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“Without your professional guidance, steadfast assistance and dedication, our massive ‘Faith & Country’ project never would have come to fruition, and nearly 200 veterans would not have had the opportunity to share their wonderful stories. Thank you for all your hard work.”
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Dr. Rita B. Turner, Coordinator of Green Acres Baptist Church Veterans Project, Tyler, Texas
“Paula Stallings Yost brings twenty-five years of writing experience and a love of story to her job as memorist and editor. She organizes, shapes and gently massages interview transcripts into an authentic, entertaining first-person narrative that retains the storyteller’s voice and personality. In the process, Paula researches historical detail to further enhance the story and works with clients to create a lasting legacy that will engage, inform and inspire generations to come.”
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Writing from Life: Telling Your Soul’s Story, by Susan Wittig Albert
Ethical Wills, Putting Your Values on Paper, by Barry K. Baines
Recording your Family History, by William Fletcher
Remembering Your Story, A Guide to Spiritual Autobiography, by Richard L. Morgan
Your Life as Story, by Tristine Rainer
Keeping Family Stories Alive, by Vera Rosenbluth
Put it in Writing: Guide for Populore Narratives, by Melinda J. St. Louis
The Healing Power of Stories, by Daniel Taylor
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Sample Chapter from the Memoirs of Paula Stallings Yost
Mercury Risin’
Texas women have long been notorious as tough and resourceful. They had to be to survive the torrid Texas summers and constant plagues of insects, critters and rednecks. I first witnessed that brand of feminine bravado as a young girl following my grandmother Murdee’s lead in the piney woods of East Texas during the early 1950s, when survival was defined in the simplest of terms.
Marathon heat waves challenged even the heartiest locals, with temperatures climbing above 100 degrees for weeks on end and air so thick with humidity you could drink it. Air conditioning was just a rumor then. Murdee, however, always kept her cool and relished the battle. By June each year, she was prepared to reign victorious.
“Daylight’s wastin’, honey!” was my standard wake-up call. “ Best be climbing outta that bed, less you’d rather be pullin’ weeds in the heat of the day,” Tossing a freshly laundered pair of cotton shorts and red bandana shirt on my four-poster bed, my tiny-but-towering grandmother then would whistle her way down the hall to her tiny kitchen to whip up a lumberjack breakfast.
“Ain’t gonna get many chores done on an empty stomach,” she always preached. Across a table laden with biscuits, bacon, sausage gravy and scrambled eggs, we’d plan our day and watch the sun rise over the pine trees outside the open, screenless window. “Them tomatoes got a little case of the wilt this morning. You need to haul some buckets of water up from the pond first thing,” she might say between biscuit bites and vigorous fly swats.
“But, Murdee, I did that yesterday—“
“Yeah. But it’s already hotter than blue blazes outside, so we gotta soak ‘em again. Only durn thing gonna grow without water is them weeds.” An ecology lesson mumbled over three bobbypins tightly clenched between gleaming false teeth as she piled auburn curls atop her head and donned a calico bonnet. “Our weedin’ will go a little easier today, though; I sharpened the hoe last night. Gotta pick cucumbers, too. They’re just the right size for pickling. You know how prickly them things are, so grab your gloves. With a little elbow grease, I ‘spect we might finish in time to take a dip in the pond before lunch.” Murdee was great at dangling carrots of motivation.
So my days began. Balancing a hickory limb across my shoulders with a tin bucket hanging from each end, I’m sure I hiked at least a million miles back and forth between our garden and the stock pond by summer’s end. Dry buffalo grass tickled my bare feet each morning and scorched them in the afternoon. If I moved quickly enough, the Kamikaze mosquitoes and horse flies had trouble keeping pace. Of course, I had to watch the ground closely to avoid cow patties, fire-ant hills and mole tunnels. There was no faster way to become one with the land than to stumble over any one of those obstacles.
If the weeding was accomplished early enough, and the veggies gathered and properly stored, my grandmother and I would race each other to the stock pond for a cooling swim. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!” For the next hour or so, we’d float on inflated, black tractor-tire inner tubes and chat about everything from God to “I Love Lucy”. Afterward, we’d make our way home for lunch and a nap.
Without air conditioning, sleep didn’t come easy in the heat of the day. Murdee had a solution for that, too. While I put away the sandwich fixings from lunch and cleaned the table, she hosed down the roof of her white, clapboard house. (The only time she ever used “city” water for anything other than drinking and washing.) Then we’d dose for an hour or so on the cushioned, front-porch swings underneath a buzzing ceiling fan.
By three o’clock most afternoons, I was busy in the yard again. Trimming hedges, mowing grass, raking, or burning brush. Mowing the grass was the absolute worst. Murdee’s small push mower required a lot of that prized “elbow grease,” and it seemed to take forever to cover even the smallest areas. No matter where I happened to mow, I encountered bug armies attacking en masse. Hordes of gnats, flies, mosquitoes, wasps, dirt daubers, grasshoppers, etc. The grasshoppers especially loved to fly in my face, down my shirt or up my shorts as I pushed the clacking mower through their midst.
Finally, I’d take an iced-tea break and sit for a while in the shade of a mimosa tree. Amusing myself by rolling doodlebugs into minuscule black balls or searching for four-leaf clovers, I was pestered occasionally by bagworms, asps and bird poop falling on my head or into my tea. I eventually learned to wear a wide-brimmed hat and cover my glass with a sycamore leaf.
When caught up on yard work, Murdee and I sometimes trekked to the dewberry patch a mile or so down the road. Wearing garden gloves, long-sleeved shirts and jeans tucked inside our socks (protection against thorns, snakes and chiggers), we filled our buckets and bellies. Berry-stained, chigger-ridden and sweat-soaked, we would return home to strip down to our undies in the backyard and hose each other off before entering the house. Berry picking was a hot and arduous chore. Our reward came with the unmistakable aroma of a dewberry cobbler baking in the wood stove later that evening.
The stock pond held a different set of perils. My Uncle Paul once swore that a twelve-foot mama alligator, who was especially partial to tender little girls, lived just beneath the lily pads there. As I waded through the hydrilla to fill my water buckets one morning, I stepped on something large and slimy that nipped my big toe. Speed records and sound barriers were broken during my screaming dash home.
“Murdee…. Murdee! The alligator got me.”
“Land sakes alive,” my grandmother sighed as I slammed the screen door and fell to the kitchen floor checking for missing toes. After hearing my tale of woe and band-aiding my wound, she said, “Now, honey, you know how your uncle loves to fib and get your goat. I’ve told you a thousand times there ain’t no alligators round here.”
I wasn’t convinced. Against my better judgment, we marched right back to that pond to investigate. As we approached, Murdee suddenly started giggling and pointed to my deserted bucket on the bank. Basking in the sun atop the bucket was the apparent culprit—a rather grumpy snapping turtle. Glancing up at the sound of my grandmother’s laughter, he slid back into the water with a smirk. (I swear.)
Though the alligator threat may have been bogus, the danger presented by cottonmouth water moccasins was not. Highly venomous, a cottonmouth is an aggressive water snake that will attack with the resolve of a mad bull if someone comes too close to its nest or feeding ground. Even Murdee didn’t go near the water without a hickory limb or hoe to “kill the S.O.B’s.” She never hesitated to use her tools of death and left many headless, writhing serpents behind.
Copperheads, a less poisonous breed, preferred the woods environment and were considerably more polite. You almost had to step on one before it would strike. The situation gave new meaning to the term, “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” My cousin Flay Don, a bit of a daydreamer, actually tripped over a copperhead in the woods once. When the offended viper sank its fangs into his ankle, Flay Don jumped at least a yard or two straight up and hollered like a stuck pig. He was bedridden for a week.
Diamondback rattlesnakes were spotted occasionally. Their dens usually were found within rock piles in the sunniest fields. Chicken snakes showed up everywhere, huge and menacing in appearance but basically harmless. Murdee told me, “Now, honey, if you come upon an old chicken snake, just say howdy and leave him alone. He eats mice and rats. In my book, that makes him a friend.” Easy for her to say. Considering that our ponds, lakes, wooded areas and open fields were such popular habitats for these creatures, it was hard to avoid them. But I willingly granted them all the space they required, except once.
When I discovered a copperhead slithering across our kitchen floor one night, I quickly ended his adventure with the aid of my grandmother’s iron skillet. Though her polished hardwood floor suffered a couple of permanent dents, Murdee didn’t complain.
I thrived on the challenges of those long ago summers and delighted in a multitude of simple things. The juice of a freshly picked tomato raining down my muddy chin with each sweet bite. (Without my daily water runs, it would have died on the vine.) A perfectly manicured lawn to play on at the end of the day, the air filled with the perfume of newly mown grass. Murdee’s pantry filled with rows of canned tomatoes, black-eyed peas, dill pickles, peach jam, dewberry jelly and more… all sealed with love. My grandmother’s country home was my sanctuary as a child and even now. In my mind, I visit there often. Still barefoot, innocent, and free.
Five decades and several big-city careers later, I have returned to my rural East Texas roots. Some things have changed for the better—central air conditioning, riding lawnmowers and underground sprinkler systems, for instance. But the summers still sizzle, and the critters have multiplied quite nicely. I wouldn’t have it any other way.