2002-01-31 - 9:53 p.m.
The thing about growing up in the south, was that you didn't really think about the fact that you were growing up in the south. It was just. You know. Where you lived. And that was pretty much all there was too it.
We watched tv, but we didn't think much about the fact that we didn't talk like they did. That's just how people on tv talked. Kind of flat when you thought about. But the thing about growing up in the south was that we didn't think much about it.
I got a bb gun when I was eight and a shotgun on my 12th birthday. I had long wild hair then because my father had a crush on Crystal Gale. She had an album out at the time where she was standing nearly on her hair. And the cover was pink and she had on a pink, flowing outfit thing. That I think was actually a pants suit except for the fact that I can't imagine Crystal Gayle would wear a pants suit. There were roses at her feet and my daddy every night or a lot of nights at least would brush my hair and tell me it was beautiful like Crystal Gayle's.
And that was about the only time my hair got brushed then because I'd forget about it and put it in a pony tail or tuck it behind my ears and tangles would build up in it all day till my daddy thought to brush it out at night.
We have this picture of my sister and me standing outside the pickup truck. We had our hands on one hip and turned around like we were movie stars or something looking into the camera. You can't tell it from the picture, but I know that was taken just outside of my grandmother's porch in far western Tennessee.
You can't tell it either by the way that photo was taken, but I almost know for a fact that we had been up there shooting guns that day.
We'd do that sometimes. When we didn't go hunting at home, we'd take the guns with us to Tennessee and shoot things off the fence there.
My grandmother had what was left of a farm and a fairly good sized back yard that wast mostly a field anyway. She had a lot of poplar trees and her water was from her well and you could always taste it. Her house slanted sometimes when you weren't looking and you tended to stay in the front room with the picture of Jesus and the heater where it was warm around the dark wood paneling.
I know you can't tell it from that picture. But I can tell it from the fact of my long, blonde, 12-year-old's hair whipping around and already mostly tangled around the wind and the day and being all the time in my daddy's eye. You can't even see the guns in that photo of us standing next to my daddy's pick-up truck outside of my grandmother's front porch.
But I can tell from my hair. That we had been shooting guns that day.
The thing about growing up in the south, was that you didn't really think about the fact that you were growing up in the south. It was just. You know. Where you lived. And that was pretty much all there was too it.
And sometimes. You can tell. Just from a girl's hair. That she's the apple of her daddy's eye. And Crystal Gale is the one to be, surrounded by pink and rose petals and country music.
And sometimes you can tell just from looking at a girl's long hair that's gone wild in the day. Sometimes you can just tell that from time to time. That girl's been known at age of 12. To shoot things off her grandmother's fence post, with her own shotgun.
