Good Morning Friends - 8/30/25

GEORGIA FOLK AND FARM LIFE - A rememberamble for Saturday, August 30, 2025 ..... I do believe if you look outside this morning it will look much like a Saturday morning. There is a very good reason for it, as it is a Saturday morning. I can remember our Saturdays as a boy, they were unique from other days of the week. I recall when I was little fellow, aged two and three years, when we lived in town, Swainsboro, on Herrington Avenue. It was a very small house, and as mama and daddy had seven kids between them, all under the age of ten, it was a bit crowded.

My baby bed was in the little living room, yes, I can remember being barely two years old, and know many can't recall that far back, but itis part of my "stout" memory. In those days, Saturday mornings meant peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk, as my brothers and I sat on our hineys arrayed in a semicircle on the floor in front of the small black and white television set, as we watched the cartoon show hosted by Bawana John.

When I was three years old, we moved out from town a short distance and lived in a larger old farmhouse and piece of land daddy rented, and we lived there four years before they bought the house and twenty acres across town on St. Rt. 56. After we moved to the place they bought in 1966, breakfast on Saturday had expanded to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cereal.

Sundays were the one day a week when mama made a full breakfast, with fresh and smoked sausage, bacon, eggs, grits and biscuits. Moving along to dinner on Saturday, we loved Saturday dinner that was always the same, Chili dogs and french fries, we looked forward to that all week, as a treat. Even daddy joined us in the chili, chilidog and french fry dinner, generally if his "Maw" didn't make it back in the Hoover Days as he referred to the depression years, then he would not eat it.

Going back to those years before I turned four when we still lived in the little house on Herrington Avenue, I will relate a couple of nightmarish memories from that time. I was the youngest, my brother Randall was a year older than me, and Joe was two years older than me. Randall was aggravating, and meaner'n cat shit, his goal was to aggravate me in anyway possible, and it still is. I was a runt, I had that "failure to thrive" syndrome, and was very much underweight and what was called "puny."

I could not beat Randall in a fair fight so I resorted to alternative tactics. Randall would pick a fight, and hold me down, and mama seemed to never hear nor be aware of this. But I would pinch the pure snot out of him, and I could put a real "hurting" on him, as I was a vicious pincher. Mama always heard his squeals of pain and I would get my butt whupped, Randall, nah, he was the golden boy, my parents did not like me, so it was fun for mama to take a belt to me.

She enjoyed it. Beatings did not break me from pinching the sh*t out of Randall. One Saturday morning he was messing with me and holding me down and again, I pinched him good, like a white leghorn rooster would with his beak, pinch, twist, and pull all at once. Mama came over, and dragged me to the couch, then got the white Johnson & Johnson medical adhesive tape, held me over her knees and taped all of my fingers together.

She told me that they would grow together, and instead of hands I would have little flippers. I was crying and screaming, begging mama not to do it. She taped them up and I cried nonstop for hours before she extracted a vow from me that I would not pinch Randall again, and removed the tape. I was truly terrified, at age three I did not know how long it took for kid's fingers to grow together and could swear I could feel it happening as soon as she taped them and turned me loose.

I remember trying to hold and eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my flippers, as snot and tears ran down my face. I never pinched him nor any other kid after that truly traumatic Saturday morning. But, I did start biting him. Yep, I would bite a plug out of him when he started a fight. He would scream bloody murder, it was nice, as Gomer would say, "it was nice, reeeal nice." So on a Saturday morning not long after, he messed with me during Bawana John, and of course, and rightfully so, I bit the bejeezus out of him.

He screamed like those teenage girls at a Beatles concert. Once again, mama dragged me to the couch, held me across her knees on my back, got a pair of tweezers, and said she was going to pull all of my teeth and I would be toothless like grandpa, her daddy. I cried, I screamed, I begged, and finally she put me down, and I stopped biting Randall. Yep, mama and daddy did not like me and I had no civil rights in our home.

I had to learn how to fight like any other three year old man. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, and I did. I hope you have similar memories of wonderful Saturday mornings like mine. It was truly a wonder that I never got hooked on drugs or alcohol. Just another rememberamble, here this morning, and I appreciate your good attendance, and have many, many more of them tucked away to share with you. Numbers 6: 24-26 KJV ..... we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me