I haven’t thought of this
in almost sixty years, and it amazes me that the little snip of memory has
persisted in some crevice of my brain, surviving unscathed to the present day.
We lived in a little white
house on a hill owned by the Clarys, a fine older couple who were relatively
well-off for rural Redwater,
Texas. They had running water and
indoor plumbing. We did not.
I must have been around
five. It was some time long before first grade. My father read a lot of
magazines when he was home and not sleeping, from long hours at his job at Lone
Star Ordnance Plant.
One day he burst out
laughing at something he read, and I went over to him. It was a humorous poem title,
“Woman,” but when he read it aloud to my mother, who was stirring a pot of
great northern beans on the stove, she was not amused.
My father sat me on his
lap and told me to repeat the verses after him. Although I didn’t understand
all the words, I quickly memorized and repeated them to my father. I’ll never
forget his booming laughter every time I recited it.
When we went to my
grandparents’ house, he had me recite the brief poem to them and a couple of
uncles, and everyone burst out in laughter again. I was so thrilled to be the
source of such glee among my family that I didn’t need much prompting. When we
went to the general store for ice cream, my father had me recite it to the
couple behind the counter. The barber thought it was hilarious, as did a couple
of my father’s coworkers. When we visited my Uncle Rufus and Grandma Norman in Dade City, Florida,
my Uncle Rufus guffawed, which led to him and my father taking me around to my
uncle’s friends to hear his nephew’s poem. Looking back, I wonder what was more amusing, the words of the little poem that were so characteristic of the early 1950's culture, or its recitation by a small boy who surely did not understand all that he was reciting. Perhaps it was a combination of both.
Amazingly, every verse is
still burned into my memory. Looking back, that little poem, my first
experience with poetry and memorization, may have been the seed that grew into
a lifelong love of poetry — reading, reciting, and writing. Although not
politically correct in our sensitive modern era, in 1954, to hear a little boy
recite it was great fun. Thanks, Daddy.
Charlie
This is the verse as Charlie
recited it:
WOMAN
She’s an angel in truth,
A demon in fiction,
Woman’s the greatest
of all contradiction.
She’s afraid of a cockroach,
She’ll scream at a mouse,
But she’ll tackle a
husband
As big as a house.
It is actually a partial section
from a poem by Alfred J. Krieg:
She’s an angel in truth, a demon in fiction A woman’s the greatest of all contradiction She’s afraid of a cockroach, She’ll scream at a mouse
But she’ll tackle a husband as big as a house She’ll take him for better, She’ll take him for worse She’ll split his head open and then be his nurse
And when he is well and can get out of bed She’ll pick up a teapot and throw at his head She’s faithful, deceitful, keen-sighted and blind She’s crafty, she’s simple, she’s cruel, she’s kind
She’ll lift a man up, she’ll cast a man down She’ll make him her hero, her ruler, her clown You fancy she’s this, but you’ll find that she’s that For she’ll play like a kitten, and fight like a cat.
-Composed by Alfred J. Krieg
(circa 1950)
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