Talking Southern No. 87 : Hair-lipping Hell

     We have all been in situations where we needed or wanted to throw down the proverbial gauntlet for the final time in a matter.   Usually we indicate it’s the final time, as in:

•  “Here’s my final offer, and I’m packing up and going home for good if you don’t take it.”

• “This is how we’re gonna do it, and you can either get on the train with us or get out of the way.”

•   “I don’t really care who it affects – this is how it has to happen!”

Sometimes we have similar situations in a family context.  

• Kids famously long for independence and pull against parental yokes constantly – it’s primeval.  Parents constantly have to remind them of the law – to lay it down for them.

• Sometimes in otherwise healthy marital relationships, one party or the other has to make something abundantly clear in a forceful way.

• And sometimes, elderly parents can be quite vigorous in asserting their continuing independence. 

     Your compiler’s late mother, who was born in Fayette County in 1939 and who was buried here in 2024, is a prime example of that last situation.   A powerhouse of a woman in her day, Jane Langford took no nonsense from anyone.  And she stubbornly insisted on doing physical tasks for herself long after it was neither safe nor practicable for her to do so. 

     A perfect example was when she wanted her barn painted in the fall of 2017, when she was approaching her 79^th birthday and had two terrible knees.  She decided she would hire a professional to paint the second-story portion, but refused to part with any money to paint the first story “because I can do that myself and don’t need to pay for it.”   Her two sons, your compiler and his brother Jon, knew it was fruitless to try to convince her to hire the whole thing out, but they figured they could save their mother the trouble and the risk by painting the first story themselves.

     But they didn’t start the next day, which to Jane’s single-minded way of thinking meant they would not do it at all .  So the morning of the second day after that conversation, Jane got busy painting.  Your compiler arrived home  from work that afternoon and saw the ladder propped up against the barn, most all of the east side of which had been freshly painted, and what looked like a bundle of cloths on the ground.  Running over to check on the bundle, which he had an ominous feeling about, he arrived at his mother’s barn about the same time Jon drove up from his house in Senoia, and together they found their mother lying on the ground by the ladder, basically unable to move.  

      They determined quickly that she was not paralyzed from the fall, but one of her ankles was swollen and painful.   The boys insisted on carrying her to the emergency room.  “Not yet,” said Jane Langford forcefully.   “Not till you boys (your compiler was nearly 55 and Jon nearly 48, but both were still “boys” to their mother) take that brush and roller and finish this side of the barn.  Then I’ll let you carry me to Fayetteville.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” said the boys, and then got to painting the last little bit their mother had been reaching for when she fell.   For you see, the boys knew their mother.  They knew that when she set her mind to something, she’d allow nothing to get in her way – not even if it hair-lipped hell and half of Georgia – till she accomplished whatever it was she had set her mind to accomplish.  And they would have tried to move Stone Mountain before they would have argued with her.