Katie B. Cooke

Katie B. Cooke

The boy woke up before his family on a Saturday morning. He ate breakfast cereal in front of the TV. The black and white set only received one station through the rabbit ears sticking out of the top. It was early, 5:30 AM, and Tarzan Theater was the first show on TV. The boy just loved Saturday morning TV. After Tarzan Theater the boy watched his favorite cartoons: Scooby-doo, Space Ghost, the Herculoids, the Lone Ranger and Jonny Quest.

Cartoons over, he went down the hallway to his room. His room was formerly the house’s foyer. Getting dressed, he went out to the front porch directly from his room. He knelt, petting all the puppies in turn on the ‘dog’ porch. His dog Cissy was nursing a new set of puppies.

Cissy always had one litter of puppies, and his sisters usually had a litter or two of kittens. His family had close to 20 animals usually, however the attrition was high. This was rural North Florida in the 1960s and his yard backed up to ten acres of abandoned phosphate mines filled with snakes. The snakes took a toll on his puppies and his sister's kittens.

The puppy names, Brownie, Blackie, Jody, etc., had no rhyme or reason, except that of a first-grade boy. When his puppies grew up his mother gave them away to people in the town.

The boy ran from the puppy porch to begin his favorite errand, visiting his grown puppies. Out of the house, past his father's church in the front yard, he jumped on his bike. It was sky blue and a little big for him. He rode onto the dirt road toward the town of Newberry. Riding fast he soon came to the first big house in town right across from the First Baptist Church. It was home to one of his puppies: Brownie. This former puppy was now owned by Mrs. Katie B. Cooke. The boy dropped his bike in the yard and knocked on the door. Mrs. Cooke came to the door, “Well hello William, good morning.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Cooke, I came to see Brownie, I mean Lassie.”

Mrs. Cooke had changed Brownie’s name to Lassie. “Oh, this is great. We'll be right out. Lassie,” she called back into the house and the dog came running.

Brownie / Lassie was a mix of Collie, Beagle, Spaniel and Lord knows what else. She jumped up on the boy standing on her hind legs. They ran around Mrs. Cooke's yard playing and wrestling.

After a while the boy would sit in the side yard petting Lassie / Brownie and Mrs. Cooke would bring out cookies on a plate. She sat on her covered terrazzo side porch. The boy and Mrs. Cooke talked while he rubbed Brownie’s / Lassie’s stomach and ate cookies.

The boy thought Mrs. Cooke had the nicest house in Newberry. Hers was a city house and had a grass yard on Newberry’s main street. His house was in the woods outside of town.

Sometimes they would sit inside, and Mrs. Cooke would talk about her paintings. Her son, Tucker II, was a famous artist and taught at the University of Florida down the street in Gainesville. He had painted very Audubon like birds and flowers for his mother. The boy would later learn that Tucker was an abstract artist and asked his mother not to show anyone these realistic bird paintings. He had painted them just for his mother.

Mrs. Cooke’s house was built in 1907 and still stands today; it’s a real estate office. Inside is a nice display of Newberry historical photos.

When the first-grade boy rode his Saturday rounds visiting his former puppies, he didn't call ahead. Sometimes, he rode off on his errand before his parents were awake. He didn’t know it, but his mother never missed hearing him leaving. Mrs. Cooke always greeted the boy with a smile; she never said that she didn't have time or was too busy.

Occasionally the boy brought a friend with him to visit Lassie. Mrs. Cooke didn’t mind. If a boy or two were over at lunch time, she made them a sandwich.

After a while the boy got up to visit one of his other puppies named Brownie. She was owned by the Laird family.

“Goodbye Mrs. Cooke! Thank you for the cookies. Bye Lassie!”

“Goodbye William, tell your mother hello for me.”

“I will, bye-bye,” the boy waved as he rode away standing on the bike pedals.



Note

Mrs. Cooke’s full name is Katie Obedience Cooke, born 1910.

Last Week with my Mother

 

Last Week with my Mother

by Wil Bosbyshell

I didn't know this would be my last visit with my mother. I didn’t get an announcement that she would die the next week. My mother was 90 years old when I spent four days with her holy week before Easter in 2024. She had lived so long, I felt she was immortal. My heart hurts.

We went and did so many things. We visited the Dali Museum, the James Museum, the liquor store, the farmer’s market, the Spanish market and the Shrimp Store. The owner of the Spanish market hugged her like she was his mother. We went out for lunch to the place she said had the best people watching, “Bill Mize says everyone here is a hipster. Not that I know what a hipster is,” she said laughing. Mama just loved people watching.

I didn't rehang every painting in her apartment, but I rehung about fifteen different paintings or photos. We rearranged her display in the hallway and her refrigerator magnets. We visited a man who had a 1960s space program collection.

She used a walker, but still drove, and nothing stopped her.

She was feeling her age and said so. We worked on her scrapbooks, and she said, “Why am I even keeping a scrapbook. I'm going to die soon.”

“No, you're not! We are working on your scrapbook,” I scolded her.

My family celebrated her 90th birthday with a big party just eight months before. So, we put those photos and cards in her scrapbook. “Can you believe I'm 90 almost 91? It's hard to believe, even for me,” she mused. “Hell, Mama, I can’t believe I’m 63.”

The summer before we invited 100 folks to her birthday party thinking 35 to 50 people would accept the invitation. Over 90 people responded yes, and two people crashed the party who were not invited. My mother changed her name to Carrie for her grandchildren. I even started to think of her as Carrie occasionally.

At Christmas my son made a huge effort so his girlfriend Ember met his grandmother, Carrie. It turned out to a very important visit. Allen and Ember got engaged the following February on Tybee Island.

Mama and I watched murder mysteries on TV and had a conference call with one of her financial advisors.

When I said goodbye, “I love you, Mama.” She cried as she responded, she had done that for about four years now. “I love you too, William.”

My mother was everyone’s friend and very sociable. There was always a pitcher of sweet, iced tea sitting on the kitchen counter ready for me and my friends after school.

Of my parents my mother was the practical one. When I joined a fraternity at college, I wrote a letter home to inform my parents. I received two letters in return. My father’s letter informed me that I had joined his fraternity: Phi Kappa Psi. He wrote, “High, High, High, we’ll pay for everything.” My mother’s letter told me I could pay the dues out of my ROTC money.

My mother was one of the secretaries for Jack Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard mutual fund company. She taught me to invest when I was in my 20s. She signed me up for the Kiplinger letter and sent me money to invest. I am financially secure in retirement because of her.

As a freshman in college, I received a letter from my mother every day. Every. Single. Day. The number of letters decreased to several a week for the rest of her life. I was always William to her, never Wil. My father told me that she had cried the entire two-day trip home after dropping me off at college. An old joke goes like this. If you ask anyone if their parents had a favorite child and they reply, “No.” That means they are the favorite.

She was always thinking about me and my future. “Willliam, I had the secretary from Edwin Thomas and the dinning table from Lilla Bosbyshell re-finished for your new house.”

The night she died she had written one of her genealogy friends a nine-paragraph e-mail. Later, she had a massive stroke as she stood by her bed. In the hospital the next weekend she was severely paralyzed. She couldn't talk. Her eyes were open, but they didn’t follow you when you moved around the room. Her expression was mostly blank. She couldn’t talk.

I stayed with her one night in the hospital. I read aloud from the Wizard of Oz, one of her favorite books and movies. For years I had given her presents related to the Wizard of Oz: Christmas Tree ornaments, magnets and stuffed dolls. She even had a framed photo of the yellow brick road from the Land of Oz on Beech Mountain, NC.

In the morning, I woke and went to the window opening the blind allowing the Florida sun to shine into her hospital room. The beam of sunlight landed on my mother’s face, and she woke up. Moving to her bedside I said, “Good morning, Mama, it's your son, William.”

She looked up at me and for a moment she was herself again: happy and clear-eyed. Her whole face brightened as death fell away. She smiled at me with the expressive eyes I had known my whole life. Then she was gone again.

Her body lived another two weeks. My sisters say she waited for me to be with her to die. Her favorite son.

Sitting at her bedside, holding her hand I said, “Your to-do list is done. There is nothing left for you to teach or do for me or my sisters. You can go. You lived a good life. You did everything you needed to do for all your friends and everyone you loved.

Goodbye Mama. You were a wonderful mother. You couldn't have done any more for me than you did. I love you."

She died the next morning.

 

The Midnight Caller!

The Midnight Caller!

Something woke me up.

Assessing my situation, I knew I was in the middle of the woods, sleeping in a sleeping bag on the ground, no tent, surrounded by close to one hundred sleeping girls. I kept my eyes closed and listened.

The night air was filled with the call and response cacophony of tree frogs. The pulsating nature of the sound, or noise, was overwhelming and drowned out every other sound in the woods. It is a comforting sound once you get used to it. I was born listening to it. My ears were not going to help me determine what had awakened me.

I cracked my eyelids and lifted my head very slowly. It was very dark, we were sleeping under dense tree cover, but the moon cast enough light for me to look around the clearing we occupied. In the middle of the sleeping girls was a fox, no, a couple of foxes. They were sniffing the sleeping bodies and looking intently into the girls’ faces.

My first thought was of the possible danger, what if a fox bit one of the campers. The foxes could be rabid. As I watched the silent fox slowly examining one kid then another, I realized they were just curious. “What the heck are all these humans doing in my woods?” I could imagine them thinking.

It was camp-out, cook-out night for a girl's session at Camp Cheerio. Three cabins had invited me along for the evening. I was a dishwasher in the camp kitchen. My friend Brandon Uttley, called the event camp-out, cook-out, make-out night.

The camp director, Ron Austin, first explained the evening program during a training session, “We need to give the dining hall cooks a night off.” “We don't have any tents?” I inquired.

“Nope, if it rains you go back to your cabin,” Ron replied unphased.

The boy from rainy Florida was incredulous. Camp Cheerio YMCA camp sat high on a mountain bluff overlooking Stone Mountain, North Carolina. It rained a lot, but rarely on camp-out cook-out nights and the boys and girls loved it.  

The cabin counselors on this night decided we would hike to the old schoolhouse. The old schoolhouse, now deserted, operated as a one room schoolhouse until 1973. Let that sink in. So, while Charlotte International Airport was only two hours away, kids rode horses to a one-room schoolhouse into the 1970s. It's hard to fathom kids riding horses to school in the age of the space shuttle.

On the way to the schoolhouse, we stopped to play in several creeks and waterfalls. I helped carry the dinner meal; everyone carried their own sleeping bag or blanket. We made a fire and cooked hot dogs, the standard camp-out cook-out night fair. Then we played games, sang, told stories and jokes, and then had vespers.

The girls arranged themselves and passed out in their sleeping bags. The counselors and I talked a while and then went to sleep ourselves. No making out for me tonight, bummer.

The fox jumped over a sleeping camper, bent his nose down, sniffed; then jumped to another camper. I was enjoying the aerobatic performance of the creatures when one fox’s eyes caught mine. We locked gazes. He froze; I stayed motionless.

The other fox picked up immediately that something had changed and found my eyes as well. Their noses twitched; their tails straightened. After a minute, they decided I wasn’t a threat and went about their business. They circled the group of campers a few more times, gave me a quick look and disappeared into the forest.

I rolled over and went back to sleep. The midnight callers turned out friendly. 

Epilogue

In 1989, Hurricane Hugo destroyed the old schoolhouse. It’s just a pile of boards and bricks today. 

Photos: 

1. Allen at Camp Cheerio on Alumni weekend in 1999.

Alaska: My First & Last Frontier