Most weekends began promptly after school on Friday when Mom, Dad, Randy and I would pile into our enormous-by-modern-standards, tastefully tan Pontiac Catalina. Dad would point the land yacht northeast and we would leave behind lesser metropolitan Little Rock.
Along the 90 minute drive, we passed through several towns no larger than a four-way intersection, sometimes with a little church nearby. Occasionally we would pass a barn with a large ad for Dr. Pepper or fertilizer painted on the roof. There were few miles without trees and trucks, the truest hallmarks of rural Arkansas.
Dad’s side of the family mostly lived in humble Bradford, on an unpaved, single lane road. You could pull two wheels into ditches on either side to be passed or for parking. Because of the tilt, it was considerably harder to open the car door on the non-ditch, uphill side, so Randy, Mom and I usually tumbled out into the ditch.
Not even realizing I was hungry, my mouth would start watering about this time. You see, first up on our Friday afternoon visit with Grandma was an iron skillet full of fried potatoes, the most comfortable of comfort foods.
Since everyone lived in 4 adjacent homes, it was easy to catch up with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and, of course, many dogs. Everyone was easy-going, with lots of humor all around, and the sense of family was strong and reassuring.
With the promise of returning Sunday afternoon for a longer stay, we would drive on up to see Mam-maw, Mom’s mother.
A couple of years after Pap-paw died, Mam-maw moved off the farm and into an apartment in Newport, a town on the White River. She lived a few blocks from the river, the train station, and the main streets of town.
On Saturday afternoons, we would stop in at Grimes’ Drug Store, where racks of comic books on either side of the front door offered a variety of four color delights. Following careful selection of the most promising issues, we indulged in hand-squeezed limeade at the soda fountain. The merest whiff of lime takes me back there in a heartbeat.
We would then hurry down Front Street to the Five and Dime, a store with an impressive array of cheap crap. There, Randy and I compared toys for sale with those across the street at the Ben Franklin Store, dragging Mom back and forth between them. A few years earlier, Sam Walton had been owner and manager at the Ben Franklin before he decided to open his own store in Bentonville. You may have heard of it.
Around supper time Saturday evening, Uncle Aut (pronounced like “Otto” without the last “O” and short for Arthur) and Aunt Oma would stop by.
Aut and Oma owned a little store up the highway in Tuckerman. They always brought a bag of candy with an astronomical caloric payload: Pixie Stix, wax lips, candy bars, and chocolate wrapped like coins and baseballs and footballs. There were also little wax bottles each containing 3 drops of syrup. Since we never figured out what they were supposed to taste like, we distinguished them by their colors, as in “red flavor” or “green flavor.”
Mam-maw’s living room housed a big console TV, a gas stove to keep the apartment warm (the TV helped, too), a dining set, a couch, a comfy chair and a coffee table. A newspaper turned to the crossword puzzle rested on the coffee table, along with Mam-maw’s Pall Mall cigarettes (called “Pell Mells”), a cigarette lighter the size and heft of a hand grenade, two ash trays (one for each end), and a set of Rook cards.
While Randy and I rode the sugar express to nirvana, the adults would break out the folding card table. They would grab up the Rook cards, divide into teams of two players each, with one adult sitting out until the next game, fire up a round of cigarettes, and start dealing.
Randy and I would usually pull up a couple of dining chairs and watch. It was always entertaining to see what shenanigans Uncle Aut would pull. He was a wild and enthusiastic player, and maintained a running commentary of what he was up to. “Oh, my,” he would say, “this is the worst hand I ever saw. I’ll bid 90.” 90 was an aggressive bid that rational players only attempted with really good cards or as a sort of Hail Mary play. As a result of winning the bid, Aut would get a few extra cards to incorporate into his hand. Flamboyantly dropping his cards on the table for all to see, he would exclaim “Now, HOW am I supposed to make 90 with THIS hand?”
Sometimes when a game ended, I would ask to play. I might as well have requested a cigarette and a whisky sour. The answer was always “Not yet. You are too young. Someday.”
One Saturday, after a couple of games, I inquired again. Uncle Aut, always the daredevil, gave Mam-maw a conspiratorial wink and said, “I think it is time. Let’s let the boy give it a try.”
Uncle Aut surrendered his seat to me, and I sat down proudly among the adults. Everything seemed immensely better than it had been just moments before. I felt electricity in my fingertips as a stack of Rook cards was dealt to me. Conscious that this was an important moment, I picked up my first hand and contemplated my opening bid.
I don’t recall any other details about the game that day, but I was the winner in every way that counts.
