Every now and then, I get a glimpse of Granny’s wild spirit, the very one she’s kept hidden from the rest of us girls no matter how many times we’ve sat around the table in her kitchen. Sometimes, just sometimes, she lets that spirit out. And if there’s anything that’ll bring out her wild spirit, it’s cabin fever, sisters. Cabin fever and those bottled spirits in the china cabinet. And memories of them bitches, of course.
Granny turns on the radio and tunes it to her favorite station, WRIC-AM 540 radio in Richlands, Virginia, and she continues a’ singing the song in her head, some tune about Tom Dooley and his imminent demise, even while the announcer reads the local obituaries, forlorn organ a’ playing and all. Granny don’t know any of those dead people on the radio. And even if she does, she doesn’t let on. Lord, no. Those folks done got their promise, and that’s what Granny thinks. She doesn’t feel sorry for a solitary soul. Not a single one.
Granny has cabin fever, like the rest of us do. Winter has stayed too long in these hills. His welcome has worn off with the remains of silver tinsel that blows in the wind when it comes. And it comes often. Those dead folks ain’t got to put up with the rest of Winter’s cold sheets and last summer’s garden goods in their supper. Cousin Snoot and I and Aunt Margene and Mama cut a regular shine watching Granny cackle and click her heels to the voice of Ralph Stanley as he pours out a song about Pretty Polly on that ol’ WRIC radio. They’re playing that ol’ back home Kentucky bluegrass this evening, and Granny is cutting the kitchen rugs.
Oh, I reckon we all got cabin fever. It’s about that time of year when folks tend to go crazy, you know. Wild spirits like us are tired of being stuck in the house for too long. Tired of the same ol’ cold sheets on the bed. Tired of the same ol’ soup in the same ol’ pot made with last summer’s garden goods. Just plain and ol’ damn tired, I reckon. But Granny don’t look tired at all. No, ma’am. She squeals with delight when Loretta comes on and sings a story about birth control pills and has the gall to suggest that us ol’ girls might know a thing or two about this world. Granny’s mama and Loretta’s mama were childhood friends, or so I’ve been told, back in the olden Kentucky days when gals knew a thing or two about cold sheets and ol’ soup and cabin fever. Every time Loretta sings on the WRIC radio, Granny hollers, “I knew that gal when she was a baby!”
Aunt Margene goes to the china cabinet and pulls a lovely bottle of wild spirits out of its innards, a spirit so clear and pure that it almost jumps right out on its own accord, and Granny gasps at the sight of it, but a smile comes across her weathered face just the same.
“I used to beautiful,” she says. “Once upon a time, I used to climb trees and throw rocks at boys.”
Now we’d heard this same story a dozen or more times, but we asked for details again and again, hoping to hear something we didn’t’ hear the last time. And we’d always assure Granny that she was still beautiful, despite the passage of time and ol’ trees and ol’ boys.
Granny would tell us of her youthful beauty, her porcelain white and flawless face and her coal-black hair and how her cousins hated the very thoughts of her. She said she had to climb the trees to escape the rocks those jealous cousins threw, and she’d caught and collected them to throw at the boys that came by to rescue her.
“Them bitches,” she’d say. Me and Snoot would snicker and Mama and Aunt Margene would chime in as they took a swig from their cup. Them bitches, indeed, they’d agree. But it didn’t matter. They were all dead now, them bitches Granny spoke of, just like those poor folks on the WRIC radio.
Snoot and I weren’t allowed to have cups from the china cabinet like Granny and Mama and Aunt Margene. We’d settle for a bottle of pop and we’d sit at the table and listen to all those stories and suffer through the cabin fever with Granny and hang on every word.
Aunt Margene pours another swaller in her cup and commences telling us all about the time she got caught skinny dipping by the Jeter boys the night she graduated from beauty school, and how those boys had courted her right up until she married Uncle Jimmy. And she swore that oldest Jeter boy had called her on the telephone not a full two weeks after her Jimmy, rest his decent soul, had passed away after his heart attack. They’d turned WRIC radio off for a week after. I recollect it plainly. Granny said she couldn’t bear to hear sweet Jimmy’s name announced while that awful organ music played. She didn’t want it said in her house, she’d told us.
“Some things just ought not be said out loud,” she’d warn us. “I reckon you have what you say, just like the Good Book says.”
Aunt Margene says that was the craziest thing she ever heard. “I can say I’ve got a million dollars in the bank, but my check is still gonna bounce.” Aunt Margene might wear too much Avon lipstick and talk too loudly, but she’s right. You get what you ask for. Oh, yes, that’s the truth of it.
You asked for it. That’s what we’re told, you and me both. Mama would say you asked for it while she tore a switch off the maple tree out in the yard or when she took the batteries out of my Walkman. You asked for it.
Whether we say it out loud or not, we ask for everything. But unlike Granny and Aunt Margene, I ain’t spilling my beans. No, ma’am. I’m not asking for a thing. Not today. But I think about them bitches that Granny spoke of, and I’ve got my own, too. I figure we all do. I grew up in the 80s, the decade of excess, when, even in a small coal mining town, you weren’t anybody if your folks didn’t have some money. Good Lord. Not only did we not have any money, we didn’t have a good name. And I didn’t ask for this name. No, ma’am.
While Snoot sips her pop, I get to thinking on all the other things I didn’t ask for. I was born in the winter just two days after Christmas, but I am summertime’s baby. I loathe this cold and ol’ soup and cabin fever just as Granny does. I’d give my eyeteeth for a sunburn and some of Daddy’s hamburgers off the charcoal grill. I want my bare feet on green grass and the smell of wildflowers and the sound of birds and the echo of that WRIC radio out of Granny’s open kitchen window.
“I want a hamburger on the grill like we have in the summertime,” I say. “I want a hamburger and some tater salad and a big dill pickle. That’s what I’m asking for,” I say. But they ain’t listening to me. That’s how it always felt, you know.
And I didn’t ask for the color of my hair. I don’t look a thing like Granny or Snoot. They’ve got olive complexions, daddy had told me. But I’m fair and towheaded with sea-green eyes to boot, unlike my cousin and granny. I never asked for the blonde jokes or the assumptions that I was stupid or easy or small town. No, sir. No matter what them bitches said. I never asked for any of that.
Alabama comes on the WRIC radio and Randy Owen croons about a lady down on love. Mama pulls Aunt Margene up by her sleeve and they dance a Texas two-step right there in Granny’s kitchen. Ain’t a one of them been to Texas, and we all know that.
“Them bitches,” Granny cackles to me and Snoot as she pours herself another swig of that bottled wild spirit from the china cabinet. Snoot goes to laughing so hard that pop spews from her nose. Them bitches, indeed. Ain’t that how it is? We can talk about you behind your back, but somebody else better not.
Granny turns up the WRIC radio and commences a flatfoot right there in the middle of the kitchen when Randy Owen sings about Mountain Music and Jeff Cook’s fiddle commences. Out there on the back porch, amidst the spitting snow and the loom of Winter’s last days, Aunt Margene is flipping hamburgers on the charcoal grill while she remembers Loretta’s song about those birth control pills and thinks about those godawful Jeter boys and her skinny-dipping days. Mama is peeling taters and cutting up an onion and asking Granny if she’s got any pickles.
Yes, ma’am. I reckon you get what you ask for, so you may as well ask for something good.
I ask for blue skies and sunshine and sunburns. I ask for Aunt Margene to get a good hickory sear on those hamburgers and for Mama’s tater salad to be both tangy and sweet, just like all things should be. I ask for Aunt Margene to get caught by one of them Jeter boys; Uncle Jimmy wouldn’t have wanted her to waste all that Avon lipstick on just ol’ soup and those same ol’ cold and lonely sheets. I ask Granny to see how beautiful she still is, and how she used the rocks them bitches threw at her to build the stepping stones to an Appalachian empire, one that still and will stand, even when summer comes home again. And again.
It’s about that time of year when folks tend to go crazy, you know. Wild spirits like us are tired of being stuck in the house for too long. Tired of the same ol’ cold sheets on the bed. Tired of the same ol’ soup in the same ol’ pot made with last summer’s garden goods. Just plain and ol’ damn tired, I reckon. But even now, beyond the hickory smoke and Granny’s cackle and the WRIC radio, I can hear the birds a’ singing and the snow melting. And I don’t feel sorry for Winter. He’s done got his promise. I hand Snoot what is left of my pop and commence to dance right there on the back porch while Aunt Margene flips those burgers. The sun comes out for a shine. I become a spirit so clear and pure that it almost jumps right out on its own accord.
“You’re still beautiful, Granny,” I assure her. She nods and takes another swig.
Oh, yes, sisters. We get what we ask for. Whether we see it now or later. No matter what happened before or how many Jeter boys come a’ calling or how many of them bitches talked their talk. No matter the sheets or the soup or the song or the season.
What are you asking for?
Love your stories. I am from East Tennessee but don’t live there now. If I were younger I would move back. My Mamaw and Papaw were very important in my life. I knew both sets of grandparents and also my great grandmother, but my maternal grandparents were my security. My grandmother was the strongest women I have ever known. She lost her first husband and one little girl in six months time. She had already lost one baby girl and had one left when her husband died of tuberculosis. My grandfather lost his first wife to the 1918 flu. She left him with six children to raise by himself. Later he met my grandmother at church and convinced her to marry him. They had twin children,my mother and her brother. He said he married the two most beautiful women in Tennessee, one blond and one dark. I love them as much as my parents. They often housed many of the family as people did back then.
I’m from the hills of West Virginia. My Daddy worked regularly, but we were never rich. Mom stayed home to care for the 5 of us. No matter what grief we gave her, we paid the price when Dad got home. “You’ve made your bed, no lie in it”. I’m from the Celtic side, the only of 5 without red hair. I was the rebel without a cause, I did it ‘just because’. I even knew I’d get the board. I try to pass on to my 5 daughters, the wills & ways of Grandma & her sister from the old country (Belgium). At the same time squeezing in just as much as the Irish side. Proud of my mixed heritage.
Pleeeease churn out something to share. Seriously, I need to escape into your down home magical world. Now more than ever with the current state of affairs and all. Plus I really want to hear more about Granny. You are missed.
I too lived in the same area you lived in… my family had a “granny witch” and my family also was not good enough for the local upper class “ You’re one of those Puckett’s aren’t ya” I was asked from those “bitches” as their mamas turned up their nose like someone had just put a dog turn under that very same nose. Keep writing I am a big fan.
I smile as I read your words, and think of my own paternal grandmother and the sun porch where she sat and shelled beans or churned buttermilk. Thanks for evoking fond memories…
Where ya at Anna?
I spent the day reading your site. Started back in the 2008 posts. Wonder what happened to the nurse and her kids?? Were you blogging about yourself ?? If so, how did you get to the place of writing about wild craft ?? Are these tales from your childhood…..are just well thought out writings ???
I wish I had started a life blog. Do not have your skill, but can see that we have no story tellers for our family past to be recorded. 30 years from now my great,great grandkids will not know of my Mother being saved by a ghost when she was 10 years old.
Love your writing…….
I stumbled over here while looking for the Return to Witch Mountain movie from the 70’s, and so glad I did! Your stories are rich in all things good. Thank you and your Granny.
Anna darlin’ I love ya, love ya, love ya!!!! I do have cabin fever. It’s Still. We’re supposed to be in the garden now but we’re expecting snow tomorrow. We are flooded in again, still! This has been a very tryin’ winter. I live in a 1824 log home. I didn’t get to know none of my grannies but I do have one of them wood cook stoves. I just stumbled upon your stories today. You know that feeling between cabin fever and spring fever? Well thanks for the good medicine. In love and light, Dana
I needed this today after a 14″ snow dump yesterday. I was whisked back to the Warm Morning coal stove heating the kitchen and Mr. Jimmy on WAYN giving us the daily obits to the mighty wurlitzer pumping away in the background. Thank you for taking this 57 year old body back to the days when we hung on the words of the ‘big folk’ and thought the world was our oyster.
Oh my goodness!!!!! I love this!!!!! I can hear the voices and feel the feet flatfootin on the linoleum….I can even smell the soup and hear the radio organ!!!!! Oh I want a big thick book with all this in it!!!!! Cause here in Mt. JULIET, Tn. I’ve got cabin fever!!!!! God bless you and thanks for using your gift!!!!!
Another wonderful story! Thank you Ana wess.
Dear Anna…how I love the words you write. I grew up in Clintwood, so when I read your words they transport me back to those Southwest Virginia mountains. Thank you so much for writing them and sharing them with us.
Your writing just makes me smile. Thanks!
Such a wonderful reflection of simple days. When gatherings were around the kitchen table. My Granny lived back a holler in Eastern Ky. Thank the Lord that kitchen table couldn’t talk, I was a Youngin, but loved listening.. TY. For the smiles you brought back ..
LOVE every one of these that I see!! Write on!!!
I needed this today…thank you thank you thank you!!! God bless you today and always for helping us regular folk have a smile and a tear when we need it the most….Luv y’all so much!
Thank You so much. I always look forward to your posts !!
Loved it.I can’t wait to escape outside into some warm sunshine.Seems the cold weather stays to long anymore.
I loved this story!! It’s not just the story (which was wonderful) but it’s the telling of the story – and that you definitely have mastered! Excellent!
Thank you for your wonderful stories. Everytime it gets above 50,I’m out in the yard getting the gardens ready for planting season. I’m done with Olde Man winter.
I am with you! I am about read for Old Man Winter’s name to be on the local obituaries on WRIC-AM 540 radio!
Reblogged this on Paths I Walk.
What a simply wonderful story! I grew up in the App. Mtns. I remember yearning for the day that we could go barefooted and catch lightening bugs in old mayonnaise jars. We would stay out late on those long summer evenings and play until the porch light flashed and we knew it was time to go inside. Your story brings back great memories. Thank you for that!
Reading this was just like walking through one of those warm sweet pockets of Springtime air that gets loose in late Winter…..it brought me joy and hope. I just love what you write and I want you to have a long glorious career as a writer 😊
And some big summertime ‘maters!
Oh how you bring back my memories! Yes we all have those bitches in our lives and i never got caught skinny dippin (to afraid of snakes) but i like to say there were Jeter boys after me too!!! Thank you once again!
thanks, I enjoyed it. always look forward to your writings.
Yes, it is time to go a little crazy! I am a summer girl, one that is waiting patiently for now.
Yep, Cabin Fever here too! looking forward to seeing granny in the garden soon… I just ordered my seeds just waiting on the sun to warm up everything again!
Them bitches lived everywhere in the South for sure. I’m asking for a beautiful spring with warm days and crisp nights, wildflowers blooming and the sweet smell of my Nannie’s lilac. Then I want long warm days, juicy homegrown tomatoes, warm dirt between my toes and lots of time fishing in the river. Great stories, thank you.
Thank you so much. I love you’re stories.
Wonderful, and very much needed today. THANK YOU.
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