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| Jessie Mae and Will Daffron, About 1904, Millport Alabama |
My father, Julius Page Allen, was a man of few words. Maybe as a consequence, I remember many of the things that he said.
He said to me one day, "I just want to wake up dead."
That is a marvelous attitude, thinking on arrival at that moment without thinking about suffering or guilt or any of the other things that often accompany dying.
He had watched many people die. He knew. He knew that dying could come as the conclusion of a long days of suffering and insufferable visits from relatives who check in on you to see if you are dead yet.
As it happens, he woke up on the day of his death. He had a nice breakfast. I think he did a reasonably good job of running a Norelco around his chin. "I'm ready for a nap." He liked a good nap and took one as often as he could.
At any rate, he lay down. I hope he went to sleep. He did not get up.
Sweeping is an old custom and for many people a lost skill. Done properly, sweeping creates a mood, a feel, a culmination of well-put effort. Done poorly, sweeping leaves a mess and causes people to reach for the medicine cabinet.
Time was, and not so long ago, sweeping, sweeping with a broom I am speaking of, was an indoor skill (please do not mention "indoor" and "yard" and such--all in due course) that would make quick work of tidying things. Patent offices worldwide must have millions, maybe billions, of replacements for the broom and for the act of sweeping. Some of the claimed replacements are plain silly. Racking my brain I find no replacement of the broom as pleasing as the broom.
Swish is nice. Swish is more agreeable to the ear than vroom. Vroom. Need I describe? Of course not. You agree even if you sell Electrolux door-to-door. I am not sure that anybody does that anymore.
I have never tripped over the cord of a broom and my limbs are less broken than otherwise they might be for the absence of a broom cord. Life is full of things nobler than to have broken one's bones for a Hoover.
I fear I stray. That's okay. My cat does the same thing, though with more grace.
If I stray it is because I am more interested in the beauty of the form and choreography of the broom and sweeping than I am in the lore that has grown up around sweeping. And that, now that I begin to unstray, is where I began writing this. Broom and sweeping lore is plentiful. Maybe some of it is useful. Maybe. I read in Shelby County Today a piece by Neal Murphy called "Broom Lore and Old Wives Tales." I recommend it if you have time and you will have time if you simply give up on trying to get the cord to retract.
Timely to the season is this advice, "To prevent an unwelcome guest from returning, sweep out the room they stayed in immediately after they leave." Done. We may have missed this chance. "Do not sweep at all using a broom on New Year’s Day or bad luck will follow you all year long." I am safe.
Advice and admonitions abound. Enjoy. And one day I will tell you about the title of this blog. Actually, I already have, at least partially, doing a little is better than doing nothing at all, but the description is so far back that you probably cannot find it. Don't fret. That is almost as bad as leaving the broom leaning against the bed.
But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.
Kings something
Well-Swept Yard Remembering why I began this blog as a place to put things about my family. Stories. Photographs. Memories. Half-truths. Al...
