Shit, Fire and Damnation

I think I am going to start this post off with a dirty little family secret. A minimum of the last three generations of my family have all been suckers for romance novels. Most of us like all books in general, but there’s nothing like a good, raunchy romance novel or epic drama. When I visited with Mamaw last week we pulled up the list of all the V.C. Andrews novels ever published and Mamaw told me she owned most of them, and had read all of them. One of my favorite things to do with my mother is to talk about books we have read. When I was a kid I used to sneak her romance novels off the shelf, until eventually she just started handing them to me when she was finished. This could be a possible explanation as to why we are all prone to have fits of passion. Or it could just be in the blood. When Mamaw was a small child, her father’s relatives and friends used to say that she had the devil in her eyes. She told my mom that she would spend hours looking in the mirror, trying to find the...

Charlotte (Mamaw) and her sister Pete I need to make a correction regarding the first post. Mamaw told me that she wasn’t naked up on the second floor, that it was actually the first floor. They only went out on the second story roof, she said, to turn the beans they were drying out. So the more appropriate title for the previous post should be ‘Out on the Porch’ rather than ‘Up on the Roof’. But the correction made me start thinking about the house itself. Mamaw said the house in Butler, Maryland was great big, so big that it housed three families.  When most people think of Maryland, they picture Baltimore and imagine life in the city. Although Butler is not far from Baltimore, it is much more rural, probably even more so in the 40's and 50's. Still today, there are only a few businesses in Butler, including a saddlery. The rest is residential and farmland. However, Butler was home for some of the wealthiest people in the state during that time, like the Worthington fa...

Up on the Roof ‘Mamaw’ might seem like a strange word to some folks, especially those that are not from the American South. However, ‘Mamaw’ was not only a common word to me and my thirteen first cousins, but a precious word attached to and associated with a precious person. Let’s be clear though, the word ‘precious’ may give you the implication that I am referring to someone who is fragile or delicate. This is actually quite opposite of the truth. Precious, in reference to Mamaw, indicates a rare sort of free-spirited, adventurous, fierce woman that is loved by more people than I can possibly count. Sure, my cousins and I looked to Mamaw for love and support, but we also looked to her when we needed someone to raise hell for us. She was our champion. She taught our parents how to be champions for us, and us to be champions for our kids. She taught us how to have fun, embrace our wildness, speak our minds, dance and laugh. This past Christmas, my mother asked me to write my g...