Granny's Gone and Fell through the Porch

I’ll be 42 in 17 minutes. So a bit of reflection is in order.

I remember a little house in Tennessee in the middle of nowhere on a gravel road that we shared with two other houses. The house had four rooms, a cold water faucet in the kitchen and an outhouse. The back porch was mostly missing.

The house was at the bottom of small hill that me and my sister dragged a little red wagon up to the top of and rode down over and over again. Granny stood on the back porch and cheered us on. I felt invincible.

At 4 or 5, jumping from one beam to another or walking on the edge of what’s left of a rotting porch is easy. And fun. When you’re an old lady taking care of young kids, it’s a hazard.

That was the day Granny fell through the porch. She missed a step and ended up hanging by her shoulders and legs in the middle of what little porch there was.

Me and Suzanne got out of our little red wagon and crawled up under the porch and pushed her up. Granny was a big woman, so it took a while, but we got her up. We weren’t supposed to tell Mama or Daddy about it, but I think we did. We were proud of taking care of her.

She lived with us back then in that tiny little house in the middle of nowhere. Me and Suzanne slept with her in that big old cast-iron bed, one on either side.

I was climbing on the foot-piece of that bed, fell off and hit my head on the corner of her cedar chest. The first of many emergency room visits.

We had a pot-bellied wood stove in the living room for heat and very little else. Our black and white TV only picked up one channel that mostly played Roy Rogers movies. Daddy liked it, but I could never see the charm.

We went to my other Granny’s house about once a week (Saturday, I think, because Lawrence Welk was always on). We took proper baths and watched her color TV.

I never knew we were poor. We had a full life as kids, my older sister and me. Granny (the one that lived with us) doted on us, much to my mother’s chagrin. I think Mama always resented not being there herself, but times were hard, and she had to work.

Granny always smelled like Ben-Gay, and it scared me a little when she took her teeth out and put them in that glass by that big old cast-iron bed. But when she had them in, she had a beautiful smile.

I don’t think we were really poor. Other people just thought we were.