dip them in beaten egg, roll them in flour, and set them sizzling in a skillet of hot grease. At the end of it all comes the most divine taste ever experienced by man, civilized or otherwise.

We have had a rather cool spring so far, and morel season--which usually comes and goes within a week or two, depending on the weather--has run later than usual. For our family, the annual morel feast occurred last night, thanks to the keen hunting instincts and prowess of son Teebo.

Last night four generations of our family gathered to devour the circle of seasonal delicacies you see above. Mom, at age eighty-nine, was our oldest morel muncher, while two-year-old Beenie got his first taste of 'shrooms. (He called them "cookies.")

Morels are one of those carpe diem kinds of things that require us to live in the moment. When that special combination of wet weather and hot sun comes together for that all-too-brief week in April, you have to drop everything and do mushrooms, or you will miss the chance until next year. You have to abandon the diet, put the menu plan on hold, heat up the grease, and enjoy one of the truest culinary pleasures of this life.

Encouraging us to revel in life's temporal beauties, poet Robert Herrick says, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." That is okay if you like flowers. As for myself, I am happy to leave the rosebud-gathering to others and just sit here in this house where the faintest hint of fried morels still lingers.  





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The Problem With Sports

There is a certain challenge inherent in discussing sports with little kids; at least, that has been my experience with Sooby and Pooh. The problem is neither the sports nor the kids; it is the ambiguous nature of the terminology.

Take, for instance, our discussion of bowling, spawned by a great little book titled Mitchell Goes Bowling by Hallie Durand. In that story, Mitchell's dad takes him to a bowling alley, a magical place where it is acceptable to "knock things down."

However, Mitch experiences some understandable angst when he is unable to knock all the pins down at once like his dad does. This leads our little reading circle to contemplate the word strike.

"A strike means you knock all the bowling pins down," I explain. "A strike is good. You try to get all the strikes you can in ten turns."

"But what about baseball?" someone asks. "Are strikes good in baseball?"

"No, strikes are bad there," I say. "If you miss the ball three times, that's three strikes, and you're out."

"Out of the game?"

"No. You just don't get to bat anymore right then. It's like losing your turn. Strikes are good in bowling, but not in baseball." I leave it at that before one of them asks me if strikes are good for the team that is not batting. That would be just too complicated.

Fast forward a month or so. Our local community college basketball team is playing in the national tournament, and the kids and I are listening to the radio as the game's final minutes are broadcast. Our team is three points ahead with only seconds to go.

A commercial airs. "It's a time-out," I explain.

"Someone had to go to time-out? What did he do?"

"Nobody did anything wrong," I say. "A coach says 'Time Out' when he wants to call his team over for a little talk."

The next few quite harrowing minutes require explanations of foul (called on our team--controversial, though), free throw (three of them awarded to the opponent--all good!), and overtime (which, thankfully, we were able to dominate for the win).

Later that night, I switched off the televised tennis match. I was afraid someone would ask me why a score of zero is called love.

Hence, my earlier assertion that sports terminology is arbitrary, confusing, and makes absolutely no sense. How is a kid supposed to understand when a strike can be good or bad, a time-out does not carry a stigma, and love means who knows what?

Keep the sports, and give me the clear, sensible world of the arts where the actors I see on my left are stage-right and the alphabet stops at G.

Pooh's Bedtime Lesson

Night before last, Pooh chose My Visit to the Dinosaurs by Aliki for his bedtime story. Unlike the usual bedtime fare of fairy tales and talking animals, Aliki's little science book lured Googie in with the potential for some serious discussion in the areas of archaeology and paleontology. I could hardly wait for Pooh to finish brushing his teeth so that we could make our way toward bedtime by way of the Prehistoric Era.

Pages 1 through 8 were pretty predictable. We joined a typical storybook family on a trip to the museum where the dinosaur skeletons ruled.  We marveled at the long apatosaurus, preserved in sand and mud until the first dinosaur fossil was unearthed nearly 200 years ago.

Then came p. 9 with its illustration of a nest of fossil dinosaur eggs, and that's when the discussion got really interesting.

 

"Those eggs won't hatch," Pooh tells me with authority. Sniffing out a teachable moment, I prepare to pounce. Getting a whiff of the chance to discuss the stone-like condition of fossils, I prepare to lecture the boy on the nature of archaeological finds.

"No, they won't hatch," I said. "Do you know why?"  I was sure he did not. I was anticipating some lesson I could teach him about, say, sedimentary rocks.  Maybe we would even discuss the long-ago processes of carbonization and petrifaction.

"Yes," Pooh said, surprising me. "The eggs won't hatch because the daddy hasn't done anything special to them."

Say what? The daddy? Does something?  Special?  To the eggs?

I pulled my head out of academia and my eyes back to p. 9 and the nest of eggs. Sure enough, there was no sign of a daddy anywhere in the vicinity.  I had to give in on this one.

On the eve of a long day celebrating family birthdays and an early Easter, I was not interested in inquiring further about the special contributions made millions of years ago by dinosaur daddies--or, for that matter, by any daddies anytime. I am quite content to let Pooh's parents explore the concept of special with him at whatever time they--or he--chooses.  This time around, I am just the storybook reader.

So I would have to say that, night before last, I am the one who got the bedtime lesson:  Fairy tales and stories about talking animals are much safer, at least for now. As I learned, dinosaur eggs can lead you into fields you might not be quite ready to excavate.

Beenie and the Car Tote

Since Beenie turned two a couple weeks ago, he and I have added "Happy Birthday" to the repertoire of songs we regularly sing when we are together. He refers to it as simply "Happy," so when he says that word, I know that what he wants is for me to burst into a rousing rendition of that well-known song.

At first, it was no big deal. He would look at the pictures on the wall of the kids' room and name the six grandkids in turn. I would respond appropriately by singing a verse of "Happy Birthday" with each child's name inserted in its proper spot in the third line.

Then, he would ask me to sing a verse for Mommy, Daddy, Googie, Pa-pa, and his dog Bernice. Still no big deal--and actually kind of fun.  After all, I had been waiting a long time for this kid to start talking, and there is no phase of a child's learning I would rather observe and be a part of than this one.

A few days after that, as I was tucking Beenie into the toddler bed for his nap, he swept his sleepy little eyes around the room to land on a series of random objects. Many of those he has just begun to refer to by name in the stage of rapid language acquisition that typically follows on the heels of the second birthday.

So on that day, I sang "Happy Birthday" to, among other things, the light, the ceiling fan, the cordless phone, a book lying on the floor, the window, and the wall. Still no problem. Still pretty cute, really.

You may sense the subtle movement of things to a head here, but apparently I was oblivious. There is no other explanation for why, when Beenie was with me two days ago, I dug into the playroom closet to retrieve "The Car Tote."

The Car Tote is a plastic storage box containing all manner of little vehicles. Matchbox, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, Transformer, fast food meal toy--you name it, and, if it has wheels, I guarantee you it is in there.

Significantly, The Car Tote houses a collection begun more than a quarter of a century ago when Beenie's daddy was himself a toddler. By some miracle, said vehicles have managed to survive periodic house purgings, relocations, giveaways, and garage sales. With surprisingly few loose wheels, missing doors, and bent axles, they have assumed an immortality that enables them to thrill, entertain, and nurture the playtime imaginations of yet another generation of little boys.

By now, you may have guessed where this is going, and you would be right. It seems that, two days ago, every one of these little cars had a birthday that needed to be celebrated in song: "Happy Birthday, dear race car," I sang.

"Happy Birthday, dear garbage truck."  "Happy Birthday, dear moving van."  You, too, long oil tanker, and green choo-choo, and black convertible. Same for the yellow pickup; the recycling truck with separate compartments for paper, plastic, and glass; and the bright red fire truck [insert siren sound effects, performed by Beenie, here].

What a fun way to pass the better part of an hour with my favorite two-year-old. We didn't make it all the way through The Car Tote, but Googie sang until her voice was ready to give out.  Beenie, on the other hand, never tired of picking out the next little vehicle to be appropriately serenaded.

I love a world that still offers the simple joys of song and celebration--even if it means I have to sing to over a hundred little cars. As long as the song is "Happy," it's all good.