Bug Swamp’s Gold

Over sixty years have passed since I raced up back steps to Grandma Nettie’s Bug Swamp kitchen porch. Closing my eyes I almost see my hundred and eleven-pound grandma, hands palm deep in teacake batter, the oven of her massive iron stove heated, ready, and waiting. So many memories take me back to our low country home: shady oaks trailing mossy beards, Grandma’s porch vines, her blue hydrangeas, sandy yards, tobacco patches, mocking bird songs. Grandma’s five children were born here. So were my brother and I. With sedge brooms fashioned by my dad and me, I swept our sandy floors, including the front porch, our “pizer,” according to Grandma Nettie.
On warm evenings, rare ones when next day required little work, we especially enjoyed our “pizer.” So did neighbors. World War II was going “great guns” overseas. Like a combat soldier, Daddy grabbed his weapon. “Take that, Hitler,” he’d swat down a mosquito hawk diving after its prey, maybe a yellow fly set to pitch and bite. “You too, Mussolini!” Daddy apologized when he smacked Miz Edna Bullock’s arm instead of the yellow fly.
Even Daddy was lulled by our surrounding cricket and tree-frog symphony. Tuned in purely to nature, for a while we’d sit in silence. Then, somebody, probably our neighbor, Mr. Albert Johnson, would perk up. “Did I ever tell you about the time I . . .?”
In another life Mr. Albert had been a deputy sheriff. One night he and his old coon dog, Ralph, chased an escaped prisoner all over Moonshine Bay. Caught him too. Mr. Albert told stories galore.
I’d turn to my story-teller. “Grandma, tell us about Uncle Bob McNabb, how he wanted to be a witch.”
“Child, I can’t share that story before I say he never was one.” Then, Grandma would spend an excitable fifteen minutes revealing how the best Christian man in Scotland battled “evil powers that be,” before he learned God’s plans for his life.
Others told tales they’d heard. Some they made up on the spot. Never one to be left out, my young brother announced to any and all, “I’ll never walk outside barefoot again, without a light.”
I asked, “Why not?”
Jack said, “’cause last night that’s how I squished an old toad-frog.”
Mother scooped him up. “I saw that yawn, Jackie-Boy. Say ‘Goodnight, all.’”
I could have listened to story-telling forever and a day.
In his book, Look Homeward Angel, Thomas Wolfe declared, “You can’t go home again.” That was his opinion. I plan to do just that. Simply put, I’ll begin with this eighty-year-old, Bug Swamp child-at-heart.
What is: mirrors must lie. Are those wrinkles etching trails around my mouth? And my eyes, they don’t twinkle; they crinkle! Not that long ago Grandma Nettie would touch my face. She’d say, “Little Bushy, yours is a peaches and cream complexion.” Then she’d smile, and the scar at the corner of her mouth would tighten, almost disappear.
Lately my vision has gone blurry, like I’m gazing through a translucent curtain. That’s what’s wrong! It’s not my face; it’s the curtain that’s wrinkled.
Who’s fooled? I have a visitor, and I hope Time, my friend, sticks around for years to come. Meanwhile I walk in his shadows. They dart in and out, around about; they cast darkness here, let light in there.
Ambling toward the mailbox the other day, I spy a multitude of quarter-inch long, gold threads. They dance, they shimmer in brightness. Probably those cataracts Dr. Philip says should go. I grab my mail from the box I need to replace, for its lid’s loose, and on rainy days my letters get soaked. In the shade of a Crape Myrtle, I tear into a Medicare envelope. Great! They paid Dr. Philip every cent he charged for that last eye exam. Glancing toward my Robin Road house of forty-one years, these days banked by an arbor and twin Bradley pear trees, I blink. Twice.
What in the world? Is that . . .? That can’t be Grandma Nettie’s house! And there’s Grandma. Sitting on her “pizer.” She’s rocking and dipping her Sweet Society Snuff, spit can at her finger-tips.
I blink again. Where are my parents?
I see ‘em. Hot, tired, ready to eat, here come Mother and Daddy, traipsing home from the tobacco patch. Grandma has dinner on the table, everything but ice tea. She’ll wait to pour that so the ice won’t melt.
I step into sunlight. What happened? Where did Grandma go? There sits my same old Robin Road House. Wonder if this new allergy medicine brings on hallucinations? I mosey over to the arbor, plop into the swing, and open remaining mail. Mostly junk.
Back in Bug Swamp I’d scoot down the sandy lane to get our mail. Grandma’s box was nailed onto a long plank between two pines. I’d wait for Mr. Proctor to drive up to our box, sort out letters, and hand me ours, lots of times a letter from Uncle Charles, far away in Georgia.
On days like today with warm sun rays glinting on leaves and grass blades, I forget Bug Swamp’s icy winters. Shivery nights, sitting around the hearth, Daddy would stare into embers, pondering. I liked hearing him talk about his courtin’ days; how in pitch-black darkness going through swamps, he’d brave slick foot-logs to see some pretty girl. One girl’s daddy prayed every night Daddy visited. His prayer, “Dear Lord, make this young man’s feet stick safely to them foot-logs tonight. He has to cross some ornery swamps, goin’ home.”
When Mother put a sock in that subject, Daddy could get strung out on another I liked even more. He’d talk about gold around and about Bug Swamp. I knew that eons ago sneaky pirates prowled. Sometimes they sailed inland, and buried trunks filled with treasure. Talk was, some might be close by, if a body knew where to dig. I had to ask Daddy. “What do you know about any gold buried around here? Real gold.”
Daddy said, “Bars? Or the round kind you count and hold in your hand? That gold’s not so easy to come by; but, Bug Swamp surrounds us with treasures more precious.”
I’d already guessed. Daddy’s gold? His tobacco, growing green and lush, sparking thoughts of pockets jingling, come market time. Grandma loved her gray cypress house Grandpa Hamp built back in ‘ninety-six. Mother sought elusive peace of mind and treasured her family. My brother? He liked flying live mosquito hawk kites tethered to tobacco twine, but he loved Sooner, his part Black Lab doggie.
My gold? Memory, and right now I hope to air out everything and everyone in second millennium sunshine. I’m time-traveling back to Bug Swamp, and I can’t wait to get there.