SPINNIN YARN

They say that adopted children sometimes take on characteristics of one or both of their parents. I took on Papa’s. We both love football, and basketball, but never could get into baseball except for the World Series. We love to work in the garden; like long walks on crisp autumn days; Love Sunday drives and mom’s beef stew. The tips of our tongues even stick out just a bit when we are working intently. I’m the only one who even looks like my Papa and my 3 other sisters were born to him. Why, we even sound alike.

You can’t get much further away from Southern twang than Portland Oregon, but a twang was what my Papa had. Oh it was slight, but it was there nonetheless. It seemed to get a little stronger when he was in a playful mood. Papa was born in Portland not too much beyond the turn of the past century. He only spent the first six months of his life there however, before his folks up and moved him to Oakland California, where he lived for most of his 89 years.

Wherever he lived, he took his twang with him. He even took it to Connecticut when his job transferred him to the east coast. My twang came from an uncanny ability to mimic any voice I heard. We would travel to different parts of the Caribbean during school holidays and I’d come home sounding like I was a local. We once had a German nanny and for weeks after she left us, folks just knew I’d been born in Berlin.

I have an incredibly vivid imagination which I suppose I have yet to outgrow from childhood since I am a writer. I could make up stories at the drop of a hat and could convince you that the sky was only blue because it reflected off the waters of the earth and the moon was really the sun with the shades pulled down.

Although I had no formal training as a novelist, the writing bug bit me at the age of 5. Having the lead in a Kindergarten production of Sleeping Beauty, I felt that women need not be awakened by a handsome prince's kiss. Being the independent woman that I was, I awoke on my own, declaring that if Prince Charming dared to kiss me with that foul breath, I would not consent to marriage. Needless to say, my writing career in comedy was formed that evening.

I’d give live performances, mesmerizing the neighborhood children with my stories of how my great grandfather was a great general in the Civil war and it was through his courageous efforts that he single handedly won the war for the North.

Once one of my smarty pants neighbors challenged the validity of my story and said that Ulysses S. Grant was the commanding general. Without skipping a beat I declared, “Well I know that you big lummox, but who do you think told him what to do?”

By the end of my 13th summer even the parents would come and sit while I performed some tall tale or another. Sometimes my Papa would sit in on one of my “shows” and just chuckle madly from the back of the room. Of course I had my friends convinced that he was madder than a hatter and to his dismay he could not convince them otherwise.

My Papa would say in his gentlemanly Southern drawl “Linda Jean you sure can spin a yarn.” It wasn't until I was an adult with kids of my own that I realized where I got this “spinnin’ yarn” trait of mine.

My youngest son’s teacher had called me in for a conference one afternoon. “Miss Irwin, Joshua has been telling the students fibs and it has just got to stop. It’s very disruptive. Why just today he told his classmates that his grandfather had been attacked by a wolf and he saved himself with a tennis ball.”

I couldn’t help but smile when I thought of the nine inch jagged scar on my Papa’s thigh. He’d been out hunting and he just happened to be carrying a batch of rabbits he and his Paw had snared only that morning. An eagle had spied him and decided that my Papa had saved him the trouble of hunting and was holding his supper. Well Papa wasn't about to let that old Eagle have the catch he had worked so hard for, so Papa fought him and got that old scar for his troubles.

Or was it the time that he saved the little sister he didn’t really have, from a bear on the rampage? Or maybe it was when he had been drug off by an alligator in the wilds of Wyoming. Papa told a different story to each one of us 4 girls and his 9 grandchildren, never repeating the same story twice. My favorite was the story he told my Josh.

“We were pretty poor you know. I had to walk 6 miles every day in the snow up to the top of the mountain where my school was.” Now let me interject and refresh your memory just a bit. My Papa was from Oakland, California where not only would you not find snow, but you’ll not find too many mountains either.

“One day I got to school a little late and found that my whole class was being held hostage by a pack of hungry wolves.”

Joshua’s listened intently. “Did you turn around and run?”

“Of course not,” my Papa said indignantly. “I had to impress Sally Ann Porter don’t you know, so I fought them all.”

“You did?” asked Josh.

“You bet I did, with nothing more than my old pocket knife. I knocked them eight ways to Sunday, but one of them wolves had a tough old hide and my knife broke when I killed him. There was still one more wolf to fight and he was the biggest meanest wolf of the bunch. There he was, had a tight grip on leg trying to tear it to shreds”

With eyes as big as saucers Josh asked “What did you do Pop-Pop?”

“Well, I just happened to have a tennis ball in my pocket. I reached down and fished it out.” He paused a bit for effect. “I crammed it so far down that old wolfs throat he choked and died on the spot.”

My son’s chest stood out as proud as could be of his Pop-Pop. “I’ll bet that Sally Ann Porter was pretty in-pressed wasn’t she Pop-Pop?”

Papa smiled at him, ruffled his hair and declared “You bet she was in-pressed. Pretty in-pressed indeed.”

Truth be told, Papa and his friends were into a bit of thievery in their younger days, and Papa got caught; literally. Trying to steal the biggest and juiciest watermelon from old Mr. Porter’s patch, Papa got caught on the barbed wire fence which tore his leg up pretty bad and made for some pretty in-pressive stories.

I guess I can stop wondering where this adopted child got her imagination from. By the way, I have a scar just about identical to my Papa’s. Mine came from being bitten by a shark in the Caribbean. Or was it the legendary barracuda Old Joe with the two front teeth as big as a man’s fist? Oh well. I hope my grandkids never know that I stole watermelons too.

When y’all get to heaven come look me up. Oh you’ll know who I am alright. You won’t miss the small circle of child angels. They’ll be listening intently as I sit by my Papa’s side and together well spend eternity spinnin yarn