| MRS. CLARA FRANZ: MOTHER EARTH'S DAUGHTER
Ninety
year's old
never
been to Kansas City
got
as far as a St. Louis suburb
once.
Still,
fairly radical:
"I ain't against pool or dancin."
She
used to walk ten miles to go dancing Saturday Nights
about
the time her father sold apples for a quarter
a
barrel.
She's
lovely
white mop top
bright old blue eyes
teeth in a drawer somewhere
voice travels from the morning dove to the crow,
mostly crow
four layers of flower-print dresses
sturdy as a turnip
didn't wear shoes in the summer until she was 73.
milked cows every day from the time she was 8
til she turned 78 (Hates milk but likes the cow)
Still keeps chickens, says,
"A day without work is a day without food."
Remembers
what happened:
yesterday
last Week
a Year and a Day ago
forty-nine Years ago
seventy Years ago
and everything in between--
Quick
at arithmetic, too.
She's
8 when the calendar rolled over to 19-double ought.
25 when the man who will be her husband
ten years later embarks for France
to fight their mutual 2nd cousins.
43 when the WPA builds the bridge down the road
60 when Ike gets elected for the first time--
and she voted for him--been Republican ever since
Wilson lied about keeping us out of war.
76 when Otto died and that almost killed her:
"I wish I was dead. Never done that before."
Otherwise
vigorous
and
what her wood stove won't heat
port-wine
will.
Plants
her man-sized garden by the Moon:
"If you sow radishes by the light of the moon
all you'll git is greens.
Never
fails."
Petrified
of snakes, lightning and the dark:
"I wouldn’t open the door to Santa Claus himself
after the sun goes down."
She
was weeding okra one morning
when
a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses
descended
upon her
them
in shirt and tie
her
in bonnet and sweating some--
"Git on, if the Lutherans couldn't save me,
you sure as hell cain't."
Always
has a can of Gold Label beer ready,
and a risky joke:
"Lady goes into the music store.
She asks the clerk," You have Hot Lips?"
He says, 'No, but I got nine inches.'
She says, "Is that a record?"
'No,' he says, 'but it's a damn good average.'
Or
this one she told her grandson on the day she died:
"Do you know why babies are so fragile?
Because they are put together with only one screw."
Had
one child of her own
cried
"a barrel of tears"
when
he shipped out for Korea.
Raised
eleven kids,
orphans
that she literally picked off the street
"And made us work,"
says the religious one.
"My
husband never made complaint."
She
listens to mathematicians
astrologers (on occasion)
bums
English perfessors
minstrels
Truth or Consequences on TV
She
says, "It's very educatin',"
while
crocheting on her pink and white African.
I
knocked at the door louder and longer than usual.
She
finally appeared, looking like a cat that's been shoved
off
a chair
I
shouted (her hearing aid lives in the same drawer
as her teeth):
"What ya doing? Taking a nap?"
"What?"
"TAKING A NAP?"
"Eh - you make me sick.
I been workin.
It's you been takin a nap."
She
was right too.
You
know its her coming down the road
engine
revved
honking
like a teenager
in
her speeding Maverick
headed
for the Big Star Market
purse
full of coupons.
Always
candy for the kids
and for their parents:
tomatoes
and okra
and zucchini
and pumpkin
and scallions
and cabbage
and pickles
and turnips
and peppers
and radishes
and beets
and lettuce
and apples
and pears
and jelly
and flowers
When
the local undertaker met her
in
the potato chip aisle of the Krogerstore
he
put his hand on her shoulder
to
which,
Mrs. Franz,
"Ain't cold yet, Marvin."
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