I Grew Up Brown County

“Papaw, what’s this scar for on your belly?”

“That’s where they cut my beans out.”

Each time he leaves his long-sleeved, button-up, always-flannel shirt undone bare-chested, we have this conversation. He’s standing by the window in the kitchen, munching on buttered toast, watching the birds flit and scatter around the birdfeeder out back. It’s chilly. Mornings with Papaw are somehow always chilly. It’s also the weekend. His mailman hours have him out the door by some ungodly, 6am hour every workday morning. But this day has to be a Saturday, or perhaps a Sunday since Nana is running a hot steamy shower in the big bathroom, getting ready for church.

The kitchen smells like coffee and ladybugs. So many ladybugs. At some point, someone trimmed a comic from the newspaper about the ‘bajillion’ ladybugs on the windowsill. Only, in the cartoon, the boy called out, “Dad! Look at the ladybugs!” but our copy is modified, scribbled out and replaced the first word with “Pap!” Our version.

Maybe it’s chilly because it’s fall. Leaves are scattered everywhere. The walnuts have all fallen out of the trees that line the drive, and they crunch and pop under the tires of The Jeep. The Jeep. That’s how we always refer to it. Nana had an accident in The Jeep once, and slid off the road in the ice. She hurt her shoulder and had to kick her way out of the passenger side door. For a long while, she called her shoulder her “broken wing.” She also ran over TJ in The Jeep. He wasn’t hurt too badly. She was backing up, still in the driveway, and she didn’t see him basking in the sunlight, lying on the gravel. He had a bit of a limp after that, but he was a tough dog.

My brother and I had our own version of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” that went something like, “Jingle Bells, Papaw Smells” and “The Jeep-mobile lost a wheel and Troy did ballet! Hey!” Clever children.

Chilly morning. Toast. Fallen leaves. This means Papaw will get out on the tractor today and scoop up all of the leaves on a huge tarp, dragging it (and us) along behind him. He makes the biggest leaf pile you’ve ever seen in the Creek. He just dumps them all there. And we just jump in them there.

When lunch time comes, we are a sweaty, dirty, covered in leaf debris and starving
todeath.

Nana brings us macaroni and cheese on Styrofoam plates, which is so bad for the environment but so tasty and creamy and cheesy and we don’t care. We drink purple Kool-Aid from Styrofoam cups too. Kool-Aid, shaken not stirred, in an old milk jug. Milk jugs hold every consumable liquid in the refrigerator. Papaw makes instant Nestle tea with 3 cups of sugar. You have to use warm water to mix it, though, or the sugar won’t dissolve, so he’s sure to pour the last of the old jug into a cup to keep in the refrigerator and sip on until the new jug gets cold.

She brings our lunch out to the club house, or the garage, or the trampoline, or the porch, or wherever we happen to sit still long enough to eat it. Papaw is on the mower now, or maybe still on the tractor, or working on a car in the driveway. She brings him a cup of cold, sweet tea. It may be chilly outside, but he’s always working up a sweat. And she’s always bringing him cups of cold, sweet tea.