The Good Ol’ Days

When I was a little girl, I would sit around and listen to the old folks talk about the “good ol’ days” and sit dreamily as I listened to how great it must have been. My grandmother and her two living sisters would talk about when they were little girls and for me to imagine my white headed grandmother as a little girl was so fascinating. They talked about learning how to read and write by drawing with a stick in the sand. My grandmother had to quit school in the third grade to go to work in the cotton mills. Her mother died from Yellow Fever when she was a little girl. The one wish that her mother had on her death bed was that the family would stay together and not be farmed out to orphanages, or worse, the streets. In order for them to stay together, the children, even the youngest, had to go to work. As I’m older and wiser, this certainly doesn’t seem like the “good ol’ days” to me but they were cherished memories from their childhood and as I’ve grown older, these memories have since become cherished memories of my own.

 

I recall my grandmother and her sisters talking about pranks that they would pull on their older brother, who at the time was having a young lady friend over for dinner. He begged them to be on their best behavior and “for goodness sakes, don’t let that ol’ mammy cat in the house!”  While their brother carefully made supper the little girls sneaked the cat into the coat closet, knowing that she would be itching to get out come dinnertime. Their brother’s lady friend came for dinner and when he opened the coat closet that ol’ cat jumped out and scared the skin off of that woman as the cat went flying like a streak of lightning for the front door. The cat was not accustomed to coming inside the house, my aunt would say, and so she bounced from wall to wall and ended up running up the curtains.

 

From time to time my mother would talk about the good ol’ days from her childhood. She talked of once a week, if she was lucky, getting a dime to go buy a Coca Cola and a piece of candy at the corner store. I couldn’t imagine that a single little dime would buy a Coke AND candy. I was lucky if a dollar would cover a Coca Cola and a piece of candy when I would go to the store. But, somehow, it always did.

 

After listening to the stories of my grandmother and my mother, especially the ones where they were pranksters, I thought I’d try my hand at mischief. I had a pretty light orange mama cat named Nattie. Nattie was my best friend and she followed every footstep that I took, which made it easier to catch her when I got the bright idea to put Nattie in the washing machine.  She had only been in there a few seconds, thankfully on a gentle cycle, when my grandmother rescued her. I don’t know if my grandmother wanted to laugh or kill me, but I suppose thankfully she did neither. She went out on the back steps and pulled a switch, a stick that’s used to swat at children’s legs when they deserve it. It didn’t do any good for me to run because even though at 76, my grandmother could run like a mad sprinter. She swatted my legs and I never put that cat in the washing machine again. Nattie did end up in the dryer and the oven a couple of times, but again, my grandmother rescued her and swatted me. Nattie lived to be about 12 or 13 years old before she passed away of natural causes but she’s part of my good ol’ days.

 

Part of the reason that I believe that I am who I am is because of my good ol’ days which in some instances weren’t all that good and went on for weeks at a time. My grandmother had a weak heart and although she tried her best to keep up with me there were times when her body just wouldn’t cooperate. There were many a summer spent in the halls of the hospital where she would be confined for weeks. It seemed like she made it all through the school year while my mom truly relied on her to care for me but once school was out, her heart weakened even more. I remember one June I had planned a big birthday party but on the day of the party, she got very sick and passed out several times before my mother convinced her to go to the hospital. My godmother and cousin came over to help supervise the party. Supervising my very first boy-girl party must have been too much for them because I ended up with my beautiful white cat Heathcliff having his fur tinted pink with fruit punch. He stayed pink for quite sometime and my dad thought it was funny to call him the Pink Panther.

 

The rest of that summer was spent between the main waiting room, the waiting room on the floor that she was on, and the hospital gift shop. The hospital had one of those old fold up phone booths at the end of the hallway on my grandmother’s floor. I would bring a bag of quarters so that I could call my best friend and talk about the things I wish we could be doing. I was too young to realize that life is not infinite and that my grandmother only had a few more short years before she would leave us. But, nonetheless, those were my good ol’ days.

 

Another part of my good ol’ days comes from when I was a young teenager and I had the bright idea to make up an “after church party.” My aunt was babysitting me because my grandmother was in the hospital again. My aunt wasn’t aware that there was not really an after church party and I was not aware that teenage boys who’ve just gotten drivers’ licenses don’t drive very well. A group of us church misfits went to a new subdivision that was still under construction and just sat around talking. That is, until this gentleman with a baseball bat from a nearby house came and not so politely asked us to leave. We piled into two different cars and I was in one with my best friend’s boyfriend driving. It was some kind of Volkswagen and it smelled like Mountain Dew and fish. He drove us to the highway towards my house to show us how fast he could go and I thought we’d walk on the wildside by going about 70 miles per hour. His idea of fast was a tidbit faster at about 110 miles per hour. I prayed, with my seatbelt on and my jowls flapping in the wind, that if I ever got out of that car alive that I would never do that again. Thankfully, even though I disobeyed God and my parents that night, I made it home alive and in one piece. And I never did that again. I’m not sure if you’d consider that the good ol’ days but it did teach me an old fashioned lesson–don’t lie and don’t ride with foolish teenage boys if you want to live past 14, or any age for that matter.

 

Now, with my boys in their formidable years I wonder what will be their good ol’ days. My oldest talks about the old days as “back in the 80’s” and I have to giggle when I think that the “old” days seem that foreign to him. But, there’s mystery in history when you weren’t there. As a child I can remember that those good ol’ days my mom and grandmother talked about seemed so mystical, like another world compared to the modern conveniences that I had. I’m sure my boys see my childhood memories as corny and bland compared to their internet charged, game system rich, virtual reality lives. They are living in what I once thought was science fiction as I’m sure I lived in what my grandmother thought was science fiction.

 

But amidst their modern conveniences I hope that they will walk through life with the memories of summer cook outs with homeade peach ice cream, new pets, and the anticipation of Christmas Eve. I hope that same type of anticipation of Christmas Eve will propel them to always be excited about their future but that the joy of simpler times like summer cookouts will keep them grounded into what really matters. For it isn’t the game systems, the computers, or the cell phones that they will remember the most when they are old and gray. It will be times like when my oldest boy broke his leg at the beginning of summer and had to flop around on the floor with his below the waist cast on both legs. He made friends with a little kitten that summer that he remembers as fondly as an old friend. Or the time when my youngest covered himself in bread flour from head to toe because he wanted to be bread. Or perhaps the time when we went to my aunt’s place on the lake for the Fourth of July and shot tons of firecrackers. Or perhaps it will be memories yet to be made. I hope that I can inspire them to cherish their past, while holding on to the hope of their future, as I have through the years. But for now, I’ve got to go make some new memories with my boys…we’re cleaning the pool out for the beginning of summer. I’m sure it’s a memory in the making!