Spit, Scarey Ann, and Sweat Bees: One Thing Leads to Another

By Kathryn Tucker Windham

With sprightly humor and a lifetime spent observing Southern culture, beloved storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham shares memories of her childhood in Thomasville, Alabama. She affectionately recounts stories about family members, friends, and favorite pastimes.

Spit, Scarey Ann, and Sweat Bees recalls small-town life in the 1920s and '30s, garnished with ruminations about folktales and superstitions. Mrs. Windham recalls how Thurza, the family cook, tucked a wooden match in her hair to cure a headache, and how her father spit in his hat when a rabbit crossed the road. She ponders the origins of old sayings and the creativity of children’s play before television and air conditioning.

One thing leads to another, Mrs. Windham says, ticking off the items she wants us not to forget. In every phrase, the reader hears her voice, almost as if our favorite storyteller was in the room.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781603061148

Kathryn Tucker Windham

KATHRYN TUCKER WINDHAM (1918-2011) grew up in Thomasville, Alabama. She graduated from Huntingdon College in 1939, married Amasa Benjamin Windham in 1946, and had three children before being widowed in 1956. A newspaper reporter by profession, her career spanned four decades, beginning in the shadow of the Great Depression and continuing through the Civil Rights Movement, which she observed at ground level in her adopted home town of Selma. In the 1970s, she left journalism and worked as a coordinator for a federally funded agency for programs for the elderly. She continued to write, take photographs, and tell stories. The storytelling was an outgrowth of her 1969 book, 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey. More volumes of ghost stories, folklore, recipes, and essays followed; she has now published more than twenty books. Her reputation as a storyteller led to thirty-three appearances over an eighteen-month period on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, which introduced her to an even larger audience. She has written, produced, and acted in a one-woman play, My Name Is Julia, about pioneering social reformer Julia Tutwiler, has narrated several television documentaries, and is a regular interviewee for national and international journalists visiting Alabama in search of the Old or the New South. It is a testament to the good humor, keen intelligence, and life-long curiosity of one of the region’s best known public citizens that she can guide visitors unerringly to either mythical place.

Book preview

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Also by Kathryn Tucker Windham

Treasured Alabama Recipes (1967)

13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey (1969)

Jeffrey Introduces 13 More Southern Ghosts (1971)

Treasured Tennessee Recipes (1972)

Treasured Georgia Recipes (1973)

13 Georgia Ghosts and Jeffrey (1973)

13 Mississippi Ghosts and Jeffrey (1974)

Exploring Alabama (1974)

Alabama: One Big Front Porch (1975)

13 Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey (1977)

The Ghost in the Sloss Furnaces (1978)

Southern Cooking to Remember (1978)

Count Those Buzzards! Stamp Those Grey Mules! (1979)

Jeffrey’s Latest 13: More Alabama Ghosts (1982)

A Serigamy of Stories (1983)

Odd–Egg Editor (1990)

The Autobiography of a Bell (1991)

A Sampling of Selma Stories (1991)

My Name is Julia (1991)

Twice Blessed (1996)

Encounters (1998)

The Bridal Wreath Bush (1999)

Common Threads (2000)

It’s Christmas! (2002)

Ernest’s Gift (2004)

Jeffrey’s Favorite 13 Ghost Stories (2004)

Alabama, One Big Front Porch (2007)

Spit, Scarey Ann, and Sweat Bees

One Thing Leads To Another

Kathryn Tucker

Windham

NewSouth Books

Montgomery | Louisville

KTW oval baby picA.tif

My baby photo, 1919

NewSouth Books

105 South Court Street

Montgomery, AL 36104

Copyright 2009 by Kathryn Tucker Windham. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58838-240-5

eBook ISBN: 978-1-60306-114-8

LCCN: 2009009232

Visit www.newsouthbooks.com.

For Thurza Hillery,

the only person who ever thought

I was perfect,

and for Thurza’s daughter,

Bessie Gray Hillery,

the best playmate any little girl ever had.

Life of the Party.tif

Contents

- Superstitions

- Spit

- Varmints

- Lightning

- Scarey Ann

- Roosters and Tom Walkers

- Running Away

- About the Author

With Effie.jpg

Outside my father’s bank, Thomasville, 1919.

Superstitions

My earliest memory is of being frightened by a big grasshopper.

My nurse, Effie, was pushing me in my baby buggy, and as we crossed a soggy spot in the path to Effie’s house, the green insect hopped on my coverlet, landing near my left hand. Effie quickly brushed the grasshopper away, but I had been terrorized.

It happened in the fall of 1920, soon after I turned two. Scoffers say I could not possibly remember such an early experience, but I do.

I don’t know what brought that experience to mind; I haven’t thought of it in years. Perhaps reading the Old Testament story about the plagues that Jehovah punished hard-hearted Pharaoh with, infestations of flies, lice, and locusts, stirred my memory.

Though I am not a Bible scholar (there have been long periods of time when I did not read it at all), some months ago our preacher suggested that we read the New Testament, two chapters a day. I followed his suggestion and, using a modern translation, I completed the assignment. I missed the beauty of the language in the King James version, but I did have a better understanding of what I read.

Then I decided to read the Old Testament, two chapters at a time. I have discovered stories, some tenderly romantic and some violently gory, that I had never known about before.

Certainly I had never been taught them in my Methodist Sunday school classes nor were they included in any of the Bible story books in our home. I had good Sunday school teachers, but they would have been embarrassed to tell innocent children some of the stories I’ve come upon.

Tville Methodist Church postcard.tif

Postcard view of Thomasville Methodist

Church (no longer standing).

I must have had other teachers, but the ones I recall are Miss Daisy Clark, an elderly, gentle woman who seldom raised her voice above a whisper; Miss Julia Mary Allen, who taught me the Bible Alphabet; and Osceola Green, who sold ladies’ ready-to-wear at Bedsole Dry Goods Company