Eccentric Relatives, Chickens and the Wrath of God

Who doesn’t have at least one family member that’s as crazy as a shit house rat? I have several and depending on who you ask I probably make the list as well. My grandmother on my mothers side was a good woman, but a wee bit looney. My mothers people are all from Oklahoma, nuff said. I lived in Oklahoma the first 6 years of my life and spent summers there for another 6 or so years , this accounts for why I have a bit of an okie accent even though I haven’t set foot near the land of red dirt and rednecks in decades, barring the occasional funeral. I digress, on to grandma.

My grandmother smoked Carlton cigs. She claimed her doctor told her to take up smoking for her nerves. Grandfather, Delbert, quit smoking years before she took it up so out of respect Clara did not smoke in the house. She smoked in her chicken coop. The ground was littered with butts. She also carried on complete one sided conversations with her chickens, she had names for everyone of them and there were at least 20. Clara also did not drive. Apparently she drove for a short period of time, but was always running into things, usually stationary and thankfully at low speeds. My mother and her siblings refused to get in the car with her and gramps eventually took her keys. Well Clara still needed to get to the hairdresser, church and Pratts Redbud Grocery store so gramps got her a riding lawn mower with a little trailer and that was her main mode of transport weather permitting. Gramps never taught her to shift into high gear so she would creep the mile or so to town at a blistering 3 miles an hour.

You could never get away with riding a lawnmower around here, but in Marlow Oklahoma it was not only acceptable it was the norm for some of the blue hairs in grandmas circle. There was a time when you could find a half dozen riding lawnmowers and one golf cart, that belonged to the Mayors wife, who was a big show off, parked at the beauty salon on Marlow’s Main street, true story.

I got a phone call when I was twenty, one of those late night calls that fill you with dread when you hear the voice of an out of town relative, in this case my older sister, whose voice fills me with dread at any given hour but even more so in the middle of the night. Clara was in the hospital she had been involved in an accident . It was just an over night stay as it turned out, couple of bumps, bruises and minor cuts. It seems Clara was riding her mower to town, and was rubber necking the Mayors wife’s flower bed. Even at 3 miles an hour you need to watch where you are going. Clara ass ended the Mayors parked Caddy, there were no skid marks, she never saw it coming.

Delbert drove Clara to town from then on. Everyone thought that was the thing to do. I thought it was a little sad in the same vein of sadness that comes to an old person when they can no longer do some of the things that brought them joy. Simple pleasures. In Clara’s case it was the independence of riding that mower. When I asked her about the accident her answer was classic Clara Mae Mader. She told me that she had been busy gloating over the fact that her flower bed put the Mayors wife’s flower bed to shame, and God in his infinite wisdom had caused her to crash for being prideful.