Days of Homemade Fun
One day last week I talked on the phone to Daddy’s first cousin Mottie. He’s 93. One of the sweetest things about talking to Mottie is hearing stories about my Daddy when they were boys together. Mottie told about them working together in Daddy Leland’s corn patch. He mentioned their school days at Sweet Home and the turnips they ate on the way home.
“Where did you get the turnips?” I asked.
“From Joe’s garden,” Mottie replied. He didn’t think Joe was a Binkley . . . . He leaned toward Harris. No matter. For me it was just good to hear those Cheatham County, Tennessee, surnames I heard so often growing up.
“Did you play baseball?” I asked.
“We played a lot of baseball,” Mottie reminisced.
My Daddy was four years younger than Mottie and — in the colloquialism of my childhood — “thought the world of him.”
“Charles Leland went everywhere I did at school,” Mottie told me (Charles Leland was my Daddy). Mottie told about the time someone tripped him on the court of the “old gym” at Sweet Home School. He had to be driven to Ashland City for medical attention. “Before I knew it Charlie Buck was in the car, too. When he got something on his mind, he just did it!”
I loved hearing him call Daddy Charlie Buck. I knew Daddy shared the nickname “Buck” with Daddy Leland, but the family all called Daddy Charles Leland. I like Charlie Buck.
Mottie said that, when he was young, men from the countryside gathered in Daddy Leland’s country store on most nights to play cards. He said, “There were a few chairs . . . and nail kegs.” He said that he and Daddy sat on a pile of “something.” From what Daddy told me, I’m guessing those things were 25 or 50 pound sacks of sugar or flour or somesuch. Mottie said the grownups told him and Daddy to be quiet.
“Did you eat bologna and crackers?” I asked.
“I never was much on bologna,” Mottie said, “but I ate a lot of crackers.”
Mottie said that they used to walk over two miles to Pleasant View and back again. On the way home, they messed around. At one point, Mottie said that they had “homemade fun.” He told about Saturday night trips to Springfield (15 miles away) to visit Aunt Sue’s family (Mottie’s Aunt Sue was my Mama Sue).
“Did you go to church at Sycamore Chapel?” I asked. “Yes, I went there for years — before it was a church. It was an old house with doors open on the side and on the front.”
“Did Mama Boyd go?” I asked. Mama Boyd was Daddy Leland’s godly mother, Daddy and Mottie’s grandmother, and my great-grandmother. The first time I ever saw my Daddy cry was when she died.
“No, Mama Boyd was living in Nashville,” he said (I knew she lived there when I was growing up, but didn’t know when she moved from the country).
“Was Mama Boyd sweet to you?” I asked.
Up to this point, Mottie had gone from remembering to remembering and chuckling, but this question was different. “Oh, yes,” he said with deep feeling. “She was always good to me.”
This is how she looked when I knew her.
“Those were some times to experience,” Mottie said.
Crackers. Watching grownups play cards. Going to church. Eating turnips. Playing baseball. Having homemade fun. Those were the memories that made Mottie chuckle.
And remembering a grandmother who was always good to him brought joy and gratefulness to his aged heart.
Thank you for providing a precious childhood for your children.
The glory of young men is their strength,
And the honor of old men is their gray hair.
Proverbs 20:29
I hope you can join Ray and me as we celebrate 7 years of Daily Encouragement for Homeschooling Mothers this coming Wednesday, April 29, at 3:00 p.m. Central. You can register here.