Going to the Washateria once a week to do laundry when we were tired of fooling with the wringer-washer that was out in the wellhouse. The deep freeze filled in the summer to last the rest of the year. Mad Butcher and Piggly-Wiggly.
Worrying about "the fastest snake on earth" catching us when we went down the path to the two-holer. And slop jars! The corn crib that was the summer bedroom. An uncle who had a rubber hand because his was cut off at the Georgia-Pacific pulp plant. Cedar posts cut for 50cents each. Riding in the back of the pick-up named Bessie to the country store to get real peppermint sticks.
Listening to Charlie Pride. Wondering what lived under the propane tank. The smell of the pig pen. My grandmother's buscuits. Eating rabbit my grandfather shot and killed my mother told me was chicken. Decoration Day at the family cemetary and "hellfire and damnation" sermons. Singing good Fanny Crosby hymns at church and "When the Roll is Called up Yonder" at the one-room white church. Baptisms in the creek.
Listening to rain on the tin roof. Collecting sweet gum balls. Stray dogs that showed up to birth a litter of pups under the house. Listening to rattlesnakes out in the field. Watching my grandfather shave in a tin basin with a straight razor then rub alcohol all over his smooth face and bald head, then roll his own with Prince Albert in a can. And the best, sitting on the porch shelling butterbeans and black-eyed peas or shucking corn with my cousins, watching folks ride by and waving to perfect strangers.