Short Story / Kentucky Summers (Analysis)
Kentucky Summers
TV Mott
As long as I can remember, at least as far as I can think back to the earliest memories of my childhood, I remember spending my summers in Kentucky. We lived in Arizona but my mom who was raised in western Kentucky in a small farming town would send me back to her home town every summer to stay with her parents on the farm. In retrospect it was an invaluable opportunity, I even think while it was happening I even knew back then that it was an opportunity that was special, different, unlike that of the kids I schooled with in the “city” as kinfolk from Kentucky like to say.
My mom has four sisters, no brothers, and never missed a Sunday of church until she was eighteen. She to this day still has not ever learned to ride a bike, a privilege that a girl raised on uneven gravel farming roads was not afforded. She and her sisters bathed together in a porcelain tub in the back yard that was filled with hot water boiled in a large cast iron pot on the wood burning stove mixed with cold water from the well.
I remember days alone with my grandfather Jess, just the two of us in the combine, with the windows down the radio playing the farm report or the weather forecast, eating Nutter-Butters, sipping Pepsi and napping on the dusty rubber mat under the driver’s seat when I was tired. My Grandfather never tired, at least not in front of me. He was a God to me. More of a God than the God of this Kentucky south that everyone was trying to show me. I don’t believe in God, not now, and not then. It was a complicated realization that was fortunately discovered early and I adhered to the little voice inside that shouted contradiction in these fables learned in the basement of the Church in the center of town on Sunday. They ate stale crackers and drank warm grape juice a symbolic ritual that I didn’t understand and was never allowed to try. That round silver tray filled with tiny shot glasses filled with grape juice would pass under my nose every Sunday on those hard wooden pews that my boney butt was forced to endure two hours of standing up sitting down standing up sitting down, open the bible, sing, close the bible sit; yet I was to young for grape juice and crackers.
The farm was my temple, my church, and my house of worship. I studied the complex world of the Hog House, where my Uncle Craig was a physician of swine, with a refrigerator filled with glass vials, syringes, and rubber gloves. The Hog House was a long rectangular building with two doors on each end. On one side were the hogs, on the other the sows, and in the middle the tiny little offspring, little hog lets. I would wake up early in the morning so I could drive my modified riding lawnmower through two pastures, four gates, three ponds, and up a long bumpy gravel road to the hog house. I would spend hours in that stinky building and I’m not sure I ever realized how disgusting it truly was. I knew the future of these beasts, their unfortunate fate that would one day have them sizzling in a pan in my grandma’s kitchen. I knew the grease in the pan that she always cooked the eggs in was a product of these friends I would drive two miles everyday to hang out with. But I was comfortable with the legitimate way with which my mom’s family lived off of the land and the fate of these pigs was apparent and necessasary. But everything on the farm seemed legitimate.
I still sometimes lay awake and try to remember all of the little details that make up my childhood summers in Kentucky. The combine, riding shotgun with my Grandfather in his Chevrolet pickup, the revolver he kept loaded with the safety off under his seat to shoot any malicious varmint that may try threaten his crops, copperhead snakes, eating lunch at the Rainbow, trying to win the Playboy Zippo lighter displayed in the front of the gumball machine, sweat tea, U.K. basketball, John Deer.
My mom was the only sister that ever left. When I say never left it is even more literal than the description may imply, for the sisters and there respective husbands, my Grand Father Jess and my Grandmother Connie, all live within 500 yards of each other. My dear mother was and still is in most senses very wise.
Before sunrise eggs were fried in bacon grease, sargum sopped up with homemade biscuits, honey buns, black coffee, maple syrup, and sausage. Every morning. Supper was lunch, which I though was dinner, but dinner was later and was grander with fresh killed sausage from hogs I had befriended each day. Blackberry’s collected from thorny vines in the ravine behind my grandparents house, next to one of many ponds on the farm filled with catfish, crappy, bluegill, large and small mouth bass, bull frogs, and the most feared pond dwelling creature, the snapping turtles.
Everyone seemed to be family, all last names had some connection, the Vinson’s were related to the Bridges, and the Bridges the Thomas’s, and Thomas’s the Perry’s,, and the Perry’s the Sigismund’s, and all these last names had been marrying each other for decades and now had established conventions, with annual meetings, mailing lists, contests announcing who had traveled the farthest to attend this years convention of the Our Last Name Mated With Yours. I still recall even at that young age, alone with my relatives in a large Church, filled with smiling folks in Sunday pastels sitting on more rows of hard wooden pews, giant shit eating grins, and firm hand shakes always with uncomfortable eye contact. Soon the P.A. speakers piped up as though God himself were in the rafters asking everyone to sit down so they could begin passing the big bowl, the one I saw at church that followed the silver tray filled with shot glasses of grape juice, that all my kin folk would put neatly written checks with value that couldn’t exceed their hard work from plowing the fields, setting the tobacco, tending to the hogs, and going to auction. The same big bowl that ended in the hands of the well dressed preacher with the really cool new Jeep and the RV with the boat hooked to the back that I saw parked at Lake Barkley while bass fishing with my cousin Kevin the day before.
Perhaps it was Kevin that I should thank for my cynical mind. If he were alive I would, for he was a zest of life that led me on many journeys each and everyday of every summer. Two years older, an IQ off the chart, and a quote he lived by even as a 12 year old, “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll man.” A Pall Mall pack rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve, a Zippo lighter he had won at the Rainbow that he could flick open swipe on his Levi’s light his smoke and close the lid of all in one motion. He could shoot a snapping turtle with only two inches of nose sticking up out of the pond from the window of a moving truck from 30 yards away. Or so it seemed to me back then.
I spent a lot of time alone in my youth which perhaps lends itself to my profound social discomfort. I find most times it is me trying to make the person in front of me feel better about themselves through positive verbal spoon feeding. On the farm I would drive the old blue riding lawnmower that my Uncle Craig had helped me remove the undercarriage that housed the blades essentially creating a slow riding go-kart with a riding lawn mower frame, huge, torn, plastic covered seat that would get so hot in the sun that I could feel it through my jeans and underwear, and head down to my favorite pond. It was shaped like a lima bean, had an old decrepit barn next to it that housed unusable relic like farm equipment, tillers, bush hogs, Farmall’s, bailers, and next to the barn stood a huge Oak tree that had branches that hung way out over one side of the pond. The limbs provided shade and a ledge for me to shimmy out on with my Zebco, night crawlers, and size four Eagle Claw hooks. Toss on a red and white bobber and I was set. I could sit in that tree and see the entire farm. Rows and rows of corn to the left, rows and rows of tobacco to the right, and a line in the water in front of me. Grandma would pack me a thick pimentocheese sandwich on wonder bread, a Pepsi and a few Oreos. My bobber, placed out in the center of the pond would retrieve bass. No bobber in the middle of the pond blue gill. No bobber in tight to the shore crappy. A stringer filled with fish tied to the log on the bank under the old oak tree unbeknowunced to me brought vicious snapping turtles that could strip a stringer filled with blue gill of its meat in less than 60 violent seconds. Quite a sight, a stringer violently pulsating in the water, a dozen still living fish, mouth hooked to a chain flopping for their lives, blood flashing and a dark green snapping turtle the size of a NFL football orchestrating the show . And all this on a farm in Kentucky.
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
Typical depiction of life on a farm in the South. I think it needs some refining. To make it more interesting, it should have a moral or point to the story. What did you learn from your Kentucky summers? Describe your feelings, not just the environment. Then, you will have a winner.
Also, there are some grammatical errors and spelling errors that need fixing. For instance: I even think while it was happening I even knew back then…You’ve got the word “even” here twice. Sargum should be spelled sorghum. John Deer should be John Deere.
- add/view comments (0)
I love the general feel to this story. However in parts it seemed rushed. I loved the details of sitting in the church, I could so relate to how that felt. The only thing I would really say is add some more datail to all. I remember in church the paster yelling about things I could not relate to and feeling uncomfortable in my dress I was forced to wear. Also, you mention a boy, and my interest was sparked, yet you didnt continue with him. He seemed like a part of her childhood that was mystical. Did he die? How? And last your ending felt like an essay where you repeated the hilights said throughout then story. Great story concept, just maybe some more detail in certain parts to really bring in the readers.
I htink you write very well, and I can say I enjoyed the peice. But I felt it would be better as an introduction to a novel rather than a short story. It didn’t really have a plot. Just my suggestion, but still very nice work! =]
This 189 word review has not been unlocked.
Your really very talented :) you open up from the first and it reminds me of someone opening up 2 a friend they haven’t seen in years or maybe since childhood you know? The one thing I didn’t get right off and kinda threw me a lil was the mother not missin a day of church untill she was 18. You just kind of leave it there for a bit with no mention of anything related to church untill farther down. I think mentioning if that was a personl choic or just a funny fluke would help people like me who focus on odd things lol. Other then that great job!
This 173 word review has not been unlocked.
You are very lucky. I am from Southeastern and this is my genre of writing. First off check for commas. I love your descriptions of the hog house and riding shotgun with grandpa. The Kentucky themes and genere are hot right now. However porcelean is expensive. People took baths in an old number ten tin washtub. You might leave out the sentences “as far as i can think back, and “while it was happening. These aren’t necessary. the sentences will stand alone. Will this be a romance? A story of a broken heart? If so, you must learn to cram in alot and say what need be in 20 pages or less. Remember that. I have trouble with this myself. You gave the reader a preimse that you had learned from your expierence at the farm. How will religion tie in with the plot? These are questions that you must ask yourself. I am assuming religion plays a part. Now show mw the reader how it ties into the plot. Overall i am interested. Please keep me posted. Happy writing Sandi K.
There’s a lot of good in this piece. A lot of the images you conjur are great. However it feels like there’s no real direction taken. Part of the time it seems to be a collection of fond impressions, but then you take certain attitudes which contradict the feel of the memories. It also never really seems to go anywhere. Maybe if you expanded it a little.
Having lived in rural Missouri from my 5th birthday (prior to which I lived in rural Florida) until I was 14, and spending many holidays with relatives in Georgia, there are many aspects of this story to which I can relate. You did a good job describing Midwestern/Southern summers, and I had fun reading the story. I think you could submit it, but it needs to be cleaned up first.
One thing that needs some polishing is the 3rd paragraph, where you are discussing church and God. Your commentary on crackers and grapejuice was funny, but you should clean up the portion prior to it. ”I don’t believe in God, not now, and not then.” disrupted your tense, and the sentence after that was a bit confusing and interrupted the smooth, easy summertime flow your narrative appropiately creates. I’d suggest reworking that portion, or maybe even removing the disbelief in God and replacing it with something else that expresses less-than-admiration for the church and flows nicely into the stale crackers bit.
Also, the sentences “No bobber in the middle of the pond blue gill. No bobber in tight to the shore crappy.” confused the hell out of me, and they seem a bit pointless. The following sentences also confused me a bit, but I was able to decipher them easily enough and think they should stay, but just rewritten for a bit more clarity.
I definetly wanted to hear more about Kevin. I was a bit disapointed when you introduced such a fascinating character and moved on from him so quickly. All and all a very good, flowing story that will do great with some new drafts. Afterthought: You use some simple, highly effective imagery that fits perfect in a narrative about simple, rural family (“Rows and rows of corn to the left, rows and rows of tobacco to the right, and a line in the water in front of me.”)
I liked this. It is a warm, specific description of a part of the country which i know very little about. It shows talent of a professional nature, describing a place and time creatively sounding believable but unlike a journal entry. I felt that this was a very real place. However, as much as I like the setting and the characters I don’t think this constitutes a short story. I kept waiting for something to happen. There are a couple spelling errors, John Deere, their husbands not “there”, unbeknownst but now I think I’m nagging a bit.
Also you start to make a reference to present day which doesn’t really fit—a social discomfort and wanting to make others feel comfortable. Kevin seems like an interesting character but he disappears as fast as he appears.
I think its a great start for a story. Could easily be another few thousands words.
Short story contest? Where? Let me know.
Brian
Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Next →
Review item
Add to faves
GENERAL
REVIEW QUEUE
Ratings & Rankings
