Finally posted in The Later Adventures ... The Orphan and Pepe Le Bell Tour the South Seas ...

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TIMELINE ON BEING ONLY AN EGG PATIENCE, COURAGE AND WISDOM
CAST OF CHARACTERS

The Early Adventures

Boeing:  Land of Heroes and Assassins

JOKES

The Later Adventures

The Mighty Boeing Company

GRANNYISMS

The Orphan and The Boot

The Awesome AquaJet Shower

 

 

 

Chapter    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20 

The Early Adventures of The Little Orphan Granny

Part One:  The Mississippi Cotton Farm

 

   

CHAPTER FOUR

 The Little Orphan Granny and The Real Granville begin their education

 

The Little Orphan Granny seems to have been born an orphan.

Near to the humble farm close to the Hamlet of Walnut that contained the lair of The Orphan and The Muddy and The Forbidding Giant, there lived, in the Counties of Tippah and Benton in the State of Mississippi, a plethora of Aunts, Uncles, Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Cousins and Others.

The Orphan always saw all of these as through a mist - even the beloved Cousin Neil called “Bitty” (so named because at his birth an unfeeling person said “…This is a little bitty baby…”).

From the beginning, there existed inside The Orphan an alone place where The Real “Granville” lived. In this place was the freedom to be any right thing chosen by The Orphan. In this place only logic, goodness, rationality and clarity of thinking existed.

When the external persona of The Real Granville was exhibited, it was always as The Little Orphan Granny. This Orphan guise was used as a barrier between the world and The Real Granville and could be used to filter the externally imposed “information” and “data” that flowed from the wise mentors as well as the flawed and limited thoughts from the other “learned” ones (“learned” was most often confused with either the time the “learned” one had been alive or with an accidental phenomenon called “age”).

The Orphan learned quickly to keep The Orphan barrier as a closely guarded secret because, whenever The Orphan expressed the inner thoughts of The Real Granville, those who heard them reacted with startlements.  Initially these inner thoughts would escape as a “blurt” from The Real Granville through the barrier and out of The Orphan following some “expert” thought that was so stupid that it screamed its ignorance to all the universe. The Orphan was taught early that many “experts” cherished their “beliefs” and would rise to smite any question (and sometimes the questioner, however innocent) with the all-consuming fury of the intolerance of any different thought process.

The Orphan had an internal meeting with The Real Granville and made a pact that, for the time being (while The Orphan weighed less than fifty pounds), some filtering of data from The Real Granville and through The Orphan to the outside world was not dishonest. It was important that The Orphan be allowed to grow up in relative safety. 

Later, when The Orphan massed 150 pounds and was well muscled, the final pact was to never filter data at all but always lay it out as the data showed, and to use real data only for good.  The mass of The Orphan would later protect him – somewhat.

Neither The Orphan nor The Real Granville had any notion of the weight of the “cross” that the duo had vowed to drag through life - but drag it they did.

It was at this instant in time that The Orphan ceased stuttering forever.

Now, The Orphan, as the protector of The Real Granville, could go forth safely to all of the world that he could reach and learn. It was acceptable to learn the real, the unreal, the false, the wrong, the old, the new, the not-yet-learned and the needs-to-be-learned. The Orphan met internally at least once each day with The Real Granville and they organized all of the additionally gained data in a manner such that it was in place in the internal files in the correct category and organized such that the data could be retrieved instantly in its entirety.

The Orphan was now ready to learn and went bravely from the loving arms of The Muddy, in a covered wagon, to the first grade of a School, while clutching his lunch in both hands, (but frightened nearly out of his wits so horribly that shallow breathing was all that could be accomplished).

Quickly, a thing called a Recess occurred, which The Orphan confused with Lunch and therefore ate all of his food. Later, when Lunch was called, The Orphan realized what had happened and was hungry. The Orphan decided quickly (as he would through all life) that he had learned enough from school already and that he did not like being away from The Muddy or from his toys or from readily available cold biscuits and ham.

The Orphan then walked alone the mile back to the lair and went to his favorite places with a biscuit (The Muddy being off doing things like the “washing” and the hoeing and watering of the garden).

Later, when The Muddy discovered The Orphan out happily playing in his comfortable places, The Muddy reacted with a strange form of consternation. When The Muddy heard the story from The Orphan, The Muddy acted stern but hugged The Orphan and cried and laughed and said mysterious things like,

     “…but along that busy highway…what will the teacher think…what if you got lost…” (a strange thought - The Orphan knew exactly where he was).

Then The Forbidding Giant came home with the mules from the fields and, after listening to “The Muddy,” gave The Orphan some new thoughts that included an opinion that half of one day in the first grade of school wasn’t enough learning. There were also lurid mental pictures of the rear of The Orphan changing from a pale white to a seriously red color, and mentions of striped calves from an instrument of torture called a “peach tree switch.”

The Orphan was now firmly dedicated to school and stayed each day until the mule-drawn school wagon (sometimes driven by The Forbidding Giant) returned him home to a grilling of,

     “…Well, what did you learn today…?”

And threats like:

     “…A whipping at school will get you two whippings at home…”; and

     “…I don’t care if the Luna boy did it too – you are a Frazier and you will behave like one…”

Thus began The Orphan’s education. 

 

 

Mississippi was a simple agrarian society composed of farms that became smaller each time children came of age and were dowered with a share of the parent’s farm.

Houses were built at “house raisings” using lumber from trees cut from the farmland, taken to the lumber mills by wagon or Ford Model T trucks and traded for part of the finished lumber.

The “house raising” was a process where houses were built by a group of neighbors and family who came en mass with potluck and all together built a fireplace from river rock and some form of cement and then built the house around it. The house was finished outside with slabs, the first cut off a log with the bark still on.

The roof was made from cedar shakes also obtained by trading trees to the shake maker for a share of the finished shakes. The “house raising” was complete when the drinking water well was dug and the first bail of water was pulled up.

McGuffey's Reader

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HOME THE BOOT'S WEB SITE wild blue goose nature photography
TIMELINE

ON BEING ONLY AN EGG

JOKES

CAST OF CHARACTERS

PATIENCE, COURAGE AND WISDOM

GRANNYISMS

     
The Early Adventures:   Chapter    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20 
The Later Adventures:   Dance Cruise     Ski Matterhorn     South Seas     North to Alaska     Education in Ethanol     Criminal Side  
The Orphan and The Boot:  

Final Seduction     Guadeloupe     The Great Arvee NW     Cabo San Lucas

The Mighty Boeing Company:   Chapter    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20
The Awesome AquaJet Shower:   Title Page     Philosophy     Preface

Boeing:  Land of Heroes and Assassins

 

 

 

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