Once More and Again

By Leala Cadney

This book heels on the previous writing of All of Ya'll Not Hailing from the North. My trusted critics, my kinfolks, said that I didn't tell the full story, didn't even scratch the surface. So after such rig-a-mo-role, I am back to make another stob (stab) at it. Once More and Again is the second book of a series called My Country Breaks up in Town. This writing continues to tell the stories of our foreparents, incorporating some of their wild, winsome, witty, ofttimes, wicked sayings and antics. It was designed for you and our future generations in mind, to let them know from whence they came so that they ne'er (never) burn the bridge down that brought them over. Read the scripture Psalm 78:6 and see if we aren't cooking with gas on this. Learn that! Be prepared to laugh, and laugh some more, folks, as we stir your memory of how it used to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781681976457

Book preview

300339-ebook.jpg

Once More and Again

Leala Cadney

ISBN 978-1-68197-644-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68197-645-7 (Digital)

Copyright © 2016 by Leala Cadney

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

296 Chestnut Street

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Dedication

Salutation

Introduction and So Forth

Preface

Jest Saying

Some Things Never Change

Well, What Are You Going to Do?

Porch Talk

Well, What Do You Know about That?

Twins in the Family

Let’s Take It to the Kitchen

My Side of the Story!

When I was a Child, I spake as a Child

He Brought Me Joy

Stop That Talking in Church... You Know Better

Grandma Is Not Lost

The Courtship

Do You All Remember This?

’Luid in the Hood

Nig’s Story

It is Knocking Off Time

On a Personal Note

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory and untold stories of my mother, Laura Mae (Monk) Harris, and my sister-in-law, Chenita Mae (Nee) Cadney. Gone too soon…way too soon!

Salutation 

Howbeit, I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes have seen it: and behold the half was not told me…

—1 Kings 10: 7, KJV

Tell It Over Again

Tell it over again, it’s never been told.

Tell it over again, it’s never been told.

Tell it over again, it’s never been told.

The half has never been told.

*Congregational song led by Sister Hass (either one of the five).

Introduction and So Forth

This writing I am working on now is done in desperation…really!

According to the feedback—or shall I say, backlash—I got from my most dedicated critics (my kinfolks), volume 1 in the series of My Country Breaks Up in Town did not even scratch surfaces.

All of Ya’ll Aren’t from the North was a fun write and a joy to behold what God had done in my life. It was accepted warmly and most folks seemed to have appreciated it as a fun read, just as it was intended to be.

Other folks—my folks to be exact—had different takes on it!

When they finally discovered it was me writing behind a pen name, I got raked over the coals on the protocol of what should be in the books.

My eyes are rolling.

Big Granny notices and admonishes me to Listen, lil’ old girl, when people are talking to you. You just might learn something!

I answer dutiful and respectably, Yes, ma’am.

I think to myself, Who is the author here, y’all? How many books have either one of you written?

Not saying that they couldn’t.

I am just saying…

Sorry, I am not saying a word. I’m just thinking.

Aunt June, all the way over to Uncle Bug, was grumbling about the way it was written and how nobody knows ’zactly who you talking about or "That ain’t hardly no secret, honey child. We all know ’zactly who you talking about."

I guess there is no point in reminding them once more and again that this is fiction, is it? They are going to mess around and get me in deep dodo trouble with some of these folks.

I am going to tell on them big time next time. No, I think I will do it right now! They won’t have to guess. They will know ’zactly’ who I am referring to.

Bright and early in the morning, live and nothing happens, I am going to get started on this piece in earnest. They have pushed that last button, and I am fittn’ to mess ’em up with the pencil, as cousin Add Green used to say.

Nah, I can’t do that because what happens over here at this here house better stay over at this here’s house. That is, if you value your hind part and ears. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it. It’s just that real.

This writing will be done up just like the other one—in clear-cut, down home talking—so you’ll know up-front and won’t have to stick out behind. All that doesn’t come out in the wash will no doubt come out in the rinse.

I shall now pray for wisdom and tact in letting these people tell their stories—well, at least their side of it. I may have to tweak some a little bit and hope for the best, just mention some of the rest.

I am going to write as the muse angel directs, and if the rhyme angel interjects, we will see what happens next, aw-ite?

But first, let me testify while I have a chance, as I may not have this chance any more.

My testimony is this:

I could, probably should, and would have been dead and gone had not the Lord made death leave me alone.

Could have been sleeping somewhere in a cold grave had not the Lord made old death behave.

Not because of any goodness and works of my own, just by the grace of God that I’ve been kept all this time and still got a mind to go on.

Thank you for going to a rugged cross out on a hill to die a sinner’s death so that mankind could live.

One Sunday night, you filled me with the Holy Ghost.

That’s the reason on you, I can boast.

You all pray my strength in Him that sent me, that I may work while it is still daytime in my life, that I may do the work that He sent me to do and be one of the ones that He is calling for in these last and evil days.

Let’s tell some stories, folks!

Preface

Well, I simply cannot put everybody’s story in a single book. Yes, I know that we are kinfolk, but still I can’t—

Wait a minute, Pee Wee! Hold up just a cotton picking…

Look here, woman, you better slow your row down!

Say what?

Watch your mouth, Wench!

I just know you ain’t calling yourself cussing at me?

See right there, you just picking and you are in the right cut to get an hundred!

"Now what I was saying was this—all that stuff Big and Little Mama and ’nem said and did cannot be contained in no one book. Shoot, not even ten or fifteen books!"

"I tell you what, you write a book and put all that jive in it. Then you can talk, okay?

Good-bye to you too!

Sheesh, that’s my little old cousin on the phone, trying to still tell me what to do after fifty some odd years.

I wrote the first book from my heart, and she’s all up in arms telling me what I should have or should not have written. Did she pay a crying dime on the publishing fee or even encourage me all those years it took me to finish it?

No, she did not!

Sooo, she might want to shut her soup coolers up or down, depending how you look at her.

She must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Somebody better tell her that I am not the one, though.

Of course, she is not the only one that has upbraided me about what was missing or why was it missing in my first writing. Just listen.

How come you didn’t mention Mr. Pep splitting that man’s heel wide open with a butcher knife that time? You know his chunking (throwing) abilities were well-known in these parts. His daughter, the one they call Bat, well, she has that same sleight of hand (dexterity) like him.

You mean to tell me that you forgot to mention Mr. Bossy and Bru-Baby and that time when cousin Jimmy Lee caught Nitapearl…?

Truth of the matter is, this is stuff I never knew anyway. Grown folks talk, you know? All of a sudden they can’t remember beating me out of the house for listening at grown folks talk.

Secrets that supposedly went to the grave have suddenly been exhumed. Daddy’s babies suddenly became some other man’s kids. Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So were never married, just common law, you know? That’s the reason she didn’t get a penny when he dropped dead the other year.

Whoa, too much info already!

That’s their business, not mine or yours. I am not digging in people’s affairs like that. I told ya’ll that you got me wrong.

Anyway, I write fiction.

It seems that everybody and their mama want their family’s story told or at least have the decency to mention some dirt about it…trying to get all huffed up when you refuse.

Dawggg, ya’ll!

One lady almost took me there, talking all crazy.

Listen at this.

"Now that you got your little book published and all, you think you are sh** on a stick. (I am not going to repeat that stick’s content.) Why, I ’member when you didn’t have a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of."

My reply could have been, Surely you jest, Miss Lady. Not when molasses buckets were a dime a dozen or less?

Whatever do you mean, no pot to piss in’? No lack in the pot business.

And why would I want to throw the stinking content of said pot out of my window?

That’s just nasty!

Folks need to stop and think about what they are saying before spouting off with their old hateful selves, am I right?

Well, now that I recall it again, I think I did reply to her in that vein.

You think that’s the reason she doesn’t speak now?

Awww! No skin off my nose.

I had already thought about doing a second writing; however, it seems almost imperative to do so now. That is, if I want to live in a semblance of peace.

I will go down home around revival time in August to what they used to call the tractor meeting or was it attractive meeting? I never figured that one out.

You know, the one where every family brought a box of cooked food to church, set tables and benches outside to eat…

That’s when everybody from up north in Chicago, out west in California, out east in New York, and down in Nawlean’ that ever had an ancestor in the South came home.

Yes, I know New Orleans is in the south, but it’s…oh, that is another chapter of another book!

Now hush so I can finish up here right quick and get about my Father’s business. You know it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it, right?

No! Not right. Far from it!

My late ex-mother-in-law used to try to justify her son’s courting and running ’round with the other women with that same old saying. I can still hear that little-big girl whiny voice.

L-le-lee-ah, it’s n-n-n-ot what y-y-you do. It’s h-h-how you do it, you know?

She had a mean stuttering problem. Then trust to try repeating it sarcastically with the little grin at the corner of her mouth. Many a day I wished I had not had good home training.

While she was hemming and a-hawing around trying to diss somebody—namely me—I would have hit her in the eye or her navel, one!

In spite of her old ways, I loved that old biddy though.

Hey, enough on that! I don’t have to deal with that group anymore.

See, right there is a good place to praise God—Trinity style. Hallelujah, three times strong!

He-he, and I just ran a switch-a-roo conversation on you.

I’ll bet you thought, Oh my goodness, this book is going bad already…the author can’t stay focused with subject matter.

Nah, just testing to see if you’re going be able to follow through wid this type of writin’ and readin’. He-he! Jest messin’ with you!

I guess I should explain to you what switch-a-roo conversing is, eh? It is a diverting tactic when someone walks upon a conversation not meant for them to hear. A change of subject that’s done so smoothly, no one can tell but the original conversationalists. It is executed most often when kids walks in on grown people talking; when the person that they are talking about walks in on them talking; when white folks walk in on black folks talking; when you’ve said a little too much and need to get out of hot water, so to speak…The list goes on. Practice doing it sometime. It is a most handy little tool to use.

Okay, now where was I?

Yeah, everybody has a story, whether they tell it or not. Some are truth, some may be embellishments, some are straight-out fantasy (I cannot call an elder a liar). I hadn’t aimed to be the one they use for laundry airing, backbiting, getting back at, and blessing somebody out in the name of literature.

On the other hand, I just might be the fella to do it. Never can tell…

Anybody, everybody, knows that I enjoy, no, love writing. The Lord knows that my mind is an all-day fantasy, and if He would allow it, I could come up with any scenario you want.

I can go there, take you there too. I can sit down and rest awhile, stay a while there. However, fantasizing is not a good thing always, especially while cooking or driving.

So I am bound to do this second volume in anuttin’, just like the ’utten fashion.

Are you wondering what I said right then?

Oh that means, Another one, just like the other one.

I repeat, I am jest trying you out so you can get accustomed to the flavor of the culture when making country breaks up in town.

I will try to hold the same homespun way of jest talking so ’erebody can understand just what I’m talking ’bout. No point in getting high-fallutin’ and proper at this point now, is it?

Cousin Hunt-Rabbit said that the best of my story hadn’t been told. I think she meant the rest of my story. Agree?

The title Once More and Again is really a prelude