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PatchWork
by Joyce Whitis |
Some of My Relatives
My aunt Maude was probably the biggest movie fan in Hardeman County, maybe even over in Wilbarger too! She tried going to the picture show in town every time the feature changed, which was twice a week. Sometimes she'd get Uncle Dave to go too and they even took the baby. I remember a story about little Cordell dropping his bottle mid-way through a Janette McDonald and Nelson Eddy love scene and nearly causing all three of them to be thrown out on the sidewalk.
The way it happened was that Cordell at the age of three, and still carrying around a bottle of milk, had got really good at tossing the empties up against the wall. Once the bottle he was working on became empty, why he'd just haul off and throw it. He broke so many bottles that Aunt Maude started putting the milk in a Coke bottle because the thick glass was more protection against breakage.
So that stopped Cordell from breaking bottles but not from throwing 'em.
Once when he was about three and still on the bottle, he was napping on the back seat of their old Chevy when Uncle Dave pulled over and got out to pick a few wild flowers for Aunt Maude. Cordell woke up as the car stopped and when Uncle Dave got back under the wheel holding his flowers in one hand, Cordell stood up in the back seat and whacked his dad over the head with that empty Coke bottle!
For just a few seconds, man and boy remained where they were. All action just stopped. Then, the way my uncle told it, he turned around, grabbed that bottle out of his son's hand, stepped out of the car and with an arm strengthened by the pain in his head, threw that bottle over the "bob wire" fence and into the middle of Alvie Chandler's cotton patch. After that he got back in the car and drove home.
That was the day when Cordell got weaned.
But back to the Palace Theater in downtown Chillicothe on a warm Saturday afternoon and a really good Janette McDonald and Nelson Eddy love story. This was one of my aunt's favorite pictures and she was all set to experience great pleasure from watching the screen when Cordell threw down his empty bottle. The first big THUD on the hardwood floor was followed by a loud CLANK as that heavy bottle rolled about a foot and hit the first cast iron leg of a theater seat. At this point several loud SHHH'S came from other customers who urged silence. The bottle continued on its way to the very front of the theater and it was downhill all the way. CLANK, roll.....roll....roll, CLANK, roll....roll....roll, as that deadly missile
hit the cast iron leg of some theater seat in every single row until it came to rest.
Uncle Dave whispered to Aunt Maude that it was time to leave but she shook her head. They had paid a dime a piece to get in so they ought to get their money's worth she told him. So they stayed until Cordell set up a howl for his bottle. It was a this point that Aunt Maude looked at Uncle Dave and they decided it was time to go.
After that bottle throwing incident at the picture show, Aunt Maude left Cordell at home with his dad and drove over to our house. She wanted to see if my mother would let me go with her to see a show at the Palace. I wanted to go of course but didn't hold out much hope. My folks tended to agree with a local preacher about going to picture shows. He stood before the congregation almost every Sunday and said right out that Christian people should not pay money to support the place called Hollywood which was a playground for the devil.
When I asked Mama about the movie stars, she said that she had heard the first thing you had to do if you wanted to be in pictures was take off all your clothes because after that you wouldn't be bothered about doing anything they told you to do! To a kid raised in a family so modest she had never seen her own mother in anything less than a very conservative slip, that piece of news was absolutely electrifying.
However, since Aunt Maude was my Daddy's favorite little sister, and the show had Shirley Temple in it who was my own age and surely was never asked to take her clothes off, and would have excited nobody if she had, my mother let me go.
I don't remember much about that movie except that after watching it, Aunt Maude decided that I would look just like Shirley Temple if I had curly hair. Since my own hair was as straight as pencil, my aunt took me to get a permanent so it would hang in curls like the little movie star in Hollywood.
The story of how my hair was twisted and scorched, while clamped in the jaws of a monster machine deserves several pages. The process cost my aunt $2.00
and cost me an afternoon of torture to rival any in a Spanish prison but when the sun had set, my hair was curly.
Aunt Maude, Uncle Dave, and Cordell are all gone now but while they were here they sure made life interesting.