Instilled values
I spent my summer days and during the school year, early mornings and afternoons with my grandparents. During the summer my gramma worked her many truck patches full of corn, peas, okra, tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe and strawberries. I don’t remember her ever letting me work them, I just sat at the end of the rows and watched or followed her carefully down each row. We always headed out early in the morning and was back in the house by 11, just in time for her to start lunch. My entire life my gramma fixed three full meals a day, no sandwiches served in her house. When we didn’t hit the truck patches were the days Ms. Effie came over and she was on that front porch everyday after the garden season. My grandpa was a different story, when he retired that was it for working. He was a deacon in the church for 60 years so the most I can remember he done was being at church every time the doors were open with my gramma. The only other was he awoke every morning to eat breakfast, get ready and go to town and sit on the court square with several other old men. In the afternoons he came back to lay on the sofa and sleep, while my gramma stayed in the kitchen washing and cleaning and preparing for supper. She normally came to sit later in the afternoon to read the paper and doze. She was the first person if not the only I saw that could sit straight up and hold the paper while sound asleep. My grandpa had problems with his gums so he always kept a bottle of rubbing alcohol to swish around in his mouth. I would sit and watch him do that several times a day. The problem never got better because it lasted the first 17 years of my life until he passed away. It was still a couple of years later before I was informed there was nothing wrong with his gums. The whole time it was always vodka. The whole time I could have been stealing sips. I don’t know if my gramma ever knew. She outlived him by 10 years. I remembered graduating and as I walked up on the stage looking back and seeing my gramma sitting at the end of the row, she had given up her truck patches long ago but I had to smile. I still think of those times. Every time I work in the yard or the garden I think of my gramma. Every time I sip my favorite drink I think of my grandpa. My drinking started early, nothing else to do but like many things I survived.
