Tater Bugs and Collies.

Back when I was a wee  little boy I would spend time with my grandmother, but I called “Ma”. She would not allow herself to be called “Grandma”.  She thought she was too young for that term of endearment. So...she was always “Ma” to me. On summer evenings we’d sit on the porch of their farm house and she’d tell me stories of the olden days as the stars would come out and the whip-poor-wills would call. The Grand Ole Opry wasn’t on the battery powered radio, and television was somebody’s dream. She would always start the story the same way.

She would say,“Tony-boy, this happened way before you were born.”

On this particular evening she added, “...and it’s about a relative. I don’t think I ever told you about Uncle Gene Bannister, did I?”  

“No ma’am,” I answered as I snuggled up beside her.  It was cooling off in the darkness.  I loved this old woman still in her apron and her braids wrapped around her head. She held my small hand in her calloused one and tugged me closer to her.

“He was Pa’s aunt Polly’s husband, and he played a tater bug!”

“Pa showed me a tater bug out in the garden,” I said.

She laughed a bit and said, “This was a different kind of tater bug.  It was a musical instrument. Sort of like a small guitar with eight strings. Makes a kinda tinkling sound.”

“But why’d they call it a bug?”

“Because hit had a rounded back with stripes just like that bug Pa showed you in the garden.

Anyway,  Uncle Gene would walk through the woods to see us playin’ that tater bug, and we could hear that music long before he got here. Uncle Gene and Aunt Polly lived about three mile through those woods,” she pointed out in front of us at what looked like a trail through the tall pines.

“What happened to Uncle Gene, Ma?” I wanted to know.

“It’s a kinda sad story. But I reckon I’ll tell you anyway. I forgot to tell you about Uncle Gene’s dog, Lady.  He loved that dog almost as much as he did Aunt Polly.  They went everywhere together. Uncle Gene and Aunt Polly didn’t have any children.  That dog was the closest thing that they had to a child. You wouldn’t believe how they cared for that dog. Let it in the house, mind you! You’ll never find a dog in my house! Why, when they’d eat, Aunt Polly would fix a plate for Lady. Meat and vegetables or whatever they were havin’. I’ll bet that dog got fried chicken on Sunday.  Aunt Polly made the best fried chicken.  Uncle Gene and Lady were like two peas in a pod.  Never saw one without the other. Except at church, of course. Even Methodists won’t let dogs in church.  But she’d be waiting outside when the service was over.”

“But what about the sad part of the story?” I wanted to know.

“Okay, okay! One day when Uncle Gene and Lady were coming to see us they didn’t make it,” she began.

“They didn’t make it?”

“We didn’t know what had happened at first. The mailman, Luther Godfrey, saw me at the clothesline when he brought the mail and asked me If I’d seen Gene Bannister. I said I hadn’t. He said Aunt Polly was worried about him and that he had said he was headed here on

Tuesday. It was Friday when Luther asked me about him.  After Luther left I got a hold of Pa, he was plowing up in the new ground. I rung the dinner bell too. That was before telephones like they got in the city. When the neighbors heard that bell they come a-runnin’ ‘cause they knew something was wrong. We all started to look for him. Didn’t take long to find him. He had fallen down graveyard dead.  He was pretty old, you know. And them old buzzards was circling around. But Lady was with ‘im and every time one of them buzzards would get close she’d snap her teeth at ‘em and scare ‘em away.  Good dog, that Lady. It’s a funny thing,” she paused, “but about a month after we buried Uncle Gene, Lady died too. And the next year, Aunt Polly.”

“That was a sad story, Ma,”  I said.

“You know, Tony-boy, sometimes when I sit out here in the evening, I can still hear that tater bug,”  she said with that far away look in her eye.

And...I think I heard that tater bug too.

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