Tales from a Free-Range Childhood by Donald Davis

Author:Donald Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blair

Chapter 13

NOTHING WORKS BUT HER MOUTH

Mama did not teach school during the years between the time when she and Daddy got married and the year when Joe and I were both safely in school. Then, that year, when I was in the second grade and he was in church-basement kindergarten, she decided to go back to resume the career she was to practice for thirty-eight more years.

She had needed no special help with the two of us during the seven-plus years when she was mothering full-time at home. However, when she again started teaching school, there were times when we all needed the help of a babysitter so that Mama could work through the tasks and errands that were not possible with two small boys as her helpers.

The solution was near at hand. Just up Plott Creek Road and over the hill from our house lived Miss Annie McIntosh, an older lady whom Mama and Daddy both knew well because in those days everybody knew everybody. Miss Annie was a widow whose four sons and one daughter were grown, who could be recruited to be the called-in babysitter whenever we needed one.

Miss Annie drove an old, gray 1939 Chevrolet she called “Rattling Rachel.” She would drive herself to our house to keep us whenever Mama called her. Miss Annie would come creeping down the dirt road, peering through the steering wheel of the Chevy as she drove. She would pull into our driveway, get out of the car, and always without knocking come right in the house.

She carried a gigantic fake-leather pocketbook with double handles. As she sat down in a chair, she would plop the big pocketbook on the floor beside her. All on its own, it would pop open, and a whole raft of old, fluffy Kleenex tissues would float out and land all around it. There were unknown other dangers hiding beneath the remaining tissues.

After a few moments of recovery from the one-mile drive, Miss Annie would get up and wander around the house gathering up all the scattered books we had left here and there and everywhere. Then she would return to the Kleenex-guarded chair and utter totally predictable words: “Do you boys want me to read you a little story?” We almost always did.

Sometimes when Mama called for Miss Annie’s help, she could not come. On most of those days, she would say, “Bring them up here. I can’t leave the house right now, but they can stay here with me just fine.”

My brother and I loved those days. Miss Annie lived in a big, old, rambling house with a basement, a first floor with a wide porch running more than halfway around, an assortment of bedrooms on the second floor, and even a walk-up attic over that. It was a warren of treasures, turns, and hiding places.

Being an old lady, Miss Annie took a lot of naps. As soon as she was asleep, Joe and I would engage in a quiet session of our favorite hobby: snooping and prowling.

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