Some colorful sayings about our favorite critters
Don’t go barking up the wrong tree or running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Even though a blind mule finds an acorn every once in a while and sometimes the tail wags the dog. I don’t care what anybody says, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. You can go hog wild, and if you get real lucky you’ll live high off the hog. And then you’ll be happier than a pig in sunshine.
It might be a coon’s age before you get what you’re hoping for, and you’ll feel like money is as scarce as hen’s teeth. Just play possum when things get rough. Don’t look hang-dog and don’t get your feathers ruffled. Yes, if a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his butt when he hops, but when you’re feeling lower than a snake’s belly never forget that, at heart, you’re finer than frog hair. Don’t lose your cool and blow up like a mule eating butter beans.
Maybe it’s true that you can’t hit a lick with a snake, or you’re all hat and no cattle, or that, when push comes to shove, you give up and say, “I don’t have a dog in this fight.” But even though nobody knows you from Adam’s house cat, and nobody’ll even say pea turkey to you when you’re in a mood, keep smiling like a goat eating briars. Get some rest, go to bed with the chickens, and don’t get mad as an old wet settin’ hen.
You’ll be just fine. Because every dog has his day.
The Tie That Binds
by Susan Alvis
“I formally proposed. I’m a good Southern gentleman.”
—Vince Gill, country-western singer
On the day when true love tied itself around my grandmother’s house, I was on her upper veranda, reading a book. It took only two hours from start to finish, but no one at my grandmother’s house over the age of eighteen was left single. At thirteen years old, I was considered too young to hang out with my older siblings and cousins. I was also too old to be told to take an official nap.
The day this all started was a Tuesday, just like any other summer day in a small Southern town. Everyone was taking advantage of one of Gran’s huge pitchers of sweet ice tea with lemon and crushed mint leaves. Even the ice clinked in a lazy, offhand manner against the edges of the glasses. The adults were swirling the sweet elixir before every next sip. There was no more talk of war and the knot of aching sadness for those who would not be coming home was loosening some.
I wandered upstairs and out onto the palm-and-fern-lined porch. I settled onto the old wicker chaise with plans to waste a long sultry afternoon reading a book. Scarlett O’Hara had choices to make, starting with which Tarleton twin to choose.
Snippets of conversation from other parts of the house buzzed up on the summer heat with the stealth of insects. Hummingbirds, ever hungry and always in a hurry, danced with the dragon flies that drone up from the marsh to light on sunny surfaces before flying off to other attractive destinations. It was one of those the magical afternoons when I loved to dive into a story. The very air around me misted with possibilities.
Frank Darling walked through the doorway, not ten feet from where I sat. He wandered over to the opposite edge of the porch. Frank had been coming around to Gran’s house since the cousins arrived before the Fourth of July.
Mr. Darling, his father, owned the hardware store in town. Without much prompting, Frank could really go into too much detail about the growing market for electric tools. Thankfully, with his back to me, he didn’t look around or he might have seen me in the deepening shadows, underneath the lazy fan.
Frank dropped to one knee, beside the empty porch swing and pulled a ring out from the pocket of his gray pleated.
“Marry me, will you, Minnie Jo?” he said. (He was speaking as though she sat in front of him. She was not there.)
Frank Darling was sweet on Minnie! I almost shrieked with the discovery!
Minnie Jo Radcliffe was a cousin from Valdosta. She was from the wealthy side of our family. Her mother was my mother’s older sister. The money was not from our side of the Macy clan, but had been married into, pure and simple. What the Radcliffe’s had in dollars and cents, our Macy clan had in Southern proclivities and sense. This is not a complaint. It’s just that our blessings don’t buy much at the store.
Minnie Jo’s golden curls and dreamy countenance combined to enchant most young men. I knew for a fact that the far-off look she always had on her face had more to do with an attempt to keep her list of suitor’s names straight than in any single romantic vision. She was not considering spending the rest of her life with any one of them in particular. I had this on the best of authority—eavesdropping.
Minnie Jo often missed the important details in conversations. Then she acted on what she thought she heard. My father said that her absent expression had something to do with all the very dear but empty space in her head.
“I’m thankful my girls will never have to worry about being overwhelming beauties,” he said once to my grandmother. “A few freckles will keep the fellows in check long enough to let them see to the souls of my girls instead of getting caught up in their outside packages.”
This from the man, my mother reminded him, whose first words to his own wife had been, “Hi there, ‘Body by Fisher . . . ’” I found out later that this referenced the sculpted lines of the newest automobile available on the market the year they courted.
“Minnie Jo’s a real sweetheart,” he told my brother, Beau, who was feeling the need to turn Minnie into a true kissing cousin, “But Minnie’s got more blue sky in that brain of hers than anything else. When it’s all said and done, a man needs a woman he can have a conversation with, not just one to look at.”
Nothing really distracted Beau from his recent experiences in Europe, even when we all wished something could. He was still thinking about war and hurt. He didn’t smile much anymore. A crush on our cousin was the first sign that life might be returning, my momma said. I guess I really don’t understand how he could be anything less than full out glad to be back with all of us.
Brother spends hours in the library instead of helping my daddy sell cars. Beau probably has lots of beautiful girls interested in him. Letting go of Minnie as his ideal woman didn’t cause much of a ripple.
Truth of the matter was I was not worried about Brother. Grandpa always said Beau could fall in a pile of bovine fecal matter and still come out smelling like a rose.
Frank Darling, though, was more entranced with Minnie’s charms than Beau had ever been. This was not a fleeting crush on Frank’s part. Even I could see that, plain as the ring in his hand.
He practiced the proposal three times, in mime, reacting with enthusiasm to her anticipated acceptance. At this point in his rehearsal he would grab the large down pillow off the swing. Squeezing it tightly, he would lower his face into the chintz, placing an amorous kiss on a large cabbage rose in the center of the cushion.
I was fascinated with kissing, not that I’d done any myself. It never occurred to me that practice was ever involved or even necessary. I believed I would probably get my first kiss from a movie star. I had not given much thought to the practicality or the details of how this would actually unfold. I just believed it would. Watching Frank practice made me sure that I would never be able to put my head against that particular pillow again without remembering that moment.
That ol’ lover boy was pretty sure of himself! His little production made me clasp both hands over my mouth to keep from howling with giggles. His face flushed with excitement, giving him a ruddy, sweaty complexion. Frank Darling had the look of a man trying to blow a tuba with a basketball wedged in the opening of the horn.
A few deep breaths later, I was able to compose myself enough quietly to sit quietly, not sure what to do. I will admit I was too fascinated to flee this scene, far more exciting than anything in my favorite old county library book. I had never, at my most sneaky, ever heard or seen anything more
amazing than this. It occurred to me that if I were discovered, I would miss the scene for which he was practicing, so I pulled my knees up near my chest, anticipating what would happen next.
In a very short time, Minnie Jo came up the stairs, home from her summer job as a stock clerk at the pharmacy. Her heels clamored on the wooden steps between the lower porch and her fate. She walked across the porch to Frank, stopping near him to touch his sleeve.
“You look nice, Frank,” Minnie said softly. “What’re you dressed up for? Got a meeting at the church?”
Minnie had the mixed scent of a cosmetic counter perfume girl. She sprayed samples for the drug store shoppers, so the breeze caught, and mixed, a number of things no one in their right mind would ever combine. I’d call her smell ‘Evening in the Stable,’ if I had to name it myself.
“No, I wanted to look nice, just for you, Minnie. I got this genuine silk tie over at the Brookshire Man’s Shop. I’m thinking I might always wear a tie from now on, now that I’m an up and coming hardware man, and all.” He paused and gulped. “Minnie Jo,” he said as he led her to the swing, bands of red ratcheting up his neck above his collar, “I have something in particular to ask you.”
I was holding my breath, giddy with excitement. Frank Darling was going to pop the question right here on my Granny’s porch! I would watch and listen. No one would ever know! Could there be anything else that could be more exciting!
Perhaps it was my age and lack of experience, but I was as caught up in the moment as Frank.
Down onto his knee he went, just as he rehearsed. Then Frank asked Minnie Jo for her hand. He reached for her, kissing her with great, slurping enthusiasm. That’s when Minnie Jo came up swinging.
“Mr. Darling, you are no gentleman!” she squealed. She was thrashing him and wiggling from his grasp. “No! I. Will. Not. Consent. To. Marry. You!” she choked. Minnie talked like she was spitting words through a straw. She banged him on the head with the same chintz pillow on which he had so arduously practiced his lip-lock technique just awhile before.
Boy, was Minnie mad.
She stomped across the porch, letting the screen door offer further punctuation for her definite refusal which was hanging in the afternoon like haze. It never occurred to me that Minnie would be upset. This possibility must not have ever occurred to Frank, either.
I watched in stunned silence. Frank’s tears were immediate and plentiful.
Suddenly the drone of conversation downstairs ceased and both porches were as quiet as a tomb. I could hear my Gran’s old clock count the seconds. It always sounded more like a dripping faucet than a time piece: click-throp, click-throp, click-throp. Then the chimes rang. It was only after five resonant bongs that Frank even moved a muscle.
What I had seen happen was crystal clear.
I knew with sudden clarity what was beginning to dawn on Frank: Minnie Jo had just slammed the door on his heart forever. There was nothing he could do now but go down to the lower veranda, pick up his hat and walk down my Gran’s front steps for the last time. There would be quite an audience gathered for his departure. Poor fellow. No dissertation on power tools could get him out of there without further humiliation.
He must’ve thought that an exit down the porch steps didn’t have much appeal either. Flopping down on the swing, he put his head in his hands. Closing his eyes, he slowly loosened his genuine silk tie. It was shining and slim, with varying stripes in shades of chartreuse and burnt umber.
Focusing on that neckwear made me wonder if all such ties were that ugly or if this one was just special.
Frank smoothed it across his knee. His hands and lower lip trembled, synchronized in misery. Then, with slow, deliberate care, he tied a square knot. In one fluid movement he slipped it over his head, leaving a strange long, flapping tail. Leaning over the railing, Frank tied another knot to one of the carved white spindles.
“Minnie Jo?!” he sobbed, “I can’t live without you!”
Before I could move from the shady chaise, Frank Darling rolled over the edge of the upstairs railing and hung himself off of my Granny’s upper veranda.
The soprano screams from all my cousins echoed up Church Street and hung in the breeze. They all ran down the front walk to look at the upstairs railing where Frank Darling dangled as he tried to die.
With Frank’s legs still flailing, the knot on his genuine silk tie slipped and he dropped like a rock into the peonies. He lay there, still and pale, among the rocks that edged the flowerbed.
I ran down the steps. There was such chaos that my only thought was to go find help. Off I ran, down the street toward town. Always a bit of the town crier, I told the story as well as I could, while asking if anyone had seen the doc. I dragged Beau home from the library, where I found him reading poetry to a girl from Beaufort.
Young Buddy Branch from the pharmacy ran up the hill, to see what all the hollering was about. Soon after that Doc Pritchard’s son, Bradley, rolled up out front, coming to call on Geraldine, Minnie’s sister.
Everyone convened out front. All of us were standing in the flower bed, looking down at the corpse of dead Frank Darling when Daddy roared up in his old ’39 Ford. I told the story for the fifteenth time in as many minutes, relishing my role as the historian of recent unseemly events. I left out not one detail, from the chintzy practice kisses to Frank’s last, sobbing cry.
Just as I finished, the crumpled body on the ground started to moan.
As I’ve said before, I may have only lived thirteen years, but even after that afternoon’s crash course in romance I was willing to bet that a dead man shouldn’t make noise.
About that time, Jean Francis, my older sister, decided to try out some of the training she was getting from her nursing classes up at the Medical College in Charleston.
Right in front of God, Daddy, and everyone else in our family, she dropped to her knees and began giving Frank Darling light puffs of air, her lips sealed on his like the lid on a Mason jar of fresh canned peaches. Her shining auburn hair made a wavy curtain, a privacy screen, if you will, around Frank’s contorted head.
I remember thinking that his tie was even uglier in the sunlight than it had been in the upstairs shade. Seems the wind had gotten knocked out of Frank, and Jean Francis, quietly and softly, reintroduced the oxygen he needed to return to life.
My father and a couple of the other men waited until Frank seemed to come around a little. They hauled Frank to Doc’s office, where the kind physician diagnosed young Mr. Darling with two broken ankles as well as a badly bruised throat.
By suppertime, I was exhausted. I believed it was probably the most exciting day of my life so far and I wanted to think back through it, to relish the details. Back up to the upstairs porch I went, thinking I’d retrieve my book, before washing my face for dinner.
There was Minnie Jo, draped across the porch swing, crying inconsolably in the arms of Buddy Branch. Buddy must’ve learned the same stuff Jean Francis knew, because he was using his mouth to help Minnie breathe, too, in between her gulping sobs.
Maybe eavesdropping is a little like honey sandwiches: A person can eventually just get too much.
That night when the house was finally quiet and dark, Gran and my parents were sitting out in the navy night, star-gazing and talking. I was back on the chaise, not really listening. I was just trying not to doze.
“When your father was alive,” my Gran said to her son, “Before the first Great War, there was a real sense of Southern propriety in our family. The Lord does His work in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?”
“That was quite a dramatic interlude today, wasn’t it, Mama?” my Daddy answered.
To my surprise, the three of them began to laugh.
“And it proved once and for all, that little pitchers have big ears . . . Come on outta those shadows, Doodlebug, and give your Pa a
hug before bed.”
I crept forward, on bare feet, to stand by the rocker where he sat. I couldn’t figure out where to put my arms and legs, wanting so badly to be experienced like my cousins and wishing I was still small enough to pass for a child. I wanted to climb into my father’s lap and hear his laughter from deep in his chest, to fall asleep in his arms like I had for so many summer nights past. That was a long time ago, when I was small, before I reached my current height of five feet and seven inches.
He stood and gathered me up in his arms, hugging me close. We stand almost eye-to-eye. I felt the sandy finish on his cheek, breathed in his bergamot soap and tobacco.
“Promise me, that when it is your time to drive a young man a little crazy, you’ll stay on the first floor. I don’t want any more hangings prompted by the women in this family,” Daddy said.
“I promise. I’m gonna wait a good long time for the man of my dreams . . . and Daddy?”
“Yes, Sugar?”
“Do you think it was all on account of that genuine silk tie? It was really ugly.”
“Are you asking if the tie is why Frank Darling is alive or the reason he hung himself in the first place?”
“Lawson!” admonished my Granny, “Don’t you egg that child on!”
By the end of that summer there were four engagements in the family, all stemming from the romantic events following the hanging on that summer Tuesday afternoon.
Minnie Jo and Buddy Branch chose the first of December for their wedding. She was going to move from Valdosta to manage the cosmetics department at the pharmacy four days a week and Buddy’s life on their days off.
Geraldine got engaged to Bradley Pritchard. As soon as Minnie Jo decided what colors her wedding party would use, her baby sister would be allowed to make choices of her own. Geraldine planned on a Valentine’s Day wedding.
Brother Beau fell in love with the girl, Joy, he met at the library that day. She followed him home after hearing about all the excitement at our house. Seems to me like Joy just never went home. Everyone said that she looked like me. She was tall and red haired. Her peachy face looked like someone painted exactly ten freckles across her nose with a paintbrush. I had more of those than her.
On Grandma's Porch Page 11