Tales from a Free-Range Childhood Read online

  Then the unbelievable happened. I could not believe what I heard. She was still going: “I am as mad as a wet hen look at me when I am talking to you. . . .”

  Then came these magic words: “You two boys you two boys you two boys never never never get to watch him again!”

  We did it! We got fired from watching the baby. And from then on, no matter what I was doing, I never again had to watch the baby.

  Chapter 2

  TOO MUCH HAIR

  Back when I was on the way to being born, my mother had a terrible, terrible, terrible time getting me here. When I finally arrived, I was a very banged-up, squashed, and bruised little baby.

  Mama and I stayed in the hospital for a pretty long time, so I am told. It was 1944, and everyone stayed in the hospital for a long time back then. Finally, someone decided it was time for us to go home, so we did.

  As usually happens, people began to come by to visit Mama and to admire the new baby. I use the word admire because that is what people normally do when judging new babies, “Oh, how cute,” being the usual verdict.

  In this case, it was different. The visitors would cheer Mama, who had indeed endured a very difficult childbirth, then they would look cautiously at me. The most often reported response was, “Don’t worry, he’ll get better!” I was the family’s ugly baby.

  Looking back later, I realized that being ugly does not hurt you if you don’t know it. So I got along just fine for nearly three years. Then a national disaster occurred right in our own family: I got a little brother!

  For nearly three years, I had never given one single thought to having a need for a little brother. It had never once occurred to me to ask for one. My parents got him anyway.

  My little brother, Joe, was a Cesarean baby, and as soon as he arrived, everyone thought he was beautiful! Visitors to see the new baby kept coming, and I had to listen to all the comments: “Isn’t he beautiful?” “Isn’t he a darling?” “He’s precious!” “His head’s not squashed like that other one was!” “Look at that hair!”

  This was the situation: my mother and I both had what Mother called “little mouse hair.” It was thin and fine and nondescript brown. But our daddy had thick, wavy, curly, almost-black hair. My new brother, Joe, had gotten his hair from Daddy.

  Mama loved his hair. She would roll it around in her fingers with constant verbal admiration: “Oh, it is so beautiful, it is so beautiful. I wish I had hair like that!” Her often-used compound description of Joe’s hair was, “Naturally curly, wasted on a boy.”

  Only I knew the real truth. No matter how many times Mama insisted that she wished for hair like Joe’s hair, I knew that what she really wanted was not a baby boy with curly hair; what she really wanted was a little girl. I figured this out because I was the first one to notice that she refused to cut Joe’s hair.

  As he grew, his hair grew with him. It got longer and longer, curlier and curlier. In no time, he and I looked like a little boy and his cute little sister. We would go with Mama on trips to town, and strangers would come up to look into the baby buggy. When they saw Joe, they would beam to Mama, “Oh, what a perfectly darling little girl you have!”

  I was totally embarrassed. I would think, almost out loud, He’s not a girl. Look in his diaper. He’s not a girl! It was terrible.

  This went on and on. Years actually passed. My little brother, Joe, got to be five years old, and in his entire life he had never had one single haircut. He looked like either Shirley Temple or a miniature version of a television wrestler. Still, Mama loved his hair.

  The summer when he was five years old, one topic of conversation seemed to dominate every family visit. From Grandma and Granddaddy to every aunt and uncle, the same question came: “Will Lucille cut Joe’s hair before he starts to school in September?”

  Opinion was divided. Daddy said, “We need to cut his hair, Lucille. The children at school will tease him and make fun of him. At home, it doesn’t matter because we love him. Besides that, if someone comes to see us, we can hide him in the closet. But at school, the children will call him a girl. Then he will go into the wrong bathroom, and when he comes out, he will not know who he is. We need to cut his hair!”

  Mama could almost not reply. Her eyes would fill with tears whenever cutting Joe’s hair was mentioned. She would nearly sob and finally stifle it. “I don’t think I can do it. It is so beautiful. I don’t think I can do it!”

  Our daddy had one favorite hobby. It was called “annoying Mama.” He had a large variety of ways of practicing this hobby, but this particular summer he invented a new way.

  He found, way back in an old drawer in a bedroom, an old-fashioned pair of hair clippers saved from his own childhood. They were the very clippers his own mother had used on his brothers and him when they were small.

  The clippers did not plug in. No, they had two handles specially shaped for your thumb and fingers, and they worked smoothly and perfectly once Daddy cleaned and oiled the works.

  He would pull out the clippers and chase my brother, crying after him, “I’m going to get you, I’m going to get you. I’m going to snatch you bald headed!”

  Joe thought it was great fun. He played his role to the hilt. He would run and scream at the top of his lungs, “Mama, Mama, save me! Daddy’s going to cut off all my hair!” He was laughing all the while.

  Mama would be furious. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” She would rein both of them in. “I give up. I will cut his hair. I will cut it myself the night before he goes to school. But nobody else better touch him!” Since she was looking directly at my father when these words were spoken, I knew they had nothing to do with me.

  It was late summer. School had not started. Every day Joe and I spent playing out of doors. Sometimes, we played in the yard. Sometimes, we played in the dirt of the garden. Occasionally, we played in the barn loft down in the cow pasture. Our favorite place, however, was to cross the little creek behind the barn and play in the woods on the other side. Mama never came across the creek, and when we went over there she didn’t know what we were doing.

  All summer long, we seemed to have company. The week before, our cousins from Florida had been at our house for a week-long visit. We loved it when they came because they always brought us fascinating presents.

  One year, they brought us little baby stuffed alligators. Joe loved his. I told him that if he put it in water, it would wake up and come back to life. He put it into the bathtub and filled the tub with water. The little alligator was stuffed with sawdust, and as the stuffing started to absorb water it began to swell. “Look, Joe.” I pointed. “See, it’s growing!”

  We watched as the alligator grew round and tight. Suddenly, it seemed to explode, and the wet sawdust flew all over the bathroom! Mama made me clean it up, and I was forced to give him my alligator. It was worth it, though, just to see him cry.

  This year, though, there were no more alligators. No, this year, they brought us wonderful little molded-rubber Disney character hats. We loved the bright hats. Mine was Donald Duck, all yellow with a blue little cap of his own on top. Joe’s was Mickey Mouse. Mama told us that wearing hats in the house was not polite and we should wear them when we were playing outside.

  So, on this late-summer day, Joe and I were in the woods across the creek playing imaginary games as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. All of a sudden, Joe pulled off his Mickey Mouse hat. “Something is wrong with this hat,” he announced. “It stinks! And it’s making my head all slick and wet.”

  I laughed. “You’re wearing a rubber hat on a hot day in the summer. It’s making you sweat.”

  “I don’t sweat,” was his answer. “I’m just a little boy. Old men sweat.”

  “Well, then”—I was careful not to smile while I looked at him—“it must have finally happened. You have too much hair. You are going to have to get a haircut.”

  Joe looked at me so innocently. “Where do you get one?”

  I looked back with equal innocence. “You sit
right there under that tree. I will be right back!”

  I silently eased in through the back door of the house. Mama was busy in the kitchen; she didn’t even know I was there.

  One of the things I knew about our house was the contents of every single drawer in every single piece of furniture in the entire house. So I knew exactly where to go to retrieve the little hair clippers from their own hiding place.

  With the clippers out of sight in my pocket, I slipped back out the door and headed over to the woods. Joe was patiently waiting. By now, his curly hair had dried and was flopping all around his shoulders.

  “Come and get behind this big tree so I can see better.”

  He followed my orders.

  I looked at his long, beautiful hair—the hair that my mother loved. Suddenly, I had two overwhelming thoughts. If I actually mess with his hair, I am going to be in bad trouble. Then I thought, almost out loud, I am going to do it anyway!

  Suddenly, as I studied Joe’s head, I had a vision of our grandfather. Our granddaddy Walker had very white hair, but his hair had a peculiar growing habit. His hair only grew right around the edges of his head. On top of his head, he looked like he had been oiled and polished. He was totally to-the-skin bald.

  The question seemed to come out of my mouth all on its own: “How would you like to look like Granddaddy?”

  Joe smiled. “That would be fine!”

  I started to work. First, I mowed a little road from his forehead right back toward the crown of his head. Then I started to widen it out carefully so that I cleared the top but stopped right at the edges. Once in a while, Joe would reach up and rub his little fingers over the part that I had cut. “Wooo! That’s fuzzy!” was his report.

  “Do you like that?” I checked it out with him.

  “Yeah, that’s a lot better now!”

  Looking at him, I realized that he had been transformed from Shirley Temple to Benjamin Franklin. It was a good job. We ran around in the woods and played like that for the rest of the afternoon. We were getting tired out when Mama called from the back door, “Supper’s ready. Come to supper!”

  As we started toward the house, I suggested to Joe, “When we go in the house, be sure to keep your hat on.”

  “But we’re not supposed to wear them in the house. Mama said so,” he objected.

  “New rules. Now we are,” I assured him.

  When we entered the kitchen, no one was in there. Every afternoon when Daddy got home from work, he went in the living room, turned the radio on, and went to sleep in the big chair. Mama had gone to wake him up for supper.

  Joe and I sat down in our chairs and waited. It was only a moment until Mama came back into the kitchen. The first thing she spotted was Joe wearing his Mickey Mouse hat at the supper table. She shook her head. “You forgot something, sweetheart. You remember that we don’t wear hats at the table. I don’t even like hats in the house. Now, take off your hat so we can eat.”

  Joe smiled, nodded his head forward, and removed the hat. His freshly cleaned head was shining directly at Mama. She let out a scream. Then it sounded and felt like she was sucking all of the air out of the kitchen. It was like a long, slow wail. Then all the air went out of her, and she deflated and landed.

  As soon as Mama landed, I knew that she was our mother. She did not even begin to talk to my brother. She started talking to me. I thought, Why are you talking to me? Talk to him! He’s the one with the haircut.

  Then she started asking questions. She didn’t ask, “What happened to him?” No, the trial was over. Her only question was, “What did you do to him?”

  I couldn’t think of what to say. Without even having the thought, I heard my voice answering her question: “I guess he got too close to the fence, and a big cow licked his hair off!”

  Her face did not look human.

  In the middle of all this, Daddy came in the kitchen door from his nap in the living room. When he saw my brother, Joe, he started slapping his knees and laughing his head off.

  That is what made Mama mad at him. She turned on him. “Stop laughing. This is not funny!” All of us thought it was funny, and I wondered what was wrong with her sense of humor.

  Mama continued, “Stop that laughing this minute. He needs to be punished, not laughed at!”

  I was mystified. Why, I wondered, does my brother need to be punished? He didn’t do anything. Then I caught on. She was talking about me.

  Daddy looked at me. “Let’s go out into the backyard. And you bring a chair from the kitchen.”

  “Oh, no! He’s going to kill me with a chair!”

  Once in the backyard, Daddy told me to sit in the chair, sit on my hands, and not move my hands no matter what happened. Then he slowly pulled the clippers out of his pocket, ceremoniously handed them to my brother, and said, “It’s your turn now. Do whatever you want to do!”

  It took no more than ten minutes for my brother to finish with me. When he got through, my head looked like a science-fiction planet from outer space.

  It was on a Friday when all this happened. My brother, Joe, and I both played all day Saturday with our new haircuts. Then, on Sunday morning, we were shocked. Mama announced that we had to go to Sunday school and church looking like we did: five-year-old Benjamin Franklin and a science-fiction planet from the far reaches of space. We were the providers of all the humor that was there that Sunday at the Methodist church.

  On Monday afternoon, Daddy finally took us to the barbershop. Herschel Caldwell, our barber, took one look at us and quickly stepped back. “Wow! I’ve never seen anything like this! What am I supposed to do about it?”

  Daddy chuckled his answer: “Skin ’em good, Herschel, skin ’em good!”

  And that is why, on the first day of school that year, both Joe and I entered our classrooms totally and completely bald.

  For some reason, no one in the family could ever find the hair clippers again . . . and Mama said she knew nothing about it!

  Chapter 3

  GOLF TEES

  From the time of my earliest memory, I loved to go shopping with Mama. After Joe was born, I loved these trips even more. Mama would call either Aunt Esther or our old neighbor, Miss Annie, and ask to leave Joe with them for most of the day. Then she and I would go to town. It was one of the only times that I reclaimed her entire attention after she had two of us to deal with.

  I loved it when we went to the dime store. Waynesville was too little to have Woolworth’s—no, you had to make a trip to Asheville for that. We had Eagles, and it was just fine. There was more there than I could get into.

  It was wonderful when we went to Smith’s Drug Store for our lunch. We would sit in a wooden booth and order grilled cheese sandwiches and a fresh-made orangeade or cherry smash to drink. Sometimes, we might have an ice-cream cone for our dessert.

  My favorite stores were Parkman’s and Joe Howell’s hardware stores. If we went there, there was a lot for me to play with or get into before she finished her business and found me.

  The store that I hated to go into was Hugh Massie’s Toggery.

  Mr. Massie was one of the main leaders at the Methodist church. He and Mrs. Massie sat near the front on the left, and they never missed a Sunday. Some people in town even called our church “Hugh Massie’s church.” I knew he was important.

  Mr. Massie was not the reason that I did not like the store. No, he was a very kind and friendly man. It was just that he did not plan The Toggery with children’s interests in mind. They had nothing in that store but women’s clothes. There must have been ten thousand women’s dresses, each one of them different from all the others. They were all on hangers in what looked like long wooden closets with no doors on them. Some of the long, open closets were along the walls, and others were in rows out in the floor.

  There was a Shoe Department and a Hat Department and a Belt Department and an Underwear Department and a Coat Department. Not a single one of these had one single thing that a little boy found to be of any inte
rest at all.

  Mama loved to go into The Toggery. She was almost never planning to buy anything. She just wanted to go in there and look. She also wanted to talk incessantly with the ladies that worked there about everything and everyone under the sun. She would look for hours through the racks of dresses, gradually choosing a few to take back into one of the dressing rooms to try on. I knew she was not buying anything on any of these miserable days. She would try each one on, then come out to get the opinion of one of the ladies who was in charge of the sales. Every time, the dress that she tried seemed to have something wrong about it, so there was an excuse to put it back and try ten more.

  Mr. Massie had nothing at all to do with any of this. He mostly stayed up in an office that was above the front windows of the store. You could look up and see him there, looking down on his Toggery world.

  The more Mama loved to go to The Toggery, the more I hated it. I did learn, however, that if she was totally out of sight in the dressing room for a safe period of time, I could climb over into the bottom of one of the open closets where all the dresses were hanging and crawl up and down under them. I could even get behind the dresses and move up and down the length of the whole parade of them, sometimes separating two of them so I could look out to see who and what happened to be in that part of the store.

  There were even times when I deliberately stood right behind dresses that were being looked through by some old lady. The old lady would separate the dresses to look at the front of one, and there I was, like a ghost in the back of the rack, silently startling the shopper. Most of the ones to whom that happened quickly picked up their pocketbooks and left the store.