To this day, I love stories about my father’s childhood. He
grew up under his father’s grocery store in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
It was a small, home-looking building on the corner of a rural highway and a
country road. My dad and his two brothers, sister, mother and daddy all lived
underneath in a house that my Mema kept “neat as a pin.” Up the road was the
Old Place, a modest farmhouse set amongst rolling hills with the obligatory red
barn topped by a shiny tin roof. That’s where his father grew up smack dab in
the middle of 24 Anderson kids. To go ahead and answer all your questions, my
great-grandfather had two wives, the first one had 12 and died, the second one had
12 and lived. My Pepa was the oldest in the second set.
Next to
the Old Place was Liberty Grove Baptist Church. A small, unified little
congregation, my dad and his siblings worshipped, ate potlucks, snuck off with
teenage significant others during vacation Bible school for some harmless, yet
decidedly impious activities. The church offered some sort of social
interaction in an extremely rural, and even for its time, disconnected little
town.
It’s
not too much of a stereotype to attribute some classic North Carolina and
Appalachia features to North Wilkesboro. NASCAR star Junior Johnson was known
to sit on the front porch and drink a Pepsi. Most everyone smoked or chewed
tobacco. Moonshiners abounded, and it is moonshiners that one of my father’s
favorite recollections comes from.
There
were a group of them, about three I think the story goes. These people were a
testament to alcoholism. A true health class warning video if there ever was
one against the evils of drink. So there were three of them and they were known
to sit in a house down by the river (cue Chris Farley) and simply drink. They
drank all the time. They made ‘shine, they sold it, and they drank it. That
tangy stink of a subway station hobo doesn’t touch the cloud that surrounded
these people. The moonshiners all had a visible scariness to them, the dead
expression and borderline uncontrolled mannerisms of the truly inebriated. One
in particular had a mangled stub of an arm because he stuck his arm out the
window of a car (while drunk of course) and had a surprise amputation courtesy
of a stop sign.
So
there they were one summer day bumbling around the store. My Pepa, Earl, had a
fantastic patience with most people, probably borne of his time with his own
sometimes foolish clan of unending siblings. Well today, they were being less
than cooperative and were also cussing up a storm. Pepa had no patience for swearing,
especially with his kids all under the age of 12 in the store. He told the
drunks to stop or get out, and to everyone’s surprise, they didn’t cooperate.
He told them again to stop or leave, and they very eloquently expressed their
firm belief that they shouldn’t. At this
point, the four small Anderson kids were sent downstairs to the house. Of
course they dutifully left, but only reached the top of the stairs behind a
semi-closed door. Finally, my Pepa physically threw them out. And that was
that.
Of
course it wasn’t. Babe came in and told them that one of them had a knife and
was fixing to come back in. Babe is the obligatory old man who sits on country
store porches and talks with everyone. Pepa, not a man known for many words
said “okay.” He stood there, a few paces back from the door, and waited. Sure
enough, one of the moonshiners who still had both his arms came in with a pocket
knife ready to fight over the injustice of his forceful removal. Sadly, my Pepa
simply punched the shit out of him. One punch to the face of an alcoholic
delivered by a life-long farmer and outstanding corn field baseball player was
all it really took for the drunk to not be a problem anymore. My father and his siblings all remember this
day with various details. The unifying theme to this fairly badass story is the
awe in which they held their father. Not the perfect father in a time when most
dads were hardly Ward Cleaver, I think watching their dad deck a man that had threatened
the safety of his family and his store reaffirmed their reverence and respect
for the man. In a few days the drunks came back and behaved, and they were
allowed to buy their cigarettes and snacks as always. As far as I know, no
knives were ever pulled on Pepa again, at least from this crowd.
I find
myself envying these stories. I have loads of them in my memory, carefully
gleaned primarily from my dad and confirmed by my aunt and uncles. Charming
stories, all of them, they make me wonder about the childhood my parents chose for
me. I grew up in suburban Atlanta in the 80’s and 90’s. Things were terribly
tame and predictable for the most part. I never got to see my dad punch someone
who had it coming (although he once threw a table full of pool/tennis keys into
the pool because Lance Lewin was being a dick. Everyone in the subdivision knew
it. Plus his name was Lance.)
It’s a grass is greener situation, and I
really don’t bemoan my privileged childhood.
I think it’s easy and unfortunately too commonplace for my generation to
hate their ignorantly blissful youth. But I’m thankful that I have these stolen
memories of baling hay for days on end, earning a cold Pepsi from the delivery man,
and living on a family farm that had housed other Anderson for generations. The
reassuring part is though that’s not who I am, I can claim that as a small part
of myself. I can be content with being the son of a son of a farmer.
