By Tom Poland, A Southern Writer
TomPoland.net
Late 1950s. May 1. Riding with Dad by a cement block house. White. A few clothes out back on the clothesline. Diapers mainly. A tricycle with a wheel missing lay over on its side. A few rusty chairs shaded a patch of grass. Close by sat a sporty aqua Chevy Apache pickup with white trim and windshield visor. That could only mean one thing. Daddy’s friend, Lemuel, was there to collect the rent. We wheeled in and stepped into the dirt. Lemuel walked over washing his hands as if he had just planted a tomato.
“They just upped and left. Gone.”
I knew what he meant. Part of my Southern education was translating that country talk folks lapsed into without missing a beat. All kinds of sayings and wry cracker wisecracks made up a language as colorful as any. Yes, I used the word “cracker.” I’m not ashamed to be called a Georgia cracker. I’d rather be called cracker than Nabisco or Saltine. Cracker works just fine.
All this language reminiscing came to me on the first Sunday in April when I spotted an open book on an old table in a shack empty for a coons age. Household goods and furniture scattered here and there. What once was a fine pair of leather boots stood forlornly. A beautiful multicolored quilt draped over an iron bed. I say multicolored. Have you ever seen a quilt that wasn’t many colors? And how is it a shack remains just as it was when inhabitants last lived in it some hundred years ago.
Easy answer. They just upped and left.
And how do I know it was some one-hundred years ago? The book on the table had a 1929 copyright. The title? The Uncertain Trumpet by A.S.M Hutchinson.
My mother didn’t sugarcoat things. She had a relative come rent time who was known for moving out in the middle of the night. By bird-thirty neither hide nor hair of him could be found. He put new meaning in the phrase “like a thief in the night.”
“Was he a crook, mom,” I’d ask.
“He’ll do till one comes along,” she’d say.
The folks back home had a potent, three-word phrase that rendered judgment with a mighty blow. One evening around 6:15 Dad came back from the store with a loaf of Claussen’s white bread and a half gallon of milk. He sat down to a glass of my mother’s wonderful tea.
“Well, Ruth, the church down the road is losing its preacher.”
“How’s that? They just got him after a two-year search?”
“They say so.”
“They say so.” Upon the utterance of those three words Gabriel would blow his horn and that was that. It worked at a high level too.
Court’s in session and a witness is on the stand. An attorney is grilling him.
“Now, Mr. Brown, you’re a bit long in the tooth. Your tired eyes didn’t see the defendant steal Mr. Clinton’s Briggs & Stratton lawnmower?”
The defendant, a shady character if ever, squirmed. He knew what was coming.
Mr. Brown turned to the judge, smiled, and said just nine incriminating words.
“I didn’t need to. They say so, your honor.”
The smack of the gavel settled things.
“Guilty,” said the judge, and the lawnmower thief found himself fixing to serve 30 days in jail.
Grandmother Poland would quietly listen to me spin some made-up yarn and when I was finished and all proud of myself, she dismissed me with a gruff tone of voice and four words.
“You don’t know nothing.”
I reckon I didn’t. Properly put in my place, I just upped and left.