When I was just a young boy my parents would drive the 6 hrs from our home in West Tennessee to Nashville to drop us kids for a week of fun with my father's parents who were by default my paternal grandparents. To say my grandmother payed attention to details would be a giant exaggeration. I was a very finicky eater when young and she knew I could eat tuna and very few other items which did not contain chocolate.
She was a wonderful grandmother who would tell stories, especially ghost stories to the three of us as we would try to fall asleep during the hot summer months upstairs in their modest home which had no air-conditioning so windows would be opened as widely as practicable without the benefit of screens to keep the flies out. Early in the evening the breeze would feel as though it had come strait from Hell.
Clean sheets feel wonderfully cool as you slide between them and the pillow seemed to trap a cool-well just under it and my older brother and I would compete to see which of us could steal the others cool from beneath the pillow by slipping one's arm very slowly and quietly under the others pillow. Getting caught was painful since the cool was protected like borders in Israel. The guilty party got an elbow to the errant arm and an admonition to cut it out.
With windows open in the summer and no screens, flies were numerous. Pancakes on Sunday morning with honey or maple syrup would draw these insects and trap them. Grandmother told us they were raisins and to just eat them, and I was a young man before I realized there was a variety of wingless raisins which were sweet!
I harbor fond feelings for my early years and had a very interesting and wonderful time.
Oh, the tuna she served me mixed with mayonnaise and placed on white bread was cat food. I noticed the difference with the first bite. Very fishy taste and bones galore! We shopped much more carefully after that incident.
I am,
Jackson Delano Maybolt, President, Urban Poverty Law Center
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