The Monkey on the Side of the Road

I should tell you that these stories aren't going to be in chronological order. They will appear as I think of them. And some of them, such as this one, won't be first person accounts. This is a story I heard Mother tell many times.

Mother and Daddy and children (unknown number) were traveling back to Louisiana from Tennessee. It was very late at night because they wanted get home so Daddy could go to work the next day. All of us kids were asleep.

This particular stretch of highway they were on went through a swampy area bordered by trees with hanging moss. According to Mother, there was almost no traffic. As they were driving along, a monkey sitting on the side of the road appeared in the headlights. Neither Mother nor Daddy said anything for a couple of minutes.

Mother finally had to ask, "Did you see that?" Daddy asked, "What did you see?" and laughed. She told him she had seen a monkey and he laughed even harder, but admitted he had also seen it. They talked a lot about this monkey the rest of the way home - trying to figure out why it would be out in the middle of the swamps sitting by the side of the road. They agreed not to tell anyone about seeing it because everyone would think they were crazy.

However, the next day, Daddy heard on the news that a circus train had derailed in the swamp and some of the animals had escaped. Apparently, this stray monkey was one of them.

I wonder if it was ever captured?

The Snake in the Wood Pile

When Budd and I were very young, about 3 and 5, we lived in a tiny little place named Ravel, Louisiana. It was outside of Monroe. I don't remember it even being a town, more a crossroad with a couple of stores. Daddy was in college at LSU and worked at Allied Moving & Storage. Bob had either just been born or Mother was still pregnant - not an important detail to a 5 year old when compared to a snake.

Budd and I along with our black Lab named Nig (yes I KNOW that's not politically correct but we didn't know what that meant in 1950 and it was the South for God's sake!) were playing in the back yard near the wood pile. I don't know why we had a wood pile. I don't remember a fireplace or a wood burning stove, but there must have been some reason for the wood. Anyway, we weren't supposed to play around it.

Well, you know what that means - we did. Nig started barking at the wood pile, Budd and I looked and we both saw a snake. It was a big snake. Any snake is big when you're 3 and 5 years old. We ran inside and told Mother. She didn't believe us, but she came out and looked anyway. She never saw the snake and she never believed that we saw one.

At Daddy's retirement party, Budd and I told Mother that we really did see a snake and she should have believed us. Her comment about that was that we shouldn't have been playing there in the first place! She still didn't believe us...

We really did see a snake...a big one.

Who's Kathy Johnson?

The only person besides me who knows who Kathy Johnson is, or actually isn't, is probably my brother Budd. When we were kids and played our imaginary lives, I was always Kathy Johnson. I don't know why I chose that name - it was just a name I liked and that was who I always was. So, when I decided to create a blog for family stories and other memories, Kathy Johnson reappeared. It seemed appropriate somehow.

As for the name of this blog - Growing Up Civilized - it comes from a comment our mother used to say to us. She would tell my three brothers and me that we acted like a bunch of wild Indians and needed to learn to be civilized. We did eventually become civilized, but I'm sure we gave Mother cause for doubt many times.

My brothers and I grew up in the 50's, 60's and early 70's, so we covered a lot of time and a lot of world changes. I have taken it upon myself to document this journey from my perspective. If the facts are a little skewed, it's not intentional, it's blurry or wishful memory.

One thing is certain, I won't be changing the names to protect the innocent or guilty - what's done is done!