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Introduction - Lessons Learned on Bullrun Road
Lessons Learned on Bull Run Road shares the values three little girls, my sisters and I, learned while growing up along the Mississippi River. In the last few years, many stories of the Louisiana Delta have found their way into the major newspapers. They've all told sad tales of economic woe and racial tension in an area of the country the media has called the poorest place in America. I know that Delta, but it's not mine. In Lessons Learned on Bull Run Road, I hope you'll find the Delta that I love.
Everyone today is talking about the redefining of America's families. Lessons Learned on Bull Run Road will take you to a place where family is defined amidst a tapestry of work and play. It's true-not everyone grew up in a happy family. These readers are invited to let the Bull Run Road gang, along with their parents, cousins, grandparents and friends fill the empty holes in their hearts-if only for a time. For everyone else who had a normal childhood, in a normal family, in an average town, I would hope that after reading this book they'd discover that normal is quite wonderful after all. Time is a thief that often steals our past. If the stories told here could bring smiles of recollection, if they could sharpen faded memories and recapture feelings long forgotten, my vision for Lessons Learned on Bull Run Road will be realized.
LESSON NUMBER ONE
"Play Now or Pay Later"
Mama taught us to appreciate people's differences…
Poor Mama, she exhausted herself trying to smooth the rough edges of her little girls. Mama was a true "Southern lady", a natural beauty born the second of five to a Baptist preacher in Natchez, Mississippi. Her innate grace helped make her a basketball star; her black hair and bright wide smile topped a tall slender frame and earned her the hometown title of "Miss Forestry Queen."
Mama's marriage to her high school sweetheart ended shortly after she brought me, her third daughter, home from the hospital. Biological Dad was more interested in cards and liquor than diapers and bottles. Mama was raising three little girls on a clerk's salary, when a young man she'd known as a child came to town and dropped by to pay her family a visit. It'd been years since he and Mama had seen one another. By this time Future Papa was fresh out of the service and farming a plot of land in Alsatia, Louisiana. For the next year or more he made the two-hour trip to court Mama. My sisters and I were their ever-present chaperones. I was two, Rhonda was three and Cyndie was five. We rode in the back seat of Future Papa's car and sang along with Mama to Conway Twitty's new hit song, "Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man."
It wasn't long before Papa married us, taking his prize bride and her tiny wedding party to the Delta to live on Bull Run Road. He built her a little white brick home with 900 square feet. She kept his castle spotless and worked beside him in the fields.
Mama looked as much a lady driving Papa's bean truck and grain cart during the day, as she did on the piano bench at Melbourne Baptist Church--twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday night. Manners were important to Mama; a theme most of her lectures centered on, as she constantly schooled us in the things little ladies did and did not do. Unfortunately for Mama, my sisters and I had a hard time differentiating between the two.
Mama should've had at least one little girl who was proper--someone who liked to dress up and play tea party. Instead, she got Cyndie, Rhonda, and Shellie, (that's me there on the end), three tomboys. Rhonda might've came the closest, everyone did call her Pretty Woman, but being the middle child and painfully shy, she didn't stand a chance--Cyndie and I took her down with us. Most of our capers were birthed in Cyndie's fertile mind, with me badgering Rhonda into being our unwilling accomplice.
When Mama wasn't cleaning house, cooking a big meal, or helping Papa in the field, she liked to have a lady friend over for coffee. Life on Bull Run Road was pretty isolated with only one other house for miles, and our cousin Jimmy Ray lived there. But, we'll get back to Jimmy later.
Our job was to play with the visiting lady's children. Most of the time we only had each other to play with, so Mama thought it should be a real treat to have new friends. My sisters and I thought our club was complete; and for the most part we considered these intruders weenies, babies, girly-girls.
One summer day an old friend of Mama's came to visit. Cyndie, and Rhonda and I eyed her daughter warily as she emerged from the car. Our assessment paused at her feet. One of our major criteria was the absence or presence of shoes. Unless it was the dead of winter we went barefoot, and we were suspicious of those that didn't. Our circle had a hierarchy, and those with the toughest soles were accorded the most respect. We smiled sweetly until the grownups went indoors and then we hit Visiting Girly-Girl with a little Bull Run Road initiation.
If she'd walk the side rails of the bridge by our house, we'd consider playing with her--an honorable test in our estimation. This bridge was probably ten to fifteen feet high, and walking its rails never gave us a moment's pause. Many of our days were spent there. In the spring, if the drainage ditch below was full of water, the rail might be our tight rope and we the daring circus performers. During the summer months, when the bed was dry and cracked and strewn with the fragile, pinkish-white skeletons of crawdads that had escaped my sisters and me in the spring, it turned into our fort. We slid beneath the rails, and perched on the sloping sides of the ditch, hiding from the marauding Indians. Cyndie could describe those vicious red natives with their sharp knives and penchant for blond hair in such detail that Rhonda, the only fair head in our fort, would cry to go home, and I'd end up with nightmares.
Stoically, my sisters and I led our potential playmate to the site of her evaluation. Upon our arrival Cyndie instructed me to assume my position on the bridge's rail and demonstrate the initiation requirement. Poor Mama! Just as we expected, our guest refused and went tattling to her mother, like the baby we knew she was. Visitor Lady, and her crying girly-girl on one side of the table, and we three lined up like wooden soldiers on the other. We felt totally justified, but you couldn't miss the message in Mama's eyes: "Play now or pay later."
Mama excused herself and took us to the back room. She explained that there were many different kinds of people in the world and we better find a way to get along with the ones that weren't just like us. She said there was something you could learn from everyone you met and something about most of them that you could enjoy, if you gave him or her the chance. Then she glanced towards Papa's belt on the dresser and smiled encouragingly. We decided then and there to give Visiting Girly-Girl another chance.
All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the motives. Proverbs 16:2
Review - Brenda Ramsbacher, Readers iBook Review http://ibooktime.com
"Love thy neighbor. Treat others nicely. Learn from the elderly. Obey your parents.
These are just a few of the many themes and lessons shared in this telling memoir. Reaching beyond current stories of the Louisiana Delta, Mrs. Tomlinson digs into her past and shares memories to treasure. Featuring twenty lessons and a selection of recipes from the Melbourne Community, Lessons Learned on Bull Run Road is a book to be treasured for a lifetime of learning. A short read, this novel can be read in a day but will be returned to again and again."
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