Short Stories

Granny

     On Sunday there wasn’t much to do so sometimes after Sunday school; we would walk across the wooded hills to the old house where granny lived. We were little girls, not old at all and she was the oldest person we ever saw, our great-grandma in her wheel-chair, frail and small with her gray hair pulled back in a knot on the back of her head. I can see her plainly yet. And I can still see that old house sitting back on a hill all by itself, with a rocky, dirt road leading up to it. No I could never forget. For when we stepped inside, we stepped back in time, the memories etched in my mind of that old house time had forgotten and Granny in her dress of cotton sitting there in her wheel-chair with her old memories everywhere. There were faded pictures on the wall and musty albums filled with all our dead relatives of long ago she showed us but we didn’t know. Then she would tell us those old tales that she’d been told and remembered so well. Stories about haints and boogers, and when she did it would give us shivers. Those stories were a legacy of superstition and memory from mountain people down through the years, a product of their imaginings and fears. Then in the evening we would go to the one room church just down the road, where the people there would shout and yell while the preacher told a devil’s tale. After church we had to walk back home in the dark through the wooded hills alone, remembering those scary tales that granny and the preacher had told so well. Our hearts beat fast and we could see boogers behind every tree, that were put there by a child’s imagination, a preacher’s angry indignation, and granny’s scary tales of long ago and we were so glad to get back home.

Click any painting below to see examples of my work:

"Winter Home" - oils 18"X24"

"Yellow Iris" - watercolors 11"X14"

"Pink Roses" - watercolors 8"X10"

"Best Friend" colored pencils 8"X10"