The Roads From Whence I've Come...

I am named after both of my grandfathers; James on my father's side and Allen on my mother's. I don't remember much about my father's parents except they were apparently old to begin with. My grandmother, according to my father, began the popular movement "Hypochondria." She was either really ill or thought she should be all of the time. Whether for real or imagined, Grandmother Latchford refused to follow any of her many physician's orders, particularly as it pertained to taking her prescribed medications. She just flat refused. This irrational approach to her personal well-being exasperated my father to no end. "She thinks she knows more than her doctors!" my father would lament. "She'd just as soon cut off her own nose to spite her face!" This latter sentiment, in one form or another, remained an oft repeated stable of my father's philosophical outlook for years to come. Whatever in fact were grandmother's real ailments, when combined with her unwavering stubbornness, the ultimate end result was to bring to fruition one of my father's more dire predictions, "If she keeps this up , she'll be dead in six months!." He pretty much nailed that one.

Now my Dad's dad, on the other hand, was of much heartier stock; he having labored in the steel mills and on the railroad in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania throughout his adult life. "Grandpap" Latchford abhorred idleness. One of my most vivid memories was watching him clipping the individual blade tops off the grass in our front yard. He remained diligently at that task for hours and appeared genuinely contented in doing so. He passed away at 93. Knowing how feisty he was throughout his long life, I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that the morticians had to use duct tape to keep him in the casket.

My most endearing and fondest recollections of "grandparents" came from my mother's side of the family; Allen and May D Brown. These were people of the "good earth." Farmers. They resided on a spread of some considerable magnitude approximately fifteen miles northwest, as the crow flies, from Statesville, North Carolina. "Going to town," in the time of my early youth, meant a trip to the "City" of Statesville, containing within its city limits a population of around 25,000, and its principle enterprise being to cater to the surrounding agricultural communities. Once one ventured in any given compass direction beyond the town limits, one was immediately immersed in "the sticks." May D's and Allen's farm could best be described as being significantly beyond that designation, so far out were they from urbanized civilization. Still, for my younger brother John and me, it was an oasis of limitless opportunities to explore and find ways to get into mischief.

My Grandfather Allen, to be generous to a fault, was in today's parlance "a player." He sired three children with May D; my mother, Emily Sue, the oldest - son Cecile Albert - the middle offspring, and his youngest daughter, Shirley. Allen also allegedly made frequent forays into the hills and valleys of rural Iredell County to pay his respects to other female acquaintances, these indiscretions ultimately being the root cause that lead to May D and Allen eventually declaring their marriage a lost cause. Although we didn't know it at the time, my brother and I most likely met one of Grandfather Allen's female dalliances, Ms. Beulah. Ms. Beulah defined what it meant to be poor in the rural south. I do not recall that she was much of a looker, but I do remember her to be slender and cute in an unkempt sort of way. She apparently had an aversion to wearing shoes, and this dislike spilled over to her offspring who came pouring barefoot out of their dilapidated house upon our arrival like circus clowns clamoring head-over-heels from an impossibly smallish car. I do not recall the final count of the smudged-faced children of all sizes and ages that ran to greet "Uncle" Allen, but any decent sized pot roast would be hard pressed to survive a meal with that bunch. If there was a Mr. Beulah, he was no where to been seen, and Ms. Beulah appeared to be more than passingly enamored with Allen's presence than otherwise would be the case had the visit been merely a courtesy call from her landlord. Brother John and I, oblivious to the real intent of these on-going visits, spent many a happy hour playing with her gaggle of kids (some of which I must faithfully admit may have been "kin") while "Uncle" Allen ensconced himself indoors with Ms. Beulah counting and recounting the rent receipts.

My most endearing memories encircle Grandmother Brown. "May D," as everyone called her. The ruling patriarch of the Brown clan. The "D" was to connote her maiden name, Douglas, another prominent family name that had established deep roots sunk into the fertile soil in that particular part of North Carolina. If "Grandpap" Latchford was rightly declared to be "feisty," May D in turn could pin him to the mat in a best two out of three wrestling match. I do not recall ever seeing Grandmother without an apron tied loosely around her diminutive waist that she would use in turn to wipe either her hands or brow. She was always in the midst of cooking a big meal or getting ready to do so. Her clapboard house was filled with the combined aromas of roasted peanuts, fried chicken and pound cake, the latter being so sweet as to persuade the most hardened criminal to reject his misguided ways. She cooked on an ancient wood-fired stove that gave off enough heat to fry an egg fifty feet from the back door. It was Brother John's and my responsibility during our frequent visits to provide May D with an ample and constant supply of chopped wood to keep her cast iron monster sated. I wasn't any less capable of fulfilling that obligation than was my brother, but I was usually more readily at hand while Brother John was off to places unknown devising more ways to get into trouble. Like the time May D caught him trying to stuff one of the family's farm dogs into the top of an open milk can."John! John!" she screeched as she came flying out of the house. "Get up from there and let that poor dog loose! I'm gonna get me a switch and tan your hide!!" When May D got riled her voiced elevated several octaves, sounding like rusty hinges on a broken screen door. But you had best "mind" her then and there or most assuredly she'd cut a stout sprig from the nearest available bush and come after you with fire in her eyes. Brother John had more than just a few occasions when the promise of grandmother's wrath came to fruition on his bare backside.

The poultry population that had free range on the Brown farm had learned to be especially wary of May D. John and I learned this early one Sunday morning when Grandmother came flying around the house at full bore just behind a flailing hen. Reaching out with the business end of a metal clothes hanger, May D precisely matched every move the chicken devised to allude its determined pursuer. To no avail. With a quick jerk of her wrist, the open hook found its mark around the hen's neck and the chase came to an abrupt conclusion. With a quick snap of the hens feathery neck the poor bird was rendered among the newly departed and one step closer to finding its remains in a boiling pot of water. Said Grandmother, "How 'bout that boys? We're fixin' to have fried chicken for Sunday dinner!!"

May D had few opportunities for relaxation and even fewer personal vices. As for the former she most enjoyed a bit of television and for the latter she most thoroughly enjoyed "taking a dip of snuff now and then." The two were most often combined when she would settle herself down in her well worn easy chair, aligned in front of her black and white television set, and tune in Saturday Night Pro Wrestling. Packing her lower lip with a goodly wad of snuff, she'd begin to narrate the action in the ring. It wouldn't be long before her emotions had elevated to a fever pitch and she was screaming at the screen. She'd hurl herself forward in the recliner, grab her Maxwell House Coffee spit can, deposit an oily stream, and shout, "Lord God, Jimmy! He's a gonna kill that poor man!! Help him! Oh God...help him!!" Nothing the wrestlers could do on screen could come anywhere close to the entertainment value Grandmother provided us on a Saturday night pro wrestling night.

A road trip with Grandmother Brown with her at the wheel was always a harrowing adventure. She owned a 50-something Bellaire Chevrolet. It's exterior paint scheme being an undecided blend of advancing rust and "I think it use to be some shade of green." It was operated with a standard three speed transmission on the steering column, a simplistic means to shift from one gear to the next, that May D never ever mastered. Raw coffee beans are ground with less ferocity than she employed trying to select any gear that would finally and decidedly get the car moving forward. Often times she could be seen, but more often than not, heard cursing at the top of her lungs as she mercilessly ground through the gears, lunging the car either backwards or forwards in a feeble but determined effort to finally point the vehicle towards the end of the driveway. Depending upon the level of success she experienced on any given day, a few minutes or upwards of a half hour would transpire before the daunting task was accomplished, and with highway 115 looming just ahead she'd yell, "Let's go!" Into the passenger side's open door we would bound, with me in the middle on the bench seat next to May D and Brother John holding down the "shotgun" position. With the accelerator smashed to the floor and the brake nearly so, we'd creep ever so slowly and hesitantly to the very end of the driveway. There we would pause again for an indeterminate period of time as Grandmother would repeatedly scan in both directions, making sure, we supposed, that Patton's 3rd mechanized army wasn't about to suddenly appear coming over the rise. Finally, with a renewed roar of the engine and another half pound of gear changing, we were headed "up the road" to wherever May D deemed was to be the destination of the day.

Seat belts were as foreign in passenger cars in those days as were Republicans in the tobacco fields. May D gripped the steering wheel as though it would be wrenched from her hands at any moment ands discarded out her open side window. Brother John and I were constantly casting about for any available secure handholds, trying to remain in an upright position as May D darted back and forth across the road at the breakneck speed of 35 miles per hour, desperately trying to keep the car out of the ditches and away from the mailboxes along the way. And to make things even more interesting, Grandmother had a very specific and well devised plan at the ready if and when our travels would require crossing railroad tracks, the necessity of which she attempted to avoid at any cost. Stopping right in the middle of the road at the ultimate safe distance of at least a hundred feet before crossing the tracks, May D would instruct either me or my brother to exit the car, run up to the tracks, and making sure no train was approaching, wave her on across. She even encouraged us to put our ears to the rail to listen for the distant rumble of an approaching train...just to be on the "safe side." Whichever one of us was selected as "scout" had the better end of the deal, as the other one was left unbuckled in the car with a mad woman!

If the rails transversed any of the many dirt roads that proliferated in that neck of the back country, the task of crossing the tracks became even more of an ordeal. This unexpected event occurred the first time John and I were accompanying Grandmother on a trip to visit "Little Grandmother," May D's mother. Suddenly she slammed on the brakes for what we thought was for no apparently visible reason, and as the trailing cloud of dust filled the interior of the car, Grandmother shouted above the roar of the engine, "Get out of the car, John!" No doubt believing the previous incident with the dog and the milk can was about to have a final retribution, John asked with no little concern in his voice, "Why, Grandmother?" "Cause there's railroad tracks up ahead and I want to make sure we ain't about to get run over!" We both scanned the road ahead as far as we could through the remaining remnants of the dissipating dust cloud and could just begin to see the faint outline far in the distance of the distinct cross buck sign warning of a railroad crossing. She gave brother his instructions and John leaped from the car as though he'd been given permission to consume all of the hard candy at the local country store. About a minute later, John was standing atop the rise in the road where the tracks crossed. Then, a few seconds later, he flashed the "Come on ahead. It's clear" signal. "Hang on!!"shouted May D, and after a few predictable fits and starts, she found a gear that began to propel us forward. Steadily gaining speed it became frightfully obvious to me that we were about to break May D's all time best miles per hour record, as the distance between where we started from a standing stop to where Brother John was even now fleeing for cover was diminishing rapidly. We just didn't cross the railroad track...the car literally went airborne as we topped the rise. I knew but few snatches of Christian hymns in my early formative years, but "Nearer To Thee Oh God" came to mind as May D's Bellaire left the ground and pointed skyward. What seemed to me like an eternity before coming to ground once again occurred with a resounding thud with May D slamming on the brakes with all her strength. The car slid to a stop more or less sideways while the engine continued to scream at the top of its RPM range. Brother John came bounding joyously through the returning dust storm and shouted, "That was great, Grandmother!! Let's do it again!!" And we did...on the return trip back to the farm. But this time I got to be the "scout." I figured that I shouldn't be the only one in our immediate family that summer's afternoon who came face-to-face with a near death experience.

Then there was the time a number of years later when May D discharged her 22 caliber revolver through her front door at me and my best friend. But that is another story for another time. Suffice it to say that visits with May D were a genuine "hoot!" It's admittedly a well-worn phrase to say that "they broke the mold" after God made May D. Brown. But as far as unique personalities go, she indeed was "one of a kind."