The first car I remember clearly
was my Dad’s 1953 Chevy
We called it “the brown car.”
I have vague memories
of a weird-looking blue Studebaker c. 1950.
My Mom had a green Ford station wagon,
probably a ’54 or ’55.
She traded it in
for a two-tone blue-and-white
1957 Chevy Bel-aire Townsman
a four-door wagon for hauling kids around,
God what a beautiful machine,
without doubt the coolest car my parents ever owned.
It was gone by the time I could drive,
but it's the image in my mind
when I think of my mother’s driving.
She was the ace of the asphalt,
no road rage in her,
Mom was loving it.
My Dad was both plodding and uncertain
behind the wheel,
slow and nerve-wracking.
Dad was a good, good man
and a southern gentlemen
to the last.
I failed to appreciate him for a long, long time;
and when I realized I wanted to allow him in
it was hard to figure out how.
He was so incapable of getting onto my level
and I onto his.
I remember Dad walking in while I was listening to music
on a cheap stereo we had
and he started patting his foot
with a rhythm totally unrelated to the song.
Mom was fast and decisive on the road,
whipping her Chevy around with authority
and kicking it when she needed to
on the yellow light
to make it through
before it went to red.
And it always did what she wanted it to.
I was taking notes all the while.
Mom was born
in Rogersville, Alabama,
on June 17, 1916.
They named her
Edna Virginia Reeder,
but she was called
Ginny.
(My daughter,
Virginia Kelley Scott,
the Bunny Rabbit,
was born
on June 17, 1984,
at Women's Hospital,
in Baton Rouge.
We also call her Jenny,
but now she's decided to be
Virginia Scott,
just like her grandmother,
soon to be
Virginia K. Scott, Esq.)
Mom started driving in 1930 when she was 14 years old,
chauffeuring my Granddaddy,
who only had one arm,
through the town and country
in his capacity as the Tax Collector
for Florence, Alabama;
and, now, 82 years later,
she's finally put down her car keys
for good.
Mom comments matter-of-factly
about herself and her peers
in the community of Iris Place,
"We're all just waiting to die."
W. Brown Reeder was the supervisor at a cotton gin.
He was repairing a jammed machine one day
when some fool turned it on
seizing and mangling a strong and skillful arm.
Granddaddy Reeder had to direct the workers
as they disassembled the gin
to extricate his doomed limb.
I remember watching him shave
with his remaining arm,
while a smooth and useless stump of flesh protruded
from a white sleeveless undershirt,
sweet man that he was.
It didn't frighten or disgust me,
it was the way it was.
The Reeder's and Harrison's and Booth's
were farm people.
I remember following Granddaddy around
when he fed the chickens
in the coop next to their house
on Poplar Street
and the huge black-green bullfrog
in the goldfish pond.
I remember arriving in the late afternoon
after an all day drive from Athens,
by way of Rome and Guntersville
where we crossed the towering, terrifying bridge,
the stuff of nightmares.
Grandmother would be in the kitchen cooking,
and I breathed the air
thick with the aroma
of fried chicken and cornbread
and Grandmother greeting us
spiritedly sing-talking in a loud voice,
it's as clear in my mind
as yesterday.
I remember her canary, Billy,
a brilliant splotch of yellow
in his silver cage in the living room,
singing along with the lean, energetic, white-haired country girl.
My Mom could hear the beat
until her hearing went south.
I’m a lot more Mom than Dad,
him with his math brain
and his stubborn refusal
to take any chances
or alter an opinion,
once formed.
Mom was anxious, too,
like everyone in my entire extended family,
(except maybe Natalie Merry)
and absolutely averse to doing anything
that might reflect poorly on the family names,
but she was almost always fun and playful.
Mom laughed a lot,
and still does,
and was almost never angry.
Mom gave me the gift,
her love of music,
and it will follow me
to the very end of the whole f'ing road
when they have to pry my guitar
out of my cold, dead hands.
