The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [190]
We may rightly question whether or not Hank Ingledew’s contribution to the way of life was a gross violation of the time-worn strictures against PROG RESS, and there is no denying that the company which manufactured the television sets he sold, as well as all the other aforementioned electrical appliances, had (and still has) as its motto, “PROG RESS is our most important product,” but I seriously doubt that Hank Ingledew ever gave the matter any thought. Selling television was a good way of earning a living, and he grew prosperous. Then too, innumerable sourhours were banished by the tube. There is one school of opinion which would argue that if literacy spoiled the Ozarks by diminishing the oral tradition, television restored something by requiring no literacy—but just what that something is would be hard to pin down.
When the money began rolling in, Hank decided that the time had come to try, once more, one last time, to have a son. He never forgot the superstition that his mother-in-law had told him about, and although he was totally without belief in superstition he could not deny the evidence of the efficacy of this particular superstition, that so many males born in Stay More had been males because their fathers had sat on the roofs of their houses for seven hours, and when Hank built the house that he now lived in, he had given it a low-pitched roof not only because low-pitched roofs are fashionable for ranch-style houses but also in order to facilitate his eventual ascent to the roof’s ridge. One evening when Hank and Sonora were talking in bed before going to sleep, he asked her,
“Snory, do you want to have another kid?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she replied. “I went to a gynecologist up at Harrison and had myself fitted out for a new diaphragm.”
“I don’t mean that,” he said. “I mean, would you? Could you stand to have one more?”
She was silent, thinking. Then she said, “It probably wouldn’t be a boy, either. You still want a boy. You won’t ever give up.”
“Your mother told me something, once,” he said. “I know it sounds silly, but there’s an old, old superstition that if a man sits on his roof for seven hours near the chimney his next child will be a boy.”
Sonora laughed uproariously. “My mother never told me that.”
“But it works, she said. Lots of men were born male because their fathers sat on their roofs. Her own father. Your dad’s father. Your dad. And she said me too, although not on purpose: my father was nailing on the shingles of his roof one day, and he was up there seven hours. At least that’s what your mother said.”
“When did you get so chummy with my mother?”
“It was the day I came home from California.”
“Oh? As soon as you got back, you went running to my mother to complain because I won’t give you a son?”
“Not like that. I was just talking to her and the subject came up.”
“Are you going to sit on the roof for seven hours?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Really, Hank! What if somebody comes along and sees you?”
“Well, I could just tell ’em I’m adjusting the TV antenna or something.”
“Oh sure. Just when are you supposed to sit on the roof? Right before knocking me up, or right before the baby is born?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Your mother didn’t say.”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“Heck, I couldn’t ask her that.”
Sonora didn’t say anything more. But just before going to sleep, she drowsily mumbled, “Maybe I will ask her.” And she did. The next time she saw her mother, she casually mentioned the subject, never having had any difficulty discussing sex with her mother, and told her, “Hank wants to sit on the roof for seven hours. When’s he supposed to do it? Before