A few years ago, I pulled into the parking lot of a local store. There was a load of kids in the back of a truck. One of the kids was teaching the others to spit. They were hanging over the side of the truck bed, two fingers pressed on their lips, aiming and firing a projectile of spit. I thought they were doing an admirable job with their spitting skills, but then, they didn’t know Mrs. Cash! She had been a neighbor of my grandparents years ago. She would have put those kids to shame!
My grandparents lived along a country dirt road. Neighbors would wave as they drove by with a cloud of red dust following them down the road. I thought that was the perfect place to live. There was a big barn, an apple orchard, a shed with a tractor, other buildings and even an outhouse. The house seemed huge to a little kid and there was even a porch across the front. A wide hallway divided the house in two. On the left side was a living room and a big kitchen. I remember taking a bath in the washtub in the kitchen floor as Grandma Bee baked peanut butter cookies. The tops of the cookies were squished with a fork, sprinkled with sugar and they were yummy! I can still smell those warm cookies being taken from the oven.
They lived in an era where neighbors were more than just people who lived nearby. Neighbors helped one another with their crops. They were a community who took care of one another. If someone had a need, the neighbors would pool their resources to help. They also took time to visit with one another. Ladies would gather for quilting bees. Grandma Bee took me with her once. I crawled under the quilt that was stretched out on the frame and watched the needles move in and out of the fabric as the women buzzed like a hive of bees.
One of their neighbors was Mrs. Cash. She was more than a neighbor; she was a friend. I never heard her called by her first name. Back in those days the ladies were called Mrs. or Miss and men were called Mr. I really only remember one thing about Mrs. Cash and that was she dipped snuff or chewed tobacco. I don’t know if Grandma Bee approved, but she at least tolerated Mrs. Cash’s vice. In fact, she enabled her habit by having a spit can that Mrs. Cash used. That lady would sit on the red vinyl sofa in the living room, work up a good spit and let ‘er fly. She could hit that spit can that sat all the way by the door. Ping! She’d hit it every time. She could spit as good or better than any man, and man, that woman could spit! Ping!
