Four year olds, Hippies, Convertibles and Birds Don't Mix!

As I write this, I find myself searching for the right words to define my profession.  As of today, I am a storyteller.  And since I have regarded myself the “Southern Songbird", I feel my first blog must serenade you with a true story about a songbird. 

I grew up in a lazy little town on the east side of Birmingham, Alabama.  When I was four my family moved to a community called Center Point.  My parents wanted several things.  First they wanted a larger house.  It was apparent that they needed a larger house in which to house all my toys I had accumulated in the four years I had been alive.  They were running out of cabinets, closets, cupboards, and out-buildings to put them in.  So they decided instead of adding on to their existing house, it would be simpler to just move.  Secondly, they felt that I needed to be close to a college.  When they decided close, they meant “real” close.  The local community college was 1.3 miles from my house.  It was definitely a short walking distance on those days when I didn’t have gas money to fuel my car and just had to “hoof” it.  Finally the last reason to move was because my mother wanted a garage.  This being very important to her, they found and moved into a house that would hold all my paraphernalia, be close to a college, and have a garage.  Sounded like a winning combination.

               After we had settled into our new home we had got to know all of our neighbors pretty well.  The neighbors adjacent to our house had two older teenage boys.  One of the boys had recently gotten a new car; a convertible Mustang.  It was pretty too; sky metallic blue with white leather seats.  Oh you got to be kidding; just letting me near a car with white seats should have sent off sirens.  But it just so happened one day my mom was in a mess and needed a babysitter.  Of all people, she called the teenage boy with the convertible.  His name now escapes me but  just for fun I’ll call him John.

“Oh yes, Mrs. Gann I’ll gladly watch your little angel”.  He must have been dead broke and needed gas money for his new car.  And there was no angel’s halo even close to my head.  I was the menace of the neighborhood and gladly wore the title proudly.  I don’t know what she offered to pay him but it must have been enough to entice him to entertain me for a few hours. 

               It was early fall I remember but it wasn’t necessarily cool.  She had donned me in a navy and white dotted Swiss dress with a white cardigan sweater.  I remember looking down at my white ruffled socks and my black patent shoes thinking I must be going to church because momma just didn’t dress me this way unless it was something special.  But being a gentle, southern woman, my mother to this very day undoubtedly believes that even if you were going to make mud pies, you always looked your best.  So after I am dressed to go to preaching, she marched me across the street and left me with that long haired hippie. 

I had met John a few times and he always seemed nice.  He seemed to be about the tallest young man I had ever seen.  I thought he was as tall and skinny as a willow tree.  Undoubtedly, all adults are like trees to children.    I remember shuffling my feet back and forth across his carpet not really wanting to even look at John.  I guess he figured I was about to cry so he had to quickly decided how he was going to entertain me.  The ultimate decision was to go do errands in that blue car of his.  My spirit quickly picked up.  He didn’t bother to open the door on the passenger side, he just picked me up and plopped me into the front passenger seat.  Now remember this was the 70’s and no laws about kids and seatbelts in the front but I survived.  I remember I couldn’t see out the window, I just stared straight at the dash.  When he roared up the engine and took off I felt like I was flying.  He took the curves relatively fast and we drove up and down really steep hills that gave my stomach a flip.  We turned onto the main parkway and he told me he was going to take me to the Spinning Wheel for ice cream.  Well I couldn’t have been happier.  Well, remember what I said about those seats being white.  Just let your imagination run a little bit. 

After I got my ice cream John said he needed to stop at a local nursery.  After we arrived at the nursery, John picked me out of the car just the way he had plopped me in.  I remember having my ice cream in my hand and I was walking behind John and my black patent shoes were making crunching sounds on the pea gravel that the nursery had spread along paths.  We were walking through trees and shrubs and something caught my eye quickly.  I guess being four years old and close to the ground it seems that it would have been automatic that I would have seen it.

A gray and white feather peaked out at me from under a cedar tree.   I had stopped in my tracks not noticing that my ice cream was dripping all down my hand.  I was more interested in the feather.   It was then that I noticed the feather belonged to a dead bird.  I remember I was so distraught that I dropped my ice cream and picked up the bird.  I heard little birds above my head and realized that it must have been the baby bird’s mother so I took the bird and ran to John.  Tears were streaming down my face.  I knew the bird was dead but I don’t know what I expected John to do, but I felt he should try to help.  John immediately knocked it out of my hands and yelled at me.

“Don’t touch that bird.”    I knew the bird was dead and then John had just yelled at me.  I was in shock I suppose.  I remember snubbing and hiccoughing at that poor lifeless bird.  After his sudden outburst, I guess John thought he shouldn’t have reacted so aggressively so he bent down and began to wipe away my tears. 

“There now, I’m sorry.  But birds carry disease and I just don’t want you handling it.”

“But it’s dead and it has babies”.  I cried softly on his shoulder.

I guess John had an epiphany and decided the last thing he needed to do was to return me to my mother all covered in ice cream and feathers and dirt with my face pink from bawling my eyes out over a dead bird he had commanded I drop.

But John redeemed himself in my eyes.  We went inside the nursery and I remember there being a water spigot on the side of the building.  John washed my hands and talked to me and told me that he was sorry and that he promised he would talk to the nursery owner about the bird.  He then took me and plopped me back in the car.  I was still softly crying, I had lost my ice cream, found a dead bird, gotten yelled at, washed off with a hose and now sitting in the convertible with a damp dress and wet socks in my Sunday black patent shoes.

Soon John came back to the car with a box.  He sat down beside me and gripped the steering wheel and told me he had talked to the nursery owner and they were going to take care of the baby birds.  I then in garbled English asked him, “What about the mommy bird?  Who’s going to bury her”?

“We are”. 

So John drove home and he plucked me out the car and went and got a shovel.  

“My yard or yours?” he asked.

“I think your yard.”

“I think your right.”  He said.

          We buried that little bird in the back yard of John’s house on a hillside.   John put a rock to mark the place he buried it.  He said I could place flowers there if I wanted to.  I picked some blooming weeds and placed it on its little grave.  It’s still there I suppose but I haven't looked for it in many years.   Some things just stick with you even 37 years later.  The memory of the songbird that no longer sings stuck with me.