“And if you come back with one that’s too short, I’ll pick another switch myself and your whipping will be much worse,” she’d warn. Ida had to be tough because Bird (who family lore says was a softy) left all the child rearing to her.
She believed in natural consequences, too. My Uncle Warren learned that one summer when he snuck into the woods at the edge of the tobacco field to doze while the rest of the family labored in their cash crop. When the workday ended, everyone went into the house to a table sagging with Ida’s country ham, sliced tomatoes, green beans, and buttermilk biscuits. Then they retired to the front room to listen to the radio and finally went to bed. Twelve-year-old Warren woke up in the woods just before 10:00 p.m. and ran almost a mile to the house, which was locked up tight. He knew better than to wake his parents and slept on the porch.
“I never snuck away from the field again,” he told me once. “Mamma didn’t mess around.”
Of all our father’s childhood stories, my sister, Melinda, and I loved the story of the ice cream truck the most. The driver, who was going way too fast for the plank bridge that crossed the creek below the Snow farm, lost control and went right into the water. My father and his siblings, nieces, and nephews raced to the creek when they heard the crash and thought they had entered an alternate universe. The driver, unhurt but cursing up a storm, stood in two feet of water surrounded by at least a hundred drums of ice cream that had rolled out the back of the truck when the doors flew open on impact.
“Have it. Just have all of it,” he angrily urged the crowd of kids. “It’s all gonna melt before we get another truck in here.” There were so many more flavors than the vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate that Bird had sold at the store. My dad ate almost a full gallon of pistachio by himself. Ida, who didn’t tell them no, enjoyed chocolate chip.
The story that always made my sister and me cry was the one my father said meant the most to him.
When he was eight years old, he spent Christmas Eve with his oldest brother, Winfield, because Daddy was best friends with Winfield’s daughter Cecil. She was his niece though she was a year older. When the sun broke on Christmas morning, Winfield’s children rushed into the living room to find their stockings filled with candy and apples and a few presents wrapped in red paper, but there wasn’t a thing for my dad.
“Santa Claus didn’t know you were sleeping here so he left presents at your own house,” Winfield explained to his disappointed youngest brother. By the time they showed up at the five-bedroom farmhouse it was close to noon and more than thirty family members were already there. The men and boys talked on the wide front porch in the unseasonably warm December weather while the women and girls worked in the kitchen under Ida’s direction. My dad rushed to the living room where no stocking hung by the fireplace and no presents awaited him under the tree.
“Did Santa come for me?” he asked his mom in the midst of the crowded kitchen. She paused for a quick second and then sank into a ladder-back chair at the kitchen table.
“Didn’t he leave you something at Winfield’s?” she asked.
“No. Winfield said he’d come here.”
Ida, who already had silver hair by age fifty-two, took my father in her arms and hugged him tightly as tears streamed down her tan face. He had never seen her cry before. It was at that moment he realized the myth of Santa Claus was truly a myth, but he also marked that Christmas as the day he knew how much his mother loved him.
Almost two decades later, after four sons and four grandsons had gone to World War II and returned unscathed, Ida Victoria went to the beauty shop for the first time and bought a suit made of pale blue silk spotted with white dogwood blossoms. Aunt Zetta drove her to Chapel Hill, and she watched her youngest son become the first college graduate in the family.
A few years ago, my former husband and I were at a supper club down the street, lingering until almost midnight as we waited for an April rainstorm to pass before walking home. I received a text from my son Wade:
“going to go to sleep now. all packed. can we go by the bank on the way to the airport tomorrow so I can get my spending money?”
I jumped out of my seat and asked our host to drive us home.
“I totally forgot Wade is going on the eighth-grade class trip to Washington, D.C., tomorrow, and we have to leave for the airport at 5:00 a.m.”
The women around the table let out collective gasps.
“Oh no, Katherine,” my friend Hope said. “Have you packed his suitcase?”
“No. I’ve done nothing. Mom-of-the-Year here. I thought about it on Friday, but we had all weekend and then I totally forgot.”
We got home in less than five minutes, and I tiptoed into Wade’s room.
“Hey. I haven’t helped you pack. I’d rather do it now than in the morning, so I’m going to have to turn on the light. I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? I packed myself. It’s not a big deal,” he said sleepily. “But if you want to feel less guilty you can scratch my back.”
I scratched with one hand and went through his suitcase with the other. He had everything he needed, even the blazer and loafers for one formal dinner and a play.
Ida would have been proud of her youngest great-grandson.
14. Ice, Elevate, and Stay Off of It
Perhaps I left my suitcase in the bathroom at Tampa International Airport on the way to Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, because I was so journey proud.
My parents’ longtime friend Sally O’Keefe introduced us to the phrase “journey proud” in the 1960s. Her husband was my dad’s editor at the Raleigh Times, and they all traveled together from time to time.
“I’m just so journey proud I couldn’t sleep last night,” Sally would say when they headed off to a newspaper convention at the Blockade Runner in Wilmington, the Carolina Hotel in Pinehurst, or the Sheraton in Washington, D.C. We adopted the phrase and used it whenever we were excited and a little overwhelmed about impending travel.
Decades later, I’d hear a friend from Charlotte and another from Greenville, Alabama, talk about being journey proud and realized that it wasn’t just Sally O’Keefe’s term, but an actual colloquialism. An online reference defines journey proud as “being greatly excited about a journey.”
If ever there was a time to be journey proud, it was when I was sitting on a plane about to take off for Washington, D.C., to see the inauguration of our first African American president.
I was traveling solo for the first time in a while. Adam, my husband at the time and the Tampa Bay Times political editor, was already in our nation’s capital covering the impending transition of power and a babysitter was home with our three children. I headed out with just my overstuffed carry-on suitcase, a Vanity Fair, and me. When the flight attendant asked passengers to make sure bags were securely stowed under the seat in front of us or in the overhead storage bin, I wanted to throw up. I immediately realized I had no bag to stow because I’d left it in the airport bathroom.
“Can you hold the plane while I run and get it?” I asked the flight attendant.
“We have to close the door in three minutes. We won’t wait.”
“But I’m checked in. I’m standing here telling you I’ll be right back.”
“We can’t wait for you. I’m sorry. It’s up to you if you want to deplane.”
I had no time go all Ben-Stiller-from-Meet-the-Parents on her and made a split-second decision to go for it. I bolted off the plane, ran past six gates to the bathroom, and there sat my olive-green bag right where I’d left it outside the last stall on the right.
I grabbed it and raced back to the gate in my gray suede wedge-heel boots, picking up speed as I ran down the bridge to the plane. Too much speed, apparently. I totally busted and dragged the suitcase over my left foot as I fell.
A flight attendant came rushing out and helped me hobble onto the plane. He stowed my bag for me while I took the last seat available in the middle of the third row, reassuring alarmed passe
ngers who had heard my tumble that I was okay and not drunk.
Flight attendants cajoled me with bags of ice, insurance waivers, and incident reports to sign throughout the flight.
I was in so much pain when I landed that I had to stop every few feet and sit down. But I soldiered on, got through the airport, and took a cab to my friend Margaret’s house in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
“Katherine! Look at it,” she said when I peeled off my sock to reveal a giant purple, prize-winning eggplant at the state fair. “Wait. Don’t look at it,” she added.
I spent the afternoon lying on Margaret’s living room sofa, talking, laughing, and drinking wine with my foot encased in bags of frozen vegetables. “Time to rotate the crop,” she’d say when the bags of edamame started to thaw and were replaced with frozen peas.
By late afternoon, I was sure my foot was much better because it barely hurt anymore, but when I tried to walk on it, it couldn’t bear my weight. I leaned against Margaret and we made it to her car so she could drive me down the road to another friend’s home where Adam and I were spending the night.
Margaret helped me limp into the house and told our hosts, Joe and Laura, that she was coming inside just long enough for the unveiling.
“Unveiling of what?” Adam asked.
“Of this,” I said, pulling my pant leg up so they could see what used to be my ankle and foot.
“Oh my God,” Laura gasped, leaning down to look closer and then turning her head in horror.
“What happened?” Joe asked.
“You can’t go to the inauguration with that,” Adam declared. “You’re going to be walking all day.”
“It’s not like I’m in the parade. I’ll be fine,” I said as I took another dose of Advil.
I spent the rest of the evening chugging ibuprofen and elevating and icing my injury. Sally the bull terrier was allowed on the sofa for the first time in her life so she could lie next to me for comfort and also to act as a shield, hiding the purple, black, and teal hues of my foot from view.
When the alarm went off the next morning at 4:00 a.m., it was an inauguration miracle. I could distinguish my foot from my ankle. Yellow had joined the rainbow of pain, but the swelling was down. I managed to get my Nike on even though I couldn’t lace it.
“Are you sure about this?” Adam asked. “It’s going to be a ton of walking.”
I was sure.
Even that early in the morning, the Metro was filled with excited people of all ages and races, forming a rainbow as multi-hued as my left foot.
Adam had a press pass to the seating right in front of the inaugural stage, and I had a ticket from a friend who works on the Hill. It got me passage into the so-called Purple Section, about halfway down the National Mall. The directions on my purple ticket instructed me to line up in a tunnel near the intersection of 3rd Street and C Street. All I had to do was wait a couple of hours for the gates to open, and I’d watch history in the making.
Turns out I made a little history myself along with an estimated 1,000 to 4,000 people who were stuck in what became known as the “Purple Tunnel of Doom” in the media, by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, and on Wikipedia. Thousands of us, including the mayor of Seattle and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s daughters, were led into the 3rd Street Tunnel but not let out in time to get into the inauguration.
Earlier that morning, however, we all felt so lucky to possess Purple Tickets and there were no strangers in the Purple Tunnel. We were all journey proud, talking about how far we’d come, how cold it was, and how the freezing temperatures didn’t dampen our excitement. After a while it seemed like the line wasn’t moving, but a church choir from Georgia led my section of the dark tunnel in a singalong of “This Little Light of Mine” to help us to pass the time.
Then we started getting calls and texts from friends who were already on the National Mall, gazing at the spot where Obama would soon take the oath.
Adam sent me a picture of the Tuskegee Airmen who were sitting three rows in front of him. I sent him a picture of the cold, dark 3rd Street Tunnel full of huddled masses. He sent me a selfie with Denzel Washington. I sent him a picture of my left foot.
Finally, word spread through the inhabitants of the Purple Tunnel that we weren’t moving. We’d been left in a tunnel and nobody had come back to let us proceed to the gates of the mall.
There was crying, yelling, cursing, head shaking, and disbelief.
When we finally reached the streets of D.C., we merged into a mosh pit of hundreds of other people without tickets, crowding their way to any gate of any color. Outstretched arms clutching useless purple tickets were ignored. The gates were blocked because the mall was at capacity.
As the inauguration started, I nudged my way into a group of six or so people crowding around a young woman with a hand-held television. I saw my first glimpse of the almost-president and his wife, Michelle, and caught my breath. They were there. This was really happening. The cluster of strangers watched civil rights activist Joseph Lowery lead a prayer. The African American woman holding the TV cried.
When Yo-Yo Ma started playing, I got my mojo back and decided to try to get inside the gates of the National Mall. I pushed my way to the front of the crowd and told a policeman that I’d been separated from my kids somehow, flashed my purple ticket, and begged to go in and find them. He didn’t really let me in, but he didn’t stop me when I crawled under the wooden barricade.
I squirmed my way farther into the crowd until I reached a spot where I could maneuver a view of the Jumbotron in the distance and thus barely see the swearing in.
So, I was there with my purple foot and my purple ticket, and I saw a black man named Barack Hussein Obama become the 44th president of the United States. After crying and hugging strangers all around me, I limped back to the Metro and made my way to Joe’s and Laura’s house where they had watched the whole thing with friends from the comfort of their home. During a chili dinner on their long, wooden farm table, another houseguest who had come from London mentioned offhandedly he was too tired to use his two tickets to the Creative Coalition Ball, hosted by the Hollywood crowd.
“I can’t believe you’re not going,” I said. “Sting is performing.”
“So is Elvis Costello. But I have to be on a flight back at 7:00 a.m. I’m can’t do it. Do you want the tickets?”
I beamed, and then remembered I had no right to take the tickets over our hosts.
“No. Joe and Laura, you two should go,” I said with the same lack of sincerity as when I suggest someone at the grocery store with five items get in front of me when I have twenty and I’m already late for the school carline.
“I have to work tomorrow. I think you and Laura should go,” urged Joe, the best man who ever walked the Earth.
Within twenty minutes, Laura and I were on the Metro headed back downtown. We couldn’t stop laughing at ourselves going out in the frigid air at almost 10:00 p.m. to a party where we wouldn’t know a soul.
I hadn’t thought to pack clothes for an inaugural ball, so I’d borrowed a black silk skirt, a black top, and long, black suede boots from Laura, who is six inches taller than I am and three shoe sizes bigger. This wasn’t all bad, since my left foot was quite swollen again after I walked seventy-seven miles that day.
We made our entrance at the Harman Center for the Arts just as the entertainment portion of the evening was starting. Celebrity hosts including Susan Sarandon, Kerry Washington, Anne Hathaway, and Spike Lee gathered on the stage of the 755-seat theater.
Matthew Modine introduced Elvis Costello and thanked him for the song “Alison” because it really got his high school girlfriend of the same name in the mood back in the day.
Elvis Costello pointed out he wasn’t even a registered U.S. voter but his wife, Diana Krall, was Canadian, so that must count for something. Then he belted out “Alison,” “Watching the Detectives,” and a few other classics.
Sting came on next and said he also
wasn’t registered to vote in America but was still thrilled as hell with the new president. He modified the lyrics of “Message in a Bottle” and had the audience repeatedly chant, “O-bam-a heard our message in a bottle.”
After the concert, Laura and I went upstairs to get a drink and passed Ron Howard on his way down.
I’d loved the guy ever since I’d grown up watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show three times a day, which is required of all elementary students in the state of North Carolina. He became an extra-favorite celebrity when he paired up with past co-stars Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler on a “Funny or Die” video for the Obama campaign. Howard went barefoot and toted a fishing rod to once again portray Opie Taylor asking his pa Andy why people were so afraid of change. Andy offered simple but wise words as always. Howard then donned his Jefferson High letter-man jacket to encourage Fonzie to embrace change.
I must have gasped, stared, or looked like an all-around star-struck stalker as we rubbed elbows on the stairs. In hindsight, it might have been more of an elbow grab than a rub; I don’t recall the details. The major detail, however, is Ron Howard stopped, looked straight at me, and said, “Hey. How are you?”
“I’m great. What a great day,” I blurted out. He agreed and I blathered on:
“I’m from North Carolina. My dad grew up in the same town that Andy Griffith is from. The one Mayberry is based on. It’s called Mount Airy. He actually grew up in Dobson, which is even smaller than Mount Airy, but it’s all right there together.”
“Oh, yeah,” Howard said. “I know all about Mount Airy.”
“I loved what you did in the video with Andy for Obama.”
“It was great to work with him again. Thanks a lot,” he said so sincerely and appreciatively that I think he really did need my approval to feel whole.
Then he quickly moved on down the stairs to the people who would congratulate him on Frost/Nixon, the movie he had just directed and that was the talk of Hollywood and Washington. Not me. I was all about a role from forty years back.
Rules for the Southern Rule Breaker Page 7
