Robert Scott made boats by hand and by himself, bending, gluing, and nailing cypress boards and plywood. Like the “dirt dobber” on the rafter above his head, he did his work alone underneath a tin-covered shed that glowed white-hot when the morning sun hit it just right.The boats he made were the bateau style with square noses and flat bottoms. That style made it easier to wiggle them through the stumpy shallows in the black-water sloughs where the catfish waited.His cypress-sided workshed wasn’t all that close to the river. But it wasn’t all that far, either. It was kind’a like me at that point in my journey through boyhood—it was somewhere “twix and between.”He never said much to anybody. In fact, I don’t recall ever hearing him say anything.So my memory of him is nothing he said, just watching as he pulled his draw knife and bent boards according to a blueprint inside his head.His shed and their house were on a small lot shaded by a sycamore tree that seemed to touch the clouds.
That corner lot had no historical significance—except for one event.In that backyard is where Sister Scott, the wife of Robert Scott, had the pleasure of being the first employer to fire me.She hired me and another boy to climb her fig tree and pick the fruit before the birds got to it.She didn’t offer me much money for my labor. But at least I’d be in the shade.And then it happened.“I’ve been watching ya,” she told me less than 30 minutes after hiring me. “And I gotta let’cha go, don’t’cha know.”She had a habit of saying “don’t’cha know” after a lot of her comments. It was like a long, drawn-out punctuation mark—a personalized period to let everyone know the statement had ended.“Why,” I asked, a little relieved because I had better things to do on a summer day.“Ur worser than d’birds,” she said. “Ya put two figs in ya mouth for every one ya put in d’bucket, don’t’cha know.”So, quicker than a Looney Tunes cartoon show with no commercial breaks, she hired’n’fired.
I lost my fig gig.I held no grudge toward her even though she was the one who started my stumbled down the corporate ladder and did it before I was even old enough to drive.Besides, the other boy could do fine by himself.He had a knack for fig pickin’ and had a foot tub half filled by the time the second “don’t’cha know” had even settled to the ground.She didn’t hold a grudge toward me either and allowed me to continue visiting there, even as an ex-employee.They lived across from the Assembly of God Church in a cypress-planked, unpainted and unpretentious house with a screened porch.Of course, being an old-school holiness, Sister Scott was herself unpainted and unpretentious.And my mama loved to visit her.They would sit and rock on the porch, sometimes into the dark, which was okay because you really don’t need a lot of light to talk.There Mama would listen as Sister Scott reminisced about that “ol time religion” and how strict it was when she was a child.She and Mama would sit on that porch and rock and listen to the croakers croaking, the crickets cricketing, and the chairs creaking.Then Sister Scott’s chair would suddenly stop mid-creak as if the rocking had to back off before her tongue could take off.“Ya know, women back then had to do their Sunday cooking on Saturday ‘cause you couldn’t do any work on Sunday, don’t’cha know.”Then the talking would stop, and the creaking would crank up again.It was a time back in history, and in the back of Sister Scott’s memory, when religion was plain and sturdy, like the porch they were rocking on.It was a time when people wouldn’t dare question God’s management skills.It was a time when people took their Bible straight up without a chaser.I’d be the first to admit that I’m as close to being a Bible scholar as a baby rattle is to being a baby rattler. But back then, if a woman wore a sleeveless dress to church, I could have predicted the subject of next Sunday’s sermon.Those congregations, made up of men in overalls and women in feed-sack dresses, seemed to always be struggling.It was enough to make you wonder just how that space between a rock and a hard place could hold so many people.That generation worked through a lot of back aches and blisters for a little money.Then my mama and daddy’s generation came along and worked just as hard for a little more money.And then there was my generation and me, who couldn’t even hold down a job picking figs.
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