Ah, yes, the days of 'innocent' youth.

I thought that as I have been offline for 9 days, you'd have this done..... (sigh)

Guess I have to learn patience after all.

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What is popular is not always right.
What is right is not always popular.
Gerry B.

Part-6
Sewing with a stapler & A la sparkler back porch flambee’

We had a large screened back porch, that had a screened view on three sides. The house was built on sloping ground so at the screen door it was level with the ground, but by the other end the floor was at least five feet above ground so the view was good. One side next to the kitchen was shaded most of the year by a large planting of climbing of a nonfruiting variety of wide leaf grape. The roof was tin and it lulled you to sleep very deeply during rains. On the elevated end was a good sized table next to the screen running long ways and a nice deep couch paralleling it next to the exterior bedroom windows. Going toward the kitchen at the end of the couch was an enameled white metal table, then the door into the kitchen, then a large kitchen window, then the screen door.

Remember that basic layout. I had a nice set of logistics running. From the couch (where the cat “atomic”{Tom} for short) was allowed all I had to do was push open the bedroom window a few inches and in he would quickly slip. Kept getting in trouble for that. The couch was good for reading and dreaming and designing.

I would take my various favorite comic book costumes and get old sheets my Mom let be used for the purpose, (they always became rags if there were anything left). I got my box of crayons, scissors, and a stapler and went to work drawing, cutting, and since I couldn’t sew I’d staple the creations together as I prepared to go out and “save the world, whip the bad guys, and be back home by lunch - especially if it was grilled cheese sandwiches & tomato soup - or chicken noodle . Having a Mom that supported the family wasn’t as good as when she was home. Especially when she cooked , little boys are always hungry .

The seasons seemed to roll together as only a young child’s mind lets them blur. It was now winter and snow on the ground. Every kids delight and just a normal occurrence in the mountains. There was a wire fence with dead weeds twined on it, and I discovered that if a lit match was applied to the bottoms of the tuffs they would whoosh into a ball of fire with gratifying speed for an inquisitive boy with matches (within limits). There was a few sparklers left on the metal table on the back porch. On a foil pie plate, on top of a tall stack on newspapers. I got tired of playing with them and left them , still smoldering on the pie pan and was out in the snow burning weed tuffs on the fence when I looked up and saw smoke and flames coming from the back porch. Fortunately my Dad was cool headed and had filled a skillet with water and was dousing the fire. Since I had not tried to burn the newspapers and had left the sparklers on the pie pan - no spanking that time.

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Edward F. Sutton

Hi Ed,

Enjoying all your story so far...

Am gonna pull a Gerry here... don'tcha think two months is a little long ta hafta wait??

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Look up!!! He's coming!

At times I get busy with other facets of Moderatorship & contuinuing the saga just has to wait.

Then I have a few "senior moments" and "out of sight out of mind" happens and I get engrossed in other things like, cymbidium orchids or jamacian jerk sauce recipes and cullinary substititions thereof so I can enjoy my own jerk sauce without the habenro allimentry-ectomy .

However I will return to Ed's Story, but be warned I only type with one finger. A washpan full of snowcream is slow going one flake at a time.

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Edward F Sutton

Long distance phone calls,Gather's Restaurant shrimp, and I am in trouble again.

During the last century, in the early to mid 1950's long distance phone calls were a rarity and on a party line; almost like internet chat except it was real chat not typing. Hold that thought it'll be handy later on.

In the sleepy little mountain town of Brevard NC, (pronounced Bree-vard) was a slightly progressive restaurant that served of all things shrimp cocktail. At first they brought to mind giant cockroaches skinned and boiled. I was right the first time, just got to liking em and it was years before I knew better.

My Dad patiently worked to add culture to his son's limited life and taught me to develop a taste for shrimp cocktail. I was at an age where every hair on the crown of my head went in a different direction and my black horn rim glasses weighed almost as much as I did, or so it seemed.

Later that would backfire on him and probably get me spanked ( I don't remember).

My Mom had deveined a large Melamac bowl of shrimp (expensive then) and gotten a big bottle of shrimp cocktail sauce and fixed them as the entree for supper.

We got a phone call-long distance no less and everyone but me left the table to talk to the person several states away, possibly even California. (ICQ is causing a page problem so I will post now & finish later.)

Back again. Everyone was spending a lot of time on the phone and only one hungry little boy and a big bowl of shrimp was at the table, maybe my cat too I don't remember. They were taking too long and I didn't have patience to wait. So I just ate one, and some sauce, then another and another and another till the bowl was empty and I was full.

Did I happen to say, two things can settle your full tummy very very well. Spanking & going to your room without desert. I probably got both I don't remember. I am not sure but I think I dimly remember hearing "You're the one who taught him how to like um."

The moral is if you're going to talk on the phone at meal time get a headset or speaker phone. Don't have a hollow legged child sitting at the table, looking at the food, sharpening his teeth, an rolling his eyes with delight. You'll have to cook something else for dinner. My Mom did.

for some reason they never left me alone at the table again for years. That is till after my Dad died and my Mom remarried and her husband was doing the drunk thing on his sister's living room carpet and I was left alone with a {once}large thanksgiving dinner with{once}all the trimmings as an even hungrier early teenager. I remember that whipping believe me.

If food is consolation, I had enough for two families that day. If thermogenics is the burning of calories, I got a few thousand thermogonized out of each posterior cheek when my mom got me home. Flyswatter city.

They had to go out to a restaurant to eat thanksgiving dinner that day, and we took my stinky step Dad home. I don't know which of us was less popular him or me ? He could sober up faster than I could sit down .

[This message has been edited by Edward F Sutton (edited December 29, 2000).]

Wow, Ed!! It's been awhile

I'm trying to be patient...

And it looks like your wife is taking lessons from you -- on cliff hangers!

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joy b2u,
Karen
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Look up!! He's coming!!

Digressing back to just about age ten. Soon my world was to fall apart, it was good not to know any sooner.

My first hero was my Dad. He was 6'4" tall, not bodybuilder muscular, not fat just tall and big. His hair was gray to silver and his eyebrows were slightly darker and bushy curling upwards especially at the edges.

His left leg below the knee was prosthetic. One finger was canted at the last digit where I had shut the car door on it by accident and broke it years before. I cried for a long time about that. He immediately forgave me and let me know it was an accident.

But now it was two days after my tenth birthday, it was a Monday October 9th 1961. Dad had not been feeling good for a few days and at age 77 his health was not so good.

Years of rough living, alcohol though given up five years before I was thought of, had taken it's toll; as had decades of smoking. His abdominal aorta was bulging in spots and leaking and he knew it was just a matter of time. In those days the replacement surgery was very new and dangerous and would bankrupt the family and take the house.

Having come close to becoming an MD at one time, he knew the outcome awaiting him.

That Monday evening Mom had went in to give him his shot, and the bed had a large circle of blood. He was not voiding urine, but blood and rapidly. Uncle Rastus was called right after the ambulance, and he came and took me to his house. I stayed with my Aunt Lucy while he went to the hospital. My sister was at work at the Biltmore Dairy across town.

Lois had, had an argument with Dad that afternoon and they had not had the chance to talk since, she never got to tell her Dad she loved him and apologize for her angry words.

I sat in the back bedroom at Ras and Lucy's and stared out the window from across the room . At 8:30 PM on the dot I saw my Dad's face briefly like a picture through the window. I knew with all dread that he had just died. It would be nearly ten years before I learned that the dead know not anything . I would carry false theories regarding what I had seen and knew in my heart.

When Rastus got home, I don't remember if told him Dad had died at 8:30 PM or just waited while he told me. My supposedly secure world crashed down, never to be the same again.

I do not know much of what happened with my Mom and sister the next few days. Life then, now seems a faint distant blur that almost happened to a kid I only faintly remember. I did not have the hope to see my Dad again. as little as I knew about God, seemed more than my family knew as a whole. SDA's had worked with my family unbeknownst to me, and one by one my family either rejected those efforts or waited for a more convenient season.

If they had responded to that, and followed up on it, their lives would have been so different and full of hope instead of hopelessness and trying to fill the void with other stuff. We could have known Him who is the Ressurection and the life.

If my Dad had embraced it, he could have brought my Mom over to it and sheltered my sister and me in that hope. He might have persuaded the rest of the family, I will never know I could only wonder.

Men, get right with God and bring your families with you. You are not made of Iron and Granite, what you suppose is secure may not be and time is not yours to command. My Dad knew his time was running out, but I never saw him build for eternity. Put things into perspective and drop away the unimportant stuff, get right with God and bring your family to Him and keep them there.

God is your only security and He is your only hope of endless time and success.

Not all my memories are happy and sweet, but may they all be turned unto eternal usefulness for someone. God did not depend upon a failing family to be the only ones to raise me. He stepped in too. He will for you also.

Jeremiah 29:
11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
12 Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
14 And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.

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Edward F Sutton