Big Daddy's Gentle Reminder.  second draft 

 

In all the years I knew him, Big Daddy was showered, straight-razored, pajama'ed and on the way to bed as soon as the television weather report was over and Grandmother had the information she needed to make a final decision on whether to bring in her standing army of potted plants.  This, you see was because he was up and going strong by five a.m. the next morning, without fail.   

 

Middle, not one to ignore the fact her status as the middle child required her to fight the curse of invisibility, actually turned to her advantage her own early morning wakefulness by secretly meeting Big Daddy in the kitchen every day, long before sunup.  They probably had to move plants first, but that never interfered with sharing hot chocolate and conspiring with twinkly early morning eyes their plans for mischief in the coming daylight hours.

 

But then, that's Middle's story.  She'll have to disclose the nature of those conversations.  Here, the important thing to keep in mind is that while we, of the generation who thought all things existed for us, only observed this curious circadian rhythm after he retired from going to work every day, Big Daddy apparently had a long history of early to bed, early to rise coming from the fact that his business required him to be up at the crack o' dawn.  

 

Of course, it’s unlikely that Big Daddy's resting hours were a real problem when Granny and Sudie Lee were children.  I mean, those were days when the pecking order at home generally allowed the primary bread winner to set the agenda, and I suspect when his family was young, everyone simply followed his lead and retired early.  But at some point impressionable youngsters become teenagers with independent ideas about what the nighttime hours are for, and that's what this story is about—but, it takes a little leap back in time from the years when Middle and I and even Youngest knew Big Daddy as a Grandfather to his days as the father of a teenaged girl who was moving through what was commonly referred to as the courtin' years, let me say what I know with what I think is some genuine Mis'sippi elocution as follows.

 

I hear tell that at some point, Granny (the oldest, and the one who had to push the envelope for the benefit of her younger sibling) began to sit on the front porch with a certain gentleman caller.  These porch sittin's became so regular and the conversation so engrossing that time simply stood still, and often this certain, number one favorite gentleman caller, extended the porch sittin' visitin' hours until long past the weather report and plant movin' time and well into the clean shaven, pajama'ed Big Daddy territory.  That means Big Daddy was tired and wanted to go to bed.  Of course, in those days there was no air conditioning and everyone left their doors and windows open such that porch sittin' was hardly the private affair it might be today.  Sometimes the conversation included porch sitters as well as those in other rooms in the house, invited or not.  Normally this wasn't a problem, but when it was time to go to bed, someone's rhythm had to rule. 

 

Of course, Big Daddy wasn't a harsh man.  He wasn't particularly demanding or authoritarian, but he did have a way of charming you so you understood what he was after.  As the story goes, whenever Papa over lingered,  Big Daddy would start communicating his intentions first by clearing his throat in the den, then by beginning the process of checking screens on the windows and doors and finally by engaging in other shut down the house activities.  If Papa didn't notice, Big Daddy would become even more obvious in the process by saying in his outside voice, "well Mildred, is there anything that needs to tendin' before we turn in?"  Those were clear "time to get goin'" cues to any gentleman caller countin' lightening bugs on the porch, but apparently at some point during the Papa's budding friendship with Granny, he felt so at home that  Big Daddy's noisy subtleties became no more Big Daddy's idiosyncrasies.  Papa was a big man and could overlook them.  He wasn't countin' fireflies anyway.  The result was that because Big Daddy liked Papa and cut him lots of slack, he would head off to bed with the admonition, "Dars-Ann don't be late."  If Big Daddy actually made it to bed and Papa was still chatting on the porch, without any warning or further conversation, a shoe would come flying down the hall.  That was a subtlety Papa understood, and the invitation to leave that he almost always honored.  Granted, some nights were two shoe nights, but Papa's other incentive was that he had to get to the bus stop before the last run or he'd have to walk home, and notwithstanding his abiding affection for the girl he won the right to escort home from Seale Lilly’s ice cream parlor one night after church by a coin flip (another story, to come), he was always one to conserve his energies. 

 

By contrast, by the time I knew Big Daddy, he kept his shoes in a big green ottoman after shining them each night, and I never ever saw him throw a single one down the hall.  Rather, he simply re-incorporated his leadership by example method into his bed time routine, demonstrating by his own behavior what he hoped everyone else would do, just like when Dars-Ann and Sudie-Lee were little.  Grandmother happily followed him, as did Granny and Papa (who were themselves early risers) and even Middle (ever the compliant one of course, but also undoubtedly anticipating early morning hot chocolate).  Sometimes his method worked on Youngest, but I usually stayed up with an earphone plugged into the radio listening to the "Woof Man," or reading a Hardy Boys book until it was bedtime on the west coast, and Big Daddy never once threw a shoe.  Maybe it was because he wore more expensive shoes.  Maybe it was because there was no porch sittin' threat, or maybe it was just because he was able to cover up any ambient noise by turning down his hearing aid and turning on the air conditioner and humming attic fan to cover up any background noise.  Anyway, as long as no one was "howlin' like wild dogs," he was always out like a light long before the Tonight Show began, and I'm told, stirrin' hot chocolate a few hours later.