Grace was swinging back and forth, head leaned back, listening to the waves.
Whenever they were within twenty miles of Keel’s Landing Lake, Grace insisted the trio visit the swings at The Landing Dock. Five minutes by the water was all she asked for. Beau was usually happy to oblige since the Trade Days Flea Market was just down the road. He was always looking for treasure and Trade Days rarely let him leave empty-handed.
“You good, Grace?” Beau asked, looking at the flea market flyer. “They’ve got a vintage tool booth this time.”
“Five minutes.”
“It’s been twenty.”
Grace opened one eye and looked over at Beau. “Five more.”
Beau nodded and tried out the swing next to her.
“Where’s Hank, anyway?” Grace asked.
“He and Jean-Paul are checking on a cooler.”
“Another one?”
“He says this one has a story.”
“They all do.”
“You know this man. He just wants to make sure everyone gets to tell their story.” Beau looked at his watch. “You ready?”
“Five minutes.”
“You just had five minutes.”
“But we were talking. That didn’t count.”
Beau closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He knew they’d leave when they left.
Thirty minutes later, the trio was drifting from booth to booth at the flea market. Beau spotted a gourd with a peacock painted on.
“Look at this.”
“What is that?” Grace asked.
“It’s a gourd.”
“I know. I guess I mean what are you gonna do with that?”
“Hang it in a tree.”
“Why?”
“It’s a gourd.”
Hank picked up two faded, hardcover manuals from the late seventies: The Complete Guide to Pelvic Operations and The Complete Guide to Peacock Taxidermy.
“Which one?”
“I think Jean-Paul might take offense to the second one,” Grace answered.
“Good point,” Hank dropped the taxidermy guide back on the table.
Beau picked up a music book with yellowed pages.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I got stuck inside a tuba at a marching band competition?”
“Only twice,” Grace answered. “The short version.”
“Well, this is the long version. The band had this tradition—”
“—Oh wow, I guess these have gone back out,” Grace mused. “Good. I’ve never liked this style.” She was looking at a table showcasing an array of trucker caps—the kind that were in fashion a few years ago.
“You don’t like the big foam front that extends your forehead?” Beau asked, trying on one of the caps.
“I mean, they’re fine for truckers… or Hank,” Grace said. “But my forehead is big enough as it is.”
Beau squinted at her forehead. “Huh.”
“I always wanted the kind of cap little boys wore in the 1950s,” she smiled wistfully. “You could shape them to frame your face. You could fold them up and carry them in your back pocket.”
”Cute. Anyway. It wasn’t your usual band competition…”
Grace nodded, looking at the trucker cap. The blistering heat of her first Alabama summer came flooding back.
Little Grace sat in the back of her Nanny’s brown Plymouth Duster. Her legs were glued to the vinyl seats as she fanned herself furiously with a paper map she’d found on the floorboard. Her long red hair was stuck to the back of her neck and the breeze coming in from the rolled-down window felt like a blast furnace.
This was her first summer on Preservation Mountain. Back in the Adirondacks, June sometimes ended with snow on the mountain peaks. Here, she’d learned two new words in the space of a week: humidity and sunburn.
“Back home” was an Air Force base where all the houses were identical. In the early part of summer, people would open their garage doors and set up tables with treasures. They called them Garage Sales. You’d stroll down the block, rummage through someone’s stuff, and come out with something exotic like a Polish pottery patterned monkey that your neighbor picked up when they were stationed in Powidz.
Yard sales were an entirely different beast. At least with Nanny and Nin. This wasn’t shopping. It was an Olympic event. It began in the war room at Nanny’s kitchen table, with brown and tan patchwork-patterned vinyl seats, early Saturday morning. Actually, it started the week before. Nanny and Nin would write down signs they spotted during the week. Then they’d check their notes against what the Good Neighbors Show was reporting on the AM radio dial that morning.
These sisters had been running this Saturday morning operation for decades. Long before Grace had been born. Nin would plot out points on the county map. Nanny would look at it, commit it to memory, and toss the map in the floorboard. Then she’d declare she had it handled. Nanny drove by pure Appalachian intuition. She could navigate by the density of the clouds and the direction of the wind.
They piled into the car. Nanny drove. Nin sat in the passenger seat with the window cracked so she could flick her cigarette ashes. Grace in the backseat. The discussion started up the moment the Duster did. And it moved just as fast.
Grace never heard them take a breath between topics. She tried to listen fast. But the air rushing in probably drowned out about half of it.
“I think Marcus is fixing to ask Gabby to marry him.”
“That boy can’t afford shoes.”
“Dr. Leslie Webber finally got locked up.”
“Let alone a ring.”
“She’s hanging up her pom poms after Homecoming.”
“Dr. Webber?”
“Gabby.”
“She was just trying to protect her daughter.”
“I’da whooped that girl’s tail running off to a cabin with that man.”
“Gabby???”
“No. Laura.”
“Dr. Webber was just doing right by her. Shoulda whooped her tail.”
“Deller finally got Tweedy signed up for school.”
“Now she’s settin’ in jail.”
“Deller?”
(It would be another three decades before Grace learned that Deller’s name was actually Idella. She never figured out where the nickname Tweedy came from.)
“No. Dr. Webber. Lort help, Tweedy’s done seven year old. About time he started school.”
“Mark my words, that scandal is about to blow that hospital up.”
“Got another Green Stamp book full up.”
“Get the blender.”
“Done got it. Thinking about the electric can opener.”
“Electric? Well smell you…”
“What are we saving those stamps for if not for luxury, Nin?”
Grace sure hoped Laura made it back home before the explosion.
She peeled her legs off the backseat and got out of the car at what was probably the 83rd stop of the day. Nanny had told her she could stay in the car, but it was hotter in there than outside.
“This is the last one, Gracie. Then we’ll head to dinner.”
There was a clothesline strung between two pine trees and mismatched tchotchkes spread across several sagging folding tables. She picked up a Roll Tide kitchenware set, faded by the sun. She overheard some older kids talking about the monster at Keel’s Landing Lake. She smiled, thinking about the lake monster back at Lake Champlain.
But this was her home now. She hoped this monster would be as nice as Champy. Grace ducked a yellow jacket as it buzzed toward an abandoned soda can. She scanned the table for a cap. She didn’t want one of those “gimme hats” that were everywhere. She wanted the old-fashioned kind. The kind that Opie Taylor and Dennis Mitchell wore on those early morning reruns.
She did not find a hat. And she was starting to see why Nanny called lunch “dinner.” Her stomach growled like she hadn’t eaten in days. As she ducked another yellow jacket, she decided to head back to the car and wait for Nanny and Nin there.
Nanny finally pulled into a parking spot right in front of Woolworths. The cold blast of air conditioning welcomed them in. Grace ran straight to the table where the hats were displayed. She dug through the pile. Nothing but trucker hats.
The shop had an old-timey lunch counter. Nanny let her order a fountain Coke—and spin around on the chrome stool until Miss Francine placed her plate down in front of her. Grace dipped her french fries and her grilled cheese in the ketchup, something her mother said was silly.
Nanny and Nin had a few more stops after Woolworths, but they promised Grace there was a prize afterward that would make it worth her while. The sun was starting to dip. Grace looked up as Nanny pulled into the gravel lot of a roadside ice cream hut. Back home, Grace would have called it a custard stand.
Grace hated frozen custard. And ice cream.
She’d cried the first time in her life that she ever tried ice cream. When the ice cream truck came around her little Air Force neighborhood in England, ringing its bell, she was excited to try what the big kids had been enjoying all summer. She took one bite, and her face screwed up. It was not what she expected.
No hat. And this was her prize?
Grace looked at the orbs hanging in the trees around the hut.
“What’re those?” she asked.
“They’re gourds.”
“Who put them there?”
“Somebody.”
“Why?”
“Probably because they wanted ‘em there.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re gourds.”
Nin handed her a cone and winked. The Hut had something impossible—a machine that pumped out a bright lavender colored ice cream. Grace’s eyes widened as she took a bite. Grape. It had won her over. She sat on the trunk of the Duster, watching the last bit of the sun disappear. Her hair was finally blowing in the breeze while she ate this strange purple treat.
Grace blinked. The trucker hat was back on the table.
And Beau was saying, “Anyway. That’s how I got out of the tuba.”
Grace nodded, turning a bedazzled spatula over in her hands.
Hank came running around the corner wearing a trucker hat with a peacock patch.
Grace looked at the hat and laughed. “Only truckers and Hank.”
“Y’all’ve gotta check this out.” Hank pointed toward the lake.
“What is it?” Beau asked.
“Purple ice cream.”
Grace dropped everything.
Then they took off toward The Hut.
(thanks to Rick for all of the fun things the trio found at the flea market and the yard sales—and the story about Beau and the tuba)
Check out these other stories in the Roots and Revelry collection.
Mountain Jam Session
This post was originally appeared on Turtle Mixtapes. But it's Southern at heart and belongs here.
The Southern Writers Guild would love to see you at the Grown Up Book Fair in August. Y’all come out if you can.
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Cotton pure video called me to show off his 🦚 hat, smh. I'd say I wonder how Beau got out of the tuba, but I'm sure that story will come back around! I'm loving this Roots & Revelry Collection Gracie!