LETTERS FROM HOME: GETTING TO KNOW THE SOUTHERN ILLINOIS FAMILY

May 24, 2001

Dear Patty,

"Do you want to hear my bird story?" Lee Ann asked.

Of course we did. Even though we had just met her, Lee Ann was family and we like birds. DC likes them a lot.

Actually, Lee Ann had two bird stories with a common theme. In number one, her next door neighbor asked her to take care of her chickens while she was out of town. At first there were plenty of eggs, but the chickens suddenly stopped laying. Another neighbor told her to give them a teaspoonful of Epsom salts and cayenne pepper to get them laying again.

Instead, the chickens got sick and started dying. One night they heard sounds in the henhouse. Lee Ann's husband, Jack, figured a skunk was in the henhouse so he got his dog and went in shooting. The toll was three chickens and one dog's tail, no skunk.

When long-lost family members get together for Sunday dinner, this is what they do: tell stories about their lives that tell you a lot about who they are.

Last weekend, DC and I drove my grandmother, Ruby, to McLeansboro, Ill., to visit two of her sisters, Lela and Nell. All three of them are in their 90s. Longevity is easy for the females in this family.

Lee Ann is Lela's daughter. Lela lives in a roomy house with another daughter, Marilyn, who plays the organ at the Christian Church and has thought about running for alderman to help straighten out the town. "We got street sweepers that don't sweep and leaf suckers that don't suck," she observed.

Though her minister was supposed to resign that day, Lela stayed home from church to cook dinner for us. She wasn't upset about missing church or the resignation because she wasn't pleased with him anyway. Photographs of family members covered Lela's walls and shelves. She instantly made us feel as if we belonged there.

Lela served us a big dinner of roast beef, potatoes and carrots, gravy, slaw, celery and cream cheese, rolls and butter topped off by strawberry shortcake. They are the sort of Christians to hold hands while praying over the food before dinner. Jack, a man with a perpetual twinkle in his eye, said it quick, then asked Lela for ketchup.

Jack used to test supersonic jets for Lockheed. "He used to be a troubleshooter," said Lee Ann. "Now he's a troublemaker."

When the Chinese detonated their first atomic bomb, Jack was airborne in one of a number of planes that were sent out around the globe to gather fallout from the blast. They wanted to find out how advanced the Chinese bomb program was.

When he was in these high-flying experimental aircraft, he had to wear a space suit. Jack got to see the curvature of the Earth before the astronauts did.

Bird story No. 2: The same neighbor asked Lee Ann to watch her 16 parakeets while she was away. Lee Ann put them on the porch, but the weather turned cold one day while she was at work. When Lee Ann got home the parakeets were lying on the bottom of their cages, feet pointing toward heaven.

Lee Ann put all 16 parakeets in the oven on a cookie sheet, feet still pointing skyward, hoping to warm them back to life. When Jack came home he asked what was cooking for dinner.

Lee Ann said the same neighbor later asked her to watch her mother while she was out of town. DC and I were laughing too hard to ask what happened next.

Seeing Nell at the nursing home brought us back to one of the realities of being 90 years old. Grandma's oldest sister has been in a wheelchair since a fall that broke her hip. Lela fretted that the nursing staff dresses her any old way, not even making sure her blouses and pants match. Lela stands up for her big sister.

Sitting around a table, the three sisters were like any of us would be getting together with our sisters and brothers. They still talked to each other the way they talked when they were young. They told stories and still made each other giggle.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.