by Randy Reynolds The Reynolds' invaded England in 1022. We were Norsemen which, I guess, explains why all our babies are so blonde. We made it to Virginia in 1622 and then, in 1799, to Hall County, Georgia, where stray remnants of the family still reside. Wikipedia says the Reynolds family has always been known for large foreheads--say what!?! I'm even more puzzled by other sources that say Reynolds means "crafty as a fox" because I'm not entirely certain that we've lived up to that definition...
1955: The first time I ever poured out my heart to a woman in writing, I was six. She was fifty. But the age difference didn't bother me. My dad had rented a typewriter and I was overwhelmed with a desire to type my heart out to Miss Lokey.
1956: I throw myself to the ground. Rolling over and over, disturbing several of Papa's newly-plowed rows, I get the cool red soil all over me. I lick my lips and taste it. Not bad.
1957: I doubt we've ever again been as carefree as we were then, pulling little fish out of the water one after the other, keeping Papa busy baiting our hooks while Strick yelled, "I got me a big one, boys" tugging his rod back and forth to dislodge his lure from the rocks.
1958: When my baby sisters fretted, Mama Maude rocked them in front of the coal-burning stove and softly sang, "Bye oh baby bunting, Papa's gone a-hunting, to catch a rabbit skin to wrap my baby in." I was always first to greet Papa when he came home from the mill in the afternoon because I wanted to see if this was the day he had finally caught that rabbit skin. I was too big to rock so Mama Maude controlled me by telling me there was a monster named Babbo in the closet waiting for me to be bad so he could jump out and eat me. Well, he could wait till hell froze over, I was never going to be bad at Mama Maude's house. http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/2010/11/mama-maude-remembrance.html
1966: She bathed me with her eyes, bemused, as if I were some harmless alien creature with whose care she had just been entrusted.
1974: If the Braves weren't on TV, H.R. would tell me stories for the book I wanted to write about him. He told me about working at the sawmill when he was just a child; about the time one of his brothers stabbed him in the chest and Minnie rubbed soot from the fireplace in it to stop the bleeding; rebuilding Miami after a hurricane hit; his life as a prize fighter; being a detective in Chicago; facing down the vigilantes who tried to stop his tent revival; and taking off his shoes on a city street and giving them to a man who said he couldn't come to church because he didn't have any decent shoes.
1974: Every Labor Day from the 1940s into the '80s, members of the Reynolds family came from all over the country to celebrate my great-grandmother's birthday. There were hundreds of Reynolds' and their in-laws at these events, and I didn't see how she could possibly remember them all. Sometimes the look in her eyes told me she was remembering who wasn't there.
1984: Mama Maude and Katrina thought the noises they heard each night were made by someone trying to break into the house. They never paused to ask themselves why they should be afraid of a burglar so incompetent that he tried to break in every night but never succeeded. The women thought their lives were in danger so they called my Uncle Wint to come protect them. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: when he showed up with a loaded handgun, their lives really were in danger!
1985: Ryan said, "Daddy, you work more than you fish." And, damned, if he wasn't right! We decided to correct that imbalance.
1988: The only storm Katrina was ever in was life and she rode it out laughing in its face...except for that last Thanksgiving... looking at me like that... as if telling me goodbye... or thanking me for being her lookout.
1992: With little Jacob gone, who'll French-kiss the dogs and who'll be the test pilot for the rocking chair that now sits idle on the living-room tarmac?
2002: My mother was so heavily medicated as she lay dying that it's a miracle she could say anything at all. But she opened her eyes and gathered her thoughts and said an odd, sweet thing.
2005: Sherry's doctor wouldn't let her work at all, so she spent her days with grandchildren and her nights sleeping in the carport with mice running back and forth across the covers. There were mice in every box and every pile of clothes on the carport floor. A mouse fell into our coin jar and rattled the pennies all night. Sherry had nightmares about mice and told me she couldn't stand it anymore.
2006: Dear God, I apologize for not showing up in church lately, but I'm not sure which one is Yours. The last time I went it seemed like I was in the wrong place. It was a fabulous church building with a lovely lobby and in that lobby on a golden easel was a life-size portrait of George W. Bush. Not You. Not Jesus. Not Uncle Sam. Not Pastor. They were worshiping George W. Bush, depicted with a cross on his shoulder and an American flag on the cross. It gave me the heebie-jeebies.
2007: Mama Maude would have been overjoyed to meet her great-great-grandchildren (the Randy & Sherry--excuse me, I mean, the Pop and Shay-Shay--grandchildren), but she left the planet before they arrived.
1934: Three-year-old Gene memorized his mama's Bible stories and, one afternoon, puffing on a stogie he'd found on the ground, he pointed a finger at the card-players and gave them hell for smoking and gambling. That got such a laugh that he eagerly repeated it the next day, standing on the porch steps, chomping on a cigar, holding a Sears-Roebuch catalog in his hands like a Bible, quoting scripture and cussing like a loom-fixer. Everyone agreed that he was going to be a hell of a preacher when he grew up.
