Devil with a Kickstand
Born not made
The following is based on a true story. It was told to me by an Aunt I never knew about, until recently.
Our story today is set in Stratford, TX, in the early 1960s, shortly after my mom, Hannibal, and her family blew into town.
Stratford is the only known city in Sherman county -- and, no, we do not consider Texhoma a city, not a Texas one anyway. There are a few ghost towns, though. Sherman county sits right next to Hansford county on the left (i.e., to the West).
The population is around 3,000 souls, two-thirds of whom live in Stratford.
Here’s Hannibal blowing into town.
Public domain
Oh, wait, that’s a dust storm approaching Stratford in 1935. Hannibal’s approach was much worse.
The Stratford Wife
The large plate glass window of the Stratford diner was a stage, and my grandmother, who we shall call “Winnie” (mainly because that’s her real name), was trapped on it. She was balancing plates of burgers, chicken-fried-steak, steak-fried-chicken, and club sandwiches, while dodging the waiving hands of farmers, their wives and kiddos.
Winnie was in her early thirties, straw blonde, disheveled curled hair, wearing a white and blue stripped waitress uniform common in the day. Her husband was a trucker and wasn’t home much. Like many families in the panhandle, they were poor. So, in addition to being a wife and mother, Winnie worked at the diner to earn a few extra bucks when she had spare time. She had none of that, though. To free some up, she would have my mom Hannibal baby sit for her two younger sisters. Hannibal did not like that, and naturally plotted the appropriate revenge.
Hot down, Summer in the 60s
It is the early 1960s, June or July. We’re in the center of old Stratford, on Main St.
In the old farming towns of the Texas panhandle, you will find wide and accommodating roads, many with old school brick pavers laid down decades ago.
Stratford’s Main St. was no exception. The road way is wide, about 25 yards, with a center strip of those old school brick pavers, with an additional 10 ft of concrete collars on each side for parking, and leading up to raised concrete side walks in front of the miscellaneous shops, including a few restaurants, one pharmacy, one grocery store, two or three hardware and parts stores and more.
Sherman (unlike Hansford) is a “wet” county -- for alcohol that is -- but the bars would be out of town a bit, not in the center square.
We are in the middle of the intersection of Main and 3rd. We see pavers bleeding into and forming a giant 75 foot diameter circle with a Lone Star inlayed in the center.
The top of star points to the North. We are looking South down Main St. to the large plate glass window of the Stratford diner a few hundred feet away.
Outside, the summer sun is intense in the wide open blue sky above Stratford, Texas, where two large hawks glide and curve, projecting shadows across the pavement, parked cars and store windows. The hawks trace looping figure 6’s and call out
purr-yeeear. . . purr-yeeear. . . puryear.
The Low Rider
My mother was supposed to be three blocks away, on Chestnut St., playing the role of the dutiful eldest daughter, tending to her two younger sisters.
Instead she was on that bike. A little girl with blonde hair, blue eyes alternately pedaling and gliding, with that pursed lipped, jaw jutted smirk which would later become an identifying feature throughout her life.
For context, here is her second grade photo from the 1960 Stratford yearbook -- probably taken in the fall of 1959 when she was 8 years old. Is it just me, or does 8 seem a little old for second grade?
From: Ancestry.com
I say, check out this side by side of my mom Hannibal and Rhoda (”Rhoda Dear”) Penmark from the 1956 movie The Bad Seed. I think they are the same person.
The Bad Seed, 1956
She knew it was the busy lunch crowd at the diner. She didn’t sneak off from her house to go swimming or to say hello to her friends at the Dairy Mart -- not even to pick-pocket a bazooka joe or two.
She pedaled her way to Main Street and smirking as she saw the many pick-up trucks and cars parked in front of the diner. She rode a slow, agonizing loop back and forth, back and forth, in the form of a six, directly in my grandmother’s sight.
Every time my grandmother looked up to check the clock or wipe the counter, there was the “Bad Riding Seed” – a little silhouette on wheels, a tiny devil with a kickstand, her grimace turned to grin, reminding Winnie: I am not where I’m supposed to be, you can’t do anything about it. I have no idea, Hannibal would telegraph with her blue dagger eyes, if my younger sisters are safe at home. And I don’t even care.
It wasn’t an escape, it was a taunt. It was a master class in the power of odious dark presence as protest. She saw one farmer leave a tip for Winnie. As he exited the diner, she “accidentally” ran his foot over. “Sorry” she said, and later under her breath “Ha-Ha!” She continued to ride down Main, around the corner and back through the alley way. While tucked in a hiding spot, waiting for the farmer to head back out into the fields, she found a tennis ball. “Perfect” she smirked.
She pulled up to the curb, right in front of the diner’s main window. She walloped the kickstand which went down with a sharp metallic clack – like the sound a shell might make as its loaded into the magazine of a Sherman tank.
She looked the through the grease-filmed glass and waited to lock eyes with her mother. The second Winnie’s tired blue eyes met her eldest daughter’s, Hannibal’s eyes narrowed to a squint, and the ball went flying -- first to the sidewalk at an angle, bouncing up hitting the glass, and back to Hannibal’s grip. Over and over the ball flew.
“Tacket-a -tacket-a thump” . . .
The glass rattled. Inside, everyone turned to see Hannibal, as the tennis ball returned to her hand and flew out again.
“Tacket -a-tacket-a thump” . . .
It was a metronome of pure spite. Every bounce was a reminder that the sisters were home alone, that the rules were broken and the “Bad Seed” had officially sprouted, and that, to use a phrase common in rural Arkansas and Missouri, don’t give me no more never-mind.
“Tacket -a-tacket-a thump”.
My grandmother Winnie had to stand there, pouring coffee with a shaking hand, listening to the rhythmic heartbeat growing louder with worry, fury and the never ending question every parent of a budding psychopath asks, viz. “what am I going to do with her?” She could only imagine what the dwindling lunch crowd of men in feed caps were thinking. Her boss raised an eye brow in sympathy, and scratched his head. She felt every thump of the tennis ball as a strike.
It “weren’t no question” of discipline or remediation; it was a question of containment. How do you bottle up a lighting storm? She looked at her daughter – the blonde haired blue-eyed devil (just like it ever was?) with a kickstand – and realized the standard tools of motherhood were useless. Shaming wouldn’t work.
She was doing this in public. She would have probably enjoyed a spanking.
Isolation didn’t work, she’d just find another bike and a ball. Fear didn’t work, the girl had already decided the world was hers. As Led Zepplin would later write “cryin’ won’t help you, praying will do you no good”.
Epilogue -- The Aftermath
When my grandmother returned home after her shift, she asked her oldest daughter, Hannibal, what and why and how could she. The reply was flat ‘whatever’. I’m home now and my sisters are fine. I think they are hungry. They want dinner.
During the warm night, Winnie waited until the daughters were asleep. She went out to find the dastardly bike, pulled up the kickstand and walked it to her friend Eldna’s house. She left a note on the bike so Eldna would know why the bike was there in the morning. Winnie and her daughter needed the bike confiscated and missing for a few days because, Lord knows, grounding her never ever worked.
The following morning Eldna entered the kitchen breakfast room and put on one of her watches from her collection. It may seem like an odd habit, but many housewives in the panhandle would hide watches and jewelry in the kitchen, figuring no thief would look there.
As Eldna walked to the kitchen she saw the bike and was struck with fear that her friend’s daughter was somewhere near. Then she saw the note tied to the right handle and went out to read it.
Oh her poor friend, what was she going to do with that child? She had been causing trouble since birth. She prayed daily for her friend and for the community. Eldna recalled pulling by the school, as the school year wrapped up, only to see tangled bodies and tufts of hair flying. In what felt like slow motion, Eldna watched as Hannibal had a few fingers’ full of Candy Lopez’s hair and was vigorously trying to rip it out. Candy was a few grades above Hannibal.
Winnie was back at the diner the next day. As the busy lunch hour bled into a quiet afternoon, my grandmother Winnie was a nervous wreck wondering what the day would bring. She had left the house before any of her daughters were awake. The lunch crowd came and went. So far, no sign of Hannibal and certainly no mention of her by the town’s polite folks. She deeply wished to feel relief and like there might be one day without chaos.
Her shift had finished and she went home. She first passed by Eldna’s house and there was no bike in sight. Then as she looked toward their house, she saw flames. Her heart sunk and her stomach turned. There in the front yard, Hannibal was sitting on the ground starring into the flames. Her eldest daughter had stacked Winnie’s record collection on the front lawn and lit it on fire.
The School of Handbook is Now in Session
Pay attention kids!
