Just as surely as a purple finch is crimson, the stories I share with you in this article are true to the best of my ever-aging memory.
I was probably about 12 years old. I was visiting with my sister Ruby’s family at her house in East Knoxville. Ruby was actually my half-sister, the oldest daughter and second child from my father’s first marriage.
Ruby’s husband was Alfred John “Buddy” Foulks, Sr., a captain with the Knoxville City Fire Department. They had four children, though the first three were older than me, grown and living on their own.
Ruby’s youngest son, Mark, was about two and a half years younger than me. Mark was a very energetic boy, at a time when my sister’s energy level seemed to be lower than it possibly was when she was rearing her first three children. Mark had one of the most active imaginations of any child I have ever known, which made him a lot of fun for a square kid like me to play with.
Ruby was a very strict parent. She certainly did not spare the rod and spoil her youngest, nor I am told did she dote on his older siblings.
My aunt Vallie lived next door to Ruby’s mother-in-law, Ella Mae Foulks. On an occasion when Vallie was visiting with Ms. Foulks, Ruby stopped on her way to church and gave Johnny a good whipping for not having washed behind his ears like he had been told. Vallie said that Ms. Foulks slipped a pack of chewing gum into Johnny’s hand as his momma was dragging his disciplined tail out the door.
I remember being at Ruby’s house once. Mark and I were watching Captain Kangaroo (a good internet search topic for younger readers). Mr. Green Jeans had been demonstrating his spoon playing skills (also a good internet search). Mark decided to try his spoon playing skills, and his only audience was me. So I could get the full effect, Mark clacked his spoons as close to my ear as possible without clicking it between the spoons. I said, “Quit, Mark” a couple of times.
Unfortunately for Mark, Ruby was in a bad mood. Also unfortunate, Mark had on only his shorts, leaving most of the skin on his body exposed to attack. Ruby was combing her hair, and she came running toward Mark. Quick as a flash, she started beating her poor son with that comb, flipping him as hard as she could on any exposed area of hide she could.
In memory it’s comical, watching the spritely young Mark running and ducking to escape his mother’s wieldy weapon. It was not comical then. I was horrified at the calamity I had brought upon my poor nephew. As he sniffled afterwards I told him he could hit me if he wanted, just to give him the opportunity to make me perhaps feel as bad as he did at that moment. However, the noble Mark inflicted no harm upon my person, for which I was glad, as he was a strong specimen.
There was another occasion involving Mark that I remember well. It was on another visit to Ruby’s house, and for some reason she left Mark, his cousins Jennifer and Brad, and me alone at the house. We weren’t left for a terribly long period, but what kid needs a long period of time in which to find trouble?
Mark’s imagination was working overtime, and it was stimulating our imaginations as well. We found ourselves in Ruby’s “good” living room. It seemed that during the 1970s that most middle-class homes had a den that was used for actual living, and the “good” living room that was for show—interesting, as it seemed few people ever saw most other people’s “good” living rooms.
Ruby’s “good” living room had the period gold carpet—I remember its unique smell, a mixture of the wood from the coffee/end tables, piano and cabinet model stereo and the fabric of the sofa and drapes in the non-air conditioned, stale air of the always-closed room. The room had a brick fireplace with a hearth, and this hearth was to be the “stage” for the production that Mark and his co-conspirators were creating.
The “stage” needed special lighting, so Mark took his mother’s handwritten songbook and placed it on top of a floor lamp. It turned out to be a hot production, but not because of the quality of the artistes. The notebook of handwritten songs began smoking as it caught on fire!
Mark reached and grabbed it from the floor lamp and threw it onto the floor. The book had not blazed, so there were no actual flames, but there was enough heat to melt the cover of the notebook and to burn a spot in the flawless carpet! And the smell of the scorched carpet and binding were enough to overshadow the room’s usual smells.
I knew that when Ruby returned that not only Mark but me (since I was the oldest child in the house) and the rest would be pulverized by her ready hand of wrath. Amazingly, she said not one word about the incident. It was as if it never happened.
I wish Ruby was here today, for I would like to ask her why she did not strike out at us. Could it be that as a fire captain’s wife that she was just thankful that only a book and carpet were singed, and not the entire house with us four children burned to death? Like the question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop, I will never know.
Want to know what happened to Mark Foulks? He is now Fire Rescue Chief at Murfreesboro, Tennessee Fire Rescue Department. Now, as Paul Harvey (another good internet search would say), “you know the rrrest of the story!”
I leave you with a question: Where do Chinese gooseberries come from?
Check out HistoricUnionCounty.com next week for the answer.