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PatchWork |
Last Updated 09/06/05
Email: joy@our-town.com
Bratton Brought The Mail
by Joyce Whitis
His name was Mr. Bratton and he brought the mail. I don’t remember that he had a first name. To a five-year-old kid, he was simply Mr. Bratton and he worked magic by putting reading in our mailbox. He brought long descriptive letters from friends that my parents had left behind in East Texas with their move to Hardeman County. I was born after that move so I never knew the Welches or the Glasscocks or the Hills but my parents talked often about those neighbors they had known since childhood and letters from them were read aloud so that I could share in the news.
Mother kept many of those letters to take out and re-read before sitting down to write a response. “I owe Ida a letter,” she’d say and pick up her pencil. After she died, I put those letters in a shoe box and seventy or so years later, they continue to be a window into country living at that time.
The Glasscocks lived on the adjoining farm in Hunt County, and with the first “cold snap”, would come over to my parents’ place and help with the hog-killin’. Dad said it was hard to get the job done in one day without help from the neighbors and the Glasscock boys were “really good help.”
Those letters from Hunt County were full of stories about the crops. “John and Will headed maize all day today. They sure looked tired when they came in for supper. I’m writing this at the kitchen table and it’s still light enough outside to see without lighting the lamp, but they’re both already in bed. Guess I’d better go too. We’ve got to dig potatoes tomorrow. We should get a good potato crop, there’s been plenty of rain this spring. Sure would love to see you all and the baby. I guess she is getting to be a big girl. Yours truly, Ida.”
Besides the letters Mr. Bratton left in our mailbox, he brought the daily newspaper with the funnies. Dad always took the paper that had the latest baseball scores and that was the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram. There was a black and white “funny page” every day and on Saturday the funnies were colored! There was no rural mail delivery on Sunday so the “Sunday” funnies were in the Saturday paper. It was years later that I discovered we got our funny page a day in advance. I thought they were the Saturday funnies, not the Sunday funnies.
One of my favorite places to watch for Mr. Bratton’s black Model A Ford, was seated on the front porch steps. I’d sit there with my knees drawn up under my chin, a cat rubbing around my bare feet, and watch for a trail of dust approaching from the north. Generally Mother would glance at the shelf clock in the dining room and say, “It’s 11:00 o’clock. You can go out and start watching for the mail carrier.”
I’d run outside to wait. When I saw his car stirring up the dust, I’d run the quarter mile to our mailbox to meet him. Oh the absolute joy when he brought the latest copy of the Sears & Roebuck or the Montgomery Ward catalog. The Sears always came first, followed by the “Monkey Ward” in about a week.
“You got a catalog today,” Mr. Bratton would say as he handed the heavy book out the car window and into my uplifted hands. “Here’s Gene’s paper and here’s a couple of letters for Blanche. Can you carry all this without losing anything?”
I’d nod happily and skip back up the road, visions of a baby doll with eyes that opened and shut hidden inside the “wish book” and the latest episode of Alley Op ready to be read aloud from the Star-Telegram. Later, I could listen to the letters, words written by folks I’d never seen yet had clear pictures of in my mind.
Mr. Bratton had worked his magic yet again. It was a beautiful day.