Sometime in the blur that was my high school life in the late 1900s, I sat in my Junior English class and listened to Sylvia Daugherty, the Great and Powerful, ramble on about something or other.
None of us minded her ramblings because she was simply brilliant. She was one of those teachers. You know, the ones who could make anything interesting. I often feel like, had I taken AP English with Momma D my senior year, I might have written a senior research paper and learned something from it rather than skipping it entirely and somehow still finding a way to pass senior English and high school.
But that’s a story for a different time…
Momma D used a lot of “country” phrases and sayings. I’m assuming they were country; I don’t know any other way to describe them. I don’t remember where she was originally from, but it was likely somewhere in the mountains of Appalachia. I’m pretty sure she had family members who knew the Hatfields or the McCoys, or possibly both, and had run more than their fair share of moonshine out of those mountains. She had a flair for storytelling that, even to a disinterested 11th-grade geek, could wrap you in a warm blanket and carry you to another world.
I still remember her expressions and tone of voice as we discussed Chapter 15 from The Grapes of Wrath — the “two for a penny” chapter —…
