Faye Gibbons Gone Strollicking

 My latest book, HALLEY, has just been released by NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com/halley

My acting career seemed to go by in a flash.  Maybe that’s because the part in front of the camera only lasted one very long day.

My husband and I heard they wanted to hire “extras” for crowd scenes in BIG FISH, and we said why not?  They were shooting the funeral scene at the little church behind our house and the pay scale wasn’t bad.   

First came wardrobe approval.  I took my favorite skirt, blouse, and (since the weather was cool) a warm jacket to be approved at the assigned place in the Cloverdale area of Montgomery, Alabama.  Everything passed.  The day of the funeral scene shoot, we reported at dawn to the Pine Flat Presbyterian Church Cemetery only to find that they had changed my wardrobe.  I had to wear a skirt well above my knees and a light weight jacket too thin for March.  Furthermore, they decided that my husband did not look right for me, so I was matched with a college professor a head shorter than me.  My husband was several tombstones away with a good-looking blond.  

We rehearsed walking toward the point where the camera was set up.  Assistant directors mounted ladders to observe, and then shuffled us extras around.  They even broke couples up and repartnered them.  But I was left with the “husband” I’d been assigned and Benjamin remained with the blond.  Again we marched, and again we were shuffled.  Benjamin and the blond got further and further away.  My back began to ache. My feet were numb with cold.

It had warmed a little when the stars appeared–Jessica Lange, Danny DeVito, and so on.  We had been warned not to approach or speak to them.  I really didn’t want to, except maybe to get close enough to hear DeVito.  Whatever he was saying was convulsing the crowd around him.

We extras kept on standing.  Then a murmur ran through the crowd.  “The director!”

Tim Burton had arrived, and he was every bit as weird looking as he appeared in the gossip magazines.  He took his place behind the camera.

“Finally!  The man next to me said.  “We’re going to get started.”

Dream on! Tim Burton left the camera and consulted with assistants.  “Extras back to starting positions!” one of them ordered.  We marched.  We marched again.  We stood.  My legs were numb, but my feet were screaming.  Across the cemetery, I saw Benjamin gallantly helping the blond to a tombstone just high enough to serve as a seat.

Good idea, I thought and looked around.  I found a very thin marker just behind me and plopped down–just behind the marker! My skirt fell down around my rear end and since the bend of my knee was supported by the stone, there was no dignified way of getting up. My pretend husband looked at me and then looked quickly away.  

“Benjamin!” I yelled.  “Help me.”  He came running.

“Hope they captured this on film,” he said.

After that, I stood, I marched, and I stood some more.  Except for a lunch break that is how the entire day went.  When the sun was going down an assistant asked who would like to work the next day.

“Not me,” I said, thereby dooming a promising show business career.  

Now when I watch BIG FISH, I have to slow it down to a creep and get really close to catch a glimpse of me in that minute or so of funeral footage. But in my closet hangs the leather coat I bought with my pay.  Too bad I couldn’t wear it at the funeral!

My latest book, HALLEY, has just been released by NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com/halley

I didn’t learn to drive as a teenager, as normal people do.  I wouldn’t ask Daddy’s permission to use his car (the answer would have been NO), and I sure didn’t want him as a driving instructor.  Besides, I knew I couldn’t risk damaging a vehicle he drove.  Even though at this time he had owned few cars that anybody besides Daddy would notice a new scratch or dent on, his eagle eye caught any new irregularity.  And woe be to the person responsible!

So when I graduated from Berry College in 1961 with plans to teach, I had no car and no driving skills.  Furthermore, since my monthly take-home pay was to be about $235, I didn’t see how I could afford a car.  Uncle William came to the rescue.  He worked at the Hub Ford Service Department in Atlanta, and he offered to get me a new Ford Falcon “at cost.”  The total price–I think this included tax–was a little over $1900.  The monthly payment was $71 per month.  Since I had no income until my first paycheck in September, I could not get the car until the week before school started.  

Of course, I must somehow learn to drive in the meantime.  My first choice teacher was Mama.  She had learned several years before, though she still had to take her bottle of Miles Nervine along for when she got nervous.  I begged, pleaded, and even tried to make her feel guilty.  Nothing worked.  In the meantime Daddy was eagerly volunteering for the job.  Why, I have no idea.  Much later, I taught two sons to drive while going through menopausal mood swings, and, if I’d had it,  I would have needed several quarts of Miles Nervine to survive the first few drives.  Luckily, the patent medicine was no longer on the market.  As Daddy kept volunteering,  and I kept answering, “No!”  He began demanding, “Why not? 

“You’d be cursing every two minutes, and I can’t stand that,” I finally told him.

Daddy seemed genuinely astonished.  “Me?  No way.  I learned your Mama how to drive, and I didn’t cuss her.”

“Huh!” Mama said, but Daddy ignored the comment.

At last, when I had despaired of finding anyone else, I accepted Daddy’s offer.  Each afternoon for a week, he took me to a rough, narrow road winding across a field, and turned the wheel of his precious car over to me.  The experience was just as bad as I had anticipated.  At the least little mistake–like running off the road into the grass, or going into a ditch, or driving over a little-bitty pine sapling–he would swear a blue streak, and then say, “Can’t you just do what I’m telling you?”

Apparently not, but we both survived.  At the end of the week, I was driving–sort of.  To stay in my proper lane, I was sighting by the hood ornament and the right fender.  The first few weeks of driving the Falcon, I probably clutched dents into the steering wheel while navigating the 14 miles between our house to North Whitfield High School.  By Christmas, I felt like a good driver.  I guess I overestimated my skills, however. Decades later, when I met a former NWH basketball player who used to hitch a ride home with me on practice days, he confessed that he never asked me for a ride until all other possibilities had failed.

“Man, you were dangerous,” he said.  “Who taught you to drive?”

“I owe it all to Daddy,” I confessed.

My latest book, HALLEY, has just been released by NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com/halley

Mama wasn’t a patient woman. I think she got less patient when she learned to drive and got her first long term job at the mill. Getting a television set, a refrigerator, a Warm Morning Heater, and a washing machine all in 1955, made her restless to have the good life she thought everybody else was already enjoying.

“We’re going to have a real Christmas this year,” she announced in early December. “With all the trimmings.”

None of us five children could quite believe it. Some years there had been no presents at all, much less “trimmings.”

“With a tree?” asked my sister Jean. “And colored bulbs?”

“And icicles?” said John.

“Christmas like everybody else has,” Mama repeated.

Mike and Jerry argued about where the tree would be placed. Daddy didn’t say anything. He was headed toward a crisis with alcohol and had to save all his energy for making forty hours a week at the mill before getting fully drunk.

While Mama put presents on layaway, we kids toured the woods around our house and picked a tree.   True to her promise, Mama bought decorations a few days before Christmas and we loaded down that tree. It sagged under the load of two strings of lights, several dozen glass bulbs, and about a half dozen packages of icicles. I can still recall the crisp clean smell of those needles.Then Mama arranged the wrapped packages at the base.

“It’s beautiful,” said Jean.

Mama grunted in dissatisfaction. “Don’t look like much for all I spent.”

“It looks good,” I assured her and all three boys agreed.

Mama dropped into her rocker and stared at the tree. “Needs a skirt like the trees on TV.” She found an old chenille spread that served the purpose, and then surveyed the scene again with a dissatisfied frown.

“It’s like everybody else has,” Jean said.

Mama sniffed. “I reckon.”

Over the next two days Mama rearranged packages and ornaments a number of times. Then it was Christmas Eve and Mama could hardly stay away from the tree. Right after lunch, as if answering a request, she suddenly burst out, “I reckon I could let ya’ll open one present today.”

“Let’s wait,” Jean and John said together.

“Christmas is just another day,” Mama said.

“Christmas is the birthday of Jesus,” Jean said.

“Christmas is whenever we say it is,” Mama said, but she wouldn’t meet Jean’s eyes.

Mama won.

Everyone chose a gift and soon wrappings were flying. I opened my box and found a Ban Lon crew neck sweater. I didn’t have a skirt fit to wear it with nor did I own a pair of pants. Maybe I could wear it over a dress?

Mama smiled on all the happiness she had created. “Might as well open the second present and get it over with,” she said.

“What?” I said.

Jean began to cry.” Can’t we wait…” but the boys were already tearing into boxes. My box contained a pair of loafers, which delighted me, until I realized they were a size too small.

“They run big, the man in the Trading Post told me,” Mama said. “And they’ll stretch as you wear them.” All my shoes had to stretch as I wore them. I had big feet.

Mama stood. “Let’s get this stuff cleaned up, and I want this tree mess out of here.”

Late that afternoon while we rolled the bedraggled tree down the hill behind our house, we heard holiday carols from the little church up the road.

“Well, at least we had Christmas this year,” John said.

Jean nodded. “And we had it before everybody else.

My latest book, HALLEY, has just been released by NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com/halley

Mama liked cornbread dressing (sometimes called “stuffing” by folks who don’t know better), and she made it often.  Where she got her recipe, I’m unsure.  The one thing I’m certain of–it called for sage, and plenty of it.  That herb was so overpowering in the finished product that you could feel the fumes in your nose.  Normally a big eater, I always got light helpings of that dish.

Mama herself was never fully satisfied, and always seemed surprised when her dressing didn’t measure up.  She would taste and sniff and poke.  Finally, she would declare, “It needs more sage.”

I don’t recall anybody complaining.  Daddy got an A for cheerfully eating whatever you put before him.  And one thing us Junkins kids learned early was to refrain from badmouthing the food on the table.  Any griping was sure to be met with the advice, “Don’t eat, if you don’t like it. You might like it better next meal.”  This was a pretty good bet since there was no junk food or snack items in our house.  Not ever. You’d be amazed what you can eat when you are REALLY hungry.

So next time Mama made dressing, she would dip more heavily into the sage box.  Finally, I think she pretty much poured in the entire box.  You could SEE the sage flecks in the mix.  It grew so strong that our dog Brownie, who until sixteen or so survived off leftovers supplemented with whatever wildlife he could run down, would turn up his nose at the chunks of dressing.  

Fortunately, Mama usually assigned throwing out scraps to one of us kids, so she probably never saw the growing pile of dressing down the hill from the outhouse.  She never learned of Brown’s betrayal.

Years passed.  I married a man whose mother was one of the South’s great cooks. You name it–that woman could cook it.  Chicken pie, fresh coconut cake, corn pudding, squash casserole.  To be fair, she had been able to be a stay-at-home wife, and all her married life she had owned a mixer, measuring cups and spoons, baking pans, casserole dishes and all the other necessities for the kitchen.  But, then, dressing didn’t require any of these, and hers was the best I’d ever put in my mouth.  I didn’t pass along my opinion to my mother, who would have resented the implied comparison.

Then one year Mama and Daddy came for Thanksgiving and Mama Gibbons prepared the dressing with giblet gravy.  Mama served herself a generous helping of dressing and gravy and then went back for seconds.  At last she turned to my mother-n-law and asked, “How do you make your dressing?”  

Mama Gibbons was happy to oblige, listing the amount of crumbled cornbread, biscuit, and white bread slices she used, the amount of chopped celery, green onions, pimento, eggs, and broth needed, the amount of garlic salt, pepper needed for seasoning.  

It was only after the meal when we were alone in the kitchen that Mama looked at the scant remains in the dressing pan and sniffed.    “I think it could use some sage.”

My latest book, HALLEY, has just been released by NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com/halley

In the Georgia mountains of my childhood strollicking was frowned upon. The only excuses for idleness were illness, like double pneumonia or paralysis, extreme youth (younger than five) or tottery old age. Of course, there was Sunday, a day of rest sanctioned by scripture, but even on that day farm animals had to be fed, milked, and tended. Meals had to be cooked, dishes washed, and water drawn from the well. Most of these jobs fell into the category of “women’s work.” and by the time all chores were finished, most women didn’t feel like strollicking. Sometimes men like my Grandfather Junkins did. Dad got it down to a fine art.

On Sunday, children could play–as long as they didn’t become irreverent. To my stern Grandmother Junkins, running, loud laughter, or yelling all crossed the line into irreverence.

Me, I longed to strollick, and at home I was sometimes allowed to. However, when we visited Grandmother Junkins, my mother followed Maw’s standards. My solution, once I learned to read, was to make sure I took along a book from school. Reading, I could do quietly, and I could read stories to younger siblings and cousins. However, books like Tom Sawyer could reduce a huge bunch of kids to irreverent laughter, which was sure to alert Maw. Such books weren’t true, she pointed out, so I was reading plain out lies Her solution to this was Bible reading. When I got older, I wondered if Jesus’ parables didn’t count as stories. And didn’t they tell the truth? I dared not ask.

By my teens, Maw was herself doing a version of strollicking, though she would never have owned it. She and Dad broke up housekeeping and lived with different ones of their nine children a week or two at a stretch. Seldom did they both stay with the same children at the same time, so they saw each other only in passing, and I think they liked it that way.

My other grandmother outlived two husbands and had many other hardships over her near-century of living, but Ma Long always had fun too. That woman knew how to strollick. In her eighties she, too, broke up housekeeping and visited about with different children. Sometimes her visit coincided with that of Maw Junkins.

One particular time stands out in memory. My sister was dating and had managed to borrow a gown to wear to the prom. Though modest by modern standards, it exposed too much skin in Maw’s opinion, and she said so. Ma Long declared that Jean was “pretty as a picture.” The appointed time passed and Jean impatiently tapped her satin shod toes. Mama was frazzled with trying to calm Maw while watching the road. Ma Long undoubtedly picked up on the tension . She finally looked out at the muddy yard (it had been raining all afternoon) and said to Jean, “The boy’s just running late is all. Why don’t you strollick up the road. I bet you meet him on the way.”

Yessiree, that woman knew how to strollick!

My latest book, HALLEY, has just been released by NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com/halley

Walter Johnson Strikes Again

Walter Johnson was the kind of boy who would pull legs off daddy longlegs just to see them suffer–or that was the way I saw him in third grade. He wasn’t especially bright–he never fully did what the teacher assigned. Maybe that is why he had so much time to torture kids like me, who were poorly dressed and had no lunch money.

My earliest memory of Walter is on my first day at East Side School. It happened to be Valentine’s Day, and this was back when classrooms celebrated the holiday in a big way. I didn’t know it was Valentine’s Day, and if I had, my parents would not have wasted money on buying cards for me to exchange. This was our third move for this school year, and my mother had just given birth to her fourth baby. Money was even more scarce than usual.

Right after lunch (which I did not have) cards were distributed from the large decorated box on the teacher’s desk. It had to contain well over a thousand cards, since there were 40 kids in the class. As expected, the popular kids received mounds of cards, many with movable parts, glitter and felted patches. Our teacher even received a box of chocolate covered cherries. Everybody had something. Everybody but me.

Folding my arms across my desk to hide its vacancy, I waited for three o’clock and tried to think of the pot of beans Mama was sure to have simmering on the wood-burning stove when I got home.

Then Walter noticed my empty desk and began pointing and laughing. “She didn’t get no valentines.”

Everyone laughed, and I began to cry.

I’m sure the teacher shushed them. She was a kindly lady, though harried and disorganized, but the damage had been done. Walter Johnson had become one of the villains of my childhood.

Flash forward 66 years. I am at a book festival in my hometown, promoting my latest book. Sales are slow. Suddenly a man stops in front of me and stares. Older than me, I think, by at least ten years (I usually think this about people who turn out to be my age). A long lost relative, I wonder. No, there is nothing familiar.

“You don’t know me, do you?” he says.

“No,” I admit.

He laughs and the sound is vaguely familiar. “I went to East Side School with you. I’m Walter Johnson.”

“Walter Johnson?”

He leans close. “You know, I remember a little girl who got no cards on Valentine’s Day. My heart just broke for that little girl.”

“Mine too,” I say.

“Hope you do good on your books,” he says, turning to leave. “Don’t look like you done much so far.”

“You haven’t changed a bit, Walter,” I call after him. And he hadn’t.