My grandmother hailed from a sizable brood: four sisters and a solitary brother. Their formative years were spent in the sun-drenched fields of south Texas, toiling on the family produce farm. The patriarch, Grandfather Duncan, regarded his children as mere hired hands and didn’t pay them a dime. Every child born saved him from hiring a lazy field hand to pick his watermelons and oranges.
Upon the completion of their high school years, one by one, the siblings, usually in the dead of night and with assistance from the others, embarked on a journey, whether by bus, train, hitchhiking, or on foot, seeking their own version of freedom from the farm. Miraculously, within a few years, they and their new spouses found themselves settling in Fort Worth, Texas, mere blocks apart.
The transition from Texas to California proved to be arduous. My grandfather, possessing the toughness of weathered leather and an insensitivity to female emotions, saw the move as a blessing and a chance for a new beginning. However, for Bertha, it felt more like a forced abduction. John Henry appeared oblivious to her distress, or perhaps he believed it would pass in due time. Yet her sorrow lingered until she stumbled upon a seeming panacea: alcohol, fashioned into the magical healing elixirs hawked on the radio and in the newspapers. From anemia to tremors, from insomnia to weight loss, from night sweats to antisocial behavior, there existed a bottled pharmaceutical remedy for every affliction, no doctor’s visit required. Countless bottles of happy juice lined the shelves of the local drugstore, catering to the myriad conditions that afflicted my grandmother, a certified hypochondriac.
When not self-diagnosing herself that she harbored every disease known to man and convinced that her death was mere hours away, Bertha was quite the letter writer. Every day, seated at her kitchen table, her fountain pen full of blue ink, she’d churn out missives to her sisters in Texas. Fueled by her newfound self-assurance courtesy of those magic elixirs, she didn’t see any harm in embellishing the truth a bit about her new life out in California: alone in a strange land, who could blame her? It’s not as if her family would ever drop by for a visit. As time went by, her letters became creative works of fiction, painting the picture of a grand Beverly Hills home in place of her modest stucco house and a swanky Duesenberg convertible instead of their old Ford. According to Bertha, even the legendary Clark Gable was a neighbor, and Sister Aimee McPherson, the radio firebrand preacher gal, became a dear friend, and the two of them often enjoyed lunch at Musso and Franks Grill, mingling with the movie stars. Bertha was dead set on landing an audition with MGM or writing a grandiose screenplay, all thanks to that magical elixir of hers. Not thinking of how she would explain her fabricated world when they returned to Texas, she continued, and the more she wrote, the more she believed her own stories.
When Johnny turned thirteen, he approached his father with a request to pursue a professional career in music. John Henry, harboring doubts about the practicality of such a proposal, pondered the unlikelihood of anyone hiring a boy for such a venture, much less paying him with real money. Nonetheless, three of Johnny’s older schoolmates had extended an invitation to join their string band, which often performed at birthday parties and school events for a small fee, which was usually a coke and a plate of food. Their need for a fiddle player in the Bakersfield-style hillbilly tunes they favored aligned perfectly with Johnny’s musical talents. That evening, seated on the front porch after supper, Johnny revealed his decision to his father — he had embarked on a professional journey with his newfound band. Despite his initial surprise, John Henry offered his warm congratulations to the young boy venturing into this new vocation.
Their first official rehearsal was an epic disaster. The guitar player knew four, maybe five chords on his out-of-tune instrument, the bass player, using a beat-up dog house bass fiddle, couldn’t get the beast anywhere near in-tune, and the tenor banjo picker was worse than the other two. After massacering a dozen or so tunes, Johnny floated an option. He knows of a genuine black blues singer who burns up a guitar when he plays. The other three were wagging their tails like a hungry dog and voted to bring this fellow into the fold. Now, Johnny had to convince Blind Jelly Roll Jackson to play with a bunch of borderline musicians.
Church on Sunday was a rousing spectacle. Sister Aimee, after singing a handful of beautiful songs and just enough preaching to make sure the offering plates were full, called for souls that needed saving to approach the altar and receive Jesus. This was part of every service; a few folks would come down to be blessed and saved. With the orchestra playing, the choir singing, and a contingent of Hollywood-style dancers on stage, a hundred folks rushed the front in need of salvation. Sister Aimee, not knowing how to handle a worked-up mob that scared her out of her witts, retreated stage right and hid in her dressing room. Her assistant preacher and a few ushers administered to the flock while Sister Aimee gulped a handful of Carter’s nerve pills, washing them down with “Father Flannigan’s Holy Healing Tonic,” which was around 80% alcohol and claimed to be brewed from the holy waters of the River Jordan.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 