Do You Hear Me, Boy?

Do you hear me boy?

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He wasn't a bad little boy really, not the rebel his grandmother claimed he was. He was curious by nature and so full of energy. Each morning, he jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen, always disappointed when no one else was up yet. He would fidgit and muck around doing this and that until Mom got up and fixed oatmeal with syrup and Pet milk, his favorite breakfast. He obeyed the house rule - no going outside until mother is awake and gives permission. So, he gulps down the oatmeal, holds the bowl up and lets the last drop of milk plop into his mouth. Then, eagerly looking at his mother, he says "may I go now?"

She gives permission with the usual warnings and admonitions, i.e., stay away from the creek, stay away from black bottom, stay off the church property, do not sneak and go to Mawmaw's house, do not eat anything anyone gives you, do not fight with anyone, do not get lost and be home before dark. She ended it with the same daily question "Do you hear me boy?"

"Yes, Mother," he always said and gave her a big smile and then a hug with his oatmealy hands. She would ruffle his hair and watch as he ran to the door and then outside on his chubby little legs, her four-year-old adventurer. In due course, he would invite his brother along on his daily quests but not yet, too young.

"Where he go?" asked his brother, Carl, "where Jimmy go?"

"I don't know, son" Mother would say. "He goes where his mind leads him, I guess."

Where he went in the early 1940's was a lot safer than it would be today. Predators weren't nearly as brave as they are now, but on with the story.

Now, he wasn't a disobedient boy usually but all the "forbidden" places which his mother warned him were exactly where he liked to go. Why, if not, what else would where be to do in the hollow we lived in, just a muddy dirty road lined with "company" houses, two to three rooms in each, with outhouses? He didn't do dangerous things such as go near the big high way, didn't go into the woods alone, didn't enter anyone's property without permission. He just took in the sights.

Now, the creek ran through the property. The women sometimes did laundry in it. God only knows what was dumped in it routinely, including run off from the coal mines. It was not the creek of lofty remembrance but a shallow bed of water with murky water in it. But, it did have crawdads (or crayfish as some like to call them). Jimmy had the patience of Job. He could sit for hours waiting for one to crawl by and - zap - he had him. He placed him in a canning jar with a lid with holes poked in it. He played with the thing until it died of old age, or something.

Successful with his crawdad hunt, he mosied on down the alley quite a ways and there was the Baptist church, white and shining. The lot was empty this morning, still too early for any goings on there. Last week had been fun though. They had a baptizing. Jimmy didn't know what that was exactly, but he was some kind of put out when they wouldn't let him swim with them. They told him to "go home, your mother needs you." He knew a put down when he heard one. In later years, he avoided the church like the plague, it being good only for playing softball on the church property, in his opinion.

The rest of the day, he just walked from place of interest to place of interest, taking in anything new or different from the day before. He liked to look at peoples' clothing hanging on the clothes line. "Some women wear awful big bloomers," he said once. And he knew who didn't bleach the baby diapers or "whites" and how lazy they were.. or poor.. bleach cost money you know. Sometimes, someone would be beating a rug on the line, and he would take a broom and help out, dust flying as they beat the tarnation out of the thing. He secretly thought it a waste of time. What's a little dust, he thought.

On this particular day, he had a big coup. He had crawled under Brother Adkins' house and found a rattler snake, a baby one. He scooped it up and put it into an old Prince Albert tobacco can that was in his possession. He carried a lot of neat things in his back pack or what passed for a back pack in those days. He left a bottle of Carl's milk, a baby bottle, for the mother snake as an offering for her young. Periodically, throughout the day, he would open the can, peek in and squeal when it's little head aimed for the top of the can. I don't have the heart to tell you what Mother did with the little snake.

He didn't go to Mawmaw's to beg food, but he got so hungry, he did wander over into black bottom, so named because the black folks lived on this side of the coal camp. It really wasn't that segrgated as all the men worked side by side in the coal mines and skin color didn't matter down there; everyone's skin was black in the hole. One could always find something to eat in black bottom. Those women could cook! Today, he got a bit of fried carp and corn break. His Mother said carp was a scum sucking fish, but it tasted great and he didn't much care what it sucked. Today, little Tyrone let him feel his hair. Jimmy loved to feel the difference in their hair, just was one of those things you don't know about but like to think about. Mother said their hair was kinky, but it wasn't. It was soft all over, but thick and close to the scalp and oh so black. Jimmy liked it and never tired of getting a "feel" as he called it. Mother Ellis shooed him away, telling him to go home as his Mother would be looking for him. It would be dark soon.

So, Jimmy, the master of the appalachian "hood," took his treasures and his chubby legs and headed for home, another day taking in the sights.