Sunday, May 03, 2009

Elonymay Utlerbay

I was the new white kid, I was a minority. My teacher's name was Mrs. Washington, she was black. That didn't matter to me but my mom was worried about it. We had moved to the Navajo reservation from south Texas. The stores there had candy named "Nigger Toes", I thought nothing of it. Mrs. Washington had a very old fashioned way of teaching spelling. When you misspelled a word, you stuck your hand out, palm up, and she would smack it with a ruler, I still can't spell. I got to walk to school when the weather was nice, I think it was about a mile. On the way home I would stop by a rock cave, I thought it was very cool. There was another cave not far away but there were some mean kids that "owned" that one so I stayed away from it. My babysitter's daughter was my age and I had a little crush on her and she liked me too. I can still remember her name because I would say it in Pig Latin to impress her and let her know that I was a man of the world, Elonymay Utlerbay Melony Butler. There was a new toothpaste out then called Vote. On the commercials they said you had to be 21 to try it. We decided to try it even though we were only seven. We were a little disappointed, it was kind of hot tasting but nothing wild happened like on the commercials. One day in the park we noticed that our eyes reflected what you were looking at. Many years later I heard a song that reminded me of her.

3 comments:

yellowdoggranny said...

oho, i like that story.
and i heart moody blues and that song in particular..great great song..
there is a fire cracker calle nigger chasers.(don't know if that is what it's real name is, but that's what everyone called it).it looks like an incense cone and you light it and it sort of poofs up and then chases out like a snake..we were at the lake austin lodges and they were selling 4th of july fireworks etc. (it was the 4th of july)ha.
and my son tom ran in and said 'can i have $3 worth of nigger chasers?'...tom was standing next to the biggest blackest cowboy you have ever seen..he turned to tom and said, i'd like to see $3 worth of anything that can chase this nigger...everyone was afraid to laugh. tom with out missing a beat said'yeah ...me too.'...and ran out the door..THEN we laughed.

joy said...

Neat stories, both of you.

yellowdoggranny said...

we should take our act out on the road...ha

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