Nonsense

Pallie was born in the last score of years before the turn of the century, in a world of milkcows, wood cookstoves and the daily work of a child that would make Cinderella tired.

Her father Atwood was a stern man who believed that one should take very seriously the passage of the bible about rods and children. His sister Aretha had married a Thompson man who ran a dry goods store in Tuscumbia.. A Hard days wagon ride from their home in Waco Alabama..

But the Mid South State Fair had come to Lauderdale County. A short spell from Tuscumbia if the Tennessee was down. Atwood, Pallie, Mary, Mattie and Celie rode to Tuscumbia to see the lights and rides and hucksters of the MidSouth Fair and stay with sister Aretha in the two story house on Water street.

The Fair had electric lights.. A Merry Go Round with a steam whistle and a Ferris wheel run by electric motors. A tiny train that took children around the fairgrounds and everybody got a roll of double tickets as big as a baseball with the price of admission. Tickets that could be torn off in pairs to ride and purchase sweets and drinks that foamed and tickled.

At the gate was a simple stage and wind up RCA record player, Deep Mahogany wood with gold gilded handles that stood a full four feet tall .. It was open and the Golden Speaker Horn was playing music of a band from a thousand miles away.

It was the most impressive thing Pallie Bishop had ever seen. The Huckster was crying "ten cents - for ten cents purchase a chance to win this beautiful RCA Victor Talking Machine"..Lesser prizes were to be given away with your ticket stub for admission but the grand prize raffle was purchased separately. Pallie looked at the coins in her purse.- She slid a dime into the man's hand.

The fair was the same as the fair today. Designed to splash color and move cotton picking money from your pocket into the pockets of itinerants who would be long gone in a week. Itinerants who knew and cared little of the sweat by which that money was earned. Pallie and the girls had what was known in the day as “a time “. They watched the displays of farm goods and prizes and local musicians and an artist who would paint your portrait while you waited if you had the money.

Pallie did not.

As night fell the drawing for the Victrola loomed near. Pallie made her way back to to the grandstand with Celie to watch the face of the lucky winner of the talking machine. The lesser prizes were drawn and Celie and the girls became more dejected as each prize was held up and lucky winner came forth to claim his or her prize. Then as the grand prize was being drawn the girls turned to walk away, Palie hesitated, and then heard her name.

At first she though it was Atwood, but realized it was coming from the other direction. it was coming from the grandstand. The man was calling Pallie Bishop. She screamed "Cellie, Get Pap!" and ran toward the stage and ran her hand over the polished wood.. Atwood came in a minute as the excited announcer tried to keep some interest in the crowd who had begun to mill away. "Here she is, all yours he said to Atwood, no cost to you at all but 15 cents each for a handful of recordings to play in your home!".. “15 Cents Bellowed Atwood! “ I wouldn't give fifteen cents for this thing for firewood.."

Pallie's world fell apart.. She began to cry. Then she got angry.. She screamed at her father "its mine”.. “I won it " take it home " .. "No! was the reply", his face redder by the minute at the insolent child embarrassing him on the grandstand stage. He did the only thing a man of his breeding could do. He took the pointer rod from the hands of he barker and began to bring blood from the legs of the almost woman child .. For a time she stood her ground. For the first, and last, time in her life she challenged her father.

They didn't take the Victrola home,

And things would never be right between them again.

Pallie saw eleven children. Buried four. Won and lost so many things so many times, and never in her life had a piece of furniture in her home so nice as a 1902 Victrola.. ..

And there in that hospital bed. 75 years later..on the last day of her life.

She sighed..

and smiled a weak smile.

And in that brief microsecond I knew her mind.

I knew that right now, she and Celie and Atwood and Mary and Mattie were loading up the Victrola.

Tonite, she would take the Victrola home.

Death is a mystery, the obvious and observable end of life that forces us to wish, or hope, or believe that there is something more.

Elementary logic says that there is not, yet a more complex evaluation makes us ask “ if there is no more then why are we here?”..

To ask “ if there is no God then we must be the most intelligent beings in the universe.?”

Now that is a scary thought.

More so than death itself.

There is a trigger within us that makes us fear death in our youth more so than in old age.

Perhaps an anticipation of things to come but more likely just an internal lethargy that comes with bewilderment that all the things we worked so hard to accomplish, struggled so hard to keep, will pass away like the dust in our bones, if it hasn't already.

My father, mother, grandfathers on both sides, my maternal grandmother, my best friend, a first girlfriend. All haunt my dreams from the other side. My aunts and uncles, most dear, some not so much, fade in and out of my conscious and unconscious thought. It is a frightening thing the day you realize that you have more friends below ground that above it.

So what is the point? Uncle Bartow, who left town to escape a murderous jilted lover. Said that life was about realizing that today might be your last day and living it thus.

Not always easy to do.. many people may not share your laze-fare attitude and require funds that require work which requires... Well you know.

Doctors are mostly religious but I often wonder how funeral home workers view the human condition. They say the right things but if you work on cars all day is it normal or abnormal to suspect the automotive souls go to a better place after the engine throws a rod.

I spend most nights studying the moons of Jupiter.. Any amateur astronomer knows where they will be and there are much better telescopes out there than what I might find on my shelf. But I feel a need to check and make sure they are where they are supposed to be. Somehow it is reassuring to know that something is more permanent than my physical self.

That they might appear to shift a little to the left or right is in some way proof that Palie is out there. Peeping around one of those celestial orbs.