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From: "j" <>
Subject: [TNDICKSO] Sunday Afternoon Rocking
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 11:14:32 -0500


When Mama married Mr. Johnson (from the "Sunday Afternoon Rocking" series)

Note: Periodically, the nature of "Sunday Afternoon Rocking" changes, and
now and then you will receive a message that is in actuality a story,
designed to help us all understand a little better the lives of our
ancestors. -jan

When Mama married Mr. Johnson

I reckon it is true that life is a whole lot like the creek down the road.
It changes, you know...oh, you can't see it if you only pass through now and
again, but now if you have waded in it, and caught its fish in your bare
hands, you notice. If you swim in it, you sit on its banks and skip rocks,
and you know it as surely as you know your only pair of overalls, well then
you know the changes in it. And you know that it is more than just the
normal changes that come with the change of seasons...the flooding in the
rainy season and the bare trickle over the rocks in the dry. No, you know
when it suddenly is following just a slightly different course, when it
rounds the rocks just a little differently, when the bank of it doesn't have
quite the same lines it used to have...and you know it is
inevitable....creeks gonna change, and so is life.

So my life changed too, and not for the first time. Guess it changed the
most when Papa died, and being the eldest boy, at 11, I found myself "man of
the house" and taking on a man's share of the work too. It weren't easy...
but the hardest part of all was burying Papa. I never knew anything in my
life so hard as knowing Papa was not going to be there anymore, knowing he
wasn't going to be waking me up before daybreak anymore to come help him
with the chores, knowing I wasn't going to be watching him work with his
brown skin glistening sweat in the sun, knowing he wasn't ever again going
to grin slowly and make me feel grown up with his "man talk". I wanted to
scream at him how dare he die? How dare he die when I was not a man yet and
needed to learn how? And I felt guilty, cause I knew he did not want to
die...and I wasn't the only one going to be needing him. And it was hard
thinking on how I was going to do what he did, and hard looking at my five
younger brothers and sisters and knowing suddenly I wasn't just their
brother anymore... how I did might be making a big difference in how we got
along. And I was scared. I didn't feel near big enough to do all he did.
Onct I put my feet down in his shoes when no one was looking, and they bout
swallowed my feet whole...and I thought that is how it really is too, I
ain't big enough to be Papa yet. No time to grieve over Papa, bad as I
wanted to, bad as sometimes I broke down when I was off to myself.....and I
knew I had to be a man and make Papa proud....and not sure how I was
supposed to do that, being only 11.

I did good as I could, and Mama and the little ones helped too, but somehow
it wasn't going good as it was when Papa was there. Some of our kinfolks
and neighbors pitched in when they could, but they couldn't do for us and do
for themselves too. Ole Miz Griffin tole Mama that it might come to the
point that she would just have to split us all up amongst the kinfolk and
neighbors and late in the night I heard her crying. Doc Adams asked Mama
had she ever considered farming me out, and I never heard Mama so spitting
mad as when she answered him....I figured I would not have to worry on that
one, but rightly, I was not sure but what it might come to that neither.

And so times got harder, and they got leaner, and what spark had not gone
out of Mama when Papa died faded a little more each day. She got tired and
thinner, and seemed like she was dying out as surely as embers in a
fireplace. And I was scared....cause I figured she was nigh to giving
up....and I think the little ones was scared the same way. Then the
preacher come.

I don't reckon none of us were expecting what the preacher had to say, and I
reckon it was hardest of all on Mama....but there didn't seem to be much
else to do, and so Mama done it. What the preacher had to say concerned Mr.
Johnson. None of us knew Mr. Johnson right well, as he lived in another
place though not too far. Preacher being a circuit rider, he knowed most
everbody round these parts, and he knowed Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson was a
widower, same as Mama was a widow. His wife up and died back in the spring
and left him with a houseful of little ones, including the one that come
when his wife died. He not able to care for them and tend the fields at the
same time.... his story was a lot like ours. And it appeared to the
preacher that what might ought to be done was to marry Mr. Johnson and Mama,
make us all into one family...and that being so, we could survive a little
better. Fact is, he didn't leave Mama much choice in it...told her that her
only choice was did she want to keep her youngins together or did she want
to give them up? I reckon that was most likely the same thing he had to say
to Mr. Johnson. And so it was, with Papa not in the ground six months, nor
Mr. Johnson's wife neither, we had us a wedding.

Mighta seemed a mite like something not honorable to either Papa or Mr.
Johnson's wife neither...but the fact is, we all was needing some help, and
times were harder than just losing someone we loved, though that was bad
enough...and we all knowed it.

It weren't no big wedding like you see sometimes with young folks, when
everone comes to watch it and they have a poundin and a shivaree, big spread
out for everybody....it was just a wedding with the words a preacher says
what makes it so in the eyes of the Lord, and Mama wearing nothing fancy,
but just the best dress she had which was the same one she wore to all the
meetings at the church house. No one there but us youngins and Miz Griffin
and one of
the church deacons. And Mr. Johnson looked mighty uncomfortable, and Mama
looked mighty sad. And Mama called him Mr. Johnson, and he called Mama Mrs.
Johnson....and we all moved into his house, and went to work and that was
about the size of it.

I can't rightly say nothin bad about Mr. Johnson, and so I reckon I am
luckier than many. He never had much to say, and he wasn't nothing
like Papa used to be with a big bear laugh that tickled everyone that heard
it. I watched him work like Papa out in the fields, and I worked beside
him, but his eyes didn't twinkle and he didn't make me feel like a man with
his "man
talk"...cause there wasn't much talk at all. He never called me son, and I
never called him anything but Mr. Johnson. We just all done what we had to
do, and then one day there was another little one, and another, and I stood
beside the family until I was a man full grown and went off to make a family
of my own.

And you know...I reckon I learned some things about being a man from Mr.
Johnson after all. He weren't papa...but he done the right thing, and he
done what he had to do. I reckon that is mostly what being a man is....or a
woman. Doing the right thing, and what you have to do.

c2000janPhilpot
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(Note: Afternoon Rocking messages are meant to be passed on, meant to be
shared...simply share as written without alterations...and in entirety.
Thanks, jan)

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