Journal of a Living Lady #57
Hardly a day goes by that somebody doesn’t spot me and tell me they enjoy reading this column. I could get the big head I guess, but it amazes me that other people are so very interested in the details of my life, past, present, and future. You probably won’t believe this, but until I started writing columns, I was pretty much a reserved person. Ask Buddy. He will vouch for my distaste of long-winded chitchat. All I want is the bottom line.
Buddy more than makes up for my personal distain of gabbiness. If you call and the line is busy, you can lay odds that it is Buddy on the phone and not me. And he is not talking to women usually. It is Bill, Bob, Broward, Clay, Don, Ed, Haydn, Howard, Jack, Mark, Max, Roy, Terry, and Thomas. This is like the Oscar speeches. If I left somebody out, forgive me. I can think of only so many names. Whoever stereotyped women as busybodies forever on the phone hasn’t met my man. Buddy can out-talk the most long-winded woman.
We have some free minutes on our phone calling plan. I analyzed the bill last month. Ninety-eight percent of the free time spent talking was his. I claim the other two percent. My conversations normally go like this: “How are you?” “Wanta go to lunch?” Meet you at the eating place at noon. Bye.”
I know. Maybe if I talked with Buddy more, he would be on the phone less. But I have been married to this guy for nearly 36 years. I know all his stories. Heard them each at least a dozen times. I can even fill in his senior moment blanks. I quite often do. When he can’t remember a friend’s name from a Navy ship he was on nearly fifty years ago, it is still in my short-term memory from yesterday.
Buddy likes to talk about the past. He grew up in Mississippi. The family moved umpteen times and Buddy and his brother had to change schools continually. He hated that because he never felt he got a decent education. He graduated in a class of 12 and jokes that he was at the bottom of his class.
Like many in that poverty-ridden era, Buddy’s father had difficulty finding and keeping work. Mr. Kelly was employed for a while at a penitentiary. Buddy has lots of interesting childhood tales about Parchman. Prison today is nothing like it was back then.
After I met Buddy, and our courtship was looking serious, he took me back to the last family home in a little town called Boyle. I wasn’t prepared for the reality of his up-bringing. The clapboard home consisted of a small kitchen attached to a tiny living room where his older brother slept on the couch. There was one bedroom where Buddy and his parents slept which later included the addition of a baby sister. This family of five all lived and survived in this 600 square feet of space for years. Buddy’s father died many years ago, but his mother still lives with his sister and is a loveable, spunky 98-year-old matriarch.
I would ask Buddy to supply more details of his life, but he is on the telephone and the deadline for this column is tomorrow. Call any of his friends and I feel sure they can tell you anything else you might like to know.
nancyk@alltel.net https://www.angelfire.com/bc/nancykelly
