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From: "Cheryl Adams" <>
Subject: [TNDICKSO] Re: Sunday Afternoon Rockin revisited....
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2004 15:30:44 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
References: <4025493B.00000F.81975@oem-computer>




-------Original Message-------

From: Cheryl Adams
Date: 02/07/04 03:23:23 PM
Subject: Sunday Afternoon Rockin revisited....


This is one of Jan's yarns.... NOONE can spin a yarn like our Jan.... I
thought you might enjoy rereading one of them and take a minute to offer a
prayer for her well being...as she deals with this surgery and illness.
Cher

-------Original Message-------

From: j
Date: 09/11/02 10:59:16 PM
To:
Subject: Re: Story????

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. This is another long ago Sunday Rocking column -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 go 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. 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. 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 some
how 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, whenever one 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. 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.

Copyright ©2000janPhilpot


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