Many times I have shared stories from my youth and the many wonderful times I spent with my grandparents in Greenville. I was very fortunate to have both sets of grandparents in the same town. Each one had its clear advantages. Although I tended to gravitate more toward Mama Patrick and Papa, who lived outside town on Hwy. 90 (across from Sherrod's Lumber, for those of you who remember that sawmill), there were times I enjoyed time with Mama Mae and Daddy Jim.
Mama Mae and Daddy Jim had a house adjacent to the schoolyard for the old Greenville High School. It was easy to climb the brick fence behind Mama Mae's house and you were on the schoolyard. When the weather was nice, it was not unusual to find a bunch of us cookie-crunchers in the schoolyard, playing a game of baseball or in the gym, playing basketball, even on weekends (Don't ask me how, but there was almost always a door open, granting access to the gym). Mama Mae didn't mind us playing in the schoolyard, but she did give us specific instructions when we went over there. “Don't y'all be talking to Charlie,” she would tell us.
Mr. Charlie was a guy who could often be found sitting at one of the picnic tables at the edge of the schoolyard. I think he lived nearby. He was a fascinating person, especially for a seven-year-old boy. He said he was an Indian, which alone was enough to make us want to hear more. He had long hair (which, in my mind only added credibility to his assertion that he was an Indian – all the Indians I had seen in the movies had long hair) and he rolled his own cigarettes with “Prince Albert” tobacco. Probably one of the most fascinating things about Mr. Charlie was that he could move the clouds. At least that's what he told us. He would tell us, “see those clouds right up there, pretty soon they are going to be over there.” Lo and behold, after a while, the clouds would move to the spot in the sky Mr. Charlie had indicated. He would also go out to the middle of the schoolyard and wave his arms and do a sort of “dance” in order to manipulate the clouds. He said he did that to keep hurricanes from coming through Greenville. It must have worked, because in all those years, I never remember a hurricane coming through Greenville.
Sure, you could probably say that Mr. Charlie was a little eccentric. He always seemed rather harmless to me, and I don't think he would have ever hurt any of us kids. In fact, he probably would have been one of our greatest defenders, if trouble had ever come around. Add to that the fact that he was certainly entertaining and he made for some incredible boyhood memories.
As “Elsa” makes her way across our area, I can't help but think of Mr. Charlie. He would have come in handy to help steer her away from us. But have no fear, after the storms that will surely come again, we'll always have the “sunny side.”