Judd
Mortimer Lewis May
19,1939 718
JUBILEE’S PARDNER
Tomorrow
will be Saturday and when I had let Jubilee down by his rope and chaseted
myself into my short britches and got almost to the top of the stairs I
happened to think that there would be only one more Saturday before vacation
and I turned a handspring I was so glad, but my feet came down past the top
step and I slid half ways downstairs on my back, and when I got in the dining
room my father hollered and asted me what was I trying to do and I said I was
trying to fall downstairs and he said it was too bad I didn't succeed. I took
the pail and went out without saying nothing. He can’t munky with me and get
away with it. The bunch came while. I was milking and Alfred and Pat was with
them, and Alfred showed us how his father twisted the man's arm. He just folded
it behind the man and pushed up on it, and he could of broke it if the man had
got funny. That is a good trick to remember when I went in to strain the milk I
was trying it out real gentle on Annabelle Lee and she hollered and my ant
slapped me so hard I saw pinwheels. I wonder if she thought I would hurt my own
sister. I wonder what she thinks sisters are for. Then Youniss and Feeble and
Maggie came and Maggie brung my mother a big bunch of lielocks and when she
pushed her face through them and looked at my unkle he said, “You look like a
magazine cover, don’t she Thomas Aristides?" and I could feel Youniss
looking at me to see what I was going to say, and I said, “Yessir, she is
almost that flat,” and Youniss looked pleased and, my mother said I had better
learn to be more polite, and she kissed Maggie, and she said, “Don't you want
to kiss her for mamma, Thomas Aristides” and I said, "Why should I have to
do the dirty work?" and they all laughed, and my father said just for that
I could go to school without any breakfast, but when he and my unkle had went
my mother made me eat some. When we had went to Angela's and went to school and
got back there again Diabetes was planting tomato plants in the garden way out
back and I punched the holes for him and he gave me twelve of them and I took
them home and laid them on the back step in the shade and went and made a nice
garden by the side of the barn and when I went to get my plants they was gone
and my ant was outside and I asted her had she seen them and she said, “Oh, was
them tomato plants'? I didn't know. They looked so tender and green that I took
them in the barn and fed them to the cows." I was so mad I said, “I wish
you would mind your darn business!” my mother heard me and made me tell my ant
I was sorry and said she was going to tell my father, but she didn't, and now I
have got a garden and nothing to put in it. I might have had some tomatoes to
sell for Fourth money, and now I ain't got nothing. Anyhow she can't feed my
vacation to the cows, but I bet she would if she could.