Beana_4

Dear Spiral Notebook

I seem to be stuck in my pre-shoes wearing days.  I'm supposed to be writing my life history down but I'm wedged into the piney woods memories, so back to Miss Ola.

She had a cast iron bed, one chair, one stool and an old trunk.  The trunk was flat on top and it was up on some bricks (I think it was bricks but I can't remember.)  On top of the trunk was a piece of wood and that was her table.  Every thing I just wrote about was painted white. She was right proud of that white paint.  There was also a black pot bellied stove with the big pipe that went up through the ceiling, but it seemed to match just fine.  I remember that she had four books.  I wished I could know now what they were but too many years have passed. I do know that one of them was a Bible of course.  This is in east Texas remember, so when you are born here, your cord is cut and then you are handed a Holy Bible before you've even been cleaned up.  During your first hour of life, you're told "here is your Holy Bible, you are a Texan and a Baptist, in that order."  Of course that makes you lucky since these two groups are Jesus' favorite two sets of people.

What made all her white paint look so pretty was all the stacks of colorful left over fabric from her many years of sewing.  Both little windows in her house were covered in a rainbow patchwork quilted curtains that reached all the way to the floor.  My own house back in Houston, and my grandparents house was just drab, drab, drab compared to hers.

During this time is when I heard the whole history of how she came to be half colored.  In those days, if you were half colored, then you was colored and there weren't no half about it.  I'll write about that next time.