She breast-fed all 10-12 of her kids and when her boobs fell, folks must have thought it was an earthquake. Mothers grabbing their kids to protect them, fear o’ God and all that. And her butt was so big; guess it was nature’s try at a balancing act. “The good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away.”
But Olena had to know what was goin’ on with ever’body, ever’where, ever minute of the day. And she could get more words out with one breath. She must have from east Kentucky. The picture a lot of folks have is that people from Appalachia are a slow-moving, slow-talking, easy goin’ bunch and for the men, that’s generally true but damnation, you get three or four mountain women together, it’s like a verbal Gatlin gun or a come-to-life bunch of floggin’ hens. Them chins boppin’ along at 90 miles a minute. It seemed that the more women joined the group, the faster the talkin’ got. Didn’t even try at keepin’ up after a while, couldn’t be done. There was one phrase my dad’s momma used, “Ponmasolendinonner”. As a kid, I didn’t have the foggiest notion what she was sayin’ then later I found out it was, “Upon my soul and dying honor” which was about the most solemn vow possible.
There was always at least a smidgen of truth with Olena’s stories—unless she couldn’t find out somethin’. Then she’d put out a story a whole lot worse than it could ever be so the real story would come back in defense. Olena wanted to know what everybody was doin’ but was super-secret about her own goin’s-on. She was good—damn good— at what she did. Probably the best. Make that Washington crowd look like a bunch o’ snot-nosed kids.
One of her daughters was married to the guy across the street from us. So she was in our neck of the woods pretty often. One day, I hit Olena in the back of the head with a slingshot. How I missed that butt….