He's my Brother

My brother, Larry, and I are almost sixteen months apart in age.  This meant that Mom had two little babies before anyone ever thought about Pampers.  Larry and I did not plan to keep Mom up nights and days on end, we just did it anyway.  Mom took iron pills and lost weight while, according to her, we fought and squealed and threw things  … then we learned to talk.

First Larry would taste the food and tell me if it was good.  If he said it was good I would eat it no matter what.  If he said sardines were bad they are bad right up until today.  Then one day he handed me a green persimmon and told me it was good, so I took a very huge bite.  Have you ever bitten into a green persimmon?  It’s just a little like dried sour vinegar paper machete with super glue that you can’t get out of your mouth.  Still, since he said persimmons were good, I like ripe ones.

We spent a lot of time at Mammaw and Pappaw’s house, especially once Mama went to work in town.  I spent as much time as possible riding on the fender of Larry’s bicycle which Pappaw called a “wheel.”    One day we were going to ride across a plank that ran over a large gully close to Mammaw’s house.

“You can go there, but leave the wheel at home,” Pappaw shouted.

“If I leave the wheel at home I can’t ride,” Larry said as we whizzed across the thin plank. 

Every Easter Monday, an exclusive North Carolina holiday, Pappaw would spread manure over the garden sites.  It seemed that every time we had company manure was getting spread. 

“Pappaw,” Larry said, “you spend so much time around those cows that one day you are going to open your mouth and nothing is going to come out but a big moo.”

Larry and I were the first two grandchildren our dad’s parents had, so we paved the way for the others. 

Did I tell you about the day we decided to ride the cow Pappaw called Old Bessie?  Larry chained her to a tree.  I do not remember how he got her to lie down.  First I sat on her bony back and realized why cows can’t wear a saddle.  Then Larry hopped on and sent me into get Mammaw to look.  Old Bessie stood up and Larry was ready to ride the range of Mammaw’s back yard until Mammaw, whose name really was Bessie, shrieked. 

Larry seemed to know just how to irritate Pappaw.  One day Pappaw was chasing him with a switch.  Mammaw’s hedge went all the way around the yard with about five different openings to walk through.  It was really funny watching Pappaw trying to catch Larry by running through the opening just in time to see Larry jump back across to the other side in the middle of the large bushes.  Pappaw even almost laughed as he forgot what he was mad about.

We built nests in the yard for the Easter bunny.  If there had been a neighborhood at that time, Larry could have been heard crying.  He had marked one of our colored eggs with a little white dot, and somehow the Easter bunny put it in his nest out in the yard by mistake.  I think that was just about a week after we all were frightened because his hand was stuck on an electric paint sprayer.

Did you ever play with those little toy cameras that when you pressed the button a snake’s head on a spring jumped out?  I guess they would be banned today.  Well, I cannot tell you how many times Mammaw let Larry and me spring that little snake right at her nose. 

I have no idea why Mammaw would not keep any more grandchildren for mommies to work, but our grandparents were super.  Pappaw taught Larry how to make ladders and other things with string as we sat listening to the radio one night while Mama and Daddy went to the movies.  Mammaw sang songs and gave us hot biscuits with newly churned butter.  Years later when Larry rode a real motor bike Pappaw hopped on the back and rode to the store with him … at least once.

Probably my favorite Larry story however,was the day Robert Sheets rode his pony up in our yard.  He had bought two little plastic birds for us, one red and one blue.  If you put the birds in water and blew the little slot on the bird’s wing the bird would sing through an opening around its plastic throat.  Larry wanted the red one and I took the blue one.  I think a little later Larry must have remembered that I could see the color red as he asked me if I would swap birds with him.