When I was about four years old, soon after Daddy died and we went to live with Papa and Grandma (Ross & Jessie Joines), I began to form good and happy memories of Papa Joines.

He looked like such a big man to me then. I look at old pictures of him today and realize that he was actually not very tall or big at all. I have the chair that he used to sit in at the head of the antique dining room table. Hazel got that beautiful table. Here is a photo of the chair though.

It is so fragile and small I am filled with wonder that Papa actually sat in it. I wouldn’t sit in it or allow anyone else to. Why do people keep getting bigger generation after generation!

I would always sit in a chair beside Papa at the head of the table. When we had fired chicken Darrell and Peggy got the chicken legs but I got the gizzard. This is true. Papa would act like I was the most blessed and luckiest person in the world to get that gizzard. He would make a big deal out it as he used his fork to retrieve it from the chicken platter and put in onto my plate. Boy look at that. He would cut it up for me, not an easy task considering the toughness of chicken gizzards. Darrell and Peggy quietly ate their chicken legs. I was the center of attention and Papa beamed with pride as I downed that gizzard with gusto and expressed my happiness at my good fortune and its unique flavor.

Papa had his favorite glass and it had a special place in the cabinet.  He would always use it to get a drink of water and Grandma would always serve him his milk in it at mealtime.  He often would add cornbread to the milk either at mealtime or for a snack.

I remember Papa taking me out to the car for a trip to town. He would sit there before starting the old car and point is finger at me. He would tell me “you know why I’m taking you to town”. He would wrinkle his face in mock disgust, “Peggy she’s too little, and Darrell, (shakes his head) he’s too big, but you, you are just right.” Satisfied that he had made a brilliant assessment of the situation and being very pleased with himself we would set off.

Off to town we would go, he would put the car in neutral to save gas and let it coast down the driveway. He’d park somewhere in town near to Sloan and Lewis Hardware Store and leave to to bake in the hot summer sun. I’d sit there for what seemed like hours and wait for him. I’m sure he was telling wild stories to the men that gathered in Sloan and Lewis’ and playing practical jokes on them and kidding as he always did. Finally I would see him coming down the sidewalk. Once he was carrying a bundle of rope but he never explained what it was for when he got into the car.

He once picked Peggy up from school and took her to town.  She was probably in the first grade.  He left her in the car until he got off work around 5:00.  All that time from 3:00 until 5:00, Mother never knew where she was.

Anyway, after we got home Papa got Theodore, Uncle Ed Brakebill and any other men he could round up and had them put a long iron pipe, probably a sewer pipe or something, from one apple tree in the back yard to the other one near by. From that the Uncles fastened the rope and we had the biggest, est swing anywhere in the county. We could swing high into the branches of the apple trees, which had those big yellow sweet tasting apples on them. We’d swing and play like wild savages and finally when the rope was nearly destroyed we’d turn it into our Tarzan jungle vine and play for hours out under the trees where we had killed all the grass and it was dusty as sand and a muddy swamp when it rained.

Papa one time got a bunch of chairs and set them under the apple trees. He had bought balloons and he made us run from chair to chair and sit on them til they burst like he had seen on Pinky Lee. We didn’t have a tv and would go over to the neighbors, D. C. Duckett’s family, the sweetest people in the world, and watch Pinky Lee on their tv.

I used to cut Papa’s hair after he stopped going to the barbershop.  I think I bought the razor kit I used from Stickley’s Drug Store.  It had all sorts of attachments for different styles of hair.  I had no idea what I was doing.   But evidently I used the right attachment and I would cut his hair for him and he liked it and it did look as good as it did when he went to the barber shop.  He would sit on the comode in the bathroom and I would get the kit out of the utility cabinet and cut his hair.  When I viewed his body at the funeral home I realized they had parted his hair on the wrong side.

After he died, Grandma gave the kit to Hazel without asking me. Hazel told me she was going to take it and they let me know that was that, so they took it.

I also shaved the back of his neck for him. He would shave his face and then call me to shave his neck.  He taught me which direction to use the razor.  He also had me cut his toenails.   I used a single razor blade!  He would lie on the sofa and prop his feet onto the armrest and I would cut them.  Of all the times I did this for him I only hurt him one time.

I remember that Ira “Doc” Henry, our neighbor, who was a good carpenter and wood worker, carved a horse’s head for Jimmy Henry to have a stick horse.  Jimmy is his grandson  and also our close neighbor at the time, living in the house that Doc built for them.   So Papa made me a stick horse.  Jimmy’s was painted solid grey.  Papa sawed the head off one of our old unused rocking horses so my horse’s head was stunningly beautiful, mostly white with colored accents.  Papa put a small rope in it and nailed it to a stick.  Honestly that was the greatest stick horse ever.  We rode for miles and miles and often I would go off by myself and play with that stick horse when all the neighborhood kids were not playing cowboys and Indians.  I really wish I had that stick horse today.  I feel sorry for kids whose parents buy them puny ugly stick horses from the Walmart.

Once for his birthday I gave Papa a little tiny gag box.  It was a little plastic thing, green and White and on the lid it said “I can’t buy you a big Cadillac so I got you this little Lincoln”.  Inside it had a Lincoln Penney.  When I graduated Papa gave that back to me with 20 dollars inside.  I don’t know if he ever got any of the other grand kids graduation gifts or not.

I teased him one Christmas and asked what he was going to give us for Christmas.  Of course he had so many kids and grand kids that he didn’t really get anybody anything.  But after I teased him, he went off to Journell’s Jewlery in town and bought all of us girls bracelets.  I still have mine and it is precious to me.  I got it into my head at one time to call Papa “Grandpa” and I did that for a long time but I was the only one who did because everybody in town called him Papa.

When I lived in Chattanooga, I shopped one Christmas for him, I think it was at Millers, and not knowing what to get him, I stumbled upon a table of cardigan sweaters and bought him one.  He opened it on Christmas and I was surprised at how proud he was of it.  He put it on and it fit perfectly and he buttoned it from the bottom and always wore it.  After he died I kept it in a plastic box and when I would open the lid I could smell his cigarette smoke and it reminded me of him.

One time he let me drive his car, a stick shift, in the drive way.  The car jumped forward and I braked, it leap forward again and I braked and finally it erked forward and I stopped.  Papa put it in park and turned off the ignition and looked at me.  Now that’s the last time you will ever drive my car.  He once left it in front of the house out of gear and it rolled down into the neighbor’s yard.  He took a lot of kidding for that and although he would tease everyone else he didn’t take teasing too well.  He once stopped to give Frankie Ray Henry a ride home and he asked Frankie, You want a ride, Frankie started to get into the car and Papa told him, get a mule.  Frankie didn’t see the humor.

One morning I got up early and it had snowed the previous night.  Everything was covered in a few inches of snow and I thought to myself, what if Papa goes out for the morning paper, the now defunct Knoxville Journal, and he slips and falls.  I’ll go get the paper for him.  I went out the door and everything was so beautiful.  Big, huge icicles hung from the roof which had no gutters.  I was looking all around at how pretty everything was as I took the first step off the porch.  The steps were covered in black ice and I didn’t stop til I was at the bottom sitting on the side walk.  I wonder now what would have happened if I hadn’t gone out that morning.  I was young and my bones not as breakable as Papa’s.  But I got the paper, a paper that was vastly superior to the evening paper, the Knoxville News Sentinel, which is probably why its not around any longer.Once when all of the grand kids were playing in the front yard, someone ran into The Thorn Bush.  There was what looked to me like a lime tree in the front yard by the hedge that surrounded the property.  It was one solid color of green, its branches, its leaves and its fruit.  It had tiny leaves on it but huge, big long thorns and it would be covered in what looked like limes although I don’t recall that anyone ever tried to taste them.  One of the kids ran into that tree and at once Papa decided to cut it down and he did.

After Papa bought the little store he would come home everyday for dinner and Grandma would go down there and keep the store for him. We often went with her and you had to step pretty quick on the asphalt if you were barefoot. Papa had a big long bench and chairs around the store and everyone would come in and sit for a spell. Grandma loved to chat up everybody who came into the store and find out all the gossip but she had no idea how to make change. When people paid for their bread or bologna and cheese sandwiches, RC Colas and moon pies, she would pick random coins from the cash register drawer and she would move her hands up and down and back and forth as if by magic she was hypnotizing everyone to not notice if the change was correct or not, and it worked because we watched as if hypnotized but nobody ever said a word about what change she gave them. God only knows how much of Papa’s hard earned money she gave away.

 

Meantime, Papa, blissfully unaware of what was happening at the store, would eat dinner, watch tv and take a nap. When I would lay out of school I’d hide from him. One time when Mr McDowell, the school principal, was signing my absentee slip that Mother had to sign when we were absent, he told me, “I think you and Darrell try to see who can miss school the most.”

Papa had a huge tomato plant every summer that grew up the side of the store. It was always full of tomatoes and the people who lived around there would steal half of them. At the house Papa would make pretty gardens and I remember on hot summer days sitting between the rows of tomatoes and eating them. They were so good.

Papa had fox hounds and every chance he got he would go fox hunting. Doug Millsaps got his beautiful, amazing fox horn. For me the idea of fox hunting brings memories of our British history and the excitement of the fox hunt. Except for hillbillies fox hunting involves sitting around a fire at night and listening for the dogs songs. Including bragging rights if your dog gets the scent first.

 

I remember one of Daddy’s dogs that Papa got. His name was White Eye. One summer day a black man was out in the yard and Papa had White Eye on a chain and the Black man took him. I heard him ask Papa, “what would you take for that dog”, indicating my little brown rat terrier, Charlie, who was given to me by my cousin Nancy Davis. Papa told him, “no that dog’s not for sale”.

Papa made the neatest little dog house for Charlie.  It wasn’t made from plywood either.  It was made from beautiful blond boards although I do not know what kind of wood but he smoothed the boards out so pretty.  It was the prettiest design and the best dog house I have ever seen.  I would give anything to have it today but I don’t know what ever happened to it.

White Eye was old when Papa finally let him go but I still remember him and it hurt when Papa got rid of him. After that Papa got beagles. I remember going up to the dog lot and running the entire length of it and the beagles on the other side of the fence in hot pursuit. I don’t remember Papa doing much rabbit hunting and eventually he got rid of the beagles too.

We always had chickens and every Saturday Grandma would go out and pick up some hapless chicken and ring its neck. I am still haunted by the images. But she would put the dead chicken in scalding hot water and pick the feathers in the yard, she’d take it into the kitchen and cut it up on the kitchen cabinet for Sunday fried chicken. Every other day of the week we had beans and cornbread and for variety every now and then we’d have cabbage and cornbread. But it was fired chicken for Sunday. After cutting it up she would wipe off the cabinet with a rag and then light it on fire with kerosene. I suppose that is how the old people would guard against the deadly bacteria left by the uncooked meat. Its a wonder she didn’t set the house on fire but she was unfazed.

Papa used to fight his roosters. I remember seeing spurs around his garage/workshop and scales to weigh the roosters and counter weights. One time Papa went all the way to Galveston, Texas to a big rooster fight. Such things used to be more common and I suppose they might have even been legal. One day a black man showed up and Papa took some money and the man took Papa’s scales. But the black guy never took the weights so one day I went out to the garage and found them. Papa sat on the back porch and watched me take them into the house but he didn’t care. Darrell has them today.

 

I was always taking in any critter that would show up. I’d take it in and feed it. Mother said that if an elephant showed up in the yard I’d take it in. So once there was this sweet little black and white tom cat and for no reason at all Papa decided he wanted rid of it. He took a club and beat it senseless and then took it off somewhere. One day I heard him cussing and I looked out the window and there was that little tom cat.

I remember another time when some old cat had kittens in the garage. One morning Papa hollered at me and took me out to the garage. He pointed to the old cat and told me that she kept putting her kittens into his car’s front seat. He said I got in there and felt like I was sitting on something and it was those kittens. He pointed that finger at me, everybody knew that was a dangerous sign. “Now if I come out here in the morning and those kittens are in there….”

After Papa got up in age he started to like the cats. He would sit for hours in the sun by the garage or on the back porch and eventually the cats started to jump into his lap and that seemed to delight him. I guess he mellowed a lot. Every time his old friends would come visit him he would bore them with talk about the cats. I remember a lot of his visitors were black. It teed me off if they made fun of him and his cats.

Papa used to play baseball and he was a pitcher.  I remember seeing trucks, bigger than pickups but I don’t know what they are called.  They look like flat bed trucks I guess.  But they were filled with blacks in baseball uniforms who came to play White teams.  When I was little we kids would play ball up on what we called the garden.  I had a softball which I kept but which eventually dry rotted a few short years ago.  And I had the perfect baseball bat that just fit me.  One day when we kids were playing, Papa took me aside and showed me how to hold the bat.  Mother gave my pretty, treasured bat to Jonathan.   You can follow the link in the comments section for more details about this.

Papa and Grandma’s house was an Arts and Crafts style and the ceilings were really high.  In the dining room the ceiling had hooks where Grandma could hang quilting frames.  It was in that dining room that Papa would set up the Christmas tree.  Every year at Christmas Papa would go get us a tree.  Every single year as he started out the door Grandma would say to him, “Now Ross don’t get a big tree”.  Papa would come home every time with a tree that had to be cut at both ends so it wouldn’t bend over from touching the ceiling.  They were big, full, pretty, wonderful smelling cedar trees.    Then Mother would spend hours decorating them.  They were always the prettiest trees anywhere.  I’m glad that Papa never listened to Grandma.  I’ll never forget his Christmas trees ever.

One day Papa’s older brother, Uncle Fred, came to the house and tried to get Papa to go to the doctor because he was passing blood but Papa wouldn’t go. He woke me up before daylight one morning and he was in great pain. Grandma called Ted and Ted called a doctor who came to the house. Papa was finally taken to Sweetwater Hospital where he died. He took care of us after Daddy died and was the only Father we knew.

Strangely, Mr Ralph Cook, our neighbor, died at about the same time as Papa. His wife, Nona Cook, who died at 103 years old, told me at the time, we won’t see Papa sitting by the garage in the sun any more.