Grandma Neely had a big back yard—the perfect place for
serious cousin play while the adults did adult things. The task of caring for the
little cousins did not constrain our creation of new games and creative
variations of old ones. Other matters did.
The group dynamics of us older cousins was fluid with
shifting alliances. Except for one constant. In the older cousin group were Aunt Mirtie’s Bobbie Jean and Kenneth, Uncle Fred’s Shirley, Betty Jo and Carl, and Ivy, Arville and me. Shirley was the constant—always the outsider. Whether
the fault lay in her or in the inherent barbarity of nine, ten and eleven year
olds is long lost in filtered memories. But Shirley was never a group member. It was she who hung around the women in the
kitchen until on threat of punishment she was relegated to what she called the
dumb antics of dumb kids. When Shirley was around we watched our own backs and
each other’s backs. Any infringement of
adult rules was promptly reported to adults. Not a good thing for us transgressors.
The snowball bush behind Grandma’s smokehouse was overgrown with
drooping branches. Our efforts to trim it
for Grandma were short lived . Randomly
snipping other branches and chasing each other with the clippers trumped
disciplined pruning. That’s when it happened. Kenneth cut Grandma’s clothesline.
Disaster loomed.
As a well trained unit we sprang into action. Bobbie Jean
ran to the kitchen. “Shirley cut
Grandma’s clothesline.” Four women lined
up eight children and threatened us with ‘the licking of our lives’ if we did
not tell what happened. To a man—no to a
child—seven of us swore we saw Shirley do it. To our juvenile sense of justice it seemed the
perfect retribution.
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