Still Climbing

The Crow And The Pitcher

Once upon a time there was a great big black bird and some people called him a Crow although he was never known to crow—that was done by his friend, the Rooster. The Crow had been traveling a long distance and couldn’t get off I-95 to get a drink of water. After many hours, he spotted a large vessel by the side of the road. At first, he thought it was a McDonalds, but then realized there was no golden arch. Too late to get back in traffic, he took the exit off, and returned to the large vessel. He put on the brakes and coasted to a stop, dragging his tail feathers in the dirt.

The vessel was as large as he, but by raising on his claw-tips he could peer into the top. Yes! By George! There was water in the jug. He tried to put his beak down into the water but could not reach it.

He stepped back, put his beak under his wing, crossed his legs and leaned against the jug. If he could hover—but no, that was patented by that little bitty fellow, what was his name? Oh, yes, the Hummingbird. Everyone said he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket –a bucket! That’s what he needed. He could tip the jug over and pour the water in the bucket; his beak would go into the bucket. He looked about. No buckets, just rocks. Yes! He could stack the rocks to stand on, but no. These were all little rocks.

Suddenly a light bulb came on over his head. He had an idea! He picked up a small rock, dropped it, peered into the jug, yes, the water had come up a little. He dropped another, that’s better, another rock, another, anotheranotheranother –there was the water! It was cool and he drank and drank and finally, saved by the Bell –but no – saved by the pebbles, he sat up and looked around. The traffic on I-95 was bumper-to-bumper, too crowded to get back on, but he had heard of another north-south route, just a few miles West, as the crow flies. If he remembered correctly, it was called I-75. He could try that. No longer thirsty, he took to the air, dragging his tail feathers in the dust again, and turned right.

Moral of the story: Necessity is the mother of invention.

This will be my third book in as many years (third pebble?). I make no apologies for my writing; it is my busy work and I have yet to reach the water. I write because I must, have always had to, the natural outreach of a voracious reader. Success has little to do with it, ambition, yes, but success, no. As every writer knows, success is just around the corner, with the next book, the next story: the next pebble dropped in the water might make economic waves.

There was another writer (storyteller) who figured prominently in my early years. I never learned his first name, but he was kin. He was my Uncle. Uncle Remus. He liked to tell stories about animals too, but I think AESOP had a bigger barnyard. I was in about the second grade when I wrote the following poem which featured Uncle Remus characters:

BRER FOX, BRER RABBIT AND THE TAR BABY

Old Brer Fox said, "It’s such a pretty day,

I’m sure Brer Rabbit will be a’comin’ this way.

That’s one rabbit I’se determined to git,

And I ain’t caught him yet!"

Brer Bear, says Old Brer Fox,

"I’ve got sense, yes, lots,

"I’ll fool that ole rabbit yet,

I’ll make a Tar Baby—it’s the best plan

I could get."

He made the Tar Baby,

And sat it on the path.

Then hid himself and

Got ready to laugh.

Down the road came the Bunny,

As happy as a bear in a pot of honey.

Hi there, said Brer Rabbit, a fine day!

The Tar Baby said nothing—

He shouldn’t act that way!

Brer Rabbit turned around. "Hi, he said,

The Tar baby didn’t make a sound.

I’ll slap you! The Rabbit said

And he slapped him on the head.

"Let me loose, you Tar Baby!

Why can’t you act like a lady?"

The rabbit danced all around

But only one foot was on the ground.

Out came Brer Fox, holding his side,

I’ve got you now, He cried.

But the sun came out and melted the tar,

Brer Rabbit was loose, like a shooting star!

We had moved up the road a few miles and the new house had a wide front porch with a railing that went all the way around, perfect for walking. When Mother ordered me off of it for the third time, I got my first switching, after which I was careful not to be caught. Mother had her own home-grown switching tree, a giant willow that straddled the fence with my teacher’s yard. My teacher was a great book-reader, and he unselfishly loaned all his new books to us just as soon as he had read them; thus my reading library was replenished frequently and with books far over my head. Later, my sister, four-years older than I, checked books out at her high school library and before she returned them, I read those also.

The following quote from Mr. Thomas Jefferson breaks my heart: The most valuable of talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

The truth is, I dearly love adjectives, words like, beautiful, gorgeous, attractive, pretty, captivating –I could go on, but you get the idea, the heart, the theme. Eons –ages, years, an eternity—ago, when I was a child—a tyke, a kid, lass, brat, juvenile, rug-rat—I was told that I was ugly—homely, an eyesore, revolting – by my sister – relative, sibling, family – all right, Mr. Jefferson, you win. What I said, in the preceding paragraph was, When I was a child, my sister called me ugly.

At this time, I was writing romantic stories about ugly girls who met their prince and suddenly became lovely. Fortunately, these stories, which I kept hidden under my mattress, didn’t survive. And, at this age, my mother decided I would become a nurse. She made this call because I was forever putting bandages on my dolls and taking them to the doctor, perhaps playing as a reflection of my own life. Every winter I had tonsillitis or pneumonia, as did my younger sister. The long hours in bed contributed to our preoccupation with books –any book, every book.

By the age of ten, I had learned that all Airline Stewardesses were required to be R.N.’s. My not-so-secret ambition was to fly, and the only way I could do that was to become an R.N. and a stewardess. My title would be Miss Betty Phipps, R.N.

My older sister had beautiful black hair, like both of our parents, while mine was skimpy, dish-water brown and unbelievably straight. So impossible to keep looking good, Mother kept it cut short, and I was skinny beyond belief, burning my daily calories in excessive energy. My sister, June, sang like a bird (a lark? no, more like a Mockingbird with great versatility) before I could talk, and while I was learning to carry a tune, she was learning to play the piano. It was not until I turned twelve that we realized I was a born alto and was learning to harmonize. By that time, my sister had convinced me I was, indeed, ugly. If it had not been for Uncle Dan, there’s no telling how old I would have been before that opinion of myself was corrected. Uncle Dan had married my mother’s youngest sister, who was only three years older than my sister, then sixteen. I was the brat (one word will do) who wanted to follow them about, be included with the grown-ups. My sister had been a grown up from the age of four, but at twelve, I was still just a ‘brat’.

Uncle Dan had been drafted. He owned a one-man gasoline distribution business and going into the Army would close it –unless Aunt Bea could keep it open. Mother and Dad allowed big sister to spend the summer away from home, keeping the office open while Aunt Bea drove the delivery truck. Before shipping out, Uncle Dan and Aunt Bea came to visit us. He was handsome in his uniform and a great cut-up, a fun young man and I was captivated. After dinner we gathered around the piano and sang all the Hit Parade favorites.

Mother went to the kitchen, calling me to come help her prepare desert. At one point she asked me to get something from the pantry –the pantry was a large storage area built under the stairs to the second floor, with the door opening into the kitchen. Uncle Dan came into the kitchen, and like it was yesterday, I recall his words to mother. Grace, he said, You are going to have to watch that Betty Lou. When she grows up you will have to fight the boys off with a stick! She’s going to be a real charmer!

Mother had answered briefly, You think so? and had changed the subject. I remember standing still, in the pantry, as Dan asked her if she needed any help, and her short negative reply. By the time I came out of the pantry Dan had returned to the singing in the living room. Dan fought in France and returned home. He built his business to be quite successful, branched into real estate, and became the Mayor of his city. Every year he returned to France where the French people celebrated their liberator; a statute of him was in the center of the village.

When Dan was past seventy, he heard that my husband and I would be making a trip down to Florida to visit my sister. He arranged to visit at the same time. Over the years we had been close buddies at family reunions with a special connection. His words, spoken when I needed them the most, stayed with me. He never knew what he had done for a skinny, awkward, twelve-year-old, little girl.

Not long after that, I went through teenaged acne with a vengeance and was fighting the coal dust and cinders that filtered down from the high bridge crossing over the houses. Scrubbing my face had been ingrained by then, but that did not help the acne. One Sunday we drove to a neighboring town to have dinner with my Aunt Gladys and Uncle Audnia. They had no children and Aunt Gladys came to stay with Mother each time she had a baby. Uncle Audnia was a railroader, but, unlike my father, he wore a white dress shirt and tie, and spent all day before a giant board, giving orders for train movement. He was a Dispatcher.

My Dad wore sixteen-inch laced up boots with his britches tucked in and work shirts. He spent his days climbing the electrical poles, either putting up or taking down the high-voltage wiring that ran the electrical engines on the Virginian railroad.

Gladys and Audnia lived in a second-floor apartment overlooking the river. There was a tiny balcony off the kitchen, but it had no staircase, just a little porch where Aunt Gladys hung her mop on the railing to dry. The kitchen was very tiny, and with Mother, June, and Gladys cooking dinner, there wasn’t room for me and I was told to get out of the way. I stepped out on the tiny balcony where I could look right down into the river. There was little water and great gray rocks covered the riverbed; birds perched on the rocks in the sun. Overhead buzzards floated with the upper air currents, moving lazily and free. I was deep into daydreaming about flying with them when Mother realized where I was. Betty Lou! Get in here! If you fell from there, you’d be killed!

In my mind, there was no reason I would fall, I wasn’t walking the railing, just standing there with a gentle breeze and a wonderful view of the world. There was never room to argue with Mother; I came in. In the living room there was a couch, an easy chair and a coffee table and just walking space between them. Uncle Audnia and Daddy were sitting on the couch, talking railroad, and my younger sister was curled up in the easy chair sound asleep. I sat down beside Daddy and he put his arm around me, his fingers finding my forehead, in what started as a caress, until he felt the bumps and blemishes on my skin. Without missing a beat in what he was saying, he turned my face toward him. Good Grief! What’s wrong with your face? You need to go wash it right now!

I gladly escaped to the tiny bathroom, and it, like the rest of the apartment, was beautifully decorated, pink towels, sweet-smelling soap, flowers in a pink vase, and three bright lights over a gold-trimmed mirror. By sitting on the tiny sink, I could get my face close to the mirror, under the brightest lights I’d ever seen. I proceeded to remove digitally every bump and blackhead, leaving a red-splotched face in the height of raging hormonal teenaged acne.

When dinner was called, I wanted to stay in the bathroom, but of course, I couldn’t. My parents were horrified when they saw what I had done. June and Red burst out laughing. Aunt Gladys was speechless, sitting with her mouth open. Uncle Audnia put his arm around my shoulders and drew me out of the room with him, saying, I think I have something that might help. We went back to the tiny bathroom and he opened the cabinet behind the gold mirror and brought out a green glass bottle. I use this all the time, he said. Now it will sting at first, but then it will feel real cool. I had the same thing when I was a teenager. It won’t last long. After that, it wasn’t just Uncle Audnia, it was MY Uncle Audnia.

A few months passed and Aunt Gladys had to have surgery. They had moved to Bluefield, Uncle Audnia moving up in the management of the railroad, and they had bought a two-story house. Aunt Gladys couldn’t go up and down stairs, so arrangements were made for me to stay with her to help with meals and housework. She taught me how to iron white dress shirts to look like they had just come from a Chinese laundry, a skill I used the rest of my life, and on Saturday Uncle Audnia took me to see the professional baseball game, complete with hot dogs, popcorn, and all the trimmings. That was my first baseball game, and I never again enjoyed one as much as I did that one. At night I had access to a whole bookcase full of books I hadn’t already read, something that had never happened before.

We grew up with Aunt Gladys and Uncle Audnia present for most holidays and frequent Sunday dinners. They never had children of their own; we were their family. Years later, after I graduated nurses training, my first job was as scrub nurse to the neurosurgeon at Bluefield Hospital. Uncle Audnia had a model railroad built in the basement of his house, an elaborate circular table with stations and signals and real lights on the locomotives, a grown-up’s toy, one we were not allowed to touch. He was a tall man, over six-foot, and when he would go down to the basement he would sometimes forget to duck, striking his forehead on the crosspiece. He developed a brain tumor that gradually increased to the size of a goose egg on the front of his forehead. One day, after I had been working in O.R. for some time, he sent word for me to come to see him. My new husband and I went one evening, and Aunt Gladys cooked dinner for us. Uncle Audnia wore a baseball cap all through dinner, but finally, after we had eaten and were talked out, he removed his cap. I was shocked at how the bump had grown. Almost child-like, he asked what I thought he should do. Without hesitation, I told him, you come to my boss’s office in the morning, and then do whatever he recommends. Will you be there? he asked. Yes, I’ll meet you there, and I’ll be there when we get this taken care of.

The neurosurgeon cut a bone flap out of the top of his skull, removed the tumor, and sewed the skin flap back over the brain. He no longer had any protection for the brain, so he wore his ball cap all the time. When we brought our rowdy brood home he would find a corner to sit in, away from any chance of injury, and wear his cap. He was fortunate; there was no damage to his nervous system, no brain impairment, and he died years later from an unrelated illness.

Over the years, I’ve thought about my first experience with a shaving astringent, but we never discussed it again. When my teenagers came along,