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"Big Papa's Croakersacks", page 2


"Big Papa's Croakersack"
(continued)
page 2 of 3

A grand baby still in the cute stage is generally not much bother
to anyone in comparison to a grand child who is no longer in
the cute stage.  I never once heard Big Mama complain about
one of her cute stage grand babies getting “on her nerves”.  

Of course she never complained about any of the rest of us
getting on her nerves, either.  She just told us straight out when
we got on her nerves, in a matter of fact way, like it was
something we needed to know, along with stuff like toilet
training. Getting on her nerves meant we were being
troublesome.

She never said so, but I know she enjoyed those trips into town
and back more than she enjoyed being in town.  Ever tried to
keep up with a herd of children and shop at the same time?   
Big Mama never said so, but now that I am older, I can see how
much trouble we were to her during those wonderful trips into
town.


One of us would run this way and another would run that way.  

One wanted her to look at this and one wanted her to look at
that.

“Ah, Big Mama, what’s this?”  “Ah, Big Mama, what’s that?”

“Big Mama, I gotta use it”.  “Well, I gotta use it again, I can’t help
it”.

“Can I have this, Big Mama?”; “Can I have that, Big Mama?”  

“Buy me this, Big Mama”. “Buy me that, Big Mama”.

"How come, Big Mama?”

I never heard her complain.  Oh, she would say things to Big
Papa like, “If I did not need someone to drive me, you could
have stayed at home for all the help you are”.  But I never
heard her complain about how much trouble we gave her.


     The Pie-Yow and the Code

We grand children preferred to ride in the back of the truck.  
We liked it.  We loved it! That’s just the way it was in those
days.   

There was no radio or air conditioning in trucks in those days.  
At least not in any trucks we rode in.  We enjoyed the additional
freedom.  It’s not that we lacked supervision.  It’s just that Big
Mama’s right arm was not long enough to reach all the way into
the back of the truck.  And we kids had some “cutting up” to do.

Seems like it never rained on the days we took those trips into
town.

Now, an experienced back of the truck rider in our family
learned the hard way not to sit in that space called “the front
right corner of the back of the truck”.  Big Mama could reach
that spot with her right arm from the cab of the truck without
turning her head, and even without skipping a beat in her
conversation with Big Papa.  We never understood how she did
it, though.  

We were always on alert to see how she actually did it but we
always missed everything except the unsuspecting target’s
reaction to the physical force we called, “The Pie-Yow”.    We
pronounced it with the same emphasis you give to the word,
“pop”, only louder.  PIE-YOW!  It is not in any dictionary, either,
so don’t bother looking it up, okay.

“Boy, did you see Big Mama go, PIE-YOW across cuz’ mouth?”

“Big Mama went PIE-YOW on cuz’ head!”

It just was not humanly possible to see with the naked eye what
preceded The Pie-Yow.

The code was:  never warn a possible target!  

No one wanted to miss having the fun of witnessing the fallout
from a genuine, “A #1”, Pie-Yow.  No one wanted to get beat up
by the rest of us, either.

The Pie-Yow was always funny to those of us who did not hear
it or receive it.  The wind muffled the sound of The Pie-Yow
while the truck was moving along.  The only way we ever knew
The Pie-Yow had been executed was by the target’s reaction.

Lightning fast movement toward the” back of the back of the
truck”, accompanied by a loud, “Whaaaa“ sound, and tears.  

The target never heard The Pie-Yow, either, but he or she
always complained about a ringing sound in the ears for most
of the rest of the day.  

The Pie-Yow was legendary!  

Whenever we talked about it among ourselves, sooner or later,
we thought we were hearing ringing in our ears, too.  When the
conversations reached that point, it was time to talk about
something else.

To this day, no grand child can say he or she actually
witnessed a Pie-Yow.  The human eye is incapable of focusing
on such speed of hand movement.  However, to this day, each
and every grand child can swear on a stack of bibles that, while
witnessing the fallout from numerous Pie-Yows, he or she only
had that ringing in the ears problem once,  while riding in the
back of Big Papa’s truck.

It got to the point where “the back of the back of the truck” was
so heavily loaded with every grand child who wanted to stay out
of Big Mama’s reach, that Big Papa had trouble keeping the
truck’s front tires on the surface of the road.  He was a slow
driver but people all over Dayton, Texas, would swear they saw
him speeding down the highway on this day or speeding down
the road on that day.

What was Big Papa doing when The Pie-Yow was being
executed?  

Laughing his oz off!

Big Mama would just act like she did not know what in the world
was so funny.


               Riding the Ice

Driving a truck without a radio is boring unless you have other
entertainment.  Big Papa was well entertained on those hot
summer days driving into town.  He may have been the first
person in Dayton to start taking shopping trips into town on
weekdays, at least during the summers when he had us grand
children around for entertainment.  He knew a trip into town was
always a good potential for a Pie-Yow.   Big Papa loved a good
laugh but we never heard him use our word, Pie-Yow.

He always bought a couple of blocks of ice to take back to the
farm on those hot summer days.  He would put the blocks of ice
in Big Mama’s ice box to keep food cool. This was in the days
before “affordable” electric refrigerators.  An ice box needed to
have ice in it.  Otherwise, it was just a box.   I don’t know if two
blocks of ice lasted a whole week in that ice box, or not.  It just
was not one of those mysteries of life that I troubled over in
those days.  My weekdays where filled with recounting the most
recent Pie-Yow episode or listening to someone else tell their
version.

Big Papa would always wrap the blocks of ice in wet
croakersacks to slow down the melting problem during the trip
back to the farm.  Anyone who knows anything about blocks of
ice in the days before affordable refrigeration can tell you, they
are never as big or as heavy when you get home as when you
started out.  What you get is not as much as what you bought.

The high point of the ride into town for the grand children was
the ride back to the farm.  That’s because if you were lucky,
and or big enough, you got to sit on the ice.  There was a
certain amount of status and prestige associated with “riding
the ice”.  There was even more benefit associated with being
among the first to ride the ice on those trips back to the farm.  It
did not matter that a human being can only sit on a block of ice
for just so long before that human being is forced to get off
that  ice, no matter how hot the day.

The idea was to sit on the ice for as long as possible.  

That was your turn!  

No one ever got two turns in the rotation.  First, the trip back to
the farm was not long enough for anyone to get two turns.  
Secondly, and most important, Big Mama got involved if anyone
ever complained about being bullied out of their turn.  God
bless the child who got Big Mama involved.


The Old School Ice Cream Freezer

After restocking the ice box with ice, Big Papa chipped off
enough ice with the old ice pick to put in the ice cream freezer
to make ice cream.  That’s how people had ice cream in those
days before refrigerators.

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When the
conversation
reached that
point, it was time
to talk about
something else.
It did not matter that a
human being can
only sit on a block of
ice for just so long...