One Summer Afternoon

As a child, I spent almost all my summers with my maternal grandmother who took care of her mother, Rosa. Only 4’10”, Rosa was nevertheless a force to reckon with and was as stubborn a southern woman as you’ll ever meet... and she absolutely scared me to death.

Case in point, after my great-grandfather died, Rosa refused to go live in Savannah with my grandmother and her family. Rosa needed someone to take care of her as there were simply things she could no longer do for herself… like cook without setting something on fire.

So, my grandmother moved back to Rosa’s house in Pembroke, Georgia when I was about 5 years old and there she remained until Rosa died some years later. This was difficult for my grandmother because Rosa also refused to have any ‘newfangled inventions’ in her house. My grandmother had to draw water from a pump in the kitchen and had to wash clothes with an agitator type machine on the back porch. It had a wringer that clothes were pushed through to well, wring them out. This was my job, and I can’t tell you how many times I got my hand caught in that machine!

The house did have electricity, but Rosa, of course, insisted on kerosene lamps in the evenings. Rosa’s house was typical of those of the low-to-middle class in rural Georgia in the 30s and 40s. It was a three bedroom wood frame, with a tin roof (God, I loved to hear it raining at night, bouncing off that tin!), and it had very large front and back porches. The outhouse was located at the far corner of the back yard.

One of my older cousins, Joann, used to come spend at least two weeks each summer, and that was when I had the most fun because Joann was my hero. She was about 4 years older than me (I was 7 at the time) and had a tremendous knowledge about animals and insects. We would spend hours, walking the woods, cotton and corn fields looking for anything alive and she would tell me their proper names, their living and mating habits, and then quiz me to see if I had been listening.

Joann also taught me how to sing and dance to “Pistol Packin’ Mama”, a record played nightly on Rosa’s wind up Victrola that she only allowed in her house because her only son had bought it for her for Christmas one year. I’m sure there were other records, but that’s the only one I really remember.

The outhouse was a two-seater and it wasn’t unusual for two people of the same sex to be using it at the same time. One such time, I had done my thing really quickly, and was just standing around waiting on Joann. And this is what happened that summer afternoon.

Me (standing around): “Uh, Joann, what was the name of that snake that has the square things on the back?”

Joann (sitting on the throne): “That’s a diamond back rattler. And what else did I tell you about it?”

Me (kind of looking around): Uh, that it’s poisonous?”

Joann (still sitting): “That’s right! You get a gold star.”

Me (looking overhead): “Oh gee, thanks!”

Joann (sitting…): “What made you think of that right now?”

Me (pointing overhead where a full grown diamond back rattler was hiding out in the rafters over the door): “Well, I think that’s one up there.”

Joann (jumping up faster than lightening, running out of the outhouse with her panties around her knees): “Run, stupid!”

Well, I was actually already trying to run after her but she kind of pushed me out of her way to get a more direct path and she was screaming the whole way:

“Aunt Ruby! Uncle Johnny!” (Her aunt Ruby is my grandmother; her uncle Johnny is my grandmother’s brother.)

Before they even got out the back door, Joann yelled: “There’s a diamond back in the outhouse!” (She finally got her pants pulled back up, thank the Lord!)

So uncle Johnny (he was also my uncle, you see) ran back inside and came running back out with a rifle while my grandmother ran to the shed and got a hoe. Uncle Johnny took the hoe from grandmother and cautiously used it to open the outhouse door. Not wanting to stick his head in there to see exactly where that rattler was, he then used the hoe to poke around overhead until finally, this huge snake fell down into the doorway.

Uncle Johnny proceeded to shoot the snake (he was a crack shot with a rifle) but my grandmother, adrenalin pumping mightily, used the hoe to also chop off its head.
I ran over to see it up close but she grabbed me by the arm and said: “Don’t get too close, the poison is still in the fangs and it can kill you if you get any on you.”

Wow! Joann didn’t tell me that poisonous snakes can still be poisonous after they’re dead! And I made a mental note to remember that little tidbit. (Although, I later learned that the venom can only kill you if it gets into your blood stream, as for example, through on open sore.)

After things settled down, we had a really good laugh about the whole scenario. Well, Joann didn’t laugh as much as we did, especially when I mimicked her running away with her panties down around her knees. She never let me go to the outhouse with her again.