Growing up on Second Street.
The first breath I drew when the
doctor slapped my behind was salty. Salt air. Gulfport, Mississippi. Highway 90 ran east and west the
length of the Mississippi Coast. Beach Boulevard is what the addresses read
along the road. Second Street was one block north of Beach Boulevard. That’s
where I grew up, Second Street. Just a walk through my grandmother’s yard and
across the highway was the sand beach.
For all practical purposes let’s
say I grew up in the perfect southern Catholic family. Oh sure, we have ghosts or
skeletons in our closet just like every other red blooded American family. But
we lost the key a long time ago, and if we ever find it we will promptly loose
it again. Thank you very much.
I was born in 1956. The year Elvis
released his first gold album named “Elvis Presley”. Norma Jean changed her
name to Marilyn Monroe and married Arthur Miller. The Wizard of Oz was shown on
television for the first time. Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai E.
Stevenson, again. The first hard disk drive was invented at IBM. And I was
born. Breathing salty air.
I was the seventh child in a
family that would eventually boast nine. In 1956 our house was a three bedroom,
one bath house. I vaguely remember at some point my older brother sleeping on
the screened in front porch. Too many bodies, not enough beds.
My grandmother lived with my
bachelor uncle across the street from us. Granny. In her later years she was
bird like. She was frail and tiny and small. In pictures of her in younger days
she was taller and fuller than what I remember. Not too long ago one of my
sisters told me that I “sashayed”. That was something my Granny did and I took
it as a compliment.
When I was little there was many
a summer day that Granny and Uncle Dick would have ice-cold watermelon sliced
and ready for us to eat on our way home from swimming and playing or fishing
and crabbing on the beach. There was a concrete table and concrete benches
under a shady oak tree in her yard. We had to wash the salt water off our little
bodies under the hose in our backyard anyway, so messy eating was the norm when
devouring the sweet melon.
Granny’s usual attire was a
cotton housedress with a starched linen apron. On her feet she wore soft house
shoes. She stepped softly. She
spoke softly. And she served the most wonderful breakfast you ever ate. Uncle
Dick traveled fairly frequently and when he did one of us children was
appointed the duty of spending the night with Granny. She didn’t like to be
alone in her house at night. It was a treat and the reason was her breakfast
and because she had milk that came in the carton. (At our house we drank
powdered milk that my mother mixed up.) Not only did she have milk in the
carton she also had, sent straight from heaven, chocolate milk in the carton.
So, for breakfast she would serve
you milk from the carton, juice, eggs, grits, bacon, toast and ask if you
wanted - cereal, too. Oh my. You wouldn’t have to eat again for days after a
Granny breakfast!
Granny’s kitchen was in the back
part of her house. I remember only
impressions of the rooms south of the kitchen because, as a child, I was not
allowed to venture into the front part of her house very often. The divider was
the dining room door. When you breached this point the house became very quiet
and, as I remember, dark and cooler that the rest of the house. She must have
kept the blinds closed most of the time. This was before central air
conditioning became popular and was installed in every house south of the Mason
-Dixon Line.
The den was the part of her house
that I remember the most as being lived in. It was where we visited her on
Sunday mornings. It was where she kept, behind her chair, a wicker basket with
a few books and toys to occupy the younger minds and fingers because “children
should be seen and not heard” -as we were continually reminded.
When I was in the sixth or
seventh grade I sat in that den and Granny rolled my hair in rags so I could go
to school the next day with “banana” curls. When I had asked her to help me she
told me to come over that evening and bring my comb and a bunch of cut up rags
about eight inches long. I did that. I sat on the floor and she had a bowl of
water on a table by her chair. She would take a strand of my hair, dip my comb
in the bowl of water and comb the wet into my hair. Then she would take a rag
and wrap my hair around it, wind it into a knot and tie it close to my scalp.
The rags close to my face were tied so tight I could feel it pulling my eyes up
into an oriental expression. That night I slept with the rags in my hair and
woke early the next morning and walked over to her house to let her undo the
rags and fix my curls for me. It was wonderful! I was born cursed with straight
hair and Granny had performed a miracle. She even told my Aunt Eleanor that my
hair would be easy to “train”. I don’t know why but that made me feel very
proud, to have trainable hair.
Granny’s love and personal
attention went a long way for this seventh child of nine children. I could get
lost or forgotten at home, but not at Granny’s. It was good to get old enough
to go across the street by myself and have Granny all to myself. It made me
feel very grown up and on my own. She was the queen of many questions, always
interested in what I had to say.
Granny was born Georgia Mae
Shirley on May 28, 1898. She was the oldest child of George Shirley and Willie
Ann West Shirley. Her siblings were Ollie (pronounced ohlee, not ahlee), Otto,
Roy and Joann. Her mother died when she was 12. Her family lived in a house on
25th Avenue in Gulfport. (Later that house would be used for her
son’s dental practice.)
****
You know the rest of the story. I grew up, married Mr. Macho and lived happily ever after.
Be tend.
(Thanks Tucker.)
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