She was wise, kind, upright, conscientious, and... She was wise, kind, upright, conscientious, and deeply ChristianShe became a member of our family for eleven yearsAll her family were good people, and after she left us, her daughter Maye Hightower came to work for Mother and stayed thirty more years until Mother diedIn another age, Cora Walters would have made a fine ministerShe made me a better person by her example, and certainly wasnt responsible for any of my sins, then or laterShe was a tough old gal, tooOne day she helped me kill a huge rat that was hanging around our houseActually, I found it and she killed it while I cheered
When we moved out to the country, Mother was concerned about my going to a small rural school, so she enrolled me in StJohns Catholic School downtown, where I attended second and third gradeBoth years my teacher was Sister Mary Amata McGee, a fine and caring teacher but no pushoverI often got straight As on my six-week report card and a C in citizenship, which was a euphemism for good behavior in classI loved to read and compete in spelling contests, but I talked too muchIt was a constant problem in grade school, and as
dior saddle my critics and many of my friends would say, its one I never quite got overI also got in trouble once for excusing myself to go to the bathroom and staying away too long during the daily rosaryI was fascinated by the Catholic Church, its rituals and the devotion of the nuns, but getting on my knees on the seat of my desk and leaning on the back with the rosary beads was often too much for a rambunctious boy whose only church experience before then had been in the Sunday school and the summer vacation Bible school of the First Baptist Church in Hope
After a year or so on the farm, Daddy decided to move into Hot SpringsHe rented a big house from Uncle Raymond at 1011 Park Avenue, in the east end of townHe led Mother to believe hed made a good deal for it and had bought the house with his income and hers, but even with their two incomes, and with housing costs a considerably smaller part of the average familys expenses than now, I cant see how we could have afforded itThe house was up on a hill; it had two stories, five bedrooms, and a fascinating little ballroom upstairs with a bar on which stood a
buy miu miu big rotating cage with two huge dice in itApparently the first owner had been in the gambling businessI spent many happy hours in that room, having parties or just playing with my friends
The exterior of the house was white with green trim, with sloping roofs over the front entrance and the two sidesThe front yard was terraced on three levels with a sidewalk down the middle and a rock wall between the middle and ground levelsThe side yards were small, but large enough for Mother to indulge her favorite outdoor hobby, gardeningShe especially loved to grow roses and did so in all her homes until she diedMother tanned easily and deeply, and she got most of her tan while digging dirt around her flowers in a tank top and shortsThe back had a gravel driveway with a four-car garage, a nice lawn with a swing set, and, on both sides of the driveway, sloping lawns that went down to the street, Circle Drive
We lived in that house from the time I was seven or eight until I was fifteenIt was fascinating to meThe grounds were full of shrubs, bushes, flowers, long hedges laced with honeysuckle, and lots of trees,
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I helped Daddy take care of the groundsIt was one thing we did do together, though as I got older, I did more and more of it myselfThe house was near a wooded area, so I was always running across spiders, tarantulas, centipedes, scorpions, wasps, hornets, bees, and snakes, along with more benign creatures like squirrels, chipmunks, blue jays, robins, and woodpeckersOnce, when I was mowing the lawn, I looked down to see a rattlesnake sliding along with the lawn mower, apparently captivated by the vibrationsI didnt like the vibes, so I ran like crazy and escaped unscathed
Another time I wasnt so luckyDaddy had put up a huge three-story birdhouse for martins, which nest in groups, at the bottom of the back drivewayOne day I was mowing grass down there and discovered it had become a nesting place not for martins but for bumblebeesThey swarmed me, flying all over my body, my arms, my faceAmazingly, not one of them stung meI ran off to catch my breath and consider my optionsMistakenly, I assumed they had decided I meant them no
large gucci bag harm, so after a few minutes I went back to my mowingI hadnt gone ten yards before they swarmed me again, this time stinging me all over my bodyOne got caught between my belly and my belt, stinging me over and over, something bumblebees can do that honeybees cantI was delirious and had to be rushed to the doctor, but recovered soon enough with another valuable lesson: tribes of bumblebees give intruders one fair warning but not twoMore than thirty-five years later, Kate Ross, the five-year-old daughter of my friends Michael Ross and Markie Post, sent me a letter that said simply: Bees can sting youI knew just what she meant
My move to Hot Springs gave my life many new experiences: a new, much larger and more sophisticated city; a new neighborhood; a new school, new friends, and my introduction to music; my first serious religious experience in a new church; and, of course, a new extended family in the Clinton clan
The hot sulfur springs, for which the city is named, bubble up from below ground in a narrow gap in the Ouachita Mountains a little more than fifty miles west and slightly south of Little
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