Start the week off with a smile

Going to the country, allows one to have a certain amount of freedom.  In the country as far as the eye can see nothing but fields of corn, black eye peas, butter beans, collards, snap peas, and other stuff that had to be harvested.  That was the only part about the country that I did not like.  I knew that when we went to Georgia, we were going to have to work like field hands.  I hated that with a passion.  We resembled something out of roots.  We had to put a rag on our heads to protect our hair, a hat on our head, to protect us from the sun, and a rag in our pockets to wipe the sweat.  It was up at 4:30 a.m. and in the fields by 5:30 a.m. so we could beat the Georgia sun and heat, cause honey it was nothing like it.  We got tans, and we were born with tans, didn't need any tans, and got them anyway though.  Also there are no bugs or knats like Georgia knats or bugs.  You cannot kill them they just keep coming and they do not go away.  The flies are larger than city flies and they bite!  They are no joke.  The more you swatted, the more they came, they wanted to feel that cool breeze also, I guess.  Well back to the kittens.  Grandma had a cat; I guess today we would say that she was a Calico.  She just kept on having kittens.  Every time we went down to visit there were more new cats.  Grandma, named all of those cats, and what was so amazing, she knew them all by name.  To me they all looked the same.  I liked cats, I like animals period.  Well one summer we went down to Georgia, now my brothers were always getting into trouble.  They were always doing something that they had no business doing.  Starting tractors, or grandpa's cotton gins, because you know they left the keys in the ignitions, you could not do that today.  Could you imagine a cotton gin going down Main Street today, as dumb as some of the criminals are today, they would probably try it.  My brothers would give the hogs stuff that they should not have to eat, now you now a hog will eat anything, hey they were caught chasing grandma's  geese, and trying to ride the hogs.  It is a wonder the hogs did not bite them.  I bet you did not know hogs, do bite.  Now guess what the cat's name was, ok you give up, the cats name was Kitty cat.  Now Kitty cat had a litter of kittens, and my brothers had the dumb idea in their heads that they could teach kittens how to swim!  Grandma had a tub that she caught rain water in.  She used that water to water in plants that she had in the house. It looked like a national forest, but she loved her house plants.  She said that it made them grow better.  Now my brothers had other ideas for her tub of water.  They wanted to see if they could show the kittens how to swim.  So they took kitty's kittens one by one, and put them into grandma's tub and began yelling at the kitten's to swim.  Well I was amazed at how dumb my brother's were.  I called grandma!  She ran out of the house calling my mom by her first name.  I had never heard my grandma call my mother by her first name.  She yelled," Ann, come and get your boys, they are drowning my kittens!"  My mom ran outside along with my grandma and my dad.  Now my dad had warned my brothers to leave grandmas kitten be.  But they did not listen, needless to say.  So they got the whipping of their life.  We managed to save all of grandma's kittens.  The boys got a whipping, I laughed, and they were punished.  I also got into trouble for laughing so hard at how stupid my brothers were.  I tried to tell them, that cats do not like water, therefore, they do not swim, but needless to say they did not listen.   I told them that they were dumber than that Georgia dirt; everybody knows kittens cannot swim, right?  I bet after our pops got finished whipping those boys butts, they then knew, cats do not swim, and for the last time to leave grandmas cats alone.  Pops always said, "A hard head makes a sore behind."  Ask my brothers.

 sherry/smomdukes