TALES FROM THE BAYOU: Staying True To My Roots

For many years when I was growing up, the whole family would pile into the old family car every summer and make the trip over the mountains to visit my Aunt Betty and Uncle Elmo. They lived in Oklahoma, not far from the Cherokee Indian Reservation, and ran a small gift shop and general store just outside the reservation lands. We would even sometimes visit some the buffalo farms scattered among the rolling hills not far from where my aunt and uncle lived.

I grew up knowing I was part Cherokee. It comes from my mother's side of the family and I can only imagine what my mother's ancestors must have been like. My mother was many things, good and bad, but the thing I remember most about her is what a strong spirited woman she was. 

At least one branch of the Ownby family tree was made up of full-blooded Cherokee and my grandparents even traveled from North Carolina by covered wagon...from an area where the Eastern Band of Cherokees remain today... to eventually settle in the mountains of Arkansas where my mother, eight siblings and her parents lived in a log cabin barely big enough for all of them. Mother was one of the oldest and worked hard on the farm to help put food on the table. 

During the summers when we would make the trek to Oklahoma, I would get a chance to visit with some of mother's relatives from the Cunningham side of the family and I knew right away they were descendants of the Western band of Cherokees. Those Cherokee were the people who survived the Trail of Tears and settled on the reservation set up for them in Oklahoma. Today I wonder if my Oklahoma cousins actually lived on the reservation back then...maybe my sister knows...but I always felt like I had stepped into another world when I would visit.

I can remember helping out in the general store and shyly hiding behind the counter to watch the people from the reservation as they would come in to do business with my aunt and uncle.  Black hair and deeply tanned skin wouldn't match my auburn hair and very fair skin but still our spirits called to one another and I knew in my heart my roots would always be with the Cherokee people.

For many years one of my favorite souvenirs was a small indian doll dressed in buckskin dress that was given to me on one of my visits. I'm not sure where that doll is now, but I still have the cherry colored doll house dining room set my Aunt Betty gave me for my birthday one year. It had belonged to her mother and is now more than 75 years old but I still have it...a reminder of my annual trips back to the reservation and a step back in time to the world of the Cherokee...

TALES FROM THE BAYOU: It's Time For The Witching Hour

It's hard being the baby of the family. Especially when the only playmates you're allowed to have is your own sibling and she's four years older than you. When I was just learning to walk Janet was getting ready to start school. When I was entering high school Janet was graduating and about to make her mark on the world. My whole childhood I had a path laid out before me by footsteps larger than my own. All I had to do was step into them. 

So I did.

I don't think my sister ever realized how much I looked up to her. How much I admired her fire, her drive, her spirit to follow her own dreams without regard to the consequences. She was outgoing and had friends and I could never understand how she did it. The mere fact she took pity on a terribly shy kid so much younger than she and played many a toddler game when she really would rather have been climbing trees with our older brother put her on a pedestal in my eyes.

There was a bond forged in those younger years that carries over to today and can never be broken. Too many amateur singing engagements, entertaining the pretend troops listening from the grass in our front yard as we strutted our stuff down the sidewalk. Too many tea parties on the front porch where Janet pretended to like playing with her younger sister when she could have been curled up somewhere with a good book.

But it was the game we played on our back steps which holds a special place in my memories. I'm sure Janet was the one who created the game but the Witching Hour was a way to be transported to a magical place outside the realm of our otherwise sad existence. As we laid on those steps and conjured up a world of witches and warlocks, we began our training in storytelling which I know is the foundation of all I am able to do as a writer today.

I can't tell you how the game was played or even how long we would allow the magic to swirl around us but I DO remember how special it made me feel. For one solitary moment in my childhood I could be as brave as my big sister and slay the demons in front of me. No, I'm sure Janet never realized back then how much it meant to me to have her take the time to hang out with me.

But now she does...

TALES FROM THE BAYOU: A Special Kind Of Poor

Whenever I post my TALES FROM THE BAYOU stories, I'm not trying to garner sympathy. I'm not trying to get my readers to say, "awww poor, POOR Donna". What I AM trying to do is tell these tales in such a way as to draw my readers back in time to a place I called home many years ago and during a time...as Billy Joel likes to say..."when I wore a younger (wo)man's shoes". I guess I will let my readers be the judge...

Circa 1964...I wasn't much more than a toddler but I can still remember the old "icebox" Mother had in the kitchen. Some of you might not have even heard of the word icebox before but it was called that because quite literally there was a compartment on top where you would place a huge block of ice to help cool the perishable items stored in the compartment below it. I can remember the rides to the ice house in the back of a beat up old Chevy truck...way before the time people thought it too dangerous to throw four young kids in the back and just let them bounce around as you go down the road. What a grand adventure it was! I knew when I got to the local ice house there would be some guy with a pair of huge ice pick tongs eager to throw that fifty or one hundred pounds of solid ice onto the blanket laid out in the back of our truck. Then it was back to the house to load it into the back of our ice box so we could have something cool to eat or drink the next day. I never stopped to think that everyone else in town probably had REAL refrigerators...I just thought trips to the ice house on a Saturday morning was what everyone did.

Then there was Mother's little habit of needing a smoke. Mother chose cigarettes, probably not because she liked them so much as the fact it helped kill her appetite. Back then cigarettes didn't cost anywhere what it does these days but even so Mother couldn't scrape enough together at the end of Daddy's paycheck to get the store bought kind so she had to roll her own. I can still remember that big ol' can of loose tobacco and the bundle of papers she had to roll it in. Not one to be outdone by circumstance, Mother even made sure to tap a cheap filter into one end of her homemade smokes to give a little bit of class to what she was reduced to doing.

I can even remember when store bought bread was 20 cents a loaf but since we didn't have the extra money to throw away on such frivolous things, Mother would make homemade bread several times a week.  I can easily remember the heavenly aroma of a freshly baked slice of bread slathered with homemade churned butter. There were many times I was forced to eat things you just never considered to be edible, but Mother's homemade bread wasn't one of them!

But I think it was when Mother couldn't pay for the gas to heat up her morning coffee that she became the most creative. At first I didn't make the connection between the utilities being cut off and Mother's lack of morning hot beverage. I would just follow orders when she'd tell me to go lay the garden hose out on the grass in the back yard where the hot summer sun could beat down on it. I always wondered if it was some kind of ritual she performed to the "garden gods" so we could harvest a lot of vegetables.

I discovered the truth when I caught my Mother coming out of the house one day and making her way to the garden hose with cup in hand. Quickly she turned on the water and captured the solar heated liquid so she could mix it with the instant coffee waiting inside. She may not have heat to cook a meal, but by God, she was going to figure out a way to have a cup of hot coffee to start her day! I can only hope a little bit of her creativity has rubbed off on me...;~)