This Month's Story
When school is let out during the summer, two of my grandchildren, Lorelei and Michaela, come and visit us for several weeks. They started coming when they were 9 and 11 years old and have come every year since.
Their visits have been a lot of fun for us. At first, however, we were unsure of each other – Stella and I never having had sub-teens stay in the house before, and the children being placed in a totally new environment. It was a hectic first year.
They wanted meat and potatoes. Stella wanted to serve them steamed crabs, crawfish etouffee and fresh fish along with fresh (not canned) vegetables. The only thing they seemed to want to eat was her homemade ice cream. We weren’t sure how to keep them amused. We tried to take them to see everything and go everywhere. This couldn’t be done, and we ended up tiring them and ourselves. But we tried, we tried hard, and, interestingly enough, we realized that the girls were trying hard as well. At the end of their first visit, they said they would like to come back the next year.
One thing that seemed to work exceptionally well that first year was my reading to them in the evening. This was a complete surprise and really almost an accident. I just came across something I thought they’d like and read it to them. That started it.
Among the several books that I read to them was My Uncle Silas by H. E. Bates. They loved this book in particular and had me read several of the chapters twice. In the years that followed, the book became worn from the many repeat readings. But at some point in their visit, I had to read aloud a chapter or two from My Uncle Silas.
The next year, things were more relaxed – we didn’t try as hard and the girls were not as terrified about eating things they had never seen before. In fact, eating crabs in the gazebo became another of the increasing highlights of their visits. We decided to stick to simple things. Stella showed them how to make decorative wreaths from the wild vines that grew in the thickets nearby. On clear, dry days, she had them making pasta and when I went in the kitchen, I would have to dodge strands of pasta that were hanging everywhere to dry.
I went to the lumberyard and bought some two-by-fours and made two sets of stilts like I made for their Dad when he was their age. They got to be quite good at using these and I soon had to raise the foot braces to three feet from the ground. Michaela would take walks across the road and down the beach with hers. She had trouble however, in wading with them – they would sink into the mud and she would fall.
One night in August, Stella and I took them on the garage roof to watch the Perseids meteor shower. This comes every August as the earth moves in its yearly orbit through the debris from the tail of an old comet. It’s composed of meteoroids, small particles most no larger than a grain of sand. These debris strike our atmosphere and vaporize, and the result is a annual summer shower of shooting stars or meteors.
The shower is easy to watch – no special equipment is needed. All we had to do was to be in a dark location, and the broad, gentle slope of our garage roof was ideal. We took with us cushions off several outside chaise lounges, some lemonade and cake that Stella had made. We were set, I thought. What I hadn’t counted on was the reluctance of the girls to go up on “that dirty old roof and sit with the mosquitoes and watch a stupid meter shower”
“Meteor,” I said.
“Whatever,” they said.
“Well, we are going up,” I sputtered. “It’s educational and that’s it!”
So we all went up on the roof and waited in a dark funk that matched the dark sky. At about 10 o’clock we saw a flash and then … Nothing. We waited and waited. Nothing. The girls started to make sarcastic remarks.
“Did I ever tell you girls about Pierre and the alligator shoes?” asked Stella. “No,” they said.
And Stella went into the long-winded Cajun story about Pierre trying to get alligator shoes to give his wife for her birthday. “He chased and finally caught old Amos, the alligator, and the two of them wrestled and Pierre, he finally got that alligator down and told him to give him his shoes. Old Amos said that he didn’t wear shoes! Never had and never will! And Pierre, he had to let him go. And that is why to this day, Pierre’s wife has never worn a pair of them fancy alligator shoes. ‘Cause in Louisiana, the alligators don’t wear shoes. And that’s a fact.”
There was a long quiet after that, and we lay back and watched the sky.
“Then there was the time,” I said, “that Pierre broke his axe…”
Then I told the equally long story of the man selling Pierre a chain saw to replace the axe, and Pierre not being able to cut more than two or three cords of wood with it a day. I dragged it out and finally came to the part where Pierre brings the chain saw back to the man saying it was no good, that he could cut more cords of wood with his old axe. The man reached down and pulling the starter cord started the saw. “And Pierre, he leaped back in a fright and yelled ‘What’s that noise!!!’”
Well, I got my laugh, and Stella passed around the lemonade and cake and we leaned back and watched the sky.
After awhile we got the girls to tell stories. Only the rule was that we picked the subject. I asked Lorelei to tell the story about the two-headed turtle and she told us an enchanting tale about a turtle called Tim and Tom. We had more cake, and after a bit Michaela came out with an equally amusing story about a chicken named Clyde.
And so it went. Finally at about 1:30 a.m. I decided to call it quits, and said we should get down and go to bed – there had been only that one meteor and we were evidently in the year of the “one meteor shower.” Now I had a small rebellion on my hands. They did not want to get down.
We stayed a little longer, time for one last round of jokes and stories and then we left the sky to its showers and we to our beds.
One thing that lasted for years after this was that whenever we would go on a long trip, I could get them to pass the time by saying, “Michaela, tell us a story about….” In the years that followed, they and we have come to look forward to their mid-summer visits. They began to call me Pawpaw, a colloquial expression for grandfather. They started to call Stella, Memaw. She loves it.
One summer I bought them a small rubber raft patterned after a Zodiac, only considerably cheaper and much smaller. On its bow I wrote with an indelible pen the name “The Honorable B. Nancy” after a Weimaraner that had paid us a short visit the previous winter. They worked at blowing the boat up and then saw the name on the bow. Michaela asked who that was, and I told her about Nancy’s visit.
“I was working on the porch,” I said, “and suddenly I saw this dog running down the beach road towards the house. It was a Weimaraner and so I thought it was Jennie. Then I remembered Jennie was eating around the side. The dog came running right up onto the porch. She sat down beside me, panting, as if she had come a long way and that she was finally there. She was thin and filthy. I fed her and when I bathed her, I was surprised to see what a beautiful dog she was. And her manners were exquisite. Even Jennie was impressed.
“However, under the dirt I found a collar with a phone number for a Bay address. I called and her owner said that he would come by the next day and get her. So, at least we had her for the one night. Her owner told me her name was Daisy, but I knew better, it was Nancy, and there it is on the boat.”
They stared at the boat, evidently the logic of what I had said seemed to have completely escaped them. Finally, Lorelei asked, “Pawpaw, you mean you named our boat after a dog you met on the street?”
“They named a star after a dog. Why not a small boat?” I retorted. They still did not seem to understand and stared at the name some more. “But what about the ‘B?’ What does that stand for?” asked Michaela hesitatingly. “Why ‘B’ as in ‘Beautiful.’ What else?” I said.
“Beautiful Nancy?” Lorelei asked. “You named our boat ‘The Honorable Beautiful Nancy?’” “‘Right Honorable’ seemed pushing it a little.”
They seemed to take that as a satisfactory explanation and, dragging the boat behind them, they went down to the beach to play another chapter of their continuing adventure of Captain Kirk and Spock. Only now they had the starship “Enterprise” with them.
Stella came over and sat down beside me. “I know how upset you were about that dog. And I knew that that ‘B’ stood for ‘Beautiful’ Nancy. But I don’t think they saw the connection with naming their boat.”
“It seems logical to me. Maybe I should have told them the ‘B’ stood for them, too.” “How’s that?” she asked.
“Well, they’re beautiful too, aren’t they?”
She didn’t answer, and we sat on the porch and watched them move the “Honorable B. Nancy” out onto the open seas and high adventure. And so in this way we (and they) were able to fret away the summer. Looking back now, I realize we have whiled a lot of summers like that. I am surprised how fast they’ve gone by.
