From the Wildness a voice calls out

As I get the rights to my work back from publishers, I am putting my stories, short and long, up at Amazon.com in the Kindle format. A couple of novels too. Check back by and leave me a message. When I write this blog I feel like

Matthew 3:1-12 A Voice Crying Out In The Wilderness

This was a man who thus said according to the prophet Isaiah, 'He serves as the voice of one crying aloud in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, 

So a note from you is much appreciated. Here's one of my Mama Stories.

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Copyright 2007 RD Larson

The After Church Get Together

by

RD Larson

My Pop wasn't much for going to his church and even less for going to my Mama's. Sometimes though, he would go along and sit in the car reading while she went to church. Sometimes I went in but more often not since I always had a book to read.

My mother liked to go to a church member's house afterward for coffee and fellowship. My Pop always said there were more gals than fellows there on any given Sunday. Mama's minister was a big wide man with whiskers on the side of his face and a voice that went from nice-and-quiet to loud and thundering. His name was Blythe. I know that because it said that on sign by the door and it wasn't a word I knew. My Pop told me who it was and how to say it.

One Sunday my mother said to Pop, “Jo-SEPH, you MUST come in with me this one time. We are planning a dinner for Thanksgiving for all of the members and I want to be a part of the planning. It won't be long.”

Mama had eyelashes that were kind of furry. And big brown eyes. She blinked her eyes. She also could talk my Pop into things.

He looked at her, pushed his hat on the back of his head. “Alright, but, Honey, it's against my better judgment. I think you should go to church and then go on to your meeting.”

“No, no. This will be nice; you can talk to Reverend Blythe while we make the plans.”

I was standing between Pop and the door to the washroom and when he turned to go out, his eyes were buggy. “Okay, then.”

So we went to church. Well, Pop and I stayed in the car. Mama went to church and was out so fast that we didn't much reading done.

“We're going over to the Elliot's on Henderson Street,” Mama said when Pop opened the door for her. She would have stood there all day before she opened her own door. I snorted with laughter but didn't let on that I thought she should open her own door.

When we got to Elliot's we all went in. Mama, Pop and me. Pop sat in a hard-back chair and I stood behind him. Mama sat on the big comfortable couch with two other ladies, dressed in their church dresses. They all had nylons on and it made a swishing sound when they crossed their legs. Two other kids were there, both boys younger than me and two babies. Their mothers weren't much like my mother; they seemed more busy with their babies than anything else.

After coffee was served by “the lady of the house”, Reverend Blythe led a prayer. I stood perfectly still with my hands folded but I had a terrible itch in the middle of my back. It took a lot out of me not to scratch it.

When the prayer was finished, all the ladies talked at once. Nobody decided anything. Finally, Reverend Blythe boomed out about hot dishes A through L and desserts M through Z. I tried so hard to think of a family with Z as the first letter of their name that my eyes crossed and I sneezed. Sometimes when I sneeze it is so loud that people stop talking and look at me. “'Scuse me,” I mumbled.

The ladies went on discussing and discussing things like decorations and so on. The two babies got all cranky and cross. One of them could walk but the other one looked like Sweet Pea, Popeye's baby, and crawled around on the floor eating things I couldn't see.

My Pop started to fool with the babies. He rolled his eyes out and stuck out his tongue like a cow. Those  silly babies thought he was very fine. They came toward him at snail's march. When they got to him, he picked them up. Their mothers and my mother kept on discussing.  Reverend Blythe tried to talk to my Pop about baseball but my Pop didn't know anything about baseball. He went hunting and fishing; he was also busy with the babies.

First he jiggled them up and down until they giggled. Then he jounced them up and down until they had hiccups. I laughed silently behind him because it was so funny. My Pop didn't know anything about babies; he couldn't even remember when I was a baby. One baby, the one that crawled, opened it's little mouth and threw up a huge puddle of old milk.

My Pop doesn't like throw-up. It makes him sick. So he threw up on top of the baby's throw-up.

My Mama jumped to her feet. “Oh, dear, I'll get a cloth.”

She ran toward the kitchen and so did the lady of the house. Their two fannies jammed in the kitchen door. I nearly died from laughing. I couldn't stop the tears from running down my face. The two of them un-jammed and went into the kitchen. My Pop handed both babies off to their mothers.

Mama and Mrs. Elliot came back with rags. The baby's mother was very upset with the mess that her baby and my Pop had made.

“You shouldn't have shaken them up and down,” she said standing up one chair over from my Pop.

“I was playing with . . .”

She didn't let him finish before she said, “Surely, you know better than that, Mr. Berry.”

My mother did what my Pop called “flying off the handle” and getting her dander up.

“Listen here, Missy, if you'd been watching your own kid, this wouldn't have happened. Now you just clean up and keep quiet.” Mama was very POLITE but she didn't take kindly to other people picking on Pop because he had a low amount of manners.

“Now, ladies this is just . . .” the squawking women drown out the Reverend.

“Mrs. Berry, you just mind your own business,” the younger mother of the throw-up baby said.

“Oh, hell,” said my Pop just as my mother grabbed a coat hanger off the door knob.

“If you don't behave yourself, young lady, you will answer to me,”  said my mother in her very low but also very loud voice. Her eyes looked just like those olive we had at Christmas. Black and shiny.

My Pop said, “Nice to meet all you nice folks, but I gotta get home to look after my cow. Thanks for the great . .. um. .. meeting. See ya, Reverend."

He grabbed Mama around the waist and lifted her off her feet and swung her toward the door. Then he started moving fast.

“Bye, bye,” I shouted as I ran out after them. We got into the old blue Plymouth and for the first time ever my Pop drove Mama's car. I sat in the back seat and watched them settle their difference all the way home. It was better than the Saturday matinée at the Rialto Theater.