Mr. Bradley and the Old Floozies

Repost:

Mr. Bradley died!! Mr. Bradley died!!

This was unbelievable! I had seen people get shot on “Gunsmoke,” but I’d never known anyone who had actually died. I knew I was supposed to cry when someone died but I couldn’t manage it. First of all, Mr. Bradley was an old grouch. He wore khaki pants and shirt and an old gray felt hat with oil stains around the hat band. He was really selfish. He had built us a chicken house. When I went out later to

Superman and Grits

 

This is me pictured with my cousin Cathy on a visit to their family in Baton Rouge. On this memorable trip, I was first introduced to grits.  It was instant love.  A year or two later Cathy told me Superman had killed himself.  I was sincerely devastated.  If Superman couldn’t deal, what hope was there for the rest of us?

 

Not a Small Matter!

Grandma was born in 1896. Very progressive, she employed higher standards of hygiene I do today, possibly because she’d barely survived typhoid in her mid-forties. Like me, washed her hands frequently as she cooked, but she scalded instead of merely rinsing her dishes, and boiled her whites, linens, and towels when doing her laundry with home-made lye soap in a huge cast-iron washpot outdoors until she got a washing machine.