James Etheridge

‪I graduated kindergarten in the dawn of the Sixties. The school was Davis Kindergarten and Nursery. My mother was a teacher there and the school had two Volkswagen buses with Panda faces painted on the front. They were Panda I and Panda II. My father painted the faces on them and also built the scenery for our graduation program, which was based on nursery rhymes and called The Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe.

A girl named Nancy Gunn and I were Jack and Jill. From that point on, through elementary school, high school and beyond, my mother was convinced that Nancy and I were going to get married. She took our picture standing together after seventh grade graduation and wanted us to get up on the stage, but they wouldn’t let us. My mother argued with Frog Eyes, the principal, but thank goodness he would not budge. In high school, for dances, banquets and such, she’d say, “Have y’thought about askin’ little Nancy Gunn?” I finally pointed out to her one day that Nancy wasn’t really wasn’t that little anymore, but I don’t think she understood what I was talking about.

About a year after high school graduation, my mother decided that I had lived the life of a swinging young bachelor long enough and it was time for me to get married. If I went out with a girl three times, she’d look at me and say, “Well, d’ya think y’all might git married?” I finally told her once that no, we weren’t going to get married and the only reason I was going out with this particular girl was because she had ample bosoms. She started crying and said, “I just don’t want y’ta turn out like y’poor ol’ Uncle Clifton.”

My Uncle Clifton was my mother’s youngest brother and a cowboy, a real cowboy who worked on a ranch in west Texas. He contracted tuberculosis and died young, in the early Seventies. “That’s th’ reason he died so young,” she’d wail to me. “He never had anybody t’cook for him or take care o’him.” I would assure her that I wasn’t going to wind up like my poor ol’ Uncle Clifton, that I was only nineteen and when I did meet a young lady I wanted to settle down with, she’d be the first to know.

My father even got in on it. I could count on one hand the number of times he ever went to church, but one day he looked at me and said, “Jimmy, y’know they got a school bus up at the church. On Wednesday nights after service, th’young people go out for pizza in it. You ort to go sometimes, they’s lotsa nice girls there.” I looked at him and said, “I don’t wanna meet any nice girls.” He started grumbling and stomped off downstairs. My mother started squalling about my poor old Uncle Clifton again. I know it was a rough thing to say to them but hey, it got them off my back.

But my mother never forgot about Nancy Gunn. During the last year or so of her life when she would say the same stuff to me every time I came over, one of the first things she would ask me was, “Sweetie, d’ya ever hear from little Nancy Gunn?” She never gave up.