On Grandma's Porch

by Deborah Smith

  We ordered ourselves a heapin’ helping of Baby Backs, then asked the waitress if the restaurant’s Brunswick Stew was homemade or store-bought.

  She gave us a Forrest Gump stare. “What’s Brunswick Stew?” she asked.

  Me and Mama nearly fell outta the booth. What kind of people have never heard of Brunswick Stew? How can any self-respecting SoFo not know that barbecue is always served with a hot bowl of sweet, meaty, corny, tomato-y, gruel-like BS?

  Not in Memphis. No stew. Never heard of it. Dear Gawd.

  “Okay, okay,” we said, fanning ourselves for air. “We’ll just crumble up some hamburger in a bowl of ketchup and make do.”

  But the worst was yet to come. When the waitress brought the Baby Backs, they were dry. I mean, bone dry. No gooey BBQ sauce. No gelatinous fat oozing down a rib staircase sprinkled with flecks of limp onion. No honey-ketchup-caramelized glop guaranteed to make your pancreas go runnin’ straight to Insulin Depot.

  Nothing. Just some ribs covered in anemic-looked, vaguely seared pig hide coated in nubbly “spices.” That’s just not right. It’s just not. It’s un-American. It’s un-Southern.

  As soon as we got back home, me and Mama drove way up in the mountains to Poole’s Barbecue. Poole’s is in Ellijay, Georgia. It’s made up of an old camper attached to a long shack. The floor is covered in old indoor-outdoor carpet. The carpet is more outdoor than indoor.

  Poole’s BBQ shack backs right up against a steep little hill. Hundreds of little pink plywood cut-outs of pigs are stuck all over that hill. Each pig has a customer’s name painted on it. Some of the names are famous. You gotta pay a few bucks to get a pig in your name. I haven’t got one, yet, but I plan to.

  Anyhow, Mama and me pigged out on real barbecue with a bowl of Brunswick Stew to wash it down. Then we looked up the hill at the BBQ Pig Cut-Outs Of Honor, and reverently we saluted All Those Who Had Eaten Real BBQ.

  Then we faced northwest, toward Memphis, and gave their barbecue The Finger.

  With sauce on it.

  Alabama is a lovely place. I’ve got kin there, and they’re smart people. Classy people. They don’t buy their fine art off the shopping channels on cable TV, they don’t duct-tape their mailbox to its post, they don’t shop at Sam’s Club just to graze for dinner at the food-sample giveaways. No, they’re fine, respectable SoFo. One of ’em is even a college professor.

  Yeah, Alabama has professors and colleges, real big ones, with air conditioning and everything. Down on the coast—hell, yes, Alabama has a coast, with beaches and moss in the trees and seagulls and oil tankers—down on the coast there are real cute towns with restaurants that sell fancy wines and bread with Italian names. Up in the mountains they have NASA, by Gawd, NASA. So the next time you dis Alabama, remember you’re dissing The Space Age.

  Which is why I hang my head in disgust every time some pandering politico or Bible-waving preacher from Alabama ups the ante on the state’s backward image. Lately, my head’s been so low I can look at my own nipples upside-down. That low.

  See, this “legislator” introduced a bill to forbid Alabama public libraries from owning books by gay authors or books featuring gay characters in a good way.

  Gawdawmighty, there go half the novels in the classics section, and pretty much everything in the decorating books! I mean, all you’ll have left are thrillers and sports books, and I’m not even too sure about those. I want to know how librarians are supposed to make these judgment calls.

  I mean, will they send out surveys to new authors? “Have you now, or have you ever 1) had sex with a person of the same gender as your own self, 2) lusted in your heart over a person of the same gender as your own self, or 3) listened to the soundtrack from Funny Girl a dozen times in a row?”

  Yours truly would definitely say, “Oh, hell, yes” to that last one. And I’m not gay or lesbian. Though I might be a gay man in a woman’s body. Chewbacca doesn’t like it when I say that, but it could be true.

  Look, I like laughing at redneck stereotypes as much as the next cracker. Jeff Foxworthy and his Blue Collar buddies have made it cool to laugh with rednecks, not just at ’em. Bravo, Bubba!

  Except we gotta be careful. It’s like when black folks call each other slang names, including the N-word. That’s okay for them to do it—amongst themselves—because they’re not being hateful. They’re in on the joke.

  Us rednecks need to enforce that kind of rule on non-rednecks. The rule being: We get to make mean jokes about ourselves. But NoSoFo don’t get to make mean jokes about ourselves. Not unless they want a cracker foot up their behinds.

  ’Cause the sad thing is that lots of idjits north of the Mason-Dixon line and west of Texas think we are a bunch of stereotypes. They’re shocked to find out we read books and wear shoes and have indoor plumbing. And they get real confused when they come here and don’t see Klansmen holding bake sales to buy rope and gasoline.

  Why, show ’em a typical peaceful and civilized small town like where yours truly lives—alongside just about every race, creed, color and place of national origin you can think of—and their heads might explode with amazement.

  So when we share redneck jokes let’s make real sure the NoSoFo don’t think they get to tell ’em, too. Damn Yankees. And by “Yankee” I mean anybody who ain’t from these here Southern states. New Jersey Yankees and California Yankees and Canadian Yankees and Burmese Yankees and eastern Mongolian Yankees.

  Yankee. Definition: “Anybody not lucky enough to be born Southern or who at least moved here long enough ago to know that y’all is plural and means you and yours.” Yawl is not supposed to be squeaked out in a high-pitched Hollywood-Southern accent. And it’s not pronounced “you all.” And it should never be spoken by Adam Sandler. Or Skanky Teenage Authors. Or people who eat dry barbecue.

  Not ever, y’all.

  Artifacts of a Lost Civilization

  Vinyl record albums

  Bottle caps with cork liners

  Band-Aid boxes made from tin.

  Vicks VapoRub and other ointments that came in glass jars.

  Wooden sewing spools that could be repurposed. When stacked up and properly glued, they would support shelves and make an attractive étagère!

  The iPod of 1960: those little 45 rpm record players you could close up and carry like an overnight case. And when you played Alvin and the Chipmunks records on one, it drove your dog to distraction.

  Girdles and other horrible torture devices people used. My least favorite was the garter belt. There was something vaguely obscene about all those dangling elastic bands and fasteners.

  —Susan Goggins, The Wart Witch

  The Wart Witch

  by Susan Goggins

  “I’ve always said that next to Imperial China, the South is the best place in the world to be an old lady.”

  —Florence King, author

  I usually liked to ride in the back of the truck, face the front, and let the wind hit me in the face, but I ran the risk of being anointed with tobacco juice if Grandpa forgot I was back there. Since I was going visiting I wanted to stay as clean as possible, so I sat up front.

  Grandpa was one of those old men who, when driving, looked everywhere but where he was going. Grandma often said it was a wonder he didn’t get himself killed that way. He particularly liked to gaze at the livestock in the pastures he passed. Right now, while he was taking in several Black Angus cows that had gathered under a shade tree in a roadside pasture, I examined a seed wart on the side of my right index finger. Gross. The kids at school would tease me about playing with frogs. Either that or they would shun me entirely. I’d seen the cool kids, as ruthless as only children can be, banish their peers from their circle for less.

  It was only recently that I had started concerning myself with flaws in my appearance. I was starting junior high in a couple of weeks,
and warts did not figure into the hip new image I wanted to project.

  Most summers I was content to help Grandma and Grandpa with chores around the farm, but this summer I was spending most of my time doing exercises I saw in magazines and experimenting with makeup and hairstyles. Grandpa thought all this was pretty silly, but Grandma seemed to understand.

  I just knew the autumn of 1969 would be a turning point in my life.

  “Grandpa, is this really going to work?” I asked.

  “Sure will, if you believe,” Grandpa said, and spat out the window of the ancient Chevy pickup.

  Grandpa had come up with the idea of visiting Mose one afternoon after hearing me complain about the four warts that had appeared on my hand. Grandma, Grandpa, and I had been sitting under a shade tree shucking corn as Bozo the Chihuahua slept under Grandpa’s chair.

  Years before, Grandma and Grandpa had gone to Sand Mountain, Alabama, to visit one of Grandpa’s cousins who was a mule trader. The man had a Chihuahua that followed him everywhere and sat in the crook of his arm while he auctioned mules. Grandpa thought this was grand, because it reminded him of Xavier Cugat holding his little dog while he conducted his orchestra. So he had a succession of Chihuahuas, of which Bozo was the latest. Grandpa would walk around the farm, gazing at his cows, with Bozo tucked in the crook of one arm.

  “I used to know an old man who could witch warts,” Grandpa said. “If he’s still living, I’ll find him and take you to him.”

  “What’s witching warts?” I asked as I picked a strand of corn silk from between two rows of white, juicy kernels. For supper, Grandma would boil a generous pot of these ears and I would eat mine with plenty of butter. Grandpa and the other farmers I knew always called this corn something that sounded like “roeshenyers,” and I would be grown before I realized that what he was saying was “roasting ears.”

  I’d figured out that farmers just had their own unique pronunciation peccadilloes. Like how they always pronounced “guano” as gyoo-anner.

  Grandpa paused in mid-shuck. “He’s got the power,” he said in a lowered voice. “He looks at your warts and does some kind of spell and pretty soon your warts go away.”

  Grandma snorted and started to say something but stopped short when the little dog let out an otherworldly howl-whine from underneath Grandpa’s chair. Grandpa came up out of the white metal lawn chair as if someone had just lit a fire under it and spilled the shucked and silked ears from his lap into the dirt.

  Grandma and I began to laugh and finally Grandpa joined in. “Bozo, wake up. You’re having a bad dream,” I said when I had quit laughing. The old dog, having been roused by the laughter, got himself to his feet and waddled off with what dignity he could muster.

  Mose hadn’t been very hard to find. After asking around, Grandpa learned that Mose’s son was working at a sawmill in the next county. Grandpa went to see him there, and the man told Grandpa where his father lived. The man said he would tell Mose to expect us.

  Mose lived at the end of a dirt road that ran beside an old Baptist church and bisected the church cemetery. Grandma and Grandpa attended the Methodist church in which Grandma was raised, but this church in the next county was the ancestral church of Grandpa’s family. And this cemetery held the family grave plot. I had often come here with Grandpa to help him care for the family lot where his baby son was buried.

  Back before the advent of the perpetual-care cemetery, people tended the graves of their loved ones themselves. To have your people’s graves grown over with weeds would have been a disgrace. Grandpa would put rakes and a sling blade in the back of the truck, and we would pull weeds and rake the white marble chips until they formed a smooth, level surface. Then Grandpa would sling blade around the outside of the plot.

  Grandma brought flowers at Christmas and on her baby’s birthday and a few other times throughout the year. But when Grandpa came, it was to groom the little grave lot, one that already had a tombstone with their names on it.

  Even though I had been to the cemetery many times, I had never been any farther down the dirt road. I had seen cars and trucks full of black people go up and down the road, each vehicle raising a cloud of brick-red dust in its wake. But I had never seen beyond the little bend in the road past the cemetery until the day we went to see Mose.

  The first homes we saw once we got past the cemetery were small frame houses sitting on brick or stone foundations three or so feet off the ground, as was the style a long time ago. Old dogs stared listlessly from their shady places underneath the houses. Children played in the yards while their mothers hung wash out to dry. Neighbor ladies gossiped and fanned on sagging front porches. The farther down the road we went, the worse the houses looked. Some had outhouses out back, confirming my suspicions that they had no plumbing. And the farther down the road we went the more people stopped what they were doing to stare at us. Grandpa glanced only casually at the roadside scenery. I guessed that was because nobody here had any cows.

  I was beginning to think that Grandpa had missed a turn. The end of the road was in sight and the houses were looking very bad indeed, but still he drove on. Right before the road stopped in its dirt tracks in front of a huge oak tree, Grandpa pulled up in front of a house, the most terrible house on the road, the worst-looking house I had ever seen.

  The roof was covered in tar paper. The sides of the house were covered with gray roofing shingles. Part of the front porch had collapsed and the two visible windows had no screens. The whole house was no bigger than some people’s living rooms.

  No sooner had Grandpa shut off the engine than Mose stepped out of the house to greet us. He must have been waiting and watching. Mose was slender and very tall. He must have been really old because he’d been a grown man when Grandpa was just a boy. But the only clue to his age was his white hair and that delicate, slow-motion gait peculiar to the very old.

  Every really old person I’d ever seen stood stooped over to some degree, their backs bowed with age, but Mose stood straight and tall. His clothes were well-worn but clean and although it was hot, he wore his checkered cotton shirt buttoned all the way to the neck.

  Mose greeted us so warmly and seemed so happy to see us that I figured he didn’t get much company, maybe because he lived at the very end of the road. Grandpa and Mose exchanges pleasantries for a few minutes and then Mose turned to me.

  “So this is the young lady with the warts,” he said, smiling broadly.

  “Here they are.” I held up my right hand so that he could see.

  Mose’s smile disappeared and his manner became all business. He took my hand and examined the warts as seriously and as professionally as if he were a dermatologist. Directly he let go of my hand and smiled again. “Y’all come on in,” he said.

  Grandpa and I followed Mose up the rickety wooden steps and into the little house. The walls were papered with newspaper and pages out of what looked like the Sears Roebuck catalog. The cracks in the floorboards were just wide enough to see all the way through to the ground. The only furniture was a twin-sized iron bedstead and a couple of straight chairs.

  A pot-bellied stove stood in a corner with a white enamel saucepan on top. The small pan was half full of blackberries.

  Mose asked us to sit and became very serious once again. I dropped down onto one of the chairs opposite Mose, who sat on the bed. He took my right hand in his and put the index finger of his left hand to his tongue. Then, as he began to touch one wart and then the other with his long, wiry finger, he closed his eyes and mumbled some unintelligible incantation.

  I stared at Mose, who was swaying now, with his eyes still closed. It felt like there was something ancient and mysterious about this ceremony, but I wasn’t afraid. Mose remained in a trance for a couple of minutes, and then opened his eyes and smiled.

  I looked closely at my hand for any immediate change.

&nbs
p; “Now, they’re not going to come off right away,” Mose said. He took a dingy handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it across his brow as if the last few minutes had tired him. Then he stood up and I started to stand up too, thinking it was time to go, but he put a hand on my shoulder. He fished in the pocket of his green work pants for a moment and then held out a quarter.

  “Here,” he said. “I’ve just bought your warts from you. In a couple of weeks the warts will come up on my hands.”

  I took the quarter and reached into my own pocket for the money my mother had given me for Mose.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “You can’t pay me. That would break the spell. I had to be the one to pay you.”

  “Is there anything I have to do?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, looking at me intently with rheumy black eyes that looked as old as time. “You have to believe. If you don’t believe, the warts won’t come off.”

  We went back out into the yard, and Grandpa and I thanked him and said our good-byes. He seemed sorry to see us go. For the return trip, I took my preferred place in the back of the truck, having made sure that Grandpa had a spit cup available. As we rode, I looked through the particles of red dust that we raised and saw that Mose, still smiling, watched us until we were out of sight.

  A week and a half later, I sat drumming my still wart-infested fingers on Grandma’s kitchen table.

  “What am I going to do?” I wailed. “I start school Monday and these ugly warts haven’t gone away yet.” Grandpa sat opposite me shelling peas while Grandma stirred something on the stove.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Grandma said without turning around. “While I was at the drugstore, I got you some of that wart compound I saw advertised on TV. It’s on the medicine shelf.”