Tales from a Free-Range Childhood Read online

  JOHN F. BLAIR, PUBLISHER

  WINSTON-SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA

  JOHN F. BLAIR

  PUBLISHER

  1406 Plaza Drive

  Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103

  www.blairpub.com

  Copyright © 2011 by Donald Davis

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address John F. Blair, Publisher, Subsidiary Rights Department, 1406 Plaza Drive, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  COVER PHOTO BY DONALD’S FATHER JOE DAVIS,

  WHO LOVED TO TAKE PICTURES WITH HIS KODAK 616 BOX CAMERA

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Davis, Donald, 1944-

  Tales from a free-range childhood / by Donald Davis.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-89587-507-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-89587-509-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)- —ISBN 978-0-89587-508-2 (ebook) 1. Davis, Donald, 1944—Childhood and youth. 2. North Carolina—Social life and customs. 3. Authors, American—20th century--Biography. 4. Davis, Donald, 1944-—Family. I. Title.

  PS3554.A93347Z475 2011

  813’.54—dc22

  [B]

  2010051339

  Design by Debra Long Hampton

  For Thomas D. D.

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  1 Watch the Baby

  2 Too Much Hair

  3 Golf Tees

  4 Go Look It Up!

  5 Little Critters

  6 Boys Are Smarter?

  7 The Little Rat

  8 Responsible

  9 “Watch Where You Step!”

  10 Pimento Cheese

  11 Something up Her Sleeve

  12 The Octopus

  13 Nothing Works But Her Mouth

  14 Broken Bones

  15 Two Red Coats

  16 The Last Whooping

  17 The Ducktail

  18 Braces

  19 The New Old Car

  20 Irrational Fear

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For more than thirty years, I have traveled as a performing storyteller. The stories that I tell are my own, built from reflections upon personal experiences and a lifetime of memories. They are put together to work first in a setting of telling with a live audience and, as such, are created in an oral/kinesthetic process without text. No writing is done until I know how the story “goes,” how it works, and all of the ins and outs of telling with various audiences and various time requirements.

  The stories in this collection are in that sense not “new.” They are part of the total canon of stories that I have been telling, some for years. Two things bring them into print now. First, they have now matured to the point at which I feel comfortable documenting a written version for readers whom I shall perhaps never meet and who can ask no questions for unresolved clarity. Second, none of them have been previously published.

  They are built of childhood memories, seen through one teller’s eyes but told with certain belief that others who were there would not fail to have parallel memories. I have arranged them in the order of their chronological ending places, so the whole may have a more integrated memoir feel than in a set of unconnected stories.

  My hope is always that they will serve as memory dusters for readers, and that readers will end up telling stories of their own about which they would not have thought without reading these.

  Chapter 1

  WATCH THE BABY

  Being the firstborn child in our household and the first grandson in Mama’s entire extended family, I experienced early confusion about exactly what my name was supposed to be. When you are a child, you do not learn your name by reading it on your birth certificate. No, you infer your intended label by the repeated observation of what you happen to be called by those adults (or available children) whom you happen to trust.

  According to this process, I soon determined that my given name was Baby! After all, that was the constant oral label placed upon me by Mama, Daddy, and even my trustworthy grandmother. After all, I was the first (in our family) baby.

  In case anyone without this experience wonders, it is important to know that Baby is not a bad name. No, it is in fact a very good name. When your name is Baby, you get to do exactly whatever you want to do! It was spoiling and wonderful!

  I got along very well being the singular family Baby for nearly three years. But when the unanticipated arrival of my little brother interfered with the established order of things, even my name changed. Suddenly, everyone started calling me Donald. And my old, dear name, Baby, went to my uninvited (by me) little brother.

  People came to see him in droves. Their assessment was always the same: “Look at that beautiful baby! He is so gorgeous!” My disgust was profound.

  When I stop to think about it, the real trouble with having a little brother was not with the fact of his personal existence. No, I did not actually mind his presence at all. In fact, the first thing I did when he came home from the hospital was to admire and kiss him. No, the problem was that he interfered with my already busy life.

  As a child, I was very involved in scientific inquiry. Each day was filled with educational experiments in my early effort to put the world in controllable order. My realization was that parents simply refused to tell you things that you need to know (example: “Do you think that my broken dump truck will flush down the toilet?”), which led to a constant life of scientific experimentation. This is where the little brother problem came into the mix.

  I would be right in the middle of an educational scientific experiment when suddenly my mama would arrive. “There you are!” was her normal announcement. “I was looking for you.” Then something like this would follow: “I need to go out in the yard and hang out the clothes. You come in the house and watch the baby.”

  I was unbelievably amazed as I stared back at her. You, I thought, are an adult woman, and you cannot see that I am busy! I do not have time to watch your baby. You wanted the little thing. I guess you can watch it! Of course, these words were thought and never actually spoken.

  “Come on, now, you are my only little helper. Come in the house and watch the baby!”

  Okay, I thought. I will watch the baby. Maybe someone will come to the door, and they can have him! I simply hated to stop my important work to watch the baby.

  I had a cousin named Andy. Andy and I were born less than a year apart. I happened to get here first, but he was close behind me. Most people understood Andy and me very clearly: since we were cousins and not brothers, we liked one another! I would go to his house and spend the day playing. He would come to my house and spend the day playing. Either way, we were happy!

  One day, Andy’s mama, my aunt Eddie, had to go somewhere for the day. So the plan was made for her to bring him over to our house, where he would play with me until she got back.

  When they arrived, Andy had brought a basket that was filled with his little cars and trucks. When I saw that, I added enough of my own little cars and trucks to fill the basket to the rim. With these toys in hand, we told his mama goodbye and headed out the back door and across the yard to the corner of my daddy’s garden. There were four things there that we needed: dirt, tools for digging, the water hose, and . . . it was out of sight of my mama!

  Andy and I worked very hard. We dug the dirt loose, turned on the water hose, mixed and stirred. Pretty soon, we had created a gigantic and gorgeous pit of mud. Now we could use the mud like it was asphalt and build little roads all over the backyard that could then bake in the hot sun and be smooth and hard for our little cars and trucks. I
t really was hard work. When we first got out there, there was grass we had to get rid of before we could even begin to do anything.

  All of a sudden, our work was disturbed. It was Mama coming to look for us. “There you are, boys! I need you! I need to go back in the garden and pick some beans for our supper. Andy, you and Eddie will probably stay and eat with us before you go home tonight. So I need for you boys to go in the house and watch the baby while I am out in the garden.”

  Andy looked up at Mama and announced, “We are busy!”

  “Not anymore, you’re not,” she replied. “Now, you boys go on in the house and watch the baby.”

  My cousin Andy was only five years old, but he already had developed a totally functional little smart mouth. He was not to be stopped. “I have a question.” He was looking straight at Mama.

  “What’s your question, sweetheart?” Mama was patient with him.

  “What I want to know is, what do you have to do around here to get fired?”

  “What do you mean, ‘get fired’?” Her patience was wearing a little now.

  “I’ll tell you what I mean.” Andy dug deeper. “What do you have to do around here to get fired from watching a baby?”

  “Mister,” she called Andy, and it wasn’t even his name, “you just get that out of your little mind. You cannot get fired from watching a baby. There is no one else around here to watch him. Besides”—she was looking at both of us now—“both of you boys know deep in your hearts that you love him!”

  Andy and I were trying hard not to gag on that one. “Now”— she was talking with her finger wagging at us—“get . . . in . . . the . . . house . . . and . . . watch . . . the . . . baby!”

  We had no choice. As she headed to the garden, Andy and I started to the house.

  Just inside the kitchen, we found my brother, Joe, playing in his playpen. It was not a new playpen with silvery chrome pipes and little padded meshlike stuff around the sides. No, it was an old-fashioned, square, wooden playpen, the kind that had wooden bars. It looked exactly like a jailhouse for babies!

  Andy and I studied Joe for a minute, trying to decide exactly what we had to do to “watch” him.

  All of a sudden, we both had the same realization at the same time: Mama was way out in the garden where she could not hear us! So we decided to play our favorite game: Make the Baby Cry.

  It was a good game. We played it with cookies.

  Andy and I got the big jar of cookies down off the kitchen cabinet. We then sat there on the floor and watched Joe watch us eat cookies! His little arms would come through the bars of the playpen as he reached toward us, begging, “Aaaaah! I want a cookie! Aaaaah!” He reached so far that his face was mashed against the bars.

  We would hold a cookie out to him and hold it closer and closer until he could almost touch the cookie. Then we would pull it back and eat it ourselves. He cried every time. It was wonderful.

  Pretty soon, all the cookies were gone and we had to play another game. We called the new game “Fishing for Babies.”

  Joe would periodically drop one of his toys out of the playpen or accidentally lose a toy out through the bars. He then wanted us to pick up the toy and toss it back in to him. We would pick up the toy. But before we tossed it back, we would tie a long piece of string to it. Then, holding our end of the string, we would launch the toy back toward Joe in the playpen. When he tried to grab it, Andy and I would jerk the other end of the string. We did this over and over again, just like trying to hook a trout! It was great fun for all three of us. Joe laughed so much (especially when we called him a fish) that he forgot about the entire cookie business.

  Finally, we were tired of that. “Play with your toys,” I ordered Joe. “Play with your toys and stop bothering us.”

  He did not agree. “Aaaaah, play with me, play with me!” Joe wailed.

  “Hush!” I countered his noise. “Play with your toys. You have plenty of toys. I know what. Play ‘Punching Bag’ with your little rattle. I’ll fix it for you.”

  One of Joe’s favorite little toys was a rattle that had originally belonged to me. It was a rattle that was very popular in those days but disappeared from the market as soon as child safety was invented.

  The rattle was like a plastic clown’s head, slightly smaller than a tennis ball. It was hollow with something like dried beans or BBs inside so it would rattle. But instead of having a handle like most baby rattles, it was different. Right where the clown’s neck would logically be, there was fastened a metal spring. The spring was very flexible and about four or five inches long. At its bottom end, there was attached a large rubber suction cup. The idea was that the suction cup could be stuck to places like the baby’s high-chair tray or the kitchen tabletop, and you could bat the little clown around, watch the head dance, and listen to the rattle. Joe loved it.

  One day, our daddy had come walking into the kitchen when Joe was on the floor playing with the rattle. Daddy had picked up the rattle, licked the suction cup, and stuck it sideways on the lower kitchen cabinet door. “Now”—he pointed to the rattle as he informed Joe—“you have a punching bag! See? Go over there and knock its head off!”

  Joe really loved it now. He went over to the quivering clown’s head, and all afternoon he punched it back and forth—Pow, pow, pow! It was great.

  Now, Andy and I were ready to fix the rattle so Joe could again have his punching bag. We pushed the playpen across the floor until one barred side was flush against the bottom cabinet door. I picked up the rattle, reached through the bars, and stuck it onto the cabinet. “Now,” I instructed, “punching bag!”

  Joe crawled over to the rattle. Pow! went his little two-year-old fist. The rattle immediately fell off the cabinet door.

  I realized what the problem was. I had forgotten to wet the rubber suction cup. So I picked up the rattle from where it had landed on the floor, licked it all over, and reached back to stick it again.

  That’s when Andy got his good idea. (From here on, everything was his fault.) “Stick it on his head!” he suggested.

  So we used the best flat place we could find: his forehead. We stuck that slobbery suction cup right in the center of Joe’s forehead as firmly as we possibly could.

  It was fabulous! The little clown stuck out from Joe’s forehead like he was a unicorn. When he moved his head, it swayed back and forth. He batted it alternately with his hands, at the same time shaking his head and laughing. Andy and I were out of control, rolling on the floor and laughing until tears came out of our eyes. This was the best thing we had ever done!

  My brother, Joe, thought that the stuck rattle was funny for all of about two minutes. Then it started to hurt. He began to whimper, “Get it off, get it off!” Then his sound accelerated to a cry: “It hurts. Help, help, get it off!”

  We tried to get it off. But it wouldn’t come off. We pulled and pulled and pulled. I would hold Joe around the waist while Andy pulled on the rattle. It looked like Joe’s neck got longer and his head distorted, but still the rattle would not come off. He kept on crying and begging.

  Finally, we got him to sit down on the bottom of the playpen, wrap his arms around the wooden bars, and put his chin on the top rail. Andy and I both got on the outside and pulled together. All of a sudden, the rattle came loose with a loud Pop! and Andy and I tumbled backwards onto the floor.

  When we got to our feet and looked at Joe, he did not look quite right. There in the center of his forehead was a big, round, red, sucked-up place. And we discovered soon that it would not wash off!

  I knew what to do. All we needed to do, I thought, was to cover it up with some of Mama’s makeup.

  When we went to look for the makeup, it was nowhere to be found. So we began to look in all the cabinets in the bathroom. There had to be something there that would work. Suddenly, Andy picked up a large bottle. “Let’s try this!” he suggested.

  I looked at the familiar bottle. It was what was always used when we had poison ivy or an insect bite:
a large, full bottle of pink calamine lotion.

  “Stop crying,” we told Joe. “We are going to fix you. You are going to be better than new!”

  We found cotton balls and, together, finally managed to get the bottle open. Andy gave the directions, and I did the application. We soaked a cotton ball with calamine lotion, and I dabbed it all around over the big red place on Joe’s forehead.

  It covered it up completely, but now it was pink.

  Andy came to the rescue. “If you put it all the way across his forehead,” he suggested, “it will look even, and she won’t even notice it.”

  I put the pink lotion carefully across Joe’s forehead and down to the corners of his eyebrows. This did not look like it helped. Now, he looked like an old two-tone car.

  “Put some more on,” was Andy’s only suggestion.

  I put on more and more. There just never was a good stopping place. In no time, the big bottle was totally empty, and wherever he was not wearing a diaper Joe was a shining, solid pink baby all over. He looked good!

  Just at that time, Mama came back from the garden. She had a large bucket of beans that she was going to work on while she sat on the back porch. We came out the door to meet her as she arrived.

  “How’s the baby?” she asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Did you watch him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I need to check on him?”

  “Nooo! ”Andy and I answered in unison this time.

  “Oh? I think I better check on him.”

  When she walked in the kitchen door and saw my smiling, solid pink little brother, she almost shrieked. “He’s sick!” Immediately, she grabbed him up in her left arm and put her right hand on his forehead to see if he had a temperature. She left the hand there just long enough that when she removed it, all of the pink stuff came right off on her hand, and there it was, uncovered: the big, sucked-up red place!

  I realized in that moment how completely my mother could get mad in a hurry. She totally lost her punctuation. It was going to be one sentence until the end of the day: “What in the world have you done to my baby I can’t take my eyes off of you for ten minutes what have you done to him you can’t be trusted farther than I can throw you. . . .” All I could think was that this story was going to have a very bad ending.