PawPaw

“These [Baton Rouge Teamster] hoodlums make Marcello and the Mafia look pretty good.”

– Louisiana governor John J. McKeithen, 1968

I opened my eyes early in 1976 to the smell of PawPaw on Saturday mornings: Old Spice after shave, unfiltered Camel cigarettes, that oil he used to slick back his salt peppered black hair, and coffee. He was kneeling by my couch in the living room. From my perspective, PawPaw was tilted sideways.

“Hey, d’er, Lil’ Buddy,” he said with his sideways grin. “‘Bout time you woke up.”

I sat up and the world rightened itself. PawPaw’s smiling face was right next to mine. His good eye sparkled; it wasn’t bloodshot yet and it looked just like his glass eye, a dark brown pupil framed with a white background that matched his name: James “Ed” White.

I hopped off the couch and plopped my duck feet onto the faded peeling vinyl floor. MawMaw said I’d grow into them one day and be as big as my daddy, but that would never happen: I would limp out of the military in a size 14 wide combat book and still be the runt of the Partin men at only 5’11”. In 1976 I could have slept in one of the shoes I wear today. Back then I just plopped my big feet onto the floor and stepped into PawPaw’s outstretched arms. He told me he loved me without saying a word.

“Go on now,” he said as he pulled away from me.

He nudged me out of his hug and pointed to the short hallway only a step away from my couch and said: “Get in d’er b’fore MawMaw’s up.”

I flip flopped across the vinyl floor and past the big hallway mirror and into our house’s only bathroom. I peed and then stood on the step stool PawPaw had made me from a few 2X4’s so I could wash my own hands. I shoved aside the piles of aftershave and hairspray and other smelly things MawMaw took me to buy at Dillards in Cortana mall while PawPaw was at Glenoaks High on weekdays. I never saw him until late at night on weekdays. He left early to open the school and stayed late to clean toliets; he was like the Airborne Pathfinders in Vietnam whose motto was First in, Last out; when he came home he smelled like Camels and Pine Sol and his good eye was bloodshot from the fumes. On Saturdays and Sundays he was the first face I saw when I woke up on the couch and the last face I saw before I drifted off to sleep again. PawPaw was my Pathfinder.

I brushed my teeth and spit out the foam and hopped off the stool and landed with a satisfying splat on vinyl floor. MawMaw had laid out my clothes the night before and they were draped over the bathtub. I slipped them on and squeezed my feet into my walkin’-shoes. I wasn’t ready for tree-climbin’ shoes yet; those were the leather ones PawPaw wore and held his spikes like the giddy-up spurs on The Lone Ranger’s boots.

As a side gig, PawPaw was the most respected tree surgeon in all of southern Louisiana. He honed his skills landscaping the gorgeous green grounds of Glenoaks High School, and every spring after hurricane season he was on call to remove old stately oak branches on big fancy houses and plantation homes up and down the River Road and all the way to Saint Francisville. On those weekends I didn’t see him much, but I always knew he’d come home in time for dinner and MawMaw’s cookies smelling like chainsaw oil and Camel cigarettes.

He was a wiry man who knew how to climb faster than a monkey. PawPaw would scurry up and cut a broken limb close to the trunk and in three places to make the break smooth and with the least exposed flesh possible, then cover the severed limb with black tar so termites and bugs didn’t get in. He said I could go with him after I get a bit bigger and get practice climbing the trees in our yard or by the nearby convenience store at the corner of Hooper and Plank; until then, I could help him by helping MawMaw make cookies for when he got home.

I ran out of the bathroom and into MawMaw fluffing her hair in front of the hallway mirror. She was wearing her fuzzy light blue slippers and shaggy grey-white bathrobe the exact color of her disheveled hair. She turned and knelt down and locked her gaze on my eyes and smiled mischievously and said: “Gimme some shugga!”

I giggled and brought my arms up to my chest and ready to defend my face.

She shuffled along the vinyl floor in her fuzzy slippers and got about a foot from my face and said again: “Gimme some shugga!”

I giggled and bring my fists closer to just below my cheeks; it was my modified crawfish defense, like how a crawfish holds up both pinchers and keeps them pointed at you so you can’t grab their whiskers, but closer to my cheeks because I knew MawMaw was aiming there.

MawMaw’s held up her own pinchers and scooched closer and closer and snapped her thumb and fingers together like a crawfish about to get me.

“I’m gonna steal me some shugga,” she said.

She thrust out her pinchers out but ducked them down and tickled my exposed ribs. I erupted in giggles and my defense dropped down and she shot some shugga on my cheeks like a shugga sniper with rapid fire reflexes. I squealed and raised my pinchers back to my cheeks; MawMaw tickled me again and I squirmed and she snuck in a few more shots of shugga.

I laughed loudly and she said: “Shhh… You’ll wake the baby.”

The baby was asleep in my old room. She was MawMaw and PawPaw’s first granddaughter. Their daughter was Linda White and Wendy’s best friend in high school; Linda married Craig Black, a funny and perpetually stoned canvas painter who always smelled like weed and looked exactly like the floppy haired and bushy bearded thin and mellow PBS painter on television, Bob Ross (whose face adorns stoner smoke shop paraphernalia to this day). Whenever we watched TV together Craig would always tell me that we lived in a Black and White house together. PawPaw had gotten him a part-time gig as the landscaper of Houmas Plantation about an hour down the River Road towards New Orleans, but it was a long drive without much pay and he and Linda still lived with us. They slept in on Saturdays and let PawPaw and me watch cartoons and The Lone Ranger together on our little black and white TV.

I shush so I don’t wake the baby but I made the mistake of lowering my hands; MawMaw is a shugga’ sniper who saw the opening and swooped in for some more shugga. I squealed again and she shushed me again. As soon as I calmed down, she swooped in again and smacked me on the cheek and I squealed and she shushed me again.

“Get in there and help PawPaw make breakfast,” she said.

She rotated me and scooted me towards the kitchen and stepped into the bathroom where she’d spend a half hour or so putting on her makeup and dewing her hair.

Before MawMaw was Mrs. James “Ed” White MawMaw she Delores Lamar of the Baton Rouge Lamars; their name was at the bottom of every billboard in Baton Rouge and all along I-110 on all the state highways leading to Chemical Alley, Scotlandville, Zachary, and Saint Francisville; today Lamar Advertising is a publicly traded company on the New York stock exchange and owns 80% of the billboards in America; if you see their little green Lamar banner under an advertisement, it’s a sign of how you and I are are connected to MawMaw and this story. She was the only person I knew who didn’t smoke, and she sounded fancier than anyone else I knew except when she talked about sugar: she loved saying shugga’ instead. When she wore her makeup, Mama left bright red shugga’ marks all over my cheeks.

MawMaw stepped into the bathroom for her long ritual of getting made up for the day. I stepped towards the kitchen but stopped in front of the mirror and stood with my toes on a big scuff mark from PawPaw’s tree-climbing shoes. I nudged the tips of my walking shoes to the scuff and presciently stood at attention like a soldier being inspected. I looked at my reflection and the bright red smudge that grazed the top of my head. Nothing had changed and I felt disappointed that I hadn’t grown. I stood up more straight and put more weight on my tippie-toes and saw the top of my head poke above the smudge. I held my stance as if practicing being taller will make it happen faster.

“You not gonna’ grow by lookin’ at y’self,” PawPaw said. “Come in here and eat some pancakes with y’er PawPaw.”

I trotted over and stepped up on the wooden stool by the stove so I could see. A few loose eggs were on the counter and PawPaw was mixing Bisquick from a box with Blue Bonnet milk from a plastic gallon jug and eggs he had beaten while I was in the bathroom. He stained empty coffee cup was beside the half-full Mr. Coffee machine.

I asked PawPaw if we were going to climb trees after we watched cartoons (I spoke more like MawMaw than PawPaw because I grew up spending all day weekdays with just her and me; Craig and Linda and the baby had moved in that summer and added to the nose, but MawMaw spoke with all of us in the same way so I picked up on it more than PawPaw’s accent, which was southern Mississippi but with a strong hint of southern Louisiana Cajun French, like the way he dropped the dipthong ‘th’ and simplified it as ‘d,’ the same as how New Orleans Saints fans on our little TV would stomp their feet in the Superdome and shout: Who D’at! Who D’at! Who D’at talkin’ ’bout ‘beatin’ d’em Saints? Who D’at!)

“Nope,” PawPaw said. “T’day is y’er day wit’ Wendy and Debbie.”

I said that sounded fun. Debbie does magic tricks and Wendy always buys me a Slushie from the 7-11 near Debbie’s house and the park where we play all day; that’s where I get to climb tall metal swings and spin on the squeaky merry-go-round. From my perch PawPaw looked me straight in the eyes and smiled lovingly.

His smile broadened and his good eye twinkled mischievously. Craig said PawPaw looked like Puck when he did that, a prankster elf and inspiration for the swamp elves he painted. Puck is what he called PawPaw, named after the woodland elf in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream who sparked others into action. Puck was an accurate way to describe PawPaw; when he smiled like that, something was about to happen.

He pulled the last unfiltered Camel from the crushed pack in his pocket and crumbled the pack and dropped it in a trash can by the kitchen sink. He slipped out a dented silver Zippo from the little pocket in his blue jeans and brought the white Camel cigarette to a foot from his lips with the little black printed camel facing me.

Wait PawPaw! I exclaimed. You’re about to light the wrong end, I said. It’s backwards again.

I said that the little black camel goes in his mouth and that he should light the other end.

PawPaw chuckled and said: “You right, Lil’ Buddy. You smarter d’an your PawPaw.”

He flipped the cigarette around and lit it and I smelled the Zippo fuel that’s not unlike the JP-4 jet fuel that blasts paratroopers in the face as they board a plane on a one-way trip. He snapped the Zippo shut and put it back in the little pocket in his blue jeans made for pocket watches and Zippos. He let the Camel dangle from his lips and flipped pancakes and smoked from the corner of his mouth like Popeye the sailor. (PawPaw looked a lot like Popeye, the little guy who squinted with one eye and smoked a pipe and mumbled on Saturday morning TV.)

PawPaw smoked and cooked pancakes and I stared out the window and through the dusty spiderwebs on the outside towards the fishing pond. There was a tall rusted metal gate leaning against the fence from when a previous owner tried to raise cows, but we had no animals other than bullfrogs we’d sometimes gig for dinner so there was no need to fix the gate; they lived in the pond and weren’t going anywhere, PawPaw had said.

PawPaw turned to the kitchen table and shoved the pile of his old tools and my Lone Ranger pistol and bullet belt aside. He put a jug of Aunt Jemima syrup on the table and a roll of paper towels to use as napkins. He poured both of us a glass of Blue Bell and we drown our pancakes in Aunt Jemima and took big bites and washed them down with swigs from the glasses. We finished and I stepped up to the sink and helped PawPaw wash dishes. We finished washing and he said: “How ’bout we go to d’ store and get some mo’ milk an’ cookie dough so MawMaw can make some cookies for when you back from seein’ Wendy?”

My eyebrows shot up and I asked if we could climb the tree; there was only one tree I called the tree, and it was the really big sprawling stately oak tree across from the convenience store on the corner of Hooper and Plank that didn’t have Slushies but had those elf in the tree cookies. I told PawPaw I bet I could climb into the saddle all by myself. He chuckled and said: “Of course, Lil’ Buddy. D’at’s what made me think of it. We’ll go after MawMaw done in d’ john.”

Just then MawMaw walked into the kitchen as if PawPaw Puck’s words manifested her. She had done her hair in a towering beehive held aloft with copious amounts of hair spray and it towered over PawPaw and me. She tore a paper towel from the roll on the table and pressed it to her lips and showed me the red kiss mark; she handed me the napkin and said it was my breakfast shugga.

I giggled and set the breakfast shugga by my Lone Ranger pistol. She gave PawPaw some shugga on his cheek and he told her we were going to the store. She glanced at the mostly empty jug of Blue Bell and asked for more milk for her coffee. She looked at me and told me to hurry and brush my teeth because Wendy’s coming and I didn’t want to be late.

I return from the john and PawPaw told MawMaw we’ll be back soon. He opened the door to the carport and I stepped outside by the cricket cage. PawPaw paused inside to grab a potato from a bag laying atop the washing machine then stepped into the carport with me. He opened the bigger blade of his Old Henry two-blade folding knife to cut the potato into chunks and opened a hatch in the refrigerator-sized cricket cage and dropped the potatoe pieces inside. He returned the Old Henry to the same pocket that had the little Zippo pocket and took my hand.

We had to turn sideways to squeeze between his rusted brown Ford pickup truck and the piles of Yellow Pages phone books lined along the carport to keep them out of the rain. We reached the driveway and walked side-by-side along the crunchy gravel carport and turned left onto the blacktop of Hooper Road. PawPaw stood between me the road in case a car speed by.

They go fast on d’at road, he once said. D’ey in a hurry to get to d’ airport.

I rarely saw cars on Hooper Road, but I didn’t doubt PawPaw and remembered everything he said so I walked off the blacktop and along the gravel and weeds with PawPaw between the road and me. I slapped the thistles that grew taller than I was and watched them weeble-wobble back upright.

I saw the stately oak tree at the empty corner of Hooper and Plank Road. Its sprawling undulating branches make it seem like a giant octopus with sprawling tentacles draped in grey Spanish moss and one of those tentacles hoovers a few feet above the ground about 40 feet from the trunk and forms a perfect saddle that beckons me to climb into it. I let go of PawPaw’s hand and rush to the tree and reach up and grab the to of the saddle and my fingers slip into grooves in the old bark that are as deep and sprawly as the wrinkles on the back of PawPaw’s weathered neck when I hug him goodnight.

I grasped that gnarled bark with both hands and heaved with all my might but could not pull myself up. I stood on my tippie toes like in front of the hallway mirror and pulled again and again but could not pull myself higher. But then I felt PawPaw’s hands under my arms and I got stronger and pulled myself onto the branch and swung my big left foot over the curved branch and raised a hand in the air as if waving goodbye.

Hi Ho Silver! I said.

The branch swayed gently up and down and I was riding in my saddle like the Lone Ranger on Silver.

I was quick to celebrate and faster to forget. I eyed the branch above me and began to reach. I stretched and grunted but could not touch the bark. Today was not my day. Instead, I grabbed some of the gray Spanish moss dangling by my hands and yanked off a tuff and held it on my chin and looked straight into PawPaw’s good eye.

I look Craig now! I said.

PawPaw chuckled like Puck and reached up and grabbed his own beard and put it on. We laughed with each other like two old men who were best friends and had already knew all the good jokes and didn’t need words to laugh.

He put his beard back on the tree and reminded me we have to get cookie dough and get back home before Wendy and Debbie showed up. I kept my beard and reached out my arms. PawPaw swung me over the saddle and onto the ground. We held hands and turned to the store and paused at the Plank Road red light until it turned green. Across the street, PawPaw pushed the big glass door open and I put on my moss as a disguise just like The Lone Ranger would wear a fake beard so he could take off his mask and look like just another old man in town. The Christmas bell tied to a string above the door rang; the man behind the counter looked up to see who came in.

“Well hello there, Mr. Ed,” he said. “Who got with you today?”

It’s me! I exclaimed as I lowered my disguise.

“Wow!” he said. “I didn’t recognize you, Mr. Jason.”

I put the beard back on and he gasped and told me it was a good disguise. I revealed myself again myself again told him that The Lone Ranger was a master of disguise and that I was too.

The man and I chatted while PawPaw shopped. He walked up to the counter with a tube of cookie dough with elves in a tree on the wrapper, a half gallon carton of Blue Bell milk, and a six pack of Miller pony bottles. Without being asked the man reached up and brought down a pack of Camels and put it on the counter by the beer. He gave us two plastic bags to carry things home, one for PawPaw and one for me.

PawPaw carried the milk and ponies and I carried the cookie dough made by elves that looked like the paintings Craig made at home but without moss and without Puck peering from behind a branch.

I don’t recall if I saw cars flying down Hooper Road on the walk home. All I remember about that walk were the weeds weeble wobbling and a feeling that it was the best day of my life, and that the day had only just begun and my whole life was ahead of me with PawPaw by my side.

Go to the Table of Contents