Vegetables for Sale: A Child's Discovery of Redemption in the American South

By Michael Barber

A faded sign with the words "Vegetables for Sale" is one of Michael Barber's most prized possessions. Michael and his grandmother created the homemade sign after she became weary of his continuous begging for candy money. At five years of age, Michael's grandmother placed him alongside the Heart of Dixie Highway to operate a vegetable stand. She

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Nov 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781649901200

Book preview

Introduction

Eternal Lessons from the

Vanishing South

A

nother dinner on the ground has come and gone at my little country church in Alabama, and I see a deeply troubling trend occurring in the congregation. Where are the bananas in the banana pudding? Where are the puddings of my childhood? The ones with real bananas and Nilla wafers. The ones with meringues as high as Vestal Goodman’s hair. I keep searching and longing for the real pudding but find only bowls of yellow banana-flavored fluff impersonating the real thing. With the passing of another year, more of the authentic is missing and more of the new, improved imitation is sitting on the dessert table.

Along with my favorite pudding, familiar voices and traditions have also vanished from the South of my childhood. Fewer front porch ceilings are painted haint blue, and good luck finding anyone to wish your wart away or to witch water for a new well. Fewer people are uttering momenems (Mama and them), and all the older Southern ladies seem to have quit dipping snuff. Porches where families once gathered when the day was over have been replaced with stoops with barely room for a rocker. Snapping dogs who once kept guard from under front porch steps have been evicted and high-tech security systems have taken their places. The wild bobwhites that once called out for love each spring are now silent, and those who once whistled them up for a meal have become as extinct as their prey. Fewer little girls are named Mavis, and calling a boy bubba, once a term of endearment, has become an insult.

My home has always been the Bible Belt, and to some it remains the KING JAMES ONLY Bible Belt. I was raised on the buckle of the belt in the state of Alabama, The Heart of Dixie. My childhood home sat alongside the Heart of Dixie Highway. No one calls it by that name anymore, even though the blacktop is still black and runs in the same direction it did when I was a boy. The American South has changed in the past half century of my life, much for the good, but I admit sometimes I find myself missing a place I never left.

With the voices of my childhood becoming silent to eternity and the memories of a place and people being lost to time, my hope is simply to preserve and share the eternal lessons I was taught. Contained in the few pages of this book are seven stories of my childhood—a childhood spent in a special place with a peculiar people who taught me the ways of mercy, grace, and redemption without stepping foot in one pulpit. Their lives were their sermons.

The Demise of Daddy’s Pontiac

*Forgiveness and Restoration*

"D

addy, what was the worst thing you ever did when you were a little boy? My baby girl asked me the question one night at bedtime. Many people might struggle with singling out one action from their childhood and assigning it the title of worst thing I ever did. I had no such struggle. One terrible sinful act from my childhood was never resurrected for discussion around the dinner table. This deed of mine is simply referred to by my godly mama as the thing that won’t ever be funny. This is the story I shared with my wide-eyed daughter that night: The Demise of Daddy’s Pontiac."

When I was coming up, my daddy was the scariest man alive. My mama claimed Daddy was possessed by the devil. But Mama always said it was best to keep the devil we knew. She would quote a rarely used Scripture from the Gospel of Matthew about getting rid of one demon and risking getting seven back. Not the best theology in the world, but it made sense at the time. The thought of Daddy being seven times scarier was beyond my adolescent comprehension. Mama also explained to us children that Daddy was a Type A personality. I was a grown man before I discovered what the A stood for. I’d always assumed it stood for a word we weren’t allowed to say.

I had two goals in life while growing up. The first was stay alive, and the second was to accomplish the first by not causing Daddy any grief. What parenting skills Daddy knew he had learned in the military. He had spent several decades in the service of his country and had gained vast knowledge about life and death. Daddy often described in great detail the variety of ways he could end my life and the life of my older brother, Bubba. Daddy’s knowledge on the subject of killing was impressive and at the same time troubling enough to keep you up at night.

Shock and awe described how Daddy disciplined his children. The shock consisted of how fast his belt could be removed from his waist. The noise made by the belt traveling through each belt loop resembled the pop, pop, pop sound of automatic gunfire. The awe came after a whuppin’, when you realized the death angel had not claimed your soul. I later learned Daddy’s discipline techniques were universally practiced at the homes of all my friends by their daddies.

Daddy always seemed to be driven to succeed in life, even during our family’s lean years, when we visited the city dump and brought home more than we dropped off. All the ingredients for Daddy’s success began to come together in the late 1950s and 1960s. Daddy married Mama and went to school on the GI Bill. He earned a nursing degree, then later specialized in anesthesia. Daddy also slowly and sincerely began to listen to Mama about the ways of the Lord. Sometimes the Lord uses the preacher in the pulpit on Sundays and sometimes He uses the one you’re married to. In Daddy’s

Reviews for Vegetables for Sale

[Serena · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Written with genuine warmth and humour, the tales within this short rendition of Southern life provided a welcome and unexpected respite from the so-called 'realities' in an increasingly harsh and value-less world. I especially loved 'Whiskers' golden contribution as a free spirited agent incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit and Michael's bond with his beloved dog. Southern folk and history has been largely buried under piles of malicious media trash and it's refreshingly poignant to feel the heartfelt truth about community bonding and lessons in life from innocent childhood yearnings.