I had the good fortune of having a "stay at home" mom for my early childhood years. (And before someone gets the idea that I have something against working moms, please let me assure you that I do not.) We weren't rich...hell, we weren't even middle class. We had to gather eggs and milk the cow every day just to eat breakfast. In the winter, meals were often left overs that had accumulated over the previous year, frozen in baggies and old buckets. In the morning, mother would throw some homemade canned tomato juice in a cast iron pot, dump in an ice block of frozen whatever-was-in-it, and set it on the old wood stove. When it boiled, it was done. Sometimes it took all day. I was a poor farm kid from the sticks. Cereal was a luxury. I spent May to September 90% barefoot and shirtless, because we couldn't afford new shoes and clothes. They had to last. Truth be told, we didn't always get "new" anything. A good bit of the time, we got hand-me-downs from cousins and neighbors. It was a circumstance of country life...but I digress. My dad made 3.15 an hour in those days, and the farm didn't bring in a great deal of money. Mother decided she would start babysitting to bring in some extra cash. To show you how much of a difference there is between then and now...she got 20.00 a week to take on 2 other kids 8 to 10 hours a day. Can you imagine?
The first couple of children she kept were the children of family friends. Their dad drove the local milk truck and their mom was a secretary for a small business. They were nice people. Trey and Ashley became like family for my sister, Tiffany, and I. We were all separated by 1 year...meaning I was 6, Trey was 5, Tiff was 3, and Ashley was 2. Ash was potty training and still in diapers. She was...portly? She always reminded me of the Gerber baby but with more chubby. Trey was so thin, you couldn't have hit him with a handful of corn. I assumed he was thin because Ash was eating his share as well. Tiff and Ash spent most of their time playing dolls and annoying Trey and I. For some reason they couldn't understand why it was inappropriate for girls to enter our Fort, which was basically 2 hay bales, a dirt mound, and a bed sheet I pilfered from the clothesline. They could usually be deterred from bothering us with the waterhose, though in most cases that resulted in the wooden spoon making an appearance. We had 1 television..cabinet style. There were 2 dials on it and rabbit ears for the first 6 years of my life. Didn't matter though...there were only 3 channels anyway. If you were lucky, and the birds stayed away, and the weather was good...you might get 2 of the 3 to come in plainly. The other was a lost cause unless you held your mouth just right.
One evening, after Trey and Ash had gone home, my dad came in and began discussing this "new" technology with my mother. I was intrigued. A device that would allow us to watch movies sounded AMAZING! I listened for a long time, and I remember thinking how awesome it would be to have something like that. The downside was that it was going to cost my dad two weeks pay to get one. That wasn't something we could afford. I was disappointed. A few weeks went by and I had all but forgotten about the new movie thing. Pretending was better anyway, and we had started getting a new channel (a 4th one!!)...KBSI 23, a FOX station. That meant more cartoon choices, when we were allowed to watch that is (which wasn't a great deal. 30 minutes a day, and Saturday mornings.) Life was good.
Right at the end of summer, a few weeks before it was time to pick corn, my paternal grandmother, Mamaw, called to tell my dad that she had found a VCR machine for sale in the newspaper. (That's right bitches, we had a phone. It was an avocado green rotary phone, but we had one.) Mother had saved a good bit of her sitting money, and she and Dad decided to move into the "modern" era. The VCR was listed in the items for a yard sale in an area of my hometown called "Pleasant Valley." Pleasant Valley was a subdivision built to provide housing options for the workers of the Goodyear factory that had opened in town...the largest in the U.S. You had to be pretty well off to afford a house in that subdivision. It was home to doctors, lawyers,...well, everyone except poor farm kids. It was actually kind of exciting to think we were going to go there and buy something. (Sadly, once I got to know some of those families later in life, I realized what an idiot I was. Most of them were assholes.) Since my dad had to work, it mean that Mother was going to have to go...with all 4 kids! Knowing how difficult it would be for Mother to handle that, Dad took it upon himself to invite Mamaw. Now, there's some history there. Mother and Mamaw got along about like two Tomcats in a burlap sack (and I'll save that for another time.)
The next day. Mother, Mamaw, and we 4 kids, piled into our Mercury station wagon and headed to town. It was about a 15 minute trip, which was about the width of our county. We pulled into the driveway of the yard sale, and Mother said to Mamaw, "Keep an eye on them. I'm going to be just a minute." Mother got out and hell broke loose. Mamaw's idea of "keeping an eye on us" was browsing the yard sale. She left 4 young children in the car....windows down mind you. In those days, in our small town, you could do that without much risk of criminal activity. The real risk was leaving 4 children to their devices. You should also keep in mind that I have Asperger's syndrome and death anxiety, which were both undiagnosed at the time. Trey, we later found out, had severe ADHD. This is a volatile combination in and of itself. Throw in 2 siblings we couldn't stand and 33 seconds of boredom, and it was a mess. We decided to play "campout." If you don't know anything about Mercury station wagons, here's a brief description. Bench seats in the front, bench seats in the middle, and collapsible "kiddy" seats in the cargo hold. I sat in the front with adults, because I was oldest. The others were in the center. The kiddy seats were folded down to allow full use of the cargo area. Trey climbed over the seat to join me in the front. We moved the bench seat all the way back and used windbreakers to build a tent. We then decided we needed a fire. Gathering brush from the floorboard and using Mamaw's cigarette lighter, we built a small fire in the ashtray...which quickly filled the car with smoke, even with the windows down. This was enough to get Mamaw's attention. She put out the fire, and subsequently prevented my mother from starting one on her head.
This next part will need a bit more explanation. You see, Dad believes that if you get off the interstate, you have to live there. So, he doesn't stop on long car rides unless he needs gas or has to pee. That doesn't work well with a 6 and 3 year old. As a result of his insanity, Mother put a potty chair in the cargo area so we could use it without having to pull over. Now, all of us knew it was there. Tiffany decided that she needed to pee. She climbed over the eats, into the cargo area, and proceeded to do her business. Once finished, she stood up and attempted to pull up her panties. Unfortunately, they had gotten hung on the kiddy seat latch. She kept bending over and jerking them, but it wasn't happening. This also caused her to moon and flash everyone at the yard sale, which was half of Pleasant Valley. A crowd of people, including other children, gathered outside of the window. Tiff began crying and screaming, because she's a drama queen. My brain started to melt and I dove under the dashboard. Luckily, my grandmother had the good sense to help her before it got worse. Meanwhile, Trey had engaged in a spitting contest with another boy from the crowd. (Oddly enough, we later, as teenagers, became best friends...with benefits!) The volley of saliva carried on for a while. Tiffany decided that she too would join in. With both Trey and Tiff spitting, things were getting gross fast. Mamaw apparently thought to look in our general direction and yelled for them to stop. The boy turned to walk away. Tiff thrust her head through the window to get in one final spit as Trey cranked it shut, trapping her sideways head between the window glass and the door frame. Of course, the drama queen began to wail.
Mamaw wasn't able to stop the cries from activating Mother's seek and destroy protocol, as she began shoving her way past the shoppers. When she arrived at the car, she jerked the door open, not realizing Tiff's head was solidly trapped...and there she dangled by her neck. Trey smacked the window roller (as they were hand cranked not electric), releasing her face, and causing her to drop to the ground with a resounding thud. It sounded something like a brick smashing through a pumpkin. Mother grabbed her up off the ground, comforted her, and checked for injuries. Seeing there were none, she then inspected the car, that was devoid of adult supervision. Seeing the burnt grass in the ashtray and the piss-filled potty in the cargo area caused her to lose her mind. That was the first time I ever heard my mother say, "Fuck." Now, this entire time, Ashley had been sitting in her carseat...quietly...shitting. Not just a normal amount, but like enough for 6 kids. I distinctly remember Mother picking her up and watching the poop spill out of the carseat. It was disgusting.
4 hours, 4 spankings, 2 adults fighting, a moon-fest, a spitting contest, a campfire gone wrong, and a shit-filled carseat later...we had a used VCR. It cost mother a month's worth of babysitting and all that drama, but we had one. When dad arrived home that night, he saw the VCR and said, "See. You said it was going to be too hard with the kids. I told you Momma would help." Mother, smiling politely, said..."Your mother is as useless as tits on a boar. Never again..." And she made good on her word. That was the last time Mother and Mamaw were ever in the same car. She quit sitting. A month later I started to school and Mother went to work...at a Video Rental place, no less.
Oh...and this hat is very similar to the one June Thompson wore when I was a child. She owned the VCR that we bought. Two years later, Mother went to work for her husband as a collections agent.
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