ORANGE CRUSH AND DRUNKEN PIGS
Sharyn Martin

Benjamin Harrison Winegar, hereafter known as Papaw, came into the world November 4, 1893. Knowing him as we did, we feel assured that although it was probably a joyous occasion, it was undoubtedly a loud one.

Growing up in eastern Hawkins County, Tennessee, near the Virginia line, meant living by the river. Papaw would tell stories of his childhood to my brother and me, his only grandchildren at the time. He would almost come to tears telling of his sister Sally, who drowned in the Holston River trying to get from one shore to the other in a small boat. Sally was "tetched", he said, but we probably know it now as bipolar.

"She was the best 'hand' with a flatiron", he'd say. He used to tell of when he tried to iron his own shirts and on one occasion Sally said "Here, Ben, let your crazy sister iron that". Those irons are in my home now, and I never look at them without thinking of Sally, and wondering what was going through her mind when she got into that boat.

World War I sent Papaw to France. He never did talk much about the war, but pictures show a tall, solemn faced young man standing proud in his uniform and leggings. He wrote to a young lady during this time and they exchanged several letters.

She asked for a picture of him, and thinking this was a wonderful omen, he sent one.

He never heard from her again. It probably didn't do too much to bolster his ego at the time but later he would laugh when telling the story, although my grandmother failed to see the humor.

Papaw often told about he and his fellow soldiers standing at attention. Body lice were a large problem due to lack of proper sanitary conditions and most of these men were afflicted with the creatures. The officer in charge would stop at each man, daring the soldier to flinch or bat an eye. As soon as the officer went down the

line, feet started moving. The lice would be underneath the leggings, and the soldiers would try to kick the devils and kill them while trying to maintain composure, still standing for inspection.

My grandparents married in the early 1920's. My father was born in 1924, and after that my grandmother assumed her work was done. My grandfather loved her totally and completely, although we remember her as a self-centered woman. Her name was Bessie, but Papaw always called her Bet. As long as I can remember, he waited on my grandmother, cooked meals and either did the laundry or someone from Kingsport Laundry came by and picked up a bag of laundry each week. Everything that could be laundered commercially was and pieces we have now still show the BHW mark somewhere.

He was a Baptist preacher, pastoring a church when I was young. He was one of the old style preachers….the kind who held his hand behind his ear and would chant and get louder and louder, preaching hell hot. He could hold his breath longer than anyone else I knew. I didn't know there was any other kind of preaching until I grew up.

Papaw worked many years at the Mead Corporation, or the pulp mill, as he called it. My grandparents and my father lived for several years in Carter's Valley before moving to Kingsport. During this time, Papaw had to wade the river twice each day to walk to work, which was several miles. There was no bridge, and if the river was up, this could be quite dangerous. Every night his dog, Betty, would be waiting for him at the top of the hill when he waded across the river.

Papaw was invited to Ridgefields Country Club for a special dinner given by Mead for some men in his department. He left home and came back just a short time later. He had gotten there around noon and no one there knew anything about a dinner at that time. The receptionist checked the calendar and told him the dinner was scheduled for six that evening. He told her that had to be wrong. Dinner was as twelve and supper was at five.

His retirement led to some great adventures. My dad decided we would all go to Norfolk, Virginia, to see Cleo, his foster sister, who was actually his first cousin. Papaw had raised Cleo and she had moved to Norfolk after marrying a Navy career man. Papaw, Mamaw and me were all stuffed in the back seat of an old '40 something car; my parents and my younger brother in the front. I say "stuffed" because my grandmother was what she called "stout". HOT does not begin to describe the climate inside this car in July with the windows all tightly shut. Mamaw would complain of any air blowing through the windows and we all suffered rather than listen to "Ben, you're jostling me, Ben, that air's too cold. Ben this, Ben that".

Well, we stopped somewhere in northern Virginia at a small store. Papaw got us all some soft drinks, or dopes, as we called them then. Piling back in the car, I was again squashed in the middle of the back seat between my grandparents. I finished my Orange Crush and gave the bottle to Papaw. As littering was not the sin then that it is now, Papaw drew back to sling the empty bottle out the window. "Thwack". A sickening sound. He drew his arm back again. "Thwack", a little louder.

"My God, Pap", dad shouted. Papaw had tried to throw the bottle through the window that had to be kept rolled up because Mamaw thought the air was too cool. We finished our trip with a window that looked like spiderwebs.

My mother and father married in 1945 and lived with my grandparents for a few months. They were awakened around three one morning by loud noises coming from the back yard. Daddy got to the kitchen about the same time as Papaw, who was carrying his mattress out the back door. Daddy looked out and all the parts of Papaw's bed were scattered across the yard. Water was boiling on the stove. Papaw insisted that bedbugs were invading the bed, so he had taken it down and was pouring boiling water on all the slats, springs, whatever. Daddy and Mother then decided it was time to move on.

Papaw never could abide insects inside the house. Ants lived short lives anywhere around him. A few made the deadly decision to crawl up the center leg of his kitchen table. He went to his shop and came back with a piece of tin, which he nailed about midway up on the table leg. He then sealed this with a tar like mixture and filled it with water. His table was probably the only one in the world guarded with a moat.

Our home in Carters Valley was where my grandfather grew up. We had a lot of relatives in the valley then, and my Uncle Edgar, Papaw's brother, lived just up the road. We raised chickens and pigs when I was young, and Uncle Edgar had sold dad some pigs. My mother made apple butter right after we bought the pigs, and that evening we took all the apple peelings and cores to the pig lot and tossed them into the trough. The next morning we went to check on the pigs and take them water, and they were staggering all over the lot, couldn't stand up, falling down, looking really strange. My mother went straight back to the house and called Uncle Edgar, telling him there was something wrong with the pigs he'd sold us. Well, Papaw and Uncle Edgar came down, looked at the pigs, looked in the trough, and just started laughing. Mother didn't see anything funny about several dollars worth of sick pigs and demanded to know the joke. "They're drunk", Uncle Edgar said between snorts of laughter. The apple peelings had fermented and the pigs got snockered. Ever see a drunken pig?

Papaw loved having his picture made. I was moving to Chicago in the late 60's and wanted pictures of everyone before I left. My grandfather always wore khaki work clothes and long sleeved shirts year around. The picture I made shows Papaw wearing the usual khakis and a black bow tie. He always "dressed up" to have his picture made and since I'd caught him off guard, this was the best he could do. My mother still talks about how he always dressed in a suit until my sister got married. Papaw came to the wedding in a sport coat, work pants, no tie. Didn't matter. The wedding was a disaster in the making anyway.

My mother has told me about Papaw's stories of death and cemeteries. His brother, C.E., was known for drinking and bootlegging during the 1920's. C.E. and a friend were making a bootlegging run one night, and just before dawn decided to lay down to sleep. They were probably both drunk at the time and neglected to notice the railroad tracks beside them. This incident brought C.E. to a rude awakening when the train came by and he couldn't pull his friend from the tracks. The man was decapitated.

Papaw said that when anybody died in the country, family or neighbors built a wooden coffin and dug the grave, usually in a church yard. The coffin was loaded into a horse drawn wagon and the mourners walked along side singing "We're going to the grave with this body."

Papaw was a worker just as long as he could work. He probably was in his 70's when he tried to fix the roof on his house. Not a good idea. He started sliding off the porch roof, couldn't stop, and landed on his feet in the back yard. This resulted in a crushed ankle. When that got better, he thought he'd help the deliveryman who'd brought a load of rock to dad's house. Papaw was standing in the back of the dump truck, pushing out the rock when the load shifted and the truck turned over. He was under the rocks, and this time broke his leg. This kept him down for quite a while, but he kept thinking of other projects while he was incapacitated.

Painting was never one of his strong suits. He always felt the brighter the colors, the better, and as many colors as possible. His house was the only one on the block with a blue porch floor, dark green railings and columns, and his favorite, robin-egg blue for the ceiling. He had a beautiful antique dresser and he was not happy with the knobs and handles. This resulted in a unique piece of furniture when the original hardware was replaced with bright blue plastic. He thought it was lovely.

The fancier clothes were, the better he liked them. Buttons, bows, lace, whatever.

When I was a small child, he loved to buy dresses for me. My mother cringed each time he came with a bag from Charles Store or JC Penney's. She knew it would be something that required a lot of care and hours of ironing. Crinolines and ruffles were a favorite. I was probably four or five when he bought me a dress with a hoop skirt. I'd never seen anything like this, let alone worn one, and had no idea of hoop skirt etiquette. I wore it to church one Sunday morning. As soon as I sat down, this hoop shot straight up over my head. I looked like an umbrella turned wrong side out. I can't remember wearing it the second time.

We sometimes talk about how he would have adjusted to technology now. I cannot imagine him dealing with an automated telephone system. By the time he heard "punch one", "punch two" would not have had a chance. The phone would have been out in the street. This was a man who never believed the United States, or anyone else, put a man on the moon.

Papaw drove everywhere until he finally realized he better quit, and then he let my mother take over. He called her his secretary. Papaw found out he couldn't bear not being able to go where and when he wanted to. One summer day, he came up our driveway. On his lawn tractor. He had driven the lawn tractor from his home in West View, through Midfield Subdivision, and along the bluff 'til he came by the river and to the house. He was not a man to be outdone.

His driving did give us a great deal of concern. He had driven to town one day and coming back had gotten totally confused. He drove by his own house four times before he realized where he was.

My grandmother became ill and suffered from dementia. This was a great burden for my grandfather who tried his best to care for her himself. She had long hair which she had always worn plaited and wound around her head and pinned with long hair pins. She would barely let him brush her hair and certainly would not allow him to braid it. She would hit him and yell and he just was at a loss. My sister came by one day and noticed something looked different. Papaw had pulled my grandmother's hair up in one long strand and cut it off to her scalp leaving her with a most unusual hair style.

Papaw became ill in early 1984 and suffered from congestive heart failure. This resulted in many trips to the hospital and during this time my grandmother was admitted to the hospital as well. Our family was at the hospital weeks at a time, trying to care for each one, and many times during these months both grandparents were in the hospital at the same time. My grandmother was finally admitted to a nursing home in Johnson City and had only been there a couple of days when my Dad received the call that she had died. My grandfather was home at this time and we went to give him the news. He had wanted to make sure she was taken care of and now his job was over. He gave instructions for Mamaw's funeral arrangements, and wanted her funeral in the church he had once pastored.

Papaw became sicker after Mamaw's funeral and we made another trip to the hospital. The heart failure caused his breathing to be labored and loud, and he began to swell from fluids gathering in his body. We brought electric fans to try to keep him cool because he felt he was smothering and in reality, he was.

My grandfather died Memorial Day weekend, 1984, thirty-three days after my grandmother's death. He died having most of his family around him, even if he didn't know it at the time. He would have loved all this attention because one of his greatest pleasures was having people fuss over him. The traditional hearse should have been replaced by a horse drawn wagon carrying his coffin and mourners walking along side singing, "We're going to the grave with this body".