Coconut Cakes, Alarm Clocks, and Pocket Knives                                       May 21, 2020

​

“How much longer?” I asked, leaning across the car seat looking between Mom and Pop.

 

We were going to see Ma and Pa, my grandparents on Pop’s side. 

 

It was like a long trip to me. We had left Arkadelphia headed for Lake City, Arkansas (Yes, the Lake City made famous in John Grisham’s novel A Painted House.) Jerry and I had played in the back seat for many miles. He was only two years old and I was six. There weren’t a lot of games we could play together. After he crawled over the back of the front seat into Mom’s lap he  quickly fell asleep. I watched miles of evergreen pine trees stoically march by without much interest. Some areas gave way to blotched cotton fields equally dull.

 

Mom had provided a coloring book and a carton of eight crayons which held my interest only briefly. My folks’ conversation was good for a limited couple of sentences.

 

“Does Pa have a job?” Mom asked.

 

“I don’t think so. He’s had a couple since we left for college. You know Ma doesn’t write much and since Pa can barely read, he never writes. Without even a grade school education, there’s not much he can do.” 

 

Then I was off in some vital experiment like seeing how wide a pencil would swing attached by a string to the dome light in the car.

 

I tried to remember our last visit with Ma (Roberta) and Pa (Baxter) Duffer in the little house in Lake City. They lived next to the bridge, almost under it, over the St. Francis River. The shotgun house was very small but that was okay because they had accumulated little to put into it. And like Grisham’s home, it needed painting.

 

With no skills and little education, Pa had floated from job to job. When Pop was small, Pa owned a team of dray horses. I enjoyed the stories about how they would work together, pulling a heavily loaded wagon of furniture or merchandise through the muddy unpaved streets in west Tennessee. It sounded exciting but hardly provided a steady income. People didn’t move everyday and stores didn’t need items delivered very often and when the team was needed the fee was small.

 

When Ma was a young girl she had fallen off the porch and broken her hip. Doctors were not easily available and could do little for an injured pelvis so she always walked with a limp, usually using one crutch to help her. As I tried to remember our last visit, I recalled how Ma enthusiastically welcomed Jerry and me with a hug at the same time, patting us on the back. Wait, those were too strong for pats. She was pounding us on the back. 

 

From as far back as I can remember, Ma and Pa looked old. Ma was a little above average height for a woman. Her long grey hair was usually twisted into a top knot. Her easy smile was pleasing. The wrinkles on her face and hands were evidence of her hard life.

 

Pa was small and did not have a cell of fat on him. Ma was actually taller than Pa which made him look even smaller. His balding head contributed to the appearance of age. His face almost always had a serious look with very few smiles. He enjoyed his chewin’ ‘bacca and it provided him with an identifying odor. 

 

Ma and Pa knew what poverty was. There had been times when they had to depend upon generous neighbors to simply survive. Pop was the eldest of three children, a sister and a handicapped brother. He contributed to the family finances early.

 

As a young teenager, he worked at a hotel. Each week he would hand his check to Ma as a major contribution to the family finances and survival. 

 

I tried again to remember something about them as the day wore on. The white coconut cake in the blue glass cake stand popped into my mind. It looked so good and it took forever for Ma to serve it on her mismatched saucers. It tasted great and that probably accounts for my liking coconuts today. 

 

They had moved often, most of the time following us. The rental houses were usually discovered by my dad and subsidised by him. Their limited furniture and goods could be moved in a pickup truck.  

 

While we were at Peach Orchard, they moved to Delaplane, the town about 5 miles away where Jerry and I went to school and Mom taught. Pa got a job with the school as custodian. The couple of years he worked there was the longest steady employment he had in his lifetime. Ma would do some washing and ironing that contributed a little.

 

They had very little they could give so we didn’t expect nor receive birthday and Christmas presents. 

 

But there was always the coconut cake in the cake stand. 

 

Since they lived a couple of blocks from our elementary school, if Mom had a conference or some delay, she would say, “You boys go to Ma’s and wait for me. Bob, take Jerry’s hand and hold on to him. You know how he likes to wander around. Go straight there. Okay?”

 

“Okay.” I replied. Taking his hand we headed down the street. Almost as soon as we were off the school property, I released Jerry’s hand so I could pick up some rocks to throw at birds. He found a stick to tap on the fences as we walked by. We stopped to watch a team of horses pulling a cotton wagon. We spotted a small bunny making its way from under the neighbors’ house to their delicious garden. A red headed woodpecker distracted us with its rhythmic pounding on the oak tree, seeking bugs. After a serpentine route, we arrived at that coconut cake. 

Sometimes, after pounding us on the backs, Ma would say, “Here’s a dime for you, Bob, and here’s one for you, Jerry. You can go to the store and get you an ice cream cone. Be careful and don’t lose your dimes” 

 

This was a big treat. My vanilla and Jerry’s chocolate was so good we didn’t think about the gift that had been given, we just wanted to eat it all before it melted and dripped onto our shirts. The ice cream was special but the cake was always there for our after school hunger.

 

It seems that Ma could never keep her cheap alarm clocks working. She knew my love for taking things apart so I would usually get the old broken one and start disassembling it as if I knew what I was doing. It is amazing how many parts a simple clock has. In my early attempts at repair I discovered the problem was too many gears. After my reassembling I often had one or two left over. Then I discovered that if you change the arrangement of the gears a little, you can speed the clock up very fast. My intent was to repair the clock though and I always tried to get it working and keeping the right time. Sometimes I was actually successful. However, by the time of our next visit, the clock needed repair again or the replacement clock had already quit working and was ready for my skillful repairs. 

​

Pa had trouble relating to us boys. He didn’t play games, or wrestle, or tease. Usually he was serious.  It wasn’t until I was about ten that he found a way to relate. 

 

I had bought my first pocket knife with my allowance. I was proud of it and showed it to Pa. He alway had a couple of pocket knives for cutting his ‘bacca so he showed a good interest. 

 

“Do you want to trade?” he asked.

 

“No.” I quickly replied. 

 

After opening my knife and checking the sharpness of the blades, he said, “I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you my three bladed knife for your new two bladed knife.”

 

It wasn’t even tempting for me.

 

On the next visit, he asked to see my knife. “I don’t have it. I lost it.” I said sadly. Like knives from most boys who hang upside down on trees, tumble through weeds, and do somersaults in the yard, it had disappeared.

 

“Here’s what I will do. I’ve got this old Case knife. I bought me a new one and I’ll give this one to you.”

 

With the excitement of winning the national lottery, I accepted his offer and rushed to show my new knife to Mom and Pop and Jerry.

 

On the next visit, the usual question came out, “Do you want to trade knives?” Pa inquired.

 

“Let’s see what you have.”

 

He didn’t offer his brand new knife, but an older one. It was better than the one he had given me, so after a careful examination of the two knives, I traded with him.

 

The pattern was set until I reached my early teen years. We traded knives. Sometimes I would end up with the one I had traded away a few visits before. Maybe part of the handle on mine had disappeared in a throwing contest and I would exchange for a better one. This bargaining was done in all seriousness with careful examination of each instrument.

 

Somewhere in the process, I had a realization. It wasn’t about knives. It was what we did together.

 

As my interest waned, Jerry’s waxed. Pa asked him the key question, “Do you want to trade knives?”

 

Jerry was hooked. Now the three of us got down to serious business. Now the finer points involved all three of us. Jerry and I never traded with each other but always with Pa.

 

My interest moved away from knives to other serious things and I began to drop out of the exchange. Jerry took up the slack. I would observe them go through the back and forth as I had, trading without any real value either way. As always, the participants were very happy with the results.

 

Maybe the value is not in the gift, but in the value of giving, like a cake, a clock, or a knife.

 

“Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. . . .” Acts 3:6

​

​