THE BLOGGER

INQUIRER

 

ISSUE # 47

 

"For Blogging Minds Who Need To Know" ...

Founder: Lucy

 

 

Editor: Bookworm

 

 

  Interviews 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: When L. Cat (the editor formerly known as Bookworm ) invited me to conduct an interview for the Blogger Inquirer, I knew immediately who I wanted to talk with:  Willard's Aunt Ornery.  She's a very busy lady--as you will see once we get into the interview--and doesn't blog much, but what I knew of her from Willard made her fascinating.  She's an increasingly rare person among hillbillies--she doctors with herbs she grows or gathers wild.  We call such people "granny women" or "yarb doctors."

 

I knew I'd have to be up EARLY in the morning to catch Auntie; Willard had told me that she's most talkative when she's out in the woods, gathering herbs, and likes to go in the mornings before it gets too hot.  With temps in this midspring hovering by afternoon in the upper seventies, I figured I'd better be up and out of here.

 

 

Auntie has a little house a piece further up the holler than Madame Sadie's.  I was trudging up that rough little road by about seven AM, yawning and rubbing my eyes, unaccustomed to the early hour.  Auntie was just coming out as I reached her garden gate and looked chipper as a chipmunk.   She was carrying a basket and wearing a bonnet. 

 

 

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Ain't the air good and fresh this morning?"

 

Fairweather Lewis: "Yeah," I yawned, although truth to tell, it was waking me up.

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Did ya happen to notice if that ol' bat Sadie's home?"

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "It didn't look like it.  The curtains were closed and the mailbox was full."

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Dang.  I'm gonna have to go over there and take care of that.  The cat's fine.  He's sittin' in there on my footstool.  He come over here a day or two after she tuck off.  He's about as ornery as she is."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: That prompted me to ask my first question, although she had set off toward the woods at a brisk clip.  It was all I could do to keep up. 

 

"Is Aunt Ornery really your name, or is it a nickname?"

 

Aunt Ornery:    "Sort of.  My name is Honoria Lea but everyone including my parents just called me Ornery."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: By now we were in the woods.  It was cooler here in the shade, and very peaceful; I could hear a little brook singing over rocks nearby, and birds were beginning to call back and forth to each other.  Auntie walked purposefully over to a patch of some sort of plant that grew low to the ground and began to pull it up, very gently, being careful to get the roots.  She told me what it was--but I was by now too winded to do much more than nod and gasp out my next question.

 

Fairweather Lewis: "How, exactly, are you related to Willard?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Well, now Willard is my half sister Mary's granddaughter.  And Mary married my half brother George so you have her being his granddaughter as well and my niece two different ways.  George was my Momma's oldest boy and Mary was my daddy's oldest girl both by two other people.  Momma and Daddy married when George and Mary were in their teens and had me.  So their daughter Mirandy was close to my age and we kind of grew up together.  When she married Billy her daughter just became my plain old niece."

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: DANG!  Now I know better than to ask a question like that.  Hillbillies can figure out that kind of thing--our family trees are more like laurel hells than individual trees, the branches tangled BAD--but it might give L. Cat trouble when he edits.

 

"Are you the only member of your--uh--extended family to be a yarb doctor?" I ventured, steering the conversation away from family for a moment.

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Lordy, child , " she answered, "this is something that's come down more generations than I can count. I'm almost willing to think that there has been a yarb doctor in the family since the 1300's."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: YIKES!!  More tangled family trees!!

 

I decided to try something less loaded.  "Your herb garden and flowers are beautiful.  Do you choose what to plant based on your doctoring or are some of them just for pretty?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Honey, there are very few plants that are just for pretty if you know what you are looking at.  And the ones that seem to be only for looks serve their own purpose in cleansing the soul of the things that hurt ya."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: I was beginning to feel more than a little out of my depth, but I was saved by a familiar sound:  a cell phone, playing "Witchcraft."  Auntie fished the little  gadget out of her pocket and looked at the number. 

 

Aunt Ornery:  "What the dickens--Sadie?  Sadie, is that you?"  After a moment she snapped it shut.  "Must have lost the signal.  I shoulda knowed she'd call today, but I was distracted."

 

Fairweather Lewis: I said timidly, "Willard is strongly psychic.  Are you more or less psychic than she is, and is this ability common in the whole family?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Doggone it.  We try to keep this talent quiet although it seems to have slipped out somewhere along the way.  I have my moments.  I've found that our talents overlap and diverge to make us perhaps the strongest of a family that has several in each generation.  Needless to say though there are branches where nobody has it."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: My next question was a very delicate one, and I finally had just to blurt it out.  "Madame Sadie has said that you and she are cousins.  Is this true?"

 

Aunt Ornery:   Auntie "tched" disapprovingly:We try not to talk about Sadie or her brother too much.  You know he was a ridge runner and Sadie has done a lot of other things including selling a few bottles of "doctor good" on the snake oil routes.  Sadly down here in the southern mountains many of us are related distantly.  She's related to us through the Elliots.   They was the branch that tried to hide when the Cherokee left on the Trail of Tears."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: Auntie's basket was full by now.  I had tried to help but she had brushed me aside; she knew what she wanted and I didn't, so I let her be.  "There now," she said proudly.  "Whatcha say we go back and have a piece of my apple pie?

 

That sounded like a winner to me.   It wasn't until we were back at her kitchen table, with apple pie and milk in front of us, that I caught my breath enough to continue the interview.

"What is your "birth order?" I asked.

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Well I'm the 7th child of my Momma, the 7th child of my Daddy but the first of both of them together."    (Next time I see her, I'm gonna ask if they were seventh children.  The seventh child of a seventh child is often a truly powerful psychic and healer.)

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: Next came the mandatory questions.  She gave some wonderful answers.

 

"What brought you to Blogstream, and what did you hope to get out of it?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Well Fairweather, you know that you and Willard are what attracted me to blogstream.  I needed to straighten out some of that local lore y'all are puttin' out there."

 

 

 

Oops.  We do get a little--uh--creative with some of those stories--

 

Fairweather Lewis:  What 5 CD's are currently in your player?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "I recently got my very first cd player and first cds.  I have mostly collections of songs from the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's.

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "Which five bloggers would you like to meet?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Bella, Sylvia's daughter, Indian, Cowboy, Sherry and more I can't keep track of."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "Favorite alcohol beverage?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Homemade blueberry wine.  My nephew-in-law makes some high octane."  She means Willard's boyfriend when she says "nephew in law."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What is your nationality? Ethnic background?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Me, I'm an American of the Southern Variety.  That means I'm really a Dukes mixture--part Cherokee,  Scots-Irish (Willard got her red hair from my side of the family), English, German, French, Welsh and God alone knows what else."

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "Last book you read?  And the best and worst ones?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Last book I read?  Girl I read so many books it's hard to say exactly which one that was.  I like Janet Evanovich and detest GONE WITH THE WIND."

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "Me too," I blurted before I could catch myself, but I made a nice save.  "Who's your favorite actor or actress?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Katharine Hepburn and (a tie between) Humphrey Bogart or Spencer Tracy."

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What was the last movie you saw at the theatre?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "I went with Willard and some other nieces to see the Second part (pt V) of the Star Wars series way back when."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What's the most embarrassing moment you remember?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "The last time someone asked just how old I was in the store (several years ago even before I became a senior citizen) then gave me the senior discount before I could tell them I hadn't achieved that honor yet."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "Do you have a favorite recipe you'd be willing to share?"  I had my fingers crossed behind my back; I was hoping she'd give me the one for her famous cherry bark cough syrup.

Aunt Ornery:  "I'm renowned in my family for my homemade apple pie recipe that has been in the family at least four generations. Of course I use store bought pie crusts.  I mix home canned apples from trees descended from my ancestors originals, cinnamon, real butter, sugar, and a tsp of flour for thickening.  And bake in an oven (400 degrees F) for 45 minutes."

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: Rats! 

 

"What's your middle name?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Lea."

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What is your favorite word?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Bless your heart child I ain't got a favorite word."

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What is your least favorite word? "

 

Aunt Ornery:  "During election years? Politician."

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What turns you on [creatively, spiritually or emotionally]?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "I believe my creative juices get moving on a spring day in the mountains.  Spiritually and emotionally the same spring day can seem almost like nirvanna."

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What turns you off? "

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Politicians thinking they can tell me how to think and vote."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "You go, Auntie!  What's your favorite curse word?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Damnation."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What sound or noise do you love?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "I love the gentle babbling of a stream coming down a hillside."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What sound or noise do you hate?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "The scritching sound of a pen or pencil against a paper as someone marks though a sentence or word that they wrote.  When you write from the heart you don't need to delete a single word you've written."

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "I've been many things in my life, and quite good at most of them, but the profession I'd love to attempt would be working in a library with books."

 

Fairweather Lewis: "What profession would you not like to do?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Now let me see--I've seen some of the jobs Mike Rowe has tried and I haven't.  I believe you couldn't pay me enough money in the world to catch snakes or let them bite me."

 

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "If Heaven exists, what would you like God to say to you when you arrive?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Welcome good and faithful servant-- you know I'm glad you're here but there really is more work for you back there."

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "That's beautiful--" I began, but just about then Auntie's old dial phone, there on the kitchen wall, started to ring.

 

 

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Hello?  Sadie?  Sadie, you ol' bat, what are you--what do you--Oh, all right, I'll try not to ask too many--you WHAT?"  Auntie gestured for a pen and paper, and I handed mine over.  This sounded serious.  "Okay.  Uh-huh.  How much?  A thousand?  FIVE thousand?  Yeah, I know that diesel don't run on air, but why not ditch it and take the bus home?  OOOHHH, I see--All right, Sadie.  I'll take care of it."

 

She hung up.  "You will not believe what that crazy ol' bat's wantin'."

 

I kept silent.  I know Madame pretty well, and it didn't take a psychic to figure out what she wanted.

 

"I've got to go to the bank, take five thousand dollars from her account, and go to Western Union and wire it to her.  Her and that ridge runnin' brother of hers need fuel for the diesel.  She ain't drunk all the Bud Light in the trailer just yet and they've decided they want to go see the Grand Canyon."

 

 

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: "Where are they now?"

 

Aunt Ornery:  "Omaha."

 

 

Fairweather Lewis: There wasn't much more to say after that.  I gave Auntie a hug, accepted a piece of apple pie to take to Mom, and left her getting into her "goin' to town" clothes.  On the way home I collected Madame's mail and put it in the house.  I figured that with Auntie occupied for the next while, that was the least I could do.

 

 

Do you approve, Auntie?