grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

A Place to Remember

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I don’t think you see a town until you spend time walking around. Every place has hidden treasures to uncover, even those nearly invisible communities tucked among the corn fields hours away from the closest Dillard’s. You may need to squint to clearly see.
Presbyterian Church, Piggott, Ar

Flying down Main Street in a cool car driving somewhere better, the old church cornerstone is a blur, the cemetery overgrown, the dilapidated house with gingerbread trim faded. The town appears abandoned, a ghostly whistle-stop off the interstate. Small-town stereotypes come to mind leaving an empty feeling, a who-on-earth-lives-here feeling. Stopping at the single red light seems ridiculous with not a soul in sight. You have some place to be. Some place exciting. Some other place. But walking the neighborhood, studying the building design and reading the historical markers bring back life. A life. A history. Every place is someone’s home, someone’s place to remember. It crosses someone’s mind.

Faded mural on side of building

Last night I walked for hours taking pictures of this little town that at first glance appeared forlorn, forgotten, faded. A passerby waved and an old man said hello from his porch swing. A stone cottage surrounded by a sizable garden with rows and rows of vegetables and apple trees caught my eye. It was framed by a rock wall, crooked yet perfect. I coveted it. I considered knocking on the door to ask permission to walk beyond the stone wall. Tomatoes already grew heavy on the vine. Could I have garden tour and learn the secret to this abundance? Would the gardeners who live within those walls consider me crazy? Do I care? It was late so I thought better of it.

Piggott reminds me of Keiser where I attended grade school, trick-or-treated on Halloween and hung out with my friends on weekends. I’m sure travelers blow through thinking it to be a sad, depressing place. They didn’t know Vic and Bobby Don who always hung out at the gas station guarding the entrance into town, or Howard Ray who road his bicycle affectionately named Trigger, or the Shake Shack with slap-yo-momma Pizza Burgers. But we do. We were part of it. We remember cotton trailers lined up at the gin, Edwina’s Beauty Shop always smelling of perms, and Spin-the-Bottle in Nana’s dimly lit attic. We remember cheering on the Keiser Yellow Jackets. We remember.

talya
“Living in a small town…is like living in a large family of rather uncongenial relations. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s perfectly awful, but it’s always good for you. People in large towns are like only-children.”  Joyce Dennys, Henrietta Sees It Through

Our Painted House

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laugh lines?
Until you paint every nook and cranny of a house, repairing cracks and spackling hundreds of nail holes in the most peculiar places, I don’t think you really get to know her. Standing on a rickety ladder looking at the top of the never-before-painted dusty door moldings or lying on the kitchen floor painting the floor trim underneath the built-in shelving, you become pretty cozy with one another. Until then, I’m not sure you can really claim her.
We’ve painted every square inch inside our Munger Place home. And because of this, we can confirm there are no square inches in this house. Her floors slope and creak and doors shift from time to time resulting in the reappearance of certain hairline cracks. Like wrinkles. After 102 years, she’s allowed. 
Years ago, I worked with a strange girl who bought a 60’s ranch style home near Ft. Worth. Once she was settled into the home with her furniture and children arranged to her liking, only then did she paint around the furniture. The trim behind the couch was stained dark brown but on either side the trim was white.  If a chair was slightly budged from position, the dark trim behind it would shine like a rotten spot. HOW did she sleep at night? I could barely even go inside, just knowing this. 
When my mother turned 40, she decided to paint the outside of our home in Arkansas. After years and years of living in a boring white house, she thought it was high time for a color change – beige. Willing to tackle the project single-handedly, she explained her plan to Daddy who was completely against it. He felt sure she would get one side painted and quit. He feared her painting work ethic would be much like her cotton-chopping work ethic. The Tate girls weren’t his best cotton choppers. 
She ignored his advice, didn’t mention it again, and patiently waited a few weeks until he started picking cotton. Now, if you weren’t raised on a cotton farm, you may not be aware of the delicate art of picking cotton. When the bolls burst open, there are only a few weeks to harvest before the yields begin to decline. So there’s no lollygagging around during this time. No sleeping or eating, no laughing or vacation days, no television watching or smiling. It’s an amazing race against Mother Nature, and not for the light-hearted. To keep things interesting, this all happens just at that time when vast tropical storms are lined up back to back in the Gulf of Mexico.
Daddy left the house before daylight and dragged home well after dark. And he worked 7 days a week until all the cotton was out. The first day he started picking, Momma started painting. High up on a ladder, she painted the eaves, the side, around the windows, all day every day. She cleaned up or hid all evidence before he lugged himself home late each night, dog-tired. She collapsed each night as exhausted as he, sore and achy. For a couple of weeks he unknowingly snored in a two-toned house. The next morning, she started back again right after he left. She too was in a race. 
Tate Farm House
aka BAT cave
Perfectly timing the entire project, she was finishing her last day of painting on his last day of picking. And that’s the day he decided to come home for lunch. Driving into the driveway, he saw her atop a ladder painting the last section of the house. He must have been shocked. He must have laughed to himself. The entire house was a different color. And the shutters were brown. She washed her hands, made him a sandwich, and he never said a word about it. Ever.
While he was busy picking cotton, he had no idea what had been going on under his roof. Of course, he never really did.
talya
Musical Pairings
Johnny Cash, “I Never Picked Cotton”
Miranda Lambert, “The House that Built Me”

Sisters

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Every girl needs a sister.

Yesterday was my little sister’s birthday. HOW did she get so old so soon? Staci’s 47 which means Lesa (our sister-cousin) will be 48 next week, and I am holding at 2 Score and 9.75 until July. I’m thinking 5, 6 and 7 years old was waaaay cuter.

Time flies. 

Me feeding Staci.
Staci was my first, best friend. Although when the stork brought her, I was a bit skeptical about our future relationship. She stole my thunder. The new cute baby syndrome ran rampant in our house. It was annoying.
Cotton Pageant 1970
We were thrilled.
I think Momma must have always wanted twins? For years, she dressed us like twinkies in handmade outfits. It was SOOOOO embarrassing. Especially when she made us model her home sewn frocks in the Cotton Pageant. We were never meant for the runway. Staci and I were much more comfortable playing with our matchbox cars in the dirt field behind our house. 
This picture of our Cotton Pageant experience was in the newspaper, and it speaks volumes. Staci, at 5 years old, is shooting daggers at the cameraman with those expressive eyes. Yet she has her hands sweetly clasped, as if she’s just biding her time before having a total all-out hissy fit. I’m standing uncomfortably like I’m posing for an awkward school picture. My arms and legs are braced as I wait for the perfect opportunity to vault off the stage and run all the way home from Burdette. I prayed NONE of my 2nd grade friends saw this picture in The Osceola Times.  

Staci had a Thomas Tate Temper when she was little. She threw tantrums at Big Star on more than one occasion, flinging herself to the nasty sticky floor, flailing her arms and legs. I never knew what triggered these meltdowns – maybe she was protesting our lack of store-bought outfits. Momma, remaining cool and calm, somehow completely ignored these outbursts. She lightly stepped right over her, grabbed a basket and strolled down the grocery aisle shopping for supper. I’m sure inside she wanted to slam a cocktail. I just stared at both of them,  completely mortified.
Thankfully Staci outgrew those tantrums pretty quickly. We continue to have hilarious adventures together, and nothing much horrifies either one of us anymore. Except maybe our 1980s big hair photos. 
HAIR.

“Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.” – Peanuts, Linus Van Pelt


Musical Pairings:


Rod Stewart, “Forever Young”
The Beatles, “In My Life”


Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!