Rubie’s Hat

I have written this story once.

It seems almost silly to tell it again.

I have a notebook full of drafts; stories I have began to write but could not quite finish.

I should go back to one of those.

Maybe pick up where I left off.

Maybe I should turn one of the one-liners on my ideas page into an actual story you have never heard before.

But for now this is my story.

This is her story.

This our story.

She stood maybe five foot five inches.

But she was a giant: built like an oak.

You have probably heard the phrase “big boned” a countless number of times, but Rubie Lee Jackson’s bones were solid. Even at her most frail, I struggled to lift her frame.

Her wit was sharp and quick, and so was her temper. I knew I was straying over the line with just a look from her dark eyes, and I knew I had crossed it when she said, “Go pick me out a switch.”

Now, young folks probably do not understand the art of switch picking.

Never, ever go for the thin, pliable bushes.

I learned this lesson the hard way. A weeping willow branch will wrap around your bare legs, and it will sting to high heaven.

Never go thin.

Get you a branch.

Heck, pull up a tree trunk if you can.

It may hurt, but it will not sting nearly as bad.

She gave me my share of whippings, and I most likely deserved them all.

But she never held a grudge, and she loved me.

She loved me hard.

When my first pet died (a Beta fish named Deon), she loved me hard.

When my paternal grandmother died suddenly a few months before her 61st birthday, Rubie, despite my screaming and crying, loved me hard.

When I was at my lowest point during basketball season of my senior year in high school, she loved me hard.

We had an incredibly special bond that is hard to put into words.

She once told me, “I don’t like your spiky hair, and I don’t like when you color it. I don’t like your pants with holes in them. And I especially don’t like your earrings. But I love you, and this is my house. If you ever need a place to go, you’re always welcome here no matter what you look like.”

She loved me hard.

When I first started to school at Louisiana Tech in 2001, I could not find a job, so I decided that I would give plasma each week in order to make ends meet. Rubie got wind of my scheme, and she was appalled. She asked me, “How much will you make selling your blood each week?” Back then, the going rate was $40 per week. She said, “If I give you $40 a week, will you promise me that you will never sell your blood?”

I lived on $40 a week for a year, and I still have not sold my blood.

I never will.

She loved me hard.

She was the daughter of a sharecropper. My great-grandfather never had a son, and he treated Rubie like a mule. From all accounts I have been given, he was mean, and he was a drunk. Rubie stood up to him on behalf of her younger sister, and she often bore the brunt of his rage.

She married young, and she had three children with a man named Albert Henry. Albert, too, liked the bottle, and a divorce came soon after the third baby.

I often think about her strength.

How strong must she have been to divorce a man in the 50s while she had three young children?

On August 2, 1953, she married a man who once told me, “I knew from the moment I saw your Maw-Maw, I had to marry her. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

Mitchell and Rubie would have three kids together.

Their youngest would bring a baby boy into the world on July 13, 1981, and that is when I guess I officially met my best friend.

I do not remember much about the early years, but I do remember the smell of bacon, the taste of scrambled eggs with a slice of Kraft cheese melted ever so slightly, the feel of a soft quilt on my skin in front of a roaring fire, the sound of a country record on a Saturday morning as she cleaned, and the smell of PineSol after she was done.

Growing up, I never really spent the night at my friends’ house, I spent the night with Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw.

Their house was a safe haven where PBS shows helped mold my mind, and Little Debbie zebra cakes helped ruin my dinner.

Rubie loved her family, and she loved sports.

My cousins would often ask if they could watch TV, and she would tell them no regularly.

I learned how to play the system at a early age.

“Maw-Maw, can we watch the ballgame?”

Never once was I denied.

Football in the fall. She loved Warren Moon and his Oilers. I was a Broncos fan, and she hated John Elway or “El-Ray” as she called him.

Winter was basketball season. We both loved the Celtics and Larry Bird. Larry was considered a member of the family. If she talked about Larry, you just knew who she was referring to.

My parents bought her tickets to see Bird and the Celtics play in Houston in the early 90s. By then Larry’s back was bad, and Rubie’s first bout with cancer had taken a toll on her body, and she could not travel.

She would beat the cancer.

And then it came back again.

She beat it again.

I told you.

She was a strong woman.

The strongest I have ever known.

She worked and raised six kids while Uncle Sam sent my Paw-Paw to Germany and the to fight in Korea and then two tours of duty in the jungles of Vietnam. She helped raise grandkids, and she never lost her fighting spirit or that twinkle in her eye.

It was that twinkle I will never forget as I kissed her goodbye on her forehead on June 12, 2005.

She had beaten the cancer, but her body was not ready for the strokes. Her brain was betraying her, but I could see her mind was still there. I told her I loved her, and she mouthed, “I love you, too.”

Two days later, my mom called.

My Rubie Lee, my Maw-Maw, was gone.

I think about her often.

Every time I see flowers come to life in the spring, I think of her.

Some people were born with a green thumb; Rubie was born with green hands. Her flower beds were magnificent, and her lawn was meticulously mowed and shaped. She grew azaleas along the sidewalk, and roses just to the left before you got to the front porch steps. There were so many gorgeous bushes around the yard, and trees I would guess that are older than our country standing watch over it all.

It was paradise which she took great pride in.

I used to play football by myself on the sidewalk. I made up my own sports league, and each of the flowers and bushes were my fans. Their leafy green adoring hands reaching out to give a high five to their hero, the awkward kid in the Rec Specs with the big imagination.

I practiced my Pete Rose head-first slides in that yard.

Years before, I made mud pies and used sticks for guns.

Spring and summer were special times down Leon Stracener Road.

Those seasons brought baseball on the TV, and crops in the field.

I could hold my own in the watermelon field, but when it came to picking peas, I was an absolute failure.

My one and only time to pick peas came when I was 14. I had just finished eighth grade, and I was in pretty good shape to venture into the pea patch (or so I thought). I was the absolute slowest and worst pea picker to ever grace a South Louisiana field. Maw-Maw stood at the end of my row watching my struggles, and when everyone else had finished picking ALL OF THE OTHER ROWS IN THE FIELD, she quietly came to my rescue. I watched her frail, but knowing hands, shred the pea plants. I knew she grew up picking cotton, and apparently she picked a few peas in her day. When she finished picking my row and filling my bucket, she said, “Now you can get paid.”

I have never felt so unworthy of $4 in my life.

When I was in high school, we had lunch every Sunday at her house. She was often too weak to eat much more than Golden Flake cheesy poofs, but the quality time we had together is something I will forever treasure. It was through these years that she became my confidant, my listening ears, my best friend.

All throughout college, I tried to make it home as many weekends as I could. One of these college visits would give me the best memory I have of my Maw-Maw, and ultimately the reason I wrote my first story of Rubie Jackson back in 2012.

I popped in to her house announced, and I found her lying down in her back bedroom. We visited for a while, and I took my hat off because that is what you did in Maw-Maw’s house. After several minutes, I told her I was going to get a drink, and I would be right back. Before I had a chance to make my way back, I was greeted by the sight of a tiny frail woman and her walker.

She was wearing my Yankees hat and a huge grin.

I was overcome with laughter, and I told her, “Maw-Maw, I could have gotten it later.” To which she replied, “It’s alright. I like the Yankees.”

A month or so later, I graduated from Tech.

She smiled when she saw my diploma, but it was nothing like the grin on the moment shared by just the two of us.

I had the privilege of giving her eulogy at her funeral, and I did so with a brand new Yankees hat on the podium, New Era 5950, size 7 1/4, just like the one she wore that day. Before her casket was closed, I managed to sneak her new Yankees hat inside.

So now if you see me on Sunday, I will be wearing my Yankees hat.

Sundays were our days, so my hat is a small tribute to a woman who wore it better than I ever could. It’s no longer the original 7 1/4. Steroids and my brain tumor pushed my head up two hat sizes, and I’m now in a 7 1/2. It’s dirty, and it shows some stains from the years we have spent together.

I will inevitably catch flack from someone for being a band wagoner or for supporting the Evil Empire, but I am used to the jeers and jabs at this point.

I welcome the question, “Why are you wearing a Yankees hat?!” because I get to share my story of a lady who liked the Yankees and loved her grandson.

She loved him hard.