FARM HOUSE SERIES

IF YOU’RE A-BUYING I’M A-SELLINGByDervis Clement Tippen   Sixty years of living in the same house made a hermit out of me.  There was a time when the nearest neighbor lived six miles up the road, now people live within a few hundred yards of my farmhouse.  Lately some strange things have been happening.   A couple of months ago this man came by and said he wanted to buy my house.   He was a friendly fellow, so I invited him inside for a cup of coffee.  He sat down at the kitchen table and started talking.  He said he worked for a newspaper in the city, and he and his wife wanted to buy a place in the country.   While we were talking he looked at the pile of papers on the table.  He began asking questions.  I told him I was writing what I called “my life stories.”  I explained that I had lived in this house for many years and I wrote to keep from being bored.   It was noble of him to ask permission to read some of the stories.  I couldn’t see any harm so I said okay.    I poured a cup of coffee and he started reading.  He would take a sip and read a little, take another sip, and read some more.    Finally he looked at me and said, “Why don’t you tell me your favorite story?”  I thought for a few minutes and decided that I would tell him the one I called, “The fat lady and the fried en.”    It happened one Sunday after church, I told him.  Several people came to our house for dinner.  The adults were seated at the big table and the children were sitting at a smaller one.  I started looking for some more food and discovered that all the fried en was gone.  I climbed upon the bench were Mama was sitting and tried to whisper in her ear.  I had a bad habit of talking too loud because Grandma was hard of hearing.  I said to Mama, “Don’t let that old fat lady eat up all the fried en.”   The lady heard me.  She jumped up grabbed her husband’s hand, who   was the preacher, and said, “Well, I never!”     Papa replied and said, “I bet you haven’t.”  She and her husband stormed out of the house.  I got my rear end busted up pretty good.     The man looked at me with a grin and said, “Tell me more.”    “You really want to hear some more of these stories?”     “You bet I do,” he answered.     One day a tornado came whirling through and busted up the outhouse.  It was Papa’s job to build a new one.  He decided to get fancy, so he made a two-seated one with one hole larger than the other.  Papa was a good handy man, so he made covers for each hole, and on top of the covers he carved the words “his” and “hers” with “hers” being on the larger hole.    Things went well until Mama went to the outhouse and found the word “hers” carved on the big hole.  When Mama got mad she was really mad.  She told Papa for thirty years she had been bare-footed and pregnant and had given him nine children, and he wasn’t going to make fun of her because she was a big lady.   Papa started arguing and saying, “Woman, all I ever wanted to do was to have some fun around here, and every time I do, you start something.  I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’ll get a stick of dynamite and blow up the whole thing!”    The kids were listening and we knew that Papa was serious.  We begged Papa not to blow up the outhouse.  “We don’t want to go back to the briar-patch with corn cobs,” we pleaded.  “We like the two seats with the Sears Roebuck catalog.”    The man started laughing and asked for more, but I told him I was tired.  He picked out a couple of stories and asked me if he could print them in his newspaper and I told him it would be okay.    I forgot about it until one day a big, black, car drove up to the house and a well-dressed lady knocked on the door.  When I opened the door she immediately said she wanted to talk to me about some stories I had written.  She said she collected stories and wanted to put them in a book.     I invited her inside and showed her the pile of papers.  She fumbled around for a while, and came up with a couple of stories she wanted to buy.  I was in the right mood and did not see any reason to waste time, so I said, “If you’re a-buying I’m a-selling.”  Before I could say another word she offered me twenty dollars for each story.   The money didn’t mean that much to me.  I’ve got Papa’s old truck, and it is still in good running condition.  This land and house are paid for, and I’ve got my government pension, so I don’t need much.    The lady at the bank said I have right near one-hundred dollars in my saving account so I don’t know what I’m gonna do with all this money.    People keep coming by asking me what I’m gonna do with this old house, and I keep telling them it’s none of their business.  I am too old to be caught up on a ladder with a bucket of paint, and I need those sunrays that shine through the missing shingles.  It is no trouble to put buckets around to catch the rainwater, and if it doesn’t bother me, it shouldn’t bother anyone else.   The other day I wrote a letter to Sis and asked her if she wanted to do some traveling with me.   Then Cousin Le Roy came by and said that Sis had been real sick, so I may have to travel by myself.    

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