City Girl

As a little girl I remember going to visit my grandma and papaw, who lived in the country about thirty miles from the city where I lived. There were lots of reasons to go to the country and most of them revolved around playing and pretending -- and no chores.

I got to help (and pretend) in the huge yard grandma called her "flower garden." The garden was so big it took us about three hours to water all the plants. While we watered, we pulled the "heads" off the drooping ones. I was never sure if those flowers were already dead, or they died because we pulled their heads off and left them lying in the sun with no water to drink. After we finished "pruning" the flowers -- oh how I hated prunes -- I could get the basket and pick up all the flower heads and play with them. Some were still pretty, but by morning they really were dead. Oh well, nothing much bothered me for long in those long lazy days of childhood.

Beyond the flower garden gate was the pasture. It had all the normal things a pasture has: weeds and dandelions, cows (and cow patties), a barn -- and George. George was big and ugly, dingy white, with sharp pointed horns and two humps. George might have been ugly, but he ruled the pasture. When he was anywhere to be seen, for whatever reason bulls demand attention, the cows followed him around the pasture. I, however, would not open the flower garden gate. There were too many other things to see and do and George did not impress me.

Did I mention that the pasture also had an artesian well that flowed constantly and never ran out of water. I remember it being the sweetest, coldest water to drink. No faucets or knobs to turn, no glasses to wash. You just knelt down in the mud (yuck), cupped your hands and drank, ummmm. There was also a smoke house in the pasture. Even though it made a good place to hide from my brother, it had a really odd smell, sorta like the bacon and ham we ate for breakfast. Since my mom and I shopped in the big grocery store in the city, I never thought about why it smelled that way. There were too many other things to see and explore on the country farm, to keep me from pondering about it too long.

Vines to climb and swing on and the barn to play in. The barn had a loft where hay was stacked high to the roof. We climbed up the ladder and slid down a rope swing all the way to the barn floor. I quickly found out the barn was not built simply for me to play in. Sometimes fantasy and reality meet at the end of a rope swing and you soon realize where the cows go when it rains. Boy did my feet stink. That lazy day in the summer turned into a rare scolding from my papaw and I was banished from the barn. For awhile.

The Mimosa tree beside the cattle guard, next to the road, was a lookout where my friend and I could climb up and watch for the fruit truck to come around the curve. When he, (Mr. Poche or Fontenot or Sanchez or Langois, I'm fuzzy on names) pulled across the cattle guard, we got to help pick out apples, grapes, bananas and juicy peaches. Funny, I never saw a cattle guard on a city driveway.

There wasn't a large grocery store for food, like in the city. There were only two small stores, one on each end of "town," with maybe five miles separating them. The smaller store on the south end of town, where the road forked, was owned by my uncle. His store had lots of stuff people needed, things the farm couldn't provide. Things like candles, sugar and a few loaves of bread, batteries and small cans of shrimp lined the shelves. I remember those because grandma would sometimes put them in her okra and tomato gumbo. There was parafin wax and jars for canning, although grandma would "go into town" to buy most of her canning supplies. The most important things he sold though were gas and penny candy. I remember wondering why you filled up your car, your tractor or even a boat motor in the same place you bought penny candy. We couldn't just go in and help ourselves to the candy, even though my uncle owned it, which I didn't understand either. We had to earn it, and that meant we carried empty boxes and other trash a store produces out to the trash pile to burn.

The other store, on the north end of town was Savic's grocery. I remember his name, though I'm not sure why. Papaw and I could walk to Savics together, passing the Poche's, our closest neighbors. Papaw (Henry was his name) talked and visited with the other farmers while I shopped. I knew where the store was because I could see the two story schoolhouse from the Mimosa tree. Mr. Savic sold larger items like big sacks of flour, papaw's blue shirts and other larger items. He had a fresh meat counter and even knobs and tools for household repair jobs.

Across the highway from Savic's grocery store was the school. Imagine that -- a school in the country. I didn't understand why the kids there went to school while the kids in the city were out. Grandma tried to explain that a long time ago, when my daddy was a boy in school, they had to work on the farm and went to school when there were no crops to harvest. Sometimes I went to school with my aunt who taught there. It felt strange going to the school because a lot of the teachers would tell me things like, "do you know I taught your daddy when he was in school." My dad went to school? He must have been very important because I got special advantages the other kids didn't. They let me out of class anytime I wanted to explore the big two story schoolhouse. I noticed some strange things to me, like kids from first grade playing on the playground with kids from the twelfth grade. And everyone seemed to bring their lunch.

Most summers I would visit in the country two or three times and, yes, I did sometimes get bored. There was a telephone but I couldn't just call my friend in the city and talk anytime I wanted. Grandma would have to dial the number and she said we could talk for three minutes. THREE minutes? Really, three minutes? No way! So I would invite her to go with me at least once each summer. Actually her grandparents lived in a small town too, but it wasn't really country. More like a town pictured in some of the family TV shows back then. We sometimes went there too, so summers weren't so long.

Something that confused me about people who lived in the country, like my grandma and grandpa, was they didn't get milk and eggs from the National Food Store like we did in the city. Grandma tried to convince me that the milk we bought in bottles and eggs that were in the refrigerated section, actually came from country cows. The cows that followed George around, and those scrawny chickens I unwillingly fed in the yard? They laid the eggs. Gross, no wonder I didn't like milk and only ate eggs if I saw mom buy them from the store.

I don't know how many of you can identify with me when I say I was a city girl growing up, and I am still a city girl today, some 46 years later. Someone could have said, "how much of a city girl were you," and my answer would have been, "you get your milk from WHERE, oh no you've got it all wrong. You see we bring our milk home every day from National Food Stores in a waxed paper carton". Eggs come from the cooler section in cardboard cartons shaped for each individual egg.

I know this is rather long, but the memories a city girl has of the country takes a long time to think through. I wonder, did a country girl who visited grandparents in the city enjoy the long lazy days of childhood as much? Surely not, the city didn't have George or a Mimosa tree, or the man with the fruit truck. And that is sad to this city girl. Hope you all enjoy a summer spent in the country.