Sunday, April 14, 2013

Snakes, Lightning and Baseball - Life before Television



Snakes, Lightning and, then, Baseball
Verbal Artistry
Life before Television
By Stephen L. Wilmeth


             Families will remember 1957 for many things not the least of which the Braves played the Yankees in the World Series for the first time … in American living rooms.
            Life surrounding family gatherings remained much the same for awhile, but that would change. No longer would the card games and formal conversation be as important as television expanded its influence into family events. A basic form of verbal history would pass from American households.
            Memories of those gatherings seem to occur more frequently these days. I miss the elegance and the artistry of the story telling by family elders.
             The Prelude
            My paternal grandparents never had a home big enough to get everybody into the same room, but we didn’t recognize that as a problem. A game of pitch would be hotly contested in the living room and the cooks would be banging pans and laughing in the kitchen.
             The kids would be outside catching something to ride, shooting at minnows in the Mangus, or engineering something else that seemed important at the moment. We took care of ourselves.
            When it was time to eat, Grandma’ would make the announcement and the process would start. I can still taste her mashed potatoes and berry cobblers.
            You ate at the table only if you were young enough to rate such preferential treatment. Everybody else ate wherever you could find a place to sit. The porch steps were always a good place to sit, visit, and … eat cobbler. 
            The Cardinal Event
             The card games may or may not continue based upon the intensity of the discussion. Attention would start building around the orators. If Roy Wilmeth was present, a recount of his latest great horse would be in the offing. His commentary would describe how athletic the prospect was or how easy he was to break. His horses were good enough to get him mentioned in the second book of legends. 
            If Howard Wilmeth and Dick Manning had been at it for any amount of time, their fiery debates would take center stage. Logic and reason would be developed in exchanges that would tend toward the esoteric rather than group friendly. Both of them would ultimately gain almost a cult following outside of the family circle.
            If Hap McCauley was tuned, it was an engineering feat that was on the edge of reason. We loved Hap, especially when his tone and demeanor got low and smooth.
            My dad, Billy Arnspiger, Scotty and Darrell, and an odd visitor or two always rounded out the edges, but center stage would be Grampa’. 
            Albert Wilmeth was, without equivocation, his own man. He was one of 16 children, and … 16 Republicans in the entire Cliff precinct. His values and his principles were never questioned. He was so no nonsense that a laugh from him would prompt one from everybody much like the attention from an orchestra when the conductor steps to the rostrum and taps his baton.
            He was the consummate story teller. With that big head of hair, sunburned face, and those blue eyes he would go off on a subject that would draw the entire audience into the drama. His subjects were adventurous, exposed to risk, and real. They were encounters with life lived in the sun and rocks with thunder rolling away to the horizons.
            Rising Crescendo
            Without fail, a portion of the session was devoted to storms. Storms were basic to his existence. His lightning stories would put you out there on the edge of your seat. They were always first hand, but in the most profound story he would drop away and let somebody take it up. 
            It was the account of the day he and Bill McMillan were struck by lightning. They were coming up a draw with a bunch of cows and they knew with an approaching storm and their location they wouldn’t finish the drive that day. They had been riding along together discussing their options and actually touched stirrups.
            Grampa would relate that the next thing he remembered was trying to regain his senses. Ol’ Jerome was trying to get to his feet shaking off the effects of the strike. Bill was wedged under the little gray horse he had been riding and both appeared to be dead. They had taken the direct hit.
            As the cowboys rolled the horse off Bill, Grampa was at his side trying to get a response. There was none.
            For five minutes, they worked frantically on him. When the cowboys moved silently to the horse to take Bill’s saddle off, Grandpa made one more attempt. It was then that Bill sucked in a breath and his eyes blinked open … and shut. 
            “Albert?” he asked.
             “Yea, Bill . . .”
            “Albert … I gotta’ spit …Where can I spit, Albert?” Bill would ask with his mouth still full of tobacco. 
            Sitting back on his haunches, but still touching Bill McMillan, Albert Wilmeth had said, “Anywhere you want to, Cowboy … you’ve got the whole world, now.”
            Once, when that story had been told in the presence of Bill McMillan, a little misty eyed kid had asked, “And, Grampa … he really did live?”
            Eyeing Bill to get his response, Bill had sputtered, “Huh, no, he didn’t make it . . . and he was going to be such a good little horse.”
After a pause, they had laughed at the kid’s expression …and their own unexpected emotion.
            Recapitulation
            A pause was always imminent as coffee cups were filled and more pie was cut. It was then back for the encore. It was time for snakes.
            Snakes were such a part of their life. There was something eerie how the people of that generation were so infatuated with snakes. All the kids were gathered around in a tight circle by that time.
            Hap was front and center in the snake stories. His specialty was snake dens. He would recount how he had eaten lunch one day while hunting in the Moonhull drainage and discovered he was surrounded by snakes. They were everywhere and the stench was penetrating.
            It was then back to the den that Roy finally decided to kill. He lugged a case of dynamite to the outcropping and lit what he thought was a long fuse. He had run only to have the mountain come down around him. 
            “Snakes everywhere,” was his memory. 
            It wasn’t the falling rocks and brush that had him spooked. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he continued. “I won’t ever pull that little stunt again!”
            “Probably would have been just fine with a stick or a stick and a half,” was Hap’s objective assessment. 
            Everybody was laughing but Uncle Roy.  He was reliving the horror of those snakes coming down around him.
            Into the night and future
            By the time us kids needed to get to bed without more threat of nightmares, we would be lined up kissing Grandma and saying goodbyes. Out into the dark we would go discussing the stories.
            Now, years later, those stories ring nostalgic. Most of the orators are gone, but not their memories. What a shame modern generations didn’t get to live before television when people sat together and practiced verbal artistry. They knew even then there was nothing better. 
             “Did he really live … Grampa?”
            “Yes, son … he lived … we lived … we sure did.”

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “We are the sum total of folks in this story and others like them. Their lives, like ours, were full of trials and tribulations. They showed us the way and gave us a point of reference.” 


THE WESTERNER sez:  

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object...Laurence J. Peter 

Now, of course, its those damned "smart" phones.

But, as Johnny Carson once said, if it weren't for television we'd be eating frozen radio dinners.

No comments: