Writing Wednesday - First Assignment for My Writing Workshop

My local library branch I use all the time is offering a 4-week writing class, focusing mainly on memoir style writing. Our first assignment was to write a piece of 'flash' fiction (something pretty short). We were also prompted to use some sensory images of food and to repeat a word or phrase. 

Anyway...

This is what I came up with and I must say it has brought up a few things, such as growing up in a smaller town in the early 1960's and the racial divide which existed and knowing one some level even at a very young age there was a difference. 

Hopefully, you will read and enjoy.

Paradise in Jackson, Tennessee (early ’60’s)

By Judy Hudgins

Sun-warmed peaches or plump, juicy grapes have an aroma which to this day will trigger my idea of paradise - a vision I have carried with me for many years and one I am trying to recreate, in part, at my current home.  During those hot summer days of my very young years, P-Paw would pull a ‘good one’ down from the loaded branches of one of the two peach trees in the yard. Using his pocket knife - the same one he would cut a chaw from the block of Bull Durham tobacco he carried in his shirt pocket, or to trim his nails or to dig out a splinter from a bare foot - wedges were cut from the peach and handed over for me to eat, juice running down my chin and over my hand onto my dirt stained top. The plum tree was avoided during the height of summer as ripe fruit, oozing juice as it laid on the ground, attracted the wasps and bees, none of which were willing to share their bounty in this paradise. A grape arbor, along the side of the fence at the back of his yard, was the place I could go, hiding out for hours, shaded from the sun and the no-so-watchful eyes of my grandmother and granddad. Only, Ding, the fox terrier, knew where I could be found as he was my shadow during those hot, humid Tennessee summer days. Across the street from the small, private collage, P-Paw and Ginny’s one acre yard was filled with enough fruits and vegetables it was not necessary to come inside during the day when hungry. And no one I knew ever fussed because I drank out of the water hose rather than going inside. Surrounded by a tall fence made of hog wire and sturdy posts, I was safe and secure in this garden paradise. Once or twice a month, P-Paw would load up a little wagon with extra produce or fish dad caught which were more than we could eat. In his suit and tie, a hat on thinning grey hair, we would walk together down the sidewalk past Aunt Babe’s house, turning down an alley way, barely big enough for a car to enter. Once past Aunt Babe’s, with its huge hydrangea bushes and their massive flowers, there stood four houses made of black tar paper, little more than sheds on a dirt pathway. ‘The girl’ lived with her children in one of those shacks. She came, several times a week, to help my grandparents with my aunt, who was also named Nancy, and bedridden. The ‘girl’ cleaned and ate alone at the kitchen table, always in a crisp, pressed shirtwaist dress, despite the heat and humidity of those long Tennessee summer days. Looking back at my idea of paradise - paradise may be a matter of the view one has of it.

(This is my grandmother in 1946 in front of the plum tree mentioned in the story. In front of her, is part of the vegetable garden. As you can see by the branch she is holding, the plum tree was super prolific. Granted by 1957 when I was born, it was bigger and I use to climb the tree.)

(This is the front of the house. When I was spending time there in the late '50's, early 60's, there were roses up all over the front of the house. The bush on the far left was a Carolina Allspice and it reached the roof and was huge in diameter.)