Letters to My Mother Maybolt, RIP
Today is a sad date for me. It ranks up there with the day I was eat up by the John Deere Manure Spreader, no it far and away surpasses that day and I would gladly give up my only remaining leg to have my mother back! Mother passed two years ago to the date in the Cedar Grove Bingo Parlor fire. Mother was the only victim of the fire because her hoverround high centered on a box of bingo cards that had just been delivered out of Corinth Mississippi and according to the Cedar Grove Fire Marshall, Robert F. Flamretardeaux, a Frenchman who moved up to Cedar Grove after Katrina wiped him out, was a clear violation of the fire codes, where it blocked the handicap exit.
I remember when I got the call from Fire Marhsall Retardo, that ill-fated night, I was in mother's bedroom straightening out her drawers, well it is too painful to remember but I cannot forget. As is usual with folks who move in to the area from out of state, their accents have to be practiced on your ear to be able to understand what they are saying. Anyway, Fire Marshall Flamretardeaux, phoned me and said:
"Missour, Maybo, yam afrid dat ur mutter is dad."
I moved the receiver to my good ear and asked him to repeat that please. My mutter is dad? My father has been dead for 25 years.
"Ur mutter, Madameselle Maybo, es dad!"
"No, she is not here she is at the bingo parlor, it is Wednesday night and she always is at bingo," I replied.
"Oui-oui Missur Maybo, zee es dad at da bingo parlar, der wus a fire!"
Then it struck me like that feeling you get when you first hear about your mother's death, like everything inside you lets go, whatever the force is that holds you together just lets go. All the string goes out of everything inside of you. As I hung up the phone that evening taking in what Fire Marshal Retardo had just told me, I knew my life would never be the same. I raced to my mother's handicap accessible bathroom and transferred to her handicapped accessible toilet and I sobbed uncontrollably, flapping my arm and my good leg in the air from time to time, and my bowels wept too.
This time of self pity and despair passed that night and I have tried to put the best face on the hand that the Good Lord had dealt to me and mother that night back in November of 2008.
More about Fire Marshal Robert Flamretardeaux. We are really lucky to get a man of his experience. As noted he was washed away from his little hamlet in Southern Louisiana by Hurricane Katrina where he was chief of the volunteer department.
He had personally attended to over 17 fires in his long and distinguished career there in Louisiana. When we got him up here at the Milan Arsenal based refugee camp, he come right over to the fire department and spoke to Howard Milligan and was voted unanimously as the first Cedar Grove Volunteer Fire Marshall! He had been to three times as many fires as our best man, Fire Chief Mouse Featherstone.
Mouse's real name is Marvin, but he was nitnamed Mouse when he was a baby. Little Marvin put everything in his mouth as a baby and his mother was horrified one day when Marvin found a baby mouse the cat had brought up and before she could get it away from Marvin, he popped it into his little mouth, gummed it twice and swallowed it whole. Well the Featherstones waited for a couple of days for Marvin to die. His mother was even checked into the hospital with a nervous breakdown when as a joke her younger brother, Neeland Finkbinder, made a pine coffin for little Marvin and brought it over
for her approval. Nina passed out when she seen that sad little coffin. Anyway, Nina got out of the hospital, Marvin did not die, but was named Mouse, and Neeland never made another small coffin. Nothing is sadder than a small coffin except maybe a tiny wheelchair.
Jackson Delano Maybolt, President
Urban Poverty Law Center
"They don't make smores in HELL!" Mother Maybolt, 1925-2008
No comments:
Post a Comment