Every kid needs a champion … some adult person who is in your family but is not your parent who lets you express your inner need to be a dirt-caked, stick-whittling, tadpole-collecting, no-count and who doesn’t object if you go barefoot around the neighborhood catching lizards or have a hole in your pants.
It’s Somebody who buys your seven-year old self a dozen packs of bubble gum or a pea shooter or a pocket knife not in full alignment with your parents’ wishes and lets you stay up past midnight when you visit over there and who makes your own special recipe for crumbled-bacon-in-Cream of Wheat on Saturday mornings. A person who commands deep respect without making it an official order and then returns it in kind, even if you’re just a kid.
Aunt Titter was my champion from an early age. As my dad’s older sister she held my respect and awe in ways unlike my mother and father. Indirectly she encouraged me to be a “good trooper” without actually being too awfully good and taught me interesting stuff like how to tie a square knot and find the North Star and to be respectful to old people and dogs, especially dogs.
She was accomplished with a bow and arrow and taught archery to little summer campers at Camp Winnataska … that piece of deep woods heaven alongside Kelly Creek in the hills of east Alabama.
“Titter”, by the way, is archaic Southern baby-talk for “sister” (“tit-tuh”) which you may be forgiven if you didn’t know. He real name was Margaret.
After graduating from college, Titter became a radio programmer at a local station and sometimes would get the disc jockey to play something I liked. My favorite was “The Baldheaded End of the Broom”, a brisk, irreverent, banjo ditty of hillbilly nonsense by Grandpa Jones, a favorite on “The Grand Ole Opry”. I thought it was beautiful. My dad mocked it as asinine.
At that age, in those years, most of us boys couldn’t imagine a career more glamorous than being a cowboy. We’d blast away at one another with six-shooter cap pistols and argue over who got to play Roy Rogers or Gene Autry or Buster Crabbe —- names which time has long erased from the silver screen as well as from the entire culture’s memory … along with Saturday double-feature westerns and nickle Cokes at the Homewood Theater.
Another favorite which Titter sometimes asked the station to broadcast for me was “Cattle Call” by Eddie Arnold. This song fit snugly into my imagined existence as a juvenile cowpoke. That melody haunts me to this day and if you ever hear it you’ll know why.
In those days, before microwaves, before seat belts, before turn signals and cell phones, even before Elvis, Sputnick and Big Macs, America’s future seemed to be a world immune to the mendacity of the media, the thievery of lying politicians or the tragedy of political correctness and universal crime. As kids, most of us were mischief-making pranksters, just to see how much we could get away with, while not actually destroying or stealing anything. But we usually got caught which was instructive.
Titter was not strict about pea shooters and bubble gum but she was strict regarding honor. Honor was the sinew and bone of your character. Never cheat. Never lie. Stand your ground. Show respect. I could never live up to all that but I think it helped me stumble more or less in that direction some of the time, sort of.
After I finally grew up and moved away, I would go over to her house whenever I got back in town. I’d take with me a couple of nice strip steaks and a bottle of bourbon. We’d sit out on her expansive front porch and have a drink and ridicule members of Congress and lament the lack of honorable replacements.
Titter made the most delicious squash and eggplant casserole in the known universe. She didn’t keep the recipe a secret. She gave it to me. Now I share it with you. Find out how to make it and more. Become a paid subscriber and help me continue bringing you “Eat Your History.” You’ll be happy. I’ll be able to keep this up.
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