The Boaz Scorekeeper–Chapter 2

The Boaz Scorekeeper, written in 2017, is my second novel. I'll post it, a chapter a day, over the next few weeks.

I was born January 1, 1954 to Billy Joe and Mary Sue Tanner. Until I moved to Atlanta in 1973 for college, we lived on a 40-acre farm, in a two-story, Amish style house, three miles east of Boaz in the Arona community.  It was my grandfather’s birthplace. My grandparents, Frank and Elma Tanner, had lived there all their married life working the farm and caring for his widowed mother until her death in 1953.  My parents married and moved in with Gramp’s and Mama El in 1944 when Dad returned from Italy after the Army discovered he was only 16 when he enlisted.   

My parents were the hardest working folks I have ever known. My Dad was a weaver at Boaz Spinning Mills, working six nights a week from 10:30 p.m. until 6:30 a.m.  He then returned home to help my Mother complete the early morning farm work that she and I started before sunrise. By 9:30, Dad had finished his chores and breakfast and had gone upstairs to sleep for five or six hours before rejoining my Mother somewhere on our 40 acres to toil until 6:00 p.m., to then catch his ride to Boaz with neighbor and co-worker Calvin Conners.  

Mother, a city girl from Albertville, knew nothing of farming but had no choice but to learn fast.  After marrying, Mother spent a month with Gramp’s learning how to grow chickens, plant and maintain a garden, hoe cotton, and a dozen other tasks before his Diabetes cost him a leg and sent him to Gadsden to rehab for three months.  Although short on experience she was extremely long on patience and determination.  For as long as I can remember, the legend was that on Christmas Eve morning 1946 my Dad had come home tired and unusually depressed spouting threats that they should pack their bags and move to Detroit for him to make ‘good money’ at General Motors, and that he just couldn’t continue working two jobs for so little results.  The story goes that Mother rolled out her own threat. “If I ever again hear you say that you are quitting, that you can’t do something, then I’m leaving you for good.  Do you understand?”  Losing Mother would have destroyed Dad.  She was the light of his life. The story goes that Dad never breathed the ‘can’t’ word again. It was also the only time that I heard of him being depressed.    

Gramp’s had started growing chickens for Boaz Poultry Company in 1932.   The Depression was gaining momentum every day.  Gramp’s had two neighbors who were pleased with their eight-year-old decision to build two specially designed buildings that housed thousands of chickens from the time they were just a few days old.  He didn’t make the decision easily since it was the first time the home place had ever been mortgaged.  In the end, Gramp’s believed it really wasn’t much of a risk when you compared it to the only other option which was to starve to death or quit farming altogether. It turned out his decision was a good one.  The two poultry houses stabilized the farm, and later gave Mother a job and the ability to always be home when I was there.  

My first memory of Saturdays as a kid was when I was three years old, at least that’s what Mama El told me.  After breakfast, she took me to our garden and taught me how to pick peas.  She told me I could tell when to pull them from the vines by looking at the plumpness of the pod, their hardness, and by their color.  She made me watch her pick half a basket of Crowder peas before she let me pull one.  Then, she taught me about peppers and tomatoes, and returned to the house.  That Saturday, I picked two bushels of peas, and a basket full of tomatoes.  I left the peppers alone, thinking they were not quite ready but also thinking Mama El might be testing my judgment. Compared to most every other Saturday I remember, that first working Saturday was a vacation.  Normally, I was up and out by 4:30 a.m. helping Mother in the broiler houses, although I was often doing this by myself by age 10 if Mother had garden vegetables to can and freeze.  After this task was completed, I worked in our corn field, milked Molly our cow, castrated pigs if we had a new litter, cut, split, and stacked firewood, and mended fences.  If all this didn’t fill up my Saturday there was always something Mother and Mama El needed help with either in the garden or on the back porch shelling peas, snapping green beans, or cutting corn off the cob.  During cold weather, we always had four hogs to slaughter, butcher, and ready for grinding into sausage, or for salting-down in the big wooden meat box.  I was only six when Gramp’s let me use his Marlin lever-action 22 Rifle to kill a 400-pound hog just right to have it fall over on the big wood sled we used to scald off the hog’s hair.  Saturdays were always work days on the farm until I went off to college. 

Mother said she got her grit and determination from God.  I’m 91 now and have never seen a more God-fearing person.  I’ve been told that I was only three days old when I made my first appearance at Clear Creek Baptist Church.  This was Mother’s doing no doubt.  From then until I started attending First Baptist Church of Christ in Boaz when I was in the tenth grade, Mother made sure I was in church every Sunday morning and night, and every Wednesday night.  But, attendance was only the minimum requirement.  Mother read the Bible to me since I was born and made sure I had my daily devotion and prayer time for thirty minutes before I went to bed at night, although there were times that I forgot.  And, reading my Sunday School lesson was even more important than completing my homework which, according to Mother, I would never be able to choose to work and live away from the farm unless I completed every single assignment in full.  In math, she always demanded I write out every step of the calculation no matter how simple it was.  As for Dad, he was not against God, Christianity, and the Church but chose to remain relatively silent while letting Mother and Brother G be my spiritual guides.  

Brother G was, as I learned after I begin attending the big church in town, a Christian Fundamentalist.  He, without doubt, believed the Bible was written by God Himself and that obviously, there was no error in any verse throughout its sixty-six books.  To him, and me until many years later, God had been around a long time, forever in fact.  He created the world in six literal days and made man in His image.  Out of His love He sent His Son, born of a virgin, to die for the sins of all mankind, and to be resurrected forever to welcome believing sinners to His presence after death or His return in the clouds, whichever came first.  God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, were all the same and all different.  That was confusing, but I believed whatever Brother G told me.  I never questioned him because he spoke the truth, the truth that comes only from the Bible.  I read my Bible most every day, said my prayers, and lived as though the Holy Trinity was watching my every move and hearing my every thought.  Throughout my growing up years I loved God with all my heart.  That’s what I was taught to do.  It was real. God was real to me.  I believed He walked with me and talked with me.  Without Brother G and Mother, I would have drunk moonshine, smoked cigarettes, and got naked with girls.  Only by God’s grace, did I walk the high road to life and peace. 

No matter what road I walked throughout my life I always had fond memories of my growing-up Sunday afternoons.  Often Clear Creek Baptist Church had ‘dinner on the ground.’ After Brother G’s voice boomed his last and hoarse gasp, the ladies moved the towel-covered dishes filled with choice casseroles, vegetables, breads, pies, and cakes, from the small kitchen at the back of the church outdoors, laid tablecloths on the long concrete table that the men had built on the creek side of the church years before I was born, and spread a collection of food that would outrank the biggest Baptist churches in North Alabama.   

After eating two days worth of food, me and every boy and girl out of diapers would take to the grass-barren field beyond the creek to play whatever sport was in season.  From baseball to football to basketball. And, starting in 1959, to soccer, after a family of Hispanics moved in the old Elkins’ home place.  Sometimes we played until it was time to go back inside for Training Union with Sister G, Brother G’s wife.  Other than the absolute minimum chores that had to be done, Sundays were for worshiping God and relaxing.  I dearly loved Sundays.