by Fannie Flagg
We went to see Miss Philpot, the band director, who’ll be glad to have me; all that was left was a saxophone, so I had to take it. I wanted a tuba. I’ll have to wear an old blue uniform from the forties because the band can only afford twelve new gold ones, and those go to the people who can read music. Pickle wears a gold one. I hate my uniform. I look like a bus driver. Pickle is a big deal in school and is going to try out for cheerleader and wants me to try out with her. I had to change my sixth-period study hall to go with her to the Future Homemakers of America. I told her I didn’t want to be a Future Homemaker. She doesn’t want to either, but her daddy makes her. She says we can have a lot of fun because the teacher is real old, and we can sneak out a lot.
I saw Vernon Mooseburger and Patsy Ruth Coggins, and Amy Jo Snipes is in love. How boring! All she talks about is her boyfriend, Nathan Willy, and how she is wearing his gold football that is just as good as an engagement ring. You should see Nathan. Pickle says he’s so dumb he couldn’t pour pee out of a boot.
Flicka Hicks is a big football player. He doesn’t even remember me. The worst news of all: Kay Bob Benson is head majorette! When she saw me, she said, “Daisy Fay Harper, you haven’t changed a bit,” which is an insult because I am older and have new glasses. She is giving a “back to school, cement mixer, putty, putty party.” Naturally I am not invited, so Pickle is not going either. Kay Bob goes home for lunch every day and irons her clothes for the afternoon classes and she and Flicka are in the school paper all the time as a current walk-to-class couple. Double Barf!
September 27, 1956
I went over to the grammar school to see Mrs. Underwood, who sent me a note about my mother. I love Mrs. Underwood, but I didn’t want to talk about Momma. I don’t even talk about her to Pickle. I still think about her and miss her and wish there was some way I could tell her how much I loved her. I don’t know if she knew it or not.
If I ever thought for a minute there was a God, I sure don’t now. My Daddy was right about that one. Pickle wishes her father had died instead of my mother. She hates him, and so do Lemuel and Baby Sister.
Lemuel is crazy about me and wants to date me. He’s tall and skinny and has a flattop, and is not bad-looking. Pickle said I could go out with him until we find someone better, but if he tries anything funny, she will kill him because we are going to college together. Whenever I spend the night with Pickle, he drives us crazy, trying to see me in my pajamas. Pickle thinks he is a degenerate. Her father doesn’t like Pickle to come to the Flamingo Motel. He is very strict and hates my daddy because Daddy won’t join the White Citizens’ Council, which is just another name for the Ku Klux Klan.
Michael Romeo has decided he doesn’t want to be a priest after all and is back home. He said the food was terrible. His mother is mad, but I’m glad. Besides, I need his vote for Pickle and me to be cheerleaders. The football team decides. We already have Vernon Mooseburger’s vote and Pickle’s brother, Lemuel’s, and all his friends’, and Amy Jo Snipes, who is also trying out, assures us her precious Nathan will vote for us because if he doesn’t, she won’t do “you know what,” whatever “you know what” is. If “you know what” is what Pickle and I think it is, we are sure that Nathan will get us elected.
We try out tomorrow. Here is our cheer:
RICKETY, RICKETY, RACK
RICKETY, RICKETY, ROO
MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, WE LOVE YOU
TWO BITS, FOUR BITS, SIX BITS. . A DOLLAR,
ALL FOR MAGNOLIA SPRINGS,
STAND UP AND HOLLER.
October 2, 1956
Pickle lied to me. Mrs. McWinney, the Future Homemakers of America teacher, is not that old. You couldn’t get out of her room dead in a paper sack. So far she’s lectured on “How to Use Starch to Your Best Advantage,” “How to Freeze Eggs,” “How to Dust Using Both Hands.” Today we had to look at colored slides of different cuts of meat. Pickle has gone crazy. She wants to win the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow pin they are going to award in home economics, and I have to help her. In exchange she is teaching me the saxophone. It is hard. My chipped tooth keeps splitting the reed. She says I’m going to learn to play “Lady of Spain” if it kills her.
And we are cheerleaders. Yeaaaaa! Pickle found out that every one of the boys voted for us, including Flicka Hicks. Amy Jo Snipes was right. “You know what” was powerful enough to get us elected. Nathan looks happier, and our first game is coming up soon. Every day when the band marches downtown at band period, all the people close their doors and shut their windows because we sound so bad. I’m playing “Lady of Spain” to all the marches, and it fits pretty well into “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Semper Fidelis.”
Miss Philpot is a nervous wreck and chain-smokes. Since she is sensitive to loud noises, you wonder why she ever became a band director. She is in love with Mr. Narney, the football coach, but he looks like a gorilla to me. He told the boys not to have anything to do with girls during football season because they will lose their strength. The boys also are not to play with themselves, but according to Pickle, Lemuel breaks training all the time. That is really gross. I’m never going to let Lemuel even hold my hand. What’s the matter with boys? Pickle knows all about them, and she will never let any one of them do anything to her. They’ll say anything to you to get you to do it, but afterwards they tell everybody and won’t respect you. You should hear how they talk about Dixie Nash, that girl we kicked so bad.
Your reputation is worth everything. Pickle and I have real good ones. Her brother would tell us if we didn’t. The boys looked in Mr. Narney’s billfold one time and found rubbers! Nobody says anything much about Amy Jo Snipes and Nathan, who are doing it because they are in love. Besides, Nathan will kill anyone who does.
Pickle told me there was a car parked somewhere and this boy and girl were petting and when a car hit them from behind, the girl’s nipple was bitten off and she had to go through life with only one nipple.
Pickle won’t take a drink from a boy because they put Spanish fly in it, which will make you go crazy and go all the way. Her story about a girl at the drive-in and a gearshift is just too gross to repeat.
October 9, 1956
I moved to a double room down at the end of the motel. I can’t stay by the bar because of all the screaming and hollering. I got so mad I went in and swiped a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey to help put me to sleep. Last night some drunk drove around the motel in a convertible playing a trumpet.
When Jimmy Snow’s here, he tries to keep it quiet. He got a crop-dusting job in Macon County. If he makes enough money, he’ll buy me some new clothes, not a minute too soon. It’s important how you look. I can’t go on wearing Pickle’s things all the time.
We hang around with the seniors, and if we want to stay in good, we have to look neat. Pickle says we should only date senior boys. She has one on the string named Mustard Smoot. She’s not in love, though. She just needs a senior to be seen with. Marion Eugene, Mustard’s friend, is going to ask me out so we can double-date.
Our first football game was a disaster. During the first quarter Vernon Mooseburger’s helmet flew off when he was tackled. It hit Mudge Faircloth, our best cheerleader, in the right knee, and she had to be carried off the field. Vernon should wear cotton in his helmet to help keep it on his head.
Five minutes before half time, when Pickle and I ran to the band room to change from our cheerleading costumes into our band uniforms, some idiot had locked the door. We ran around the outside and I had to break the window so we could get in. Pickle is one of the few players who can read music, plus we were both important parts of our band formations, particularly when we formed the word “GO.” Anyhow, we changed clothes as fast as we could and got back just as the band was entering the field. Miss Philpot was nervous and gave the “enter the field” command too early. We marched out before the game was over and messed up a field goal for our side. The bass drummer lost his drumsticks trying to get out of the way, and he had to hit his
drum with his fist.
We formed a bell and played “School Days” and “Ring, Ring, Goes the Bell.” It went all right. Then we played “Teacher’s Pet” and formed a big apple.
Just as I marched by, Edwina Weeks, who plays the cymbals, screamed at me, “Look at your hand.” It was all bloody from breaking the window and the blood was dripping on my saxophone. I hoped I wouldn’t die while forming an apple on the Magnolia Springs Football Field. What a way to go.
I didn’t have time to think because we had to form the word “GO” while they played “Mr. Touchdown U.S.A.” and I played “Lady of Spain.” Then we had to form a big football with the majorettes in the center simulating the laces. Every time Edwina Weeks passed by, she screamed, “Look at your hand!” and pretty soon she started screaming for everyone to look at my hand. We had to stand there for what seemed like forever while Kay Bob Benson in her trashy blue sequined majorette outfit did her tricks, twirling two batons at one time, throwing up her baton and catching it behind her back. She didn’t miss once.
By this time my whole arm was bloody. I thought, if I have to die, let it be during Kay Bob Benson’s baton number so I can ruin it. When we got off the field, Edwina Weeks threw up, and Pickle tied my arm with my sock to keep the bleeding down. It ruined the look of my cheerleader outfit, just having on one sock, but we didn’t know what else to do. We got through the game and won.
Afterward all the cheerleaders are supposed to run up to the football players and hug them and tell them how great they did. Boy, did they smell! No one ever told me how stinky and sweaty they would be. I guess I don’t have much school spirit.
Today my wrist is taped and it looks great, just like I tried to commit suicide. I wore sunglasses to school and Pickle told everyone that I had experienced a great personal tragedy and not to ask me about it. You should have seen those people looking at me. We are going to make up a great personal tragedy to spread around tomorrow. I think it will have something to do with Tony Curtis and his recent marriage.
October 11, 1956
Jimmy Snow came home and gave me $25. Pickle and I went shopping with a copy of Seventeen magazine. I bought a pair of white loafers and more collars, including a fur one for winter. I hate it, but Pickle wants to wear it, and some sweaters plus two new skirts.
Pickle is sure that when it gets cold, we will be accepted at the Senior Radiator. The seniors have a special radiator they stand around at the end of the hall by the principal’s office and maybe, even though we are only sophomores, we might, if we’re real popular, be accepted at the Senior Radiator. We have to work hard at being popular and smile at everyone in school, even people we think are real spastics.
We went out with Mustard and Marion Eugene to the Hub Drive-In to see a double feature, The Earth vs. Flying Saucers and Shack Out on 101 with Terry Moore and Frank Love joy. We were having a good time, until Shack Out on 101 came on the screen. The boys were drinking beer and thought “shack-out” was so funny that they giggled and screamed every time anybody in the movie said it. Pickle made Mustard get in the back seat with Marion Eugene and I got in the front seat with her and watched the picture. It was a good movie, all about blackmail and crime.
Pickle and I have decided to write Terry Moore and tell her she has been in too many movies about crime and shoplifting. We would like for her to make a film that is funny, maybe a musical, because all these crime movies might begin to affect her personality.
October 15, 1956
I can never face anybody at school as long as I live. I have never been so humiliated in my whole life. I might as well quit and go back to work at the potato shed with the retards. My best friend is supposed to stand by me in my moment of need, but Pickle is in the other room sound asleep. This is all her stupid brother’s fault for bringing that stupid mule down to the stupid swimming pool in the first place.
Pickle and I were having a perfectly good time swimming. I was wearing my flowered two-piece suit and my rubber swim hat with the flowers that match. Then Lemuel brought that stupid mule over and said, “Come on, I’ll give you a ride on Molasses.”
I told him I was afraid to ride horses. He said not to be afraid, that he’d just lead him around the park.
My dear friend Pickle said, and I quote, “Oh, go ahead and ride him; he is as gentle as a lamb.”
I got up on that thing and it had an Indian blanket in place of a saddle. I asked Lem what I was supposed to hold onto.
He said, “Hold onto the mule.”
I said, “Won’t that hurt him?”
He said, “No, mules can’t feel a thing.”
He led me around the park, but I got scared when I remembered the story Mrs. Dot told me about some girl in Memphis who fell off a horse. It stepped on her right boob and mashed it flat. Now she is one-sided, so I told Lem to let me down.
About that time a bee stung Molasses, who they had just told me couldn’t feel a thing, and he took off, running as fast as he could go. He galloped out of the park and right straight down Highway 3. I had to hold onto his mane for dear life with one hand and onto my glasses with the other. I must have been bouncing up in the air three feet. I kept saying, “Whoa! Whoa!” but that stupid Molasses wouldn’t stop. About a half mile down the highway, I saw a convoy of jeeps filled with soldiers coming towards me. They had to pull off the side of the road to keep from hitting me, and as I went by, they all started yelling and whistling and hitting the sides of the jeeps. Just then I realized the top to my bathing suit had fallen down and there I was naked, flopping up and down the highway. I must have ridden by 200 jeeps, but I couldn’t let go ’cause I would have killed myself. I had to choose between modesty and death, and I’ll tell you, I almost chose death. You should have heard those soldiers carrying on. You’d think they’d never seen a naked girl on a horse before. Even I’ve read National Geographic for heaven’s sake.
Molasses ran off the highway through three fields and all the way to Pickle’s house. When he finally did stop, it was in front of Lem and half the members of the Magnolia Springs football team. When I looked up and saw Flicka Hicks standing there, I ran in the house and hid in Pickle’s room, but she was still down at the pool waiting for me. When she did come home and I told her what happened, she said she was sure that the boys didn’t notice my top was off, they were probably looking at my flowered swim hat because it is so pretty.
I hope she is right, but I still could die of mortification. What if the Army gets my name and puts it in the paper that I was riding down the middle of Highway 3 bare-breasted? It will ruin our chances of ever being accepted at the Senior Radiator, even though Pickle is prepared to swear on the Bible it wasn’t me.
I have never been so sore in my whole life. I’ll probably never be able to sit down again, but I certainly have a lot more respect for cowboys now. All I can say is Mr. Lemuel Watkins is going to be very sorry when he wears the jockey shorts Pickle and I put poison ivy in.
October 18, 1956
Pickle got into terrible trouble for spending the night with me. Her daddy was waiting for her when she came home from school and accused her of being with a boy. The only reason I found out is when we were dressing out for gym, I saw huge red welts on her back. She said it was nothing, but I asked her sister about it and she said that her father is always beating them if he thinks they’ve been with boys. She told me one night Lem tried to kill him when he was beating up on Pickle. Lem nearly got sent to a reform school. Now they just put up with it until they can get away from him.
I wonder why Pickle never told me. I guess she is too embarrassed. My daddy may drink, but he never hits me. I was so upset over Pickle I forgot I had exposed myself until Kay Bob Benson came down the hall with three of her friends and said, “Well, here is Lady Godiva.”
I know Flicka Hicks told her. I just know it!
October 26, 1956
We won another football game and the band was OK. We did a jungle show, and we formed the African continent and played “
Abadaba Honeymoon.” We formed two jungle drums and they turned out all the lights on the field while Kay Bob Benson twirled two fire batons in the air. Then we formed a hunter’s hat and played “Searching,” made a skull and bones and played “Witch Doctor.”
During the game Nathan Willy was hurt and Amy Jo Snipes got hysterical and ran out on the field with the water boy and the coach and they had to pull her off of Nathan’s body. He only had a sprained ankle.
After the game we went to the Spinning Wheel and I got in the trunk of Patsy Ruth’s car and let my arm hang out dripping with catsup, but nobody saw it and I ruined my sweater. Nathan was walking around using Amy Jo Snipes as a crutch. She loved it. She will make the perfect wife. I think she has braces on her brains. If I have to hug those football players one more time, I will SCREAM. Why can’t they lose?
Velveeta found a whole bunch of empty whiskey bottles under my bed and asked me where they came from. I told her they were Daddy’s. I hope she keeps her mouth shut. I am still having a hard time sleeping. I never see Daddy anymore. Jimmy is worried about him and made him go to the doctor. Daddy is throwing up blood, but he won’t stop drinking for anything.
Pickle is driving me crazy. All she thinks about is the Senior Radiator. She is very good at math and I am failing algebra. Who cares if x equals z or whatever? It seems to me I am learning a lot of useless stuff. The only thing I like is English, but not the grammar. Pickle can even diagram a sentence. I wish they would let me take shop, but they won’t. I am taking driver’s education, but I am failing that because I had a head-on collision on the driving machine.