(I started this blog post about three weeks ago so "last night" is last night about three weeks ago. Sorry).
Last night on Facebook I posted that I am speaking at a Women's Symposium this Saturday and my topic is my blog. I've been feeling the pressure to publish a blog post but have been running short on time to get something out. This month has been unbelievably crazy busy--more so than usual--and time has been more of a challenge than topic. I did ask for some suggestions from my Facebook friends on topics and got a few back. So, I am up to my own stated challenge of being "able to make anything funny" and I'm trying to do so during the 5:00 hour--a.m. not p.m.--which I think is an hour in which I should not even be vertical, much less productive.
My cousin, Lana, suggested that I write about summers in Pollock, Louisiana, and swimming in the creek. Where is Pollock, you ask? Well, it's real close to Dry Prong, silly, and it's in Grant Parish. Didn't you know that? (If you're a Missourian or from another state, and you aren't familiar with Louisiana Lingo, they call their counties "parishes." They would probably say that we call our parishes "counties.") This area is close to Alexandria, LA which is a decent sized city and might give you a better point of reference. So, why were Lana and I in Pollock in the summertime? Well, our Uncle Jim (our Moms' brother--Lana's Mom and my Mom are sisters) and his family lived there for many years. They had a beautiful piece of property out in the country with horses and lots of room to run around. My Dad traveled a lot for his job during that time and every summer he would plan a trip to Louisiana so that he could drop my brother and me off down there for about a month. We spent part of our summers with Uncle Jim and Aunt Willie and part with our grandparents in New Iberia. Somehow Aunt Willie got roped into being the one to transport us from one place to the other. If I remember things correctly, I was a young girl after all, she had to take my Uncle Jim to Lafayette one week so that he could fly out to work on the Shell Oil rig and then she would drive back down a week later to pick him up and bring him home. I think it was about a 2 1/2 hour trip, one way, and she did that every week. She also had three kids at home and a husband who worked 7 days on and 7 days off. I can't imagine that sort of lifestyle but that was the way of life for them and is for so many who work on oil rigs. I love my Uncle Jim and my Aunt Willie very much and appreciate how they put up with all the cousins running around. Lana would also be part of the mix in Pollock and then we had my brother and our cousins; Paige, John, and Ellen; who are the ones who actually lived there in Pollock.
Lana mentioned swimming in the creek. Honesty, if you know me pretty well, you probably don't view me as the creek-swimming kind of girl; but this was the middle of nowhere and there weren't really any "swimming pools and movie stars." We swam in a creek. I don't remember if it was clean or dirty. I imagine it was pretty clean or Aunt Willie wouldn't have taken us there. We also spent A LOT of time at the baseball field because John played Little League. Those were great memories and I'm sure that's when my love of baseball began. I don't care for a lot of sports but I do love baseball, especially Cardinals ball, and I know those summers contributed a lot to my tolerance of the game. I remember going to see "Footloose"--the original one, you whippersnapper readers--in the theatre. I don't know if we were really supposed to go see it but we did and we loved it.
Speaking of movies, Ellen and I were spending time at our grandparents' house one summer and Lana was working in a movie theatre. "Top Gun" was the big movie that summer and she got us in to see it. We watched it...more than once...and so began my love for Tom Cruise in his PNBD--(Pre-Nut Bag Days). I also remember going to see "Cocktail" one summer with Ellen and Lana. I believe I was 15 that summer and Lana was old enough to drive us. Ellen was only 13. Three years later when I met a boy that a lot of people said resembled Tom Cruise I guess it doesn't come as a surprise that I fell in love with him at first sight.
I learned to play a card game that we called "21" during those summers. I was a full-grown adult before I realized that the game is actually Black Jack.
Our grandmother, Mau Mau, had a thing about making sure that she always gave to Ellen and me equally since we were pretty much joined at the hip when I visited in the summer. At least a couple times I celebrated my birthday in Louisiana and Ellen usually got the same gifts that I got. Don't begrudge her that because her birthday is in December and that can be unfortunate when your birthday falls around Christmas. We had Coca-Cola nightgowns (mine was red and hers was navy) and matching swimsuits nearly every year. One year we talked her in to taking us to the water slide nearly every day. Also, Mau Mau would not allow us to watch "The Newlywed Game"--the original one. (Boy, am I old). When I've seen bits and pieces of episodes as an adult I can totally understand why she didn't want her young granddaughters watching that show. But, we would try to get away with it. We would lie on the twin beds in her bedroom and watch it at low volume and hold the remote to change the channel if we heard her coming. She was smart, though, and sometimes she would sneak up on us and catch us watching it. I think she actually enjoyed the challenge. Ellen and I really didn't even understand what the questions and answers on the show meant, so I guess we just liked trying to get away with something that was forbidden. Good thing we've matured since then. I think that's the worst thing we tried to get away with.
I remember Lana learning to drive, yikes, and Aunt Elaine going out to buy us boudin to eat for breakfast. (If you've never had the pleasure of tasting boudin, I feel for you. Honestly, you can't really find it north of Baton Rouge, LA. It's not really a breakfast type of food but we would eat it night or day). During those teenage years Duran Duran was a really big deal. Lana had a huge crush on Simon LeBon. She had a huge poster of him in her room, but since she felt like he was watching her when she changed clothes, she started changing in her bathroom. Sorry, Lana. You might not want to make a blog request next time. :)
I remember learning to ride a mini-bike and driving it through Pa Pa's pea patch. He kept yelling at me as I was driving and I kept saying,"What??" I didn't know what a pea patch was and I drove right through it. All of us cousins had war wounds from riding that thing--burns, abrasions, bruises.... I think I was on it with Lana when she drove it up a tree. Crazy!!! Let's just say that control of the machine was not our forte.
I miss those days and I miss getting to see my cousins on a semi-regular basis. I'll keep the stories limited to those above so as not to further embarrass them. Hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane, cousins. And, for the second cousins that might read it, you can get a little glimpse in to the previous generation of cousins.
Randy Smith, your Reader Request is coming next....
No comments:
Post a Comment