monthly musings from JD
Late May 2009 - Elsie’s Enormous Panties
My mother had a sister named Elsie.
Aunt Elsie I always called her.
Aunt Elsie was a woman of great size. These days she would no doubt be referred to as ‘morbidly obese’, but back then, we just knew that Elsie was large. No one, under any circumstances, ever called Elsie fat. I don’t think any of us ever cared. She was just a big woman, and that was that.
Elsie and her husband, Ross, lived in the city where I was born, Miami, Oklahoma. They lived on a wonderful little street, in a wonderful little house (starched white home-made doilies everywhere), with a wonderful front porch and a wonderful double swing. In the quiet heat of the evening Elsie and I used to sit together in that swing and gently rock back and forth as we listened to a ball game, and although I was always a little concerned that Elsie’s great weight might cause the swing to give way, I never brought it up.
It never did.
‘Uncle’ Ross was tall, skinny, and quiet. I seem to remember he smoked a pipe, although I’m not certain about that. They were very good, simple, courageous church-going people. They were America. Together, Ross and Elsie looked a bit like Laurel and Hardy.
So way back in the day, when I lived in Coffeeville, Kansas, which is just up the road from Miami, in the Summer I used to spend a few weeks at Aunt Elsie’s. I think it was kind of like my ‘summer camp’. Back then, in that part of the country, I don’t believe kids went to summer camp, although the kids from my neck of the woods wouldn’t have been able to afford to go even if there had been such things. But for several summers, I would spend time staying at Aunt Elsie’s.
Even though I would be ‘homesick’ for my folks and for my brother and my sister and our cats and our dog and our cow and our chickens and all the other living things back at home, I loved staying at Aunt Elsie’s.
Elsie could cook like no one has ever cooked, and I suspect that’s why she had become a woman of size. She completely killed everything she touched, turning out the most delicious meals effortlessly. We can not, nor should we, discuss the ‘health’ aspects of her culinary efforts. We speak of fried chicken, and bacon and eggs (the eggs cooked in the bacon fat), and mashed potatoes and white gravy (made in either bacon fat or the grease from the fried chicken), biscuits, fried corn, pies of every sort, cookies, iced tea from the hand of the gods, and every other food one could imagine. Elsie killed them all.
Now, as a tall, skinny man (I prefer ‘lean’), I have always had a curious relationship with food. This certainly did not start with Elsie. I was actually a bit of a chubby kid.
With Aunt Elsie I ate as if each meal would be my last meal, and that’s how she fed me. God did I love her food. God did she love to feed me.
Most of all, and her legend still lives, Elsie made the greatest cinnamon rolls that ever graced an oven.
Like Merlin in his workshop, Elsie would add this, and throw in that, and kneed and flour and roll and top and glaze and sugar and cinnamon these concoctions that would somehow turn into the most delicious treats ever in the history of the world, or at least, in that little corner of Oklahoma. I can still smell them baking in Elsie’s kitchen.
There was no recipe.
It was all in Elsie’s head, and she took it with her.
Elsie’s daughter, Lorene, also lived in Miami, and her two kids, Karen and Bill, were my cousins. I especially delighted in hanging with them while I stayed at Elsie’s, as Billy was about my age, and Karen a bit younger. Aunt Elsie would take us all fishing, packing us up (and food, of course) in her giant 1950 Plymouth (it might have been a Chevy or a Ford) and driving us out of town to a spot that she ‘knew’ was a good fishing ‘hole’. Using cane poles that couldn’t have cost more then twenty-five cents at the local Woolworths, we whiled away many a hot afternoon fishing in a little creek. Looking back, it’s amazing we weren’t all killed by water moccasins or other such disagreeable critters, but at the time we never even thought about it. All we could think about was trying to catch the great big old catfish who was rumored to lay in the mud on the bottom. Luckily, we never did, although we did score our share of his smaller brothers and sisters. When the turtles didn’t help themselves to our catch (we kept our fish in the water with a line running through their gills), we’d go back to Elsie’s and she’d cook the daylights out of them. Using cornmeal and some sort of ‘oil’, and lots of salt and pepper and god knows whatever else, she, of course, fried them. Add in her cornbread, and we three little piggies would finish as full and satisfied as any three little piggies ever could. Of course we’d top all that off with a cinnamon roll. Sleep, or a nap, was never far behind.
But the point of all this is not Elsie’s amazing cooking.
Elsie had a little back yard, with a one car garage where she faithfully kept her giant car, and a little storage shed opposite that. Whenever no one was looking, and we thought we could get away with it, Billy and I would climb up onto the roof of the storage shed for the forbidden treasure that waited for us there.
Bean poles.
Bean poles are these longish green things that look like giant green beans, and they grow on trees. Anyone from the Midwest would know at once what they are, and from what kind of tree they grow on, but all that has escaped my mind. But the tree that contained these forbidden treats grew directly over the storage shed, putting these dastardly delights within our reach.
You could smoke them!
At least that’s what we’d been told.
Especially the ones that were turning brown.
It didn’t have anything to do with ‘getting high’. One did not get high back in those days, at least no one who lived where we lived.
We smoked them because it was cool.
Carefully stealing a book of matches from Elsie’s famous kitchen, Billy and I would secret ourselves atop the shed for some serious smoking. How we didn’t burn down the entire town with our daring antics eludes me to this day.
So it was then, up on the roof, doing our best to ‘light’ these ‘smokes’, where we first saw ‘them.’
One afternoon, doing our best to smoke, we saw Aunt Elsie come out of her house with some hand laundry to hang on the little clothesline in her backyard.
Total silence was immediately required, because if she saw us up there all hell would break loose. We had been ‘warned’ not to go up there.
These two seven year old smoked-up delinquents fell silent.
Laying on our bellies, we silently watched as Elsie began to hang the few things she had just washed.
And then, there they were.
Unaware that she was being watched, Elsie, using several clothespins, attached her panties to the line to dry in the warm air.
Elsie’s panties were enormous.
Made of ‘old lady’ material, these drawers were very, very large.
There was nothing ‘frilly’ about them, just good, functional underwear sized to fit a woman of a certain girth.
As only two seven year old boys can behave, Billy and I were at once astonished and overcome by the sheer size of these garments. Not being able to control ourselves, our snickers and laughs could not be contained. Not only had we never seen such personal items belonging to our beloved Aunt, but, beyond our wildest dreams, at last we had glimpsed her gigantic bloomers, and there was something about them that was so funny, so unexpected, that despite our efforts to remain silent, we started to laugh.
Oh boy, the jig was so up.
How cruel children can be.
We did not mean to be.
We were just being stupid little embarrassed boys who had witnessed a private ‘grown-up’ thing, and we reacted the way stupid little boys react.
Elsie looked up and saw our heads leaning over the edge of the shed.
I would have felt better if I could have died before she spoke.
“YOU BOYS COME DOWN FROM THAT SHED RIGHT NOW!”, Elsie yelled to us in a tone that indicated we should do what she said.
I wanted to kill myself.
We quickly climbed down.
Once we were standing side by side in front of her, Elsie spoke.
She didn’t speak in a fire-n-brimstone fashion, she spoke in a calm, highly agitated, very quiet tone.
Even as a stupid seven year old, I could immediately tell that we had hurt her feelings.
We had laughed at her enormous panties, and therefore, at her.
We had found something funny about something that was extremely personal to her.
I wanted to kill myself all over again.
I would have felt better had she beaten us to a pulp.
But Elsie was a ‘grown-up’, who happened to be morbidly obese.
She was totally aware, far more then we could ever be, of the ‘issues’ of being a ‘large’ person.
It was ‘her’ wound.
Her voice quivering , and doing her best to hold back her tears, she quietly said, “Don’t ever laugh at a person because of who they are.
And don’t you boys ever go up on that shed again”.
And that was all she said.
Turning away from us, she went back inside.
Billy and I stood there in silence.
Suddenly, nothing seemed very funny.
She took us fishing the next day.
I wanted to jump into the creek and drown while the water moccasins were biting me and the turtles were eating me.
She took us home and fed us more incredible food.
I don’t think we ever spoke of this again.
If I never told you back then dear Aunt Elsie, I’m very sorry I was so insensitive. Children so frequently are.
That was no excuse.
We only marveled at the size of your panties.
Not you.
As it does, time would pass.
I ‘grew up’.
Elsie would pass over. The rumor had it that her casket was an ‘extra-large’ and had to be pulled behind the hearse on a trailer, but I don’t know. I was on board an aircraft carrier in the middle of the South China Sea, and I couldn’t be there.
Ever since the panty incident, I didn’t care.
So it was through my Aunt Elsie’s enormous panties that I learned the great lesson that it doesn’t matter who a person might be.
Or how large one might be.
Or how small.
Or what color.
Or what nationality.
Or what sexuality.
Or what God they worship.
Or what language they speak.
Or where they come from.
Or anything.
It’s totally the inside of each of us that matters.
While we can all find a certain humor in the ‘uniqueness’ of others, boil it all down, and we are all in the boat together.
When you think about it, we’re all pretty funny.
How blessed I was to have had a woman of a certain size as my Aunt.
She made the greatest cinnamon rolls that have ever been made.
Her fried chicken and mashed potatoes and white gravy knew no peer.
Perhaps neither did her panties.
Her heart was equally as large.
That’s all that matters.
Rest in peace dear Aunt Elsie.
Thank you.
Give my love to your sister, my mom.
James C. Dawson
May 28, 2009
New York
Previous Songman's Notes
© Copyright 2009 Jim Dawson - The Original Songman | Official Website. All rights reserved.