When I was growing up, I was a “yard young’un” my grannie called me. Mama promised to come after me with a switch.

If she had, I might not have fallen in love the way I did.

Booley lived on the pig trail behind our house.

Every day after school, I’d go straight to Amos and Eunice’s house and straight to the wood stove hoping for a baked sweet potato with crispy skins. Then, I would go take my place on the porch, ready to listen to the tales that were being “stowed around.”

Growing up, I helped Daddy and Pop out at the feed mill and ice plant where farmers and townspeople gathered to just to “chew the fat.”

Out in the gin yard, the bales of cotton would be stacked yea high and I’d climb to the top and sit there listening to the tales the farmers told. In the summer, everybody, who came to pick up a watermelon they’d left to cool in the ice room, had a story to tell.

Just why a lady’s tongue loosened up while she was waiting to have her meat cut, Daddy couldn’t say but their tongues would start wagging like a dog’s tail.

“….and, you didn’t hear a thing I said, little girl,” the farmer would say to me, knowing full well that I had taken in every word.

That’s how I fell in love with storytelling in the gin yard.