Random summer memories

hey-hey good lookin’
what’cha got cookin?
How’s about cookin
sumpin up for me?

I am cursed with remembering those lyrics as among the few that my father loved to croon when we would take those dreaded, non-stop road trip vacations to visit his parents in Ravenden Springs, Arkansas.

These would be my Grandmother and my Granddad; not my Grandma and Grandpa, who were the parents of my mother. Grandmother did not care much for Grandma and would frown down upon any grandchild that accidentally called her by the term that was reserved for us by my mother’s mother. Even worse to her was “Granny”; which was the salutation we would sometime tease her with, but only if we weren’t within swatting distance.

While Dad would sing mile after mile, the imaginary line drawn in the middle of the backseat to separate my brother and I was grew ever-thinner as he poked me intentionally several times in a row. I let out a “Mom, make Jerry stop touching me!” and found that it brought a slap to both our bare legs. Jerry glared at me, thinking, “Snitch,” I’m sure, and even though my leg stung, I felt a satisfaction that I had brought him displeasure.

Bored with the passing scenery, I would think about what Grandmother might be cooking for our arrival as we drove through Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi with my butt getting numb and tired from sitting.

Grandmother had tried to make us pizza the summer before and failed miserably. She’d never eaten pizza herself and had read the recipe out of a Good Housekeeping magazine. It was loaded with things like pieces of corn, carrots, chunks of spam, and vienna sausages, and she gave me an offended look when I asked, “Where’s the pepperoni?”.

But still, she loved to cook and to invent things on her stove. She had a pride in her beet jelly and her fried zucchini was something she was sure God had graced her with the talent for making. With Grandmother, God had a hand in everything. (Once she took a switch to me for saying “Gosh” and “Golly” because, according to her, they were derivatives from ‘GOD’ and therefore, to say them was to take his name in vain.)

I dreaded being forced into that small, uncooled chapel on Sundays in the thick of August to fellowship with children I hadn’t seen for a year and whose names I had failed to remember. Perhaps those early unpleasant memories of church life play a part in my current status of “non-church goer”.

My relatively short period of time spent in Arkansas every summer seems almost like a past life now--very vague and distant. Both Granddad and Grandmother have died and I’ll probably never lay eyes on Ravenden Springs, Arkansas again. And I'm grateful that the days of swatting, slapping, and getting a switch taken to me are over. About the only constant through all these years is the Hank Williams song. I’m sure Dad is still singing it.