Growing Up Tall
Today was a West Tennessee summer day, warming quickly toward hot. My home was Martin, Tennessee, a town that was split down its middle once a day by the City of New Orleans passenger train. The population had just passed the 3,000 mark. The University of Tennessee Junior College (UTJC) campus was located on the west side of town. It was the biggest employer in Weakley County. My father, Paul Meek, was chief executive officer of the college.
This Saturday in 1941was the first day of summer school vacation, and I had just seen my first Tarzan movie at a special afternoon matinee. I started to dream of how to make these school vacation days into glory days. The action in the Tarzan movie stayed with me while I pedaled home from the movie. I lay down on our backyard grass, watching a few scraggly clouds floating slowly toward the west and starting to color red in the evening sky. Visions of the movie slipped around and through my mind. Little bits and pieces of a plan for summer fun randomly filtered through my imagination.
All at once my thoughts congealed. I would start a Tarzan Club and enroll members from kids living in the neighborhood. Naturally, I felt the most qualified to be their leader. My sister Anne would soon be five years old. She had proved gullible enough to believe in almost anything I told her. I planned to try my ideas out talking with her.
By this late afternoon hour, my mother usually called out "Supper!" in a voice loud enough to reach the boundaries of our large backyard. I had a brief tinge of resentment when the usual call for supper sounded in my mother's high-pitched voice from the kitchen, interrupting my rapidly growing visions. I sat up, but I was slow getting started toward the house. My imagination was red-hot, and I didn't want to shut it off. In a second call from the house, my mother's voice was a pitch higher than before. I realized it would be politic of me to go to the kitchen quickly and sit down with my family to eat. I felt that I could get right back in the groove, thinking about my as yet incomplete Tarzan Club plans. I would try my plans out on Anne after supper.
When I sat down at the table, the wrinkle on Mom's forehead smoothed out. I knew I had just barely beaten her ticking tolerance clock. Dad was finishing his meal and he reached for a tanned biscuit, cut it open, and buttered it with one swift stroke. He added damson plum preserves, peeking up to see if we had noticed his maneuver. His taste for sweets indicated that no meal was complete without such a treat.
* * * At the dinner table, we were often entertained by family stories. My father, Paul Meek, like my grandfather Felix Meek, was a great storyteller, and the stories frequently included my grandmother Charlotte Temperance, called Temp. When Dad started a farm story about our Grandfather Felix, who bred and trained mules on his farm, my brother John Paul, who was five years older than I, and I leaned forward with both elbows on the table to listen. It went like this: One morning Felix and my father were feeding the mules in the barnyard, and Felix was peering at a feed bucket as if he couldn't see clearly how full it was. Paul asked Felix if he was having trouble seeing the bucket's contents. Felix replied, "Have you that noticed I sight a gun left-handed, but I'm really right-handed while I'm working?
Paul said, "I have noticed this, but I thought it was just a habit."
Felix sighed, "I've been blind in my right eye ever since a childhood illness."
Paul pondered a moment and then said, "Did my mother ever know about your blind eye?"
Felix leaned close to his ear and whispered, "I never told her a word about it."
Paul asked, "Why have you kept the secret of your blind eye from Mother for over twenty-five years?"
Felix kept his voice almost to a whisper while telling Paul his secret reason. "When I was courting Temp, she had an ardent suitor from a nearby farm who was giving me heavy competition in my courting. I wasn't sure she had made up her mind yet whether or not to accept my marriage proposal. She was good-looking and energetic. I was afraid that if Temp knew about my blind eye, she might decide to prefer the other suitor."
"You were never going to tell her about your eye, were you?" Paul stated.
Felix whispered, "I have never told anyone in our family but you just now. Your mother accepted my proposal, and we were married soon after."
Dad would be chuckling every time he told this story, or any other. He had an extensive repertoire of stories designed to make us laugh and, sometimes, to teach us a lesson.
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