Bug Swamp Palavering
by
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Chapter One ---Eyes still shut, awareness struck my brain. Today yours truly, Billie Faye Hamilton, could legally enter Conway High School’s teen club, not to mention the ninth grade!
I shivered, then opened my eyes. Yep. Here I was, plopped into mine and Grandma Nettie’s old feather bed, but in our new Homewood house. I liked opening my eyes to blue walls. And this room’s windows wore blinds, up before we moved here last week. Yesterday Mother installed rods for new curtains, but as yet, they lay folded atop our chest of drawers.
What did not look strange: that chest of drawers. Stuffed full of mine and Grandma’s doo-dads, it looked as at-home here as in our Bug Swamp bedroom. So did Grandma Nettie’s mahogany wardrobe wearing mirrors on both doors. Ready to view anyone entering, that wardrobe occupied a third of our room’s back wall.
Now, this looked strange: Grandma, sleepin’ away just like she’d lived here forever. Till the day we moved Grandma fought leaving the farmhouse she’d shared with Grandpa Hamp and their children.
Feelin’ kindly toward my sleepin’ granny, I won’t mention that her mouth stood ajar. She breathed in and out. Nary a pause. Thank The Good Lord no flies buzzed around.
Mid-book, Part of Chapter Eighteen ---God gave us our daughter, Mona, twice, once in 1956, and again in 1958. Two years later in 1960, as the Bible says, “heavy with child,” I waited until Buddy returned home from Clemson’s Agricultural Department. I knew he had arrived when I heard feet scrape on our side-porch steps.
Mona jumped up from coloring a caterpillar purple. “Daddy! Daddy!” She ran into his arms.
At this stage I was slow arising. Arms full of a happy daughter, Buddy approached where I sat in our small living area. “How do you feel? You still okay?”
We both considered the time close at hand. “I was waiting for you. I figure a walk around the pasture might help.”
“Probably won’t hurt.”
“You and Mona care to tag along?”
“I’m tired. We’ll just finish this purple caterpillar. Okay, Sugarfoot?”
Mona ran for her coloring book.
Outside in a far corner, Buddy’s sheep herd gathered. I walked to where pasture collided with pines. A warm day this mid-August afternoon, fleecy white clouds against an ultramarine sky rivaled, they surpassed the white of our sheep. I took a deep breath and immediately felt a kick somewhere near my rib cage. I’d hoped my baby had dropped lower by now. Too close to a grounded covey of quail, I jumped at their rush overhead.
Why couldn’t we always have beautiful weather, not too hot, not too cold; everyone and everything at peace. Even the drone of a small plane in the distance sounded tranquil.
The drone drew nearer. It hiccupped. It choked. By now, hand to forehead, I scanned the sky. Fast approaching, flying ever lower, a small, silver plane touched down between me and our house. I held my breath. That misplaced silver transport continued rolling way past the sheep barn. Diagonally opposite my stance, across the far range, the plane halted. A man climbed out of the cockpit. He headed toward our house. I got there first.
Holding Mona, Buddy waited in the yard. I grabbed his arm. “What in the world?”
The pilot walked through our gate. “Hello.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Jon Gates. My plane ran out of gas.”
We introduced ourselves. “There’s a rather large airport at Anderson,” Buddy told the man.
“I know, but I saw this pasture, and I was afraid I wouldn’t make it to Anderson.”
Buddy asked, “Are you from around here? What’s your business?”
The fellow yanked off some kind of skull cap. “I’m from Hollywood, California, flying to Florida. I deliver film.”
Interesting, but not exactly the way I’d planned the day.
Last chapter, Part of Chapter Thirty-four---In writing this and my earlier memoir, I begin with a Bug Swamp babe born in a farmhouse. I follow her around and about, up and down life’s sandy church road. With little or no warning that babe, by anyone’s standards, is “Mature, PLUS!” I, Billie Faye Hamilton, Grandma Nettie’s Little Bushy, Buddy Wilson’s blushing bride, Mona, Jimmy, and Bryan’s mommy, their children’s grand-mommy, I’m that seventy year-woman!
Revisiting Bug Swamp; Good Hope Church; Conway High School; Winthrop College; Clemson College’s sheep farm; VPI’s Blacksburg, Virginia; Bowie, Maryland; then Athens, Georgia; finally, Calabash, North Carolina; what a thrill!
It’s just as much fun to sit across from my beauteous granddaughters and handsome grandsons at Athens’ La Fiesta and eat tacos and burritos. Actually, I order chimi changas.
Keynote, Bug Swamp Palavering: Like Anne of Green Gables, Bug Swamp’s Billie fulfills aspirations. She teaches; she loves Buddy; their children; grandchildren. Preserving life’s poignancies, Billie publishes this and other memoirs.
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About the Book
When company came, Grandma Nettie grabbed her sand-filled snuff spit-can and another for her visitor. “Come.” She’d head for the porch. “Let’s us set here and palaver.” Paralleling Grandma Nettie, throughout Billie’s life she palavered. A giddy thirteen-year-old ninth-grader, traipsing on through high school, college, on dates, Billie shared too much with whoever listened. At twenty she graduated from Winthrop and then wed a gorgeous guy about whom Grandma said, “Girl, I’d rather you marry that brown boy than anybody else.” God blessed Billie with children. Suddenly, who were those aging adults calling her “Mama”? Whoa. Who was that “seventyish” lady peeking at Billie from her looking glass? Life caught up with this palaverer.
Billie has experienced sickness, death of loved ones, every sensation her universe has to offer, and each day, palavering to God, she thanks Him for His blessings. This graphic memoir of an imperfect palaverer, aging from thirteen to seventy, allows all voyeurs a field day of reading.
About the Author
Billie H. Wilson popped into the parlor of a Bug Swamp, South Carolina, farmhouse during the Great Depression, soon followed by World War II. Billie’s Grandma Nettie descended from ancestry established before “the new world” became our country, and her head was packed with stories galore. Fascinated by a dear voice spouting fun tales about family, bears, birds, and sometimes gators, in a vernacular passed down through generations, Billie’s subconscious dictated, “Share these tales with the future!” A degree in English from Winthrop College led to teaching, followed by twenty-five years of study with fellow writers in UGA’s Athens, Georgia. This association led to publications in local and regional, magazines and anthologies. Prior to Billie’s first memoir, Bug Swamp’s Gold, she penned a nostalgia column for her hometown newspaper’s popular alternative magazine, Independent Senior.