Deatsville wasn’t any bigger than a whistle on a walk in 1954, and about as far due south of my Michigan birthplace as any eight year old could imagine. The roads running east and west past Popeye’s two pump, glass globe gasoline stop and shop had the soft, dust-rusty look of a boiled bare five-and-dime enamelware pan.
I’d traveled to Deatsville to spend the summer with my cohort, Molly, and her parents who owned that screen door gathering spot frequented mostly by natives of Elmore County and daytrippers from Lomax and Verbena who’d gotten sidetracked on their way to Montgomery.
Molly and I were counterfeit cousins, joined at the heart and mind’s-eye instead of the kinsman hip. Our mommas had been best friends before us. They’d met in New York City where each had fled during the 1930’s, intent on finding a more sophisticated lifestyle than that of a small town girl grown into a small town wife. Marriage and children returned them to convention, but our births had awarded each a vicarious second chance at adventure.
In time we’d give them their dreams, but for that last unadulterated summer of our youth we were as any other children growing up in the kind of rural community that red line roads on paper pocket maps connected.
“Do as you’re told and make me proud,” was always my mother’s marching order. I did and would.
I arrived by bus, the driver making a stop at Popeye’s even though it wasn’t on his scheduled route. Had he chosen to obey orders to pass Deatsville by, visitors and residents of the area would have had to find additional transportation back to there. Stopping was the common southern courtesy that northern dispatchers were forced to either ignore or accept.
Molly and her dog, Buford, greeted me by dancing barefoot in the dirt, a piece of her momma’s pecan pie held high in her right hand while she wigwagged the left.
“Hi you all, “ she enunciated with an exaggerated drawl.
I kissed her. Then I bent down and kissed Buford before attacking the pie.
“I ate mine already but you can share yours with me if you want,” she hinted.
We slept in a tall-walled room at the end of a tongue and groove hallway in a 19th century carpetbaggers house set five hundred feet back from the store. It was a proud, old, chipped-paint clapboard structure with faded green plantation shutters hiding nine foot, nine-over-nine pane windows, most of them swollen shut. Those that worked opened like doors onto wraparound porches connecting pencil post pillars to a sloping tin roof that provided both shade and shelter from the relentless heat and sudden white rains of an Alabama afternoon.
“I’ve got a secret to show you,” Molly whispered to me one afternoon while we were pretending to nap. Together we crawled under her grandma’s iron bed and removed the floorboards to an inwardly opening trap door exposing a ladder that took us ten feet down into a somber cellar of red clay and hollowed out slots where candles once burned as lighting.
———– TO CONTINUE READING ————
THE ABOVE ESSAY REPRESENTS AN EXCERPT FROM:
Seriously, Mom, you didn’t Know?
by Marguerite Quantaine © Copyright © 2019
NOW ON AMAZON & AVAILABLE IN BOOKSTORES NATIONWIDE
You are urged to LOOK INSIDE on Amazon for a try-before-you-buy FREE READ of the first 3 chapters. Click FREE PREVIEW BELOW THIS COVER.
# # #
M A G P I E à la modus operandi 
And wonderful readers. I look forward to you all, truly!
LikeLike
Wonderful blog, wonderful words, Marguerite! Thanks so much for sharing.
LikeLike
Hello Miss Grimmel good bye Molly…
A wonderfully descriptive story of an imaginary friend incarnate. I could feel the town and that special place bellow the floorboards through your descriptions. And could delight in the faint smell of Miss G’s violet cologne up and down the aisles. How wonderful it all is indeed.
Only a small thing perhaps, but as a reader I would have liked you to use your descriptive powers for maybe one additional sentence about how Miss G made you feel or what to be mesmerized looked and or felt like for you as that young girl.
Thanks for sharing your blog M!! So wonderful. I’m in awe.
LikeLike
It was as you said, Cheryl. Awe. Though, thinking back, I’m not sure why. Thanks for the tip. I’ll chew on that. You’re right about it though and I appreciate your thoughts.
LikeLike
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this xxx
LikeLike
Love seeing you show up as a reader here reader Jo. Wouldn’t be the same without your input. Thanks!
LikeLike
Effortlessly beautiful, as always 🙂
LikeLike
As are you Sunita. I mean that.
LikeLike
Thanks Sally. Much appreciated.
LikeLike
yup- tugged on my heart stringd – lovely – congrats
LikeLike
Simply put, you are a magnificent writer!!!!
LikeLike
Thanks so very much for the fine review, Fay!
LikeLike
Beautifully evocative. You give us a lyrical prose that seems so rare these days. Thank you for a peek at the almost forgotten past…
Barrett
LikeLike
Wow, Jeanne. Lyrical is how I always feel when I write and wondered if anyone ever felt it flow through. You are the first to say so. I’m beaming. Thank you.
LikeLike
I enjoyed reading and your words brought back some personal memories……..
LikeLike
then my job here is done, hon!
LikeLike
You do have a way with the words my friend. Thank you!
LikeLike
As always, my pleasure.
LikeLike
You took me there; to the happiest times of my childhood and my “cousin” Eileen who was the daughter or my mother’s childhood friend and all the wonderful times we had together. Thank you so much!
LikeLike
Oh, Marguerite, I can see and feel every detail. How magnificently you speak through your words!! I do remember my first. She was the pastor’s wife and so very kind and loving to my crush-awed self. Thank you for putting a smile on my face and in my heart. Happy Valentine’s day, friend.
LikeLike
You, too, Bren. You know I mean that. Make memories!
LikeLike
Isn’t it rather wonderful, Nancy, how everyone can mix memories via shared emotions about similar times? It’s one of the great delights of life I think. I’m glad ours crossed on those paths of happy times.
LikeLike
Such a wonderfully-crafted story! I, too, could smell the violet cologne; I have a hard time finding it now that Yardley I think eliminated it. I’ve loved the violet fragrance since Avon’s “Raining Violets.”
LikeLike
My mom once brought it back from her only trip to England. It was packaged in little bottles in the shape of English cottages. I am so glad you found that memory here. Grinning!
LikeLike
you are a wonderful story teller! thank you
LikeLike
That wouldn’t be possible without people like you in the audience Donna. Here’s looking at you kiddo!
LikeLike
That was beautiful. I can almost taste the pie!
LikeLike
I will cut you a piece and send it cyberally with thanks.
LikeLike
Be mine Kieran! Thanks.
LikeLike
Magnificent. You talk on so many levels – by just telling one level. One more time – magnificent. Thanks for taking me along on your youth adventure.
LikeLike