RESPECT

I learned a lot about life from my Great-grandpa and this is just one of those life lessons. In everyone’s life there are defining moments.  You decide who you are based on the things, people and experiences around you. This story is about one such moment for me.

RESPECT

The honeysuckles filled the air with a poignant aroma. Blackberry vines were blooming and the soon to be succulent fruit had started to produce. 

The Mississippi Sun as always was scorching, causing the dirt road that my great-grandparents house was on to crack and blister. The red clay produced a fine coat on anything or anyone unfortunate enough to have the misfortune to be nearby.

 We, my Great-Grandfather and I had been working since before the hellish sun rose. We had picked cucumbers while the dew was still coating the tender plants.

  “Papa Red” and I had loaded his old green Chevy truck’s bed to capacity with burlap bags. Those bags had been filled to bursting with small jerkins, which we took into town to be weighed and sold. After we harvested the “pickling cucumbers” we would have breakfast.

 Normally breakfast was biscuits, eggs gathered from our chickens and sausage that we made from our pigs. My “Grannie Maude” would cook a large pan of biscuits and sit in the kitchen to see if we needed more prepared.  

Once breakfast was done we had a myriad of other chores to perform.  We would handle those tasks until noon when dinner was served. If my Grannie said “Dinner po today chile” it meant that there was no meat to be had. Those were my favorite meals.

 Black eyed peas, were often on the menu, or sliced red ‘maters’, squash, okra, turnips, collards, or as it was this particular day my Great-Grandmother made “Ice taters and Anglish Peas”.  For those of you who are not fortunate enough to have grown up in the deep south, that is Irish potatoes and English Peas. I have been cooking for 30 plus years and have never been able to make mine taste half as good. After a hardy meal of Ice taters and Anglish peas, hot water cornbread, and sliced tomatoes with salt and black pepper, we rested. 

 The three of us, my Great-Grandparents and I would lay sideways across their bed and nap. After a brief respite there was more work to be done. 

 Well this day Papa Red and I had put in a mans work. I had been plowing Papa’s brand-new mule, Johnny. Why he named that stubborn S.O.B., Johnny I will probably never know.  What I do know is that I hated that Mule and the feelings were reciprocated. 

That strong and head strong beast had beat my 10-year-old body up, and I was sitting on the porch having a cup of coffee and a Prince Albert. (roll your own cigarette) Remember I never said that my Papa Red was a good influence I said he was defining. 

 In our part of the world in the early 80’s there was a gentleman who sold Raleigh items. These were salves and snake oils that probably served few if any beneficial purposes. 

Well the “Raleigh Man” as he was known would extend credit to the elderly people in our community from one “Check day” to another, as most of these folks lived on a fixed income.

 Well as we relaxed on our porch, drinking our coffee, with a little nip of brandy, and smoking our roll ups the Raleigh Man arrived.

 Now I can’t speak to anyone else’s frame of mind, but I was pissed that Mr. Dan the Raleigh man had stirred up the red dust.  I held my tongue though because grown folks were doing business.  It’s probably for the best that I held my tongue.

 Mr. Dan seemed to be upset from the outset.  He approached my Grannie Maude, with attitude already on his mind. He insisted that my Great-Grandma owed him $20. She was adamant that she had settled the debt. The pair went back and forth for a moment until Mr. Dan, who was white, became disrespectful. “Look hear-ya gal! You owe me and I wants my money!” 

 Papa had been silent up until that point. He still didn’t speak. He leaned back in his rocking chair, slipped one hand behind him, and gently moved his 30-0-6 rifle behind his chair. At which point he cleared his throat and said in the reasonable voice that I emulate with my family. “Pardon me Mr. Dan. If’n my wife says she paid ya. Then she paid ya.” 

While calm and fraught with wisdom his baritone held distinct menace when he proclaimed. “Now I’d appreciate it if you don’t EVER call my wife no Gal ever gain.” 

 I distinctly remember the pale parlor of the man changing to the same red of the unripe black berries. He seemed to fall all over himself getting back into his car. If the first dust cloud had been a storm this was a tornado. He spun his tires on the sparse gravel intermixed with the red clay.

 Before the dust could settle good, and as I watched the angry man drive away, I heard my best friend, my coffee buddy, my icon, my Papa’s melodic laughter.

 Still angry with the interloper my Grannie spat, before she asked her husband. “What’s so funny Red?” My Great-Grandpa sipped his brandy coffee mixture before he answered, and when he did I could still hear the mirth. “Now Maude, you know you owed that man don’t cha?”

 At the time I didn’t grasp the seriousness. Here was a man whose father had been a slave, who had served ten years in the than new, Parchman Penitentiary Farm, who was black and in Mississippi in the early 80’s.

  Here was a man who had every reason to be afraid, to acquiesce, and to allow his wife to be disrespected, but he would not stand for it.

  Not only that but he knew that his wife had been wrong.

 My Papa couldn’t read or write that well, but he knew money. He knew to the very last penny where everything was assigned. 

 He knew that his wife had owed that debt. Papa would not let her be wrong, not in front of someone else.

 That moment in time 36 years ago, was defining it helped shape my opinions on how you are supposed to treat your woman.

 It taught me to respect my woman, and to support her even if she is wrong as two left shoes. I can always laugh and tell her she was wrong later.