Summers of Childhood

"Green is my favorite color," said Mamaw, my grandmother on Mother's side. Mamaw was a Riley and grew up, living her whole life, in the tiny town of Frankston, between Athens and Jacksonville, near Tyler, Texas. Her given name was Mossie. Mossie Riley. How Irish can one name sound?

She married a Thrasher, my grandfather John William "Mr. Johnny" Thrasher, of Poyner, who set up his barbershop in Frankston, across the street from the cleaners and next to a cafe where the jukebox played "bop" music and sometimes the teenagers hopped up from their booths and burgers to dance. The First Baptist Church was just down the street, so sometimes a good Christian woman would enter the cafe, tsk-tsking the kids, 'til they sat down just long enough for her to priss on down the street.

Mamaw and Papa Thrasher were good Baptists; they never missed church unless a high fever was involved, and on Sunday afternoons they did nothing more exciting than a little fishing at the lake. My brother and I spent summers with Mamaw and Papa; idyllic is an understatement for the life we led under their care.

Mamaw had a little apparel store called "Mary's Shoppe," named for my mother, Mary, Mamaw and Papa's only child. When she wasn't working in the shop, Mamaw was always busy sewing Pricilla curtains or baking pound cakes, or taking a Mason Jar of soup to a sick friend, often a Sunday School class member or a neighbor who was really a cousin from some connection.

Getting dressed for church was quite an ordeal--there were white gloves and small purses with handkerchiefs containing the proper number of coins for the Sunday School offering. Mamaw tied me into organza dresses, or little ruffled cotton pinafores with white blouses, their small round collars ironed just so.

The gloves came from small boxes with many rules: never remove them by pulling on the fingers; ladies pull the whole line of fingers gently, until they're loosened to the point they can be surreptitiously removed; never wear just one glove unless that hand is holding the other glove. Why that was, I never understood, but I followed each dictum to the letter.

Then there was the whole extravaganza of the socks; I was not allowed to wear colored socks, ever, so white socks softened the hard edges of either black or white Baby Jane flats, depending on the season. I didn't like it one bit that in Mamaw's dress shop, baskets and baskets of darling ice-cream colored socks would become sold out in no time, yet it was only white ones for me--the others were considered a bit tacky I guess. The law was not explained. But it meant something to Mother and Mamaw, so I never cheated on that rule.

Green was the color of many of Mamaw's things--minty soft green platters, green crystal cake plates that were really pressed glass; the yard shone green with a lawn and shrubbery she loved to clip and prune, and the flowers bloomed in every bed, in every season. Soft teal napkins were washed and ironed regularly, until Wash 'n Dry fabrics came onto the scene. Cloth napkins meant something to Mamaw--there was always a little wooden napkin holder full of them at her house.

Iced tea was the daily ritual once coffee time had passed, and we sometimes got to run outside and pick fresh sprigs of mint to garnish the Cape Cod tumblers packed tightly with ice. Mamaw measured out many spoons of loose Lipton leaves into a large jar at the back of the counter top, pouring the boiling water carefully and leaving it for just five minutes. At times of great numbers of family at Thanksgiving or for summer reunions, she had four or five jars of leaves steeping at once. The pungent smell of tea brewing instantly imports me back into her kitchen.

Green days of summer--they lasted for weeks it seemed--and we spent them doing as we liked, as we were good children (the word "kids" was also not allowed in Mamaw's home) and could be trusted to a normal point. We put on theater productions underneath the pecan trees in Mamaw and Papa's back yard, pestered the gas station attendants across the street toward town, as they repaired old Fords and Chevys.

We played in the Gazebo, or band shell, in the park, which went for one block in the center of town, bordered on the south by the railroad tracks, and on the other three sides by the stores. . . Clyde's Dry Goods sold everything under the sun at one end of the block facing the park, the Weesner's Grocery on the other end. . . in between were some favorite haunts besides Mamaw's shop: The Five and Dime, where we could run in for penny candy and those waxy tubes fill with heaven knows what, and cool off a while; the Frankston Citizen's news office, where something was always happening, and our favorite, the huge cavernous Drug Store, soda fountain, marble floor, patterned tin ceiling and all.

The smell of the Drug Store tantalized us, between the "fountain's" vanilla ice cream and root beer, the perfumery which also sold pinky-orange face powder by the waxed-paper bag, measured out in small silver scoops, and the druggist's counter, which was always mysterious but good-smelling, as if he cleaned the place with pure Witch Hazel. It was always cool in there, and sitting in the booths drinking our lime freezes or Coke floats, I liked to slip out of my sandals and massage the marble with my feet.

No wonder Mamaw insisted we scrub our faces and hands before we ever set foot into the Drug Store. We were probably "filthy-dirty" by the time mid-afternoon came, and we'd either been swinging in the trees like Marmosets or climbing the rungs of the Gazebo to get a better look at the thousands of boxes of peaches that came into town on the train.

The widespread whole-town smell of those peaches--I smell their syrupy perfume, can see them now, glowing pink and gold in the sunlight. Soon the tomatoes would appear and we would feel hungry even if lunch had just filled our tummies--who could resist one of those farm-grown, vine-ripened tomatoes, big as a baseball in our small hands?

Mamaw had cornbread for supper, with the left-overs from a fried-steak lunch with rice and gravy maybe, and myriad vegetables. Sliced tomatoes and cornbread, with a big glass of tea, and I didn't care what else was on the plate. But it all came out delicious: fresh Crowder peas with their bits of ham; yellow squash stirred together with onions in the buttery skillet; salads with oranges and apples and pecans, bits of coconut, or sometimes the traditional "Ambrosia," that old signature dish of Southern parties.

And Frankston is a very Southern town, even if Dallas and Ft. Worth, two hours away, border the West. Then, people called one another "Mr. Johnny," "Miss Mossie," and I was "Miss Cheri Dena," and my brother "Mr. Randy." It seemed to be part of life, like breathing in the Sweetgum-flossed air, or shelling pecans while an aunt told stories of the old farms, the fields, the cousins and weddings and babies and betrayals and resolutions. "Mother and Daddy" this, and "Mother and Daddy" that. . . some of it I could understand but often the cup towel would hide her lips from the young ones.

The form of address was formal but the people, in the middle of 1950s small-town East Texas, were a thing apart. Always polite, perennially friendly, hospitality was serious business: they actually cared for one another, looked in on "Old Miss Althea," who's 85 after all; took care of the sick "Old Maid" down the lane, delivered pound cake or blackberry pie to the bereaved.

Traditions live on in one way or another, and the First Baptist Church is still in its old spot, enlarged to take in the growing population, but still with its old red brick entrance. Funerals are still served up with pound cake and pies, visits during the night by concerned neighbors, vigils in the Irish tradition without the whiskey, or at least without showing the whiskey.

The summers of my childhood are more about the simple honest sweetness of the household of Mamaw and Papa, than about the culture. But it all blends like cream, vanilla and sugar, twirling around like an old crank-handle ice cream maker, solidifying, if not factually perfectly, at least simply and resting cool and secure, like a child's head sleeping in somebody's lap.