grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

What’s in a Name

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The rules of phonics were pounded into our heads from the start of Kindergarten. Sound-it-out. Find the vowels, short or long?, blend with the consonants, syllable by syllable, beware the silent e… We learned this as soon as we mastered the Alphabet Song.

These same teachers who preached the Phonics Game couldn’t follow their own simple rules when it came to pronouncing my name.

As a kid, I was quiet and shy and preferred to live beneath a cloak of invisibility. My name made this impossible.  On the first day of school, when the teacher came to my name on her seating chart, she stared blankly, trying to twist her tongue into the proper shape to summon the correct sound. Seconds ticked by feeling more like slow motion minutes while kids turned and stared, knowing my name would soon be butchered. This was cause for rip-roaring laughter. This was the Phonics Game in action. Everyone knew my name was next, she had already perfectly pronounced Timmy Stone. I always came after Timmy Stone and before Clay Wade.

School was predictable. Life was predictable. Everything was predictable other than my name.

I wanted to scream, “Just sau̇nd ət au̇t!” 

I can blame Daddy for my odd name. He was a farmer and a man of few words who chose the occasion of my birth to become involved in such girl related things.

In 1962, living in the Mississippi delta surrounded by farmland, he came up with the strangest name ever to be given a baby girl born in the Osceola Memorial Hospital. Back when the top five girl names were Lisa, Marie, Susan, Karen, Linda I got Talya. 

Talya Tate. Oh the alliteration.

I was kər-səd!

Daddy alleged he came up with the name while reading the book South Pacific (a Polynesian chick? a hot war nurse?) What if he had been reading To Kill a Mockingbird? 

Regardless, I think beer drinking was involved.

As I’ve become acquainted with more writers, I’ve met many who have changed their names to something more unique, a name more reflective of their personalities. With my name, Daddy gave me permission to be different from Day One. It just took me a while to figure it out, to sound it out.

He’s been gone eighteen years, but I still have his copy of South Pacific. The pages are yellowed and brittle and smell of a different life. Someday soon, I shall read it.

talya

Name, Goo Goo Dolls

fyi…

Talya is a small village in the Holalkere taluk near Chitradurga district, Karnataka State, India.
The name Talya is a Hebrew baby name. In Hebrew the meaning of the name Talya is:Dew of heaven.
The baby girl name Talya comes from the Indian word which means, “Reach bearer.”
Means Born at Christmas. From the Russian name Natalya.

Deputy Nana

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My mother the deputy
Deputy BAT

My mother was hauled down to the bowels of the Memphis International Airport when the x-ray machine spotted her pistol in the bottom of her purse. It was simply a silly misunderstanding, but nevertheless the FAA frowned on it, even pre-September 11. The security agent may not have detected the firearm, which is a scary notion, but as the purse disappeared into the machine’s black hole Momma gasped in a guilty panic, “Oh no!”, drawing more attention to herself than normal. 

“Run that purse through again,” the agent ordered.

Prior to the incident, she had only begun to pack. An Arkansas State Trooper friend encouraged she carry a gun after the recent shootout at her house. A tri-state manhunt and interstate roadblock ended with one escaped prisoner dead at her back door, his cellmate shot and injured in the bean field out back and their terrified hostage at Momma’s kitchen table. Anyone who knows our family, knows this excitement is typical for us.

Bullet holes still nick the spanish tile floors inside the house as a constant reminder and conversation starter. Not that she ever needs a conversation starter. In the time it takes to check out at Wal-Mart, my mother has a talent for learning the innermost secrets of the person queued up behind her. 

Barney Fife

But like overzealous Barney Fife, my mother’s gun mainly just created problems. It was an innocent mistake, an unfortunate accident resulting in twelve months of probation. 

Clearly these people in Tennessee didn’t know who she was. 

She was forced to walk a fine line as she met monthly with her probation officer in Memphis and attended court with other criminals. Thomas Tate, much like Andy Taylor, was surprisingly calm throughout this ordeal. But really, what choice did he have?


Upon successfully fulfilling the terms of probation including not drinking wine at the country club, her record was completely expunged. She could vote again. And since that nightmare, to our knowledge, she has managed to keep her nose clean. We are so proud.

Mississippi County Arkansas

Last week at home while spring breaking with my sister and her kids, Momma was sworn in as honorary deputy of Mayberry Mississippi County, receiving a badge and identification card at the county jail. Oh, if Thomas Tate had lived to see this day.

How many kids in Plano, Texas returned to school saying, “We spent our spring break gambling at the horse track after a quick trip to Graceland. Oh and our Nana was sworn in as deputy at the county farm?” ZERO. But we had an educational spring break, learning that with hard work anyone can get their life back on track. 

talya

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:

Elvis Presley, Jailhouse Rock

“I say this calls for action now. Nip it in the bud.” Barney Fife

the grass grows

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Yesterday I parked in Daddy’s parking spot. The place where he always parked his dusty farm truck, not in the carport but along the gravel road beside the field. Grass now grows through the gravel, nearly covering it. I guess he really isn’t coming back.

I still expect to see him dragging through the back door for supper, hungry yet too exhausted to eat, his jeans hanging loose and tired. I still hear him grumble about the rain shower today. Such terrible timing during cotton harvest…
On the porch, wheat from his last harvest still fills a vase. Eighteen years later.
At the Corral diner in Keiser … Are you Thomas Tate’s girl? I remember seeing your daddy drive up and down the road in front of my house at Coleman Lateral. Seems like I saw his truck ten times a day when they were pickin’ cotton… He’s been gone a long time, hasn’t he?
Yes ma’am.
In eighteen years, most everything changes.

The tree Daddy planted my senior year of high school soars over the back yard. Only a twig at the time, he transplanted it from the banks of Little River.

Grass now grows through the gravel, nearly covering his parking spot. 
I still feel the same. 
talya
Musical Pairings:

I Miss You a Little, John Michael Montgomery

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!