Young Love, Chapter 14

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This chapter is very descriptive of farm life in the 1950's in Alabama for many farmers. To begin getting her memory back, Lizzie Jane must begin re-living these moments in her mind.

Young Love
A Lizzie Jane Adventure
Chapter 14
 
By Billie Sue Pilgrim

 

 

Chapter 14

A couple of hours later, Jed came rushing into the house, followed by Doc Brown.

"I have good news! Doc Brown has located Lizzie Jane!"

Aunt Maudie came into the living room with a smile and said, "Oh, really?"

"Sure have. Doc Brown can tell us exactly where she is!"

"I kinda doubt that because I know where she is."

You could see the shock on Uncle Jed's face and the confusion on Doc Brown. Aunt Maudie just smiled and said, "Come here, hon, and meet Uncle Jed."

Shyly Lizzie Jane appeared in the doorway. She looked at Uncle Jed, trying to place his position in her absent memory bank, wondering if she made a mistake in coming back. She recognized Doc Brown right away. Not knowing what to say, so she just stood there with a smile on her face.

Aunt Maudie looked at Lizzie Jane. "Dear, he is your uncle. He loves you as much as I do. Isn't there something about him that you can recognize?"

Lizzie Jane slowly shook her head, "No".

Uncle Jed spoke. "Remember, I taught you how to milk a cow? When polk salet was ready to pick? And many other things about the farm and about nature?"

Lizzie Jane tried to think of what polk salad was. It slowly came to her mind as tasting similar to spinach -- only a wild spinach. Aunt Maudie had taught her how to cook it mixed with eggs. It was one of the favorite dishes among North Alabama country folk. She remembered Uncle Jed telling her it was poisonous unless it was fixed right and not to try to cook it until Aunt Maudie taught her. Of course, she had been taught that the berries were poisonous, too, until a very young boy had eaten some and not suffered any ill effects.

'Uncle Jed --- Uncle Jed' -- the thought went through her mind. She began to form a mental picture of a man in the field, wearing a straw hat with some plastic on the front of the rim that made her think of sunglasses. She could see the man plowing a field with a mule.

She began to remember him teaching her how to plow in case the need arose -- to pull up on the handles of the turning plow to go deeper in the soil and push down on the handles to go lighter. A farmer had to adjust the position of the handles to keep from making it too hard on the mule and to plow in hard soil as well as soft.

She began to remember hoeing and thinning the small cotton as it began to grow and doing the same with corn. Back in those days, the fields were kept clean because all the picking cotton and pulling corn were accomplished by hand. Lizzie Jane began to smile when she remember a packsaddle falling down the back of Uncle Jed's shirt when he was in the cornfield. He jumped around hollering while jerking his shirt off.

Yes, she was remembering Uncle Jed as these thought began to return. She remembered going to the cotton gin, helping sometimes to push the big "pipe" around that sucked up the cotton from the truck, watching the process until it came out in big bales. The seeds were separated and some farmers sold their seed while others carried it home to plant the next year.

She remembered always getting a huge, oversized pencil, a common gift at Alabama gins. Because of its size, farmers did not have any problem getting it out of the hole in the bib of their overalls. The farmer would weigh the sacks of cotton and jot down the weights in a little book. Cotton pickers were paid by the pound and a few could pick 150 pounds a day.

Lizzie Jane did not pick much cotton because Aunt Maudie kept her busy learning to be a future housewife. The one room school did not have Home Economic classes. That was always left up to the mothers to teach their daughters. But, Lizzie Jane and Aunt Maudie did pick cotton at times.

Uncle Jed was one of the farmers who planted a few watermelons throughout the cotton patch so that, when the cotton pickers came across one, they would burst it on a rock, dig in with their dirty hands and grab a big chunk. Some of the boys were always after the "heart" of the melon and grabbed it before anyone else could. To city folk, eating watermelon with dirty hands may sound awful, but a person has not really tasted a good watermelon until they find one in the middle of the field when they are hot and tired.

She remembered going to the mill to have the corn crushed, some for meal for cooking, such as cornbread, and some was used for feed for the cattle which was mixed with sweet creep and hay. Mules also had their supply of corn.

A few times she went to the market in Birmingham with Uncle Jed where farmers carried their produce to sell. Sometimes they would sit all night as people would stream by, but sometimes representatives from canning companies would purchase the whole load at a discounted price. Farmers welcome that so that could get back home. Other times, vegetables were sold to stores. Of course, the women would do home canning from the vegetables from the garden to use during the cold winters.

All those memories flooding back into Lizzie Jane's mind is what helped her remember Uncle Jed. One by one she was to become acquainted with family and friends and the best place to do that was at church, so there wasn't anything short of being swept away by a tornado that would have kept them from church the next Sunday.

While Lizzie Jane was getting acquainted with her aunt and uncle, Sam and Carol had been getting acquainted with the community. He got acquainted with another Sam, who owned Sam's place, thinking it was a restaurant, but discovered that it was mostly a soda and ice cream shop where the kids hung out. It did serve hamburgers, cheeseburger and hot dogs, but that was about all.

So, Sam Henderson (who had brought Lizzie Jane home) thought it would be a good location for an eating establishment so he began to formulate plans for a country-style restaurant in the area. He discussed it with Carol and both came to the conclusion that it would be profitable and they could be close to Lizzie Jane, the girl they loved so much and could not stand the thoughts of leaving her to go back to Sam's old business.

When Sam and Carol returned to the travel trailer, which Sam had parked a stone's throw from Jed and Maudie's house, they saw Lizzie Jane running toward them. The became concerned, thinking something detrimental could have occurred.

"Carol, Sam!" yelled Lizzie Jane. "I am so glad to see you guys. Aunt Maudie wants me to go to church Sunday so I can get acquainted again with a lot of people. Aunt Maudie and Uncle Jed are the only two I know around here, so would you please go with us so that I can have four people that I know and love?"

Sam had not been to church in awhile, but Carol had been recently with Lizzie Jane, so she agreed. Sam said that he would go, too.

"One other thing," mentioned Lizzie Jane. "They told me that I had a boy friend that I had promised to marry. I think his name is Jake. Aunt Maudie tried to help me remember him, but I can't. What will I do? I am afraid that he will be a complete stranger to me and I don't want to hurt his feelings. From what Aunt Maudie had heard from others, he had proposed to me just before I fell and hit my head. The way I feel now, I don't want to marry anyone."

"Girl, you don't have to marry anyone until you are ready. Remember how Philip tried to claim you?" Carol asked.

"Yes, but he thought I was 16 years old or older and he was only 18."

"That is true. But you thought you were around 16, also, and you still handled him as a woman would have. Don't worry about this 'Jake'. You are not old enough to think about marriage anyway."

"But around here, some girls marry at 14 and most are mothers at 18," replied Lizzie Jane.

"How do you know that?" asked Carol.

"I don't know -- it is just as if I just remembered it."

"See, certain things you remember and certain things you forget. Maybe you were trying to forget this 'Jake' fellow and in the process, you forgot everyone else. When you needed to, you remembered -- like remembering Aunt Maudie when you needed to explain how you knew to cook."

Carol thought of something, paused, then continued, "Let's try a little experiment."

"Okay."

"Now, trying as hard as you can, you do not remember Jake. Now think, did you go to school around here somewhere?"

Lizzie Jane thought for just a moment. "I think I remember a little one room schoolhouse."

"You 'think' you remember a one room schoolhouse? Or do you remember a one room schoolhouse?"

Lizzie Jane did not answer immediately, but eventually replied, "I remember the schoohouse."

"Think of what the teacher looked like."

Thinking very hard, Lizzie Jane could not visualize her. "But, I do remember helping the younger kids learn."

"Okay, that is important to you -- that you were of help. You seem to remember facts and later you remember people. Now, about this 'Jake' fellow. You don't remember him proposing to you, do you?"

"No, I don't," replied Lizzie Jane.

"Okay," answered Carol. "You don't remember the fact that he proposed, so naturally you don't remember accepting, do you?"

"No."

"Well, it seems to me that marriage wasn't important to you and, if you did accept, do you suppose that you were trying to forget that and forgot everything connected with your life at that time?"

"Well, I ---"

"Just think. You don't remember anything about Aunt Maudie around that time, do you? All you remembered was a long time before that when Aunt Maudie taught you to cook. Right?"

"Hey, that's right. And I remembed Uncle Jed when he began to talk about how he taught me things about the farm. I still don't remember what happened just before I lost my memory."

Carol was astonished at her own self. It appeared that she had hit the nail right on the head. The questions she asked had just popped up and, at the time, they all seemed to be natural.

"And you don't remember things about Jake --ever?"

"No, I don't."

"Girl, I think you have your answer. When you meet Jake and if nothing comes to memory, do like you did with Philip. Let him off easy and get ready to play the field. Once boys find you are free, you will find a lot of new boy friends. Trust me on that one. Okay? If Jake is the one, time will tell."

Lizzie Jane smiled. She realize that the door was open to romance and it could enter her life anyway that God willed.

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To be Continued
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Copyright by Starla Anne Lowry
under the pen name of Billie Sue Pilgrim
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Comments

Billie Sue, Lizzie Jane Is A Charmer And Needs Her New Friends

Not remembering all of her past right away is a perfect way to continue the story and keep OUR Lizzie Jane the same sweet, adorable Christian young lady that WE have all come to cherish. I have come to think of Lizzie Jane as my sister because she is Southern like I am and I hope to meet a girl like Lizzie Jane one day.
May Your Light Forever Shine

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

Lizzie Jane Is A Charmer And Needs Her New Friends (Response)

Yep, Lizzie Jane is a southern country gal. I think this chapter makes it obvious why she lost her memory -- to forget the marriage proposal of Jake and the fact that she could not say "no" or "I don't know".

Also, in dating Philip, she lost her shyness and was able to stand on her own two feet and refuse a man who had marriage in his mind.

So, what is going to happen with Jake? I dunno -- I will just have to wait and find out.

One thing we must admit -- Lizzie Jane is growing up, but still a child in many ways.

Love,
Billie Sue

Billie Sue

lizzie jane again

laika's picture

I love how she's been getting her memory back. Very real, from what little I know of these things. One time I tried to hypnotise myself to get an old story of mine I'd lost back, hadn't seen in years, thought I still had it somewhere. It didn't work. So I thought. The next day around noon it was wild...... memories, specific scenes I had written bursting into my consciousness like a bunch of big old icebergs somebody had dragged to the bottom of the ocean and chained there had all been released, and were popping up (which would make a heck of an art project), and I was scribbling frantically to get it all written again. And that was one little story.
I couldn't imagine getting a whole life back! Am really really enjoying the YOUNG LOVE series!
~~~hugs, LAIKA

lizzie jane again

Sometimes I wonder if anyone enjoys my story, so I am very pleased when someone write and tell me that they do.

Thank you so very much. I am trying to get out two chapters a week and sometimes I have a problem.

I only had one long term memory loss and that was when I fractured my skull. It took years for me to remember the events just before it happened and it all gradually came back and I was shocked and scared.

What had been an accident was not an accident. I had harmed myself through my own actions on purpose.

Love,
Billie Sue

Billie Sue