Segment
seven from the fictional series Uprooted,
about an Appalachian family living in south Florida from 1955 through the
1960’s.
Daddy loved
to read the newspaper, and he said that there were really good ones in south
Florida unlike what he called the “news-less near-nothing” that he got in North
Carolina. One got delivered to the house
every day and he read every word of it.
Every single word, meaning every article, every ad, every obituary …
everything.
At the
supper table he would tell the family about what he read in the newspaper;
including local news and news from all over the world. He said that south
Florida was in what was called a “boom.”
That meant that lots of folks like them had moved there.
He told the
family that the schools were overcrowded.
Rebecca and Robert did not know what that meant but they were anxious
for school to start, because they wanted to meet more kids.
Daddy was
afraid that the children would get lost, because the school was a long way from
their house. He made both Rebecca and
Robert memorize their address, because they had no telephone, and he made them memorize
the phone number at Uncle John’s store.
They were
going to ride the school bus. All they
had to do was walk down their road to the bigger road to catch the bus. “No,” mama corrected. “You walk down our avenue to the street.” Rebecca had forgotten that in Fort Lauderdale
that the roads were called avenues, streets, drives, places and boulevards, but
not roads. So far as Rebecca could tell
there was only one road in all of Fort Lauderdale and that was State Road Seven.
It was
confusing to her, because all those differently named things sure looked like
roads. Anyway, they met the school bus
and off they went. The farther east they
went from where they lived the bigger the houses got.
Rebecca
helped Robert find his second grade classroom and she told him that she would
pick him up there after school and take him to the bus. Then, she found her third grade classroom.
By way of
introduction, Rebecca’s teacher said that they would go around the room and
tell their names, where they were from and what they had for dinner last
night. Rebecca knew that dinner didn’t
mean dinner, but supper, because Aunt Lou had taught her that.
She was sitting
on the front row of the classroom, because she was small. A few kids spoke before she did. One was from Ohio, one was from Michigan and
one was from New Jersey. They all talked
real funny and when they said what they had for dinner, Rebecca had no idea
what they had eaten, because she had never even heard of that stuff.
Rebecca told
her name and where she was from then she said, “We call our dinner supper. We eat our dinner at noon. Last night we had pinto beans, corn bread and
arsh taters.” The other children
laughed. Rebecca did not say anything. She did not know what was so funny.
Her teacher
said, “Rebecca you had pinto beans, corn bread and Irish potatoes.”
“Yes ma’am,
that’s what I said.”
Her teacher
just smiled at her and went on to the next student. There were thirty-four students in the
classroom which was in a little building called a “portable” off from the main
building. There was not one kid in
Rebecca’s class from Florida or North Carolina.
They were from places Rebecca had mostly not heard of and to a person
they talked funny.
At recess a
little girl named Linda from New York asked Rebecca what pinto beans were. Rebecca had never heard of a person who did
not know what pinto beans were, but none of the kids knew. So, she told them it was a dried bean that
turned brown when you cooked it.
Most of them
knew where North Carolina was, because they had passed through it on their way
to Florida and some of the kids started teasing Rebecca because she came from
there.
Rebecca just
puffed up and told them all: “I am sorry
that all of you all couldn’t a come from North Carolina. It is such a beautiful place and everybody
knows that when God decides to come back that is where he is going to settle … out
of every place he created on earth.”
“How do you
know that?” asked a boy named John from Pennsylvania.
“Because,”
Rebecca replied, “where I am from everybody knows that North Carolina is ‘God’s
Country.’”
“Oh,”
replied the other children impressed.
Rebecca just crossed her little arms across her puffed out chest and
smiled.
“North
Carolina didn’t seem so special when we passed through it and how do you know
that God is going to settle there?” The
argumentative John wanted to know.
“Did you
come through the mountains of western North Carolina?” Rebecca asked him.
“No,” the
boy replied.
“Then,
that’s your answer,” said Rebecca. “It’s
the mountains, the streams, the rocks and the woods that are so special. Why one mountain not far from Turkey Tail is
shaped like a real big table. That’s where
God is going to sit down and eat.”
“How do you
know that and how do you know that God is going to settle there when he comes
back and not were any of us are from?” Linda asked.
Rebecca
paused a minute thinking, then she replied.
“Well, I don’t rightly know how the secret got out that God was going to
settle in our parts, but it is easy to understand why when you see it and his
table is there.”
John asked,
“Then why didn’t anyone I know say why he wasn’t going to settle in Pittsburg?”
Rebecca
pondered her answer then replied, “After all he is God. I guess that he just didn’t want to hurt y’all’s
feelings.”
The teacher,
Mrs. Johnson, had stood by listening to the conversation. She just smiled and realized that the little
southern girl was going to be all right.
After school
Rebecca picked-up Robert from his classroom in the main building. Robert was so proud. He had only gotten into trouble three times
that day for talking. “Don’t tell
Daddy,” he begged. Rebecca didn’t and
the rest of the school year went along about the same.
© Patty F.
Cooper, Elizabethton, Tennessee, April 14th, 2015
All Rights
Reserved
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