The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [96]
The post office in its early years was not a separate structure, but occupied one small corner of Isaac’s mill, where, twice weekly, Lum Ingledew would sort and distribute mail, what little there was of it, until the people discovered how to write off for catalogs and to circulate chain letters. One of the first catalogs to arrive in Stay More was a seed catalog, and the recipients discovered to their amazement that the Tah May Toh, which grew wild on fifteen-foot vines all over Stay More, and which they had always thought poisonous, was considered edible, so immediately everybody began harvesting and eating ’maters, as they called them, and suffering no effects other than the heady (and body) sense of voluptuousness that gave the ’mater its nickname, “love apple.” It is not exactly an aphrodisiac, because no frigid woman nor impotent man has ever been cured by eating one, but in the case of persons already healthily disposed toward sex, it enriches the disposition. Hence, the numbers of people who comprised Stay More’s maximum population during the last part of that century were conceived and born during the Decade of Light. But Isaac’s wife Salina, even though she acquired just as fond a taste for ’maters as anybody else, still would not climb Isaac during the Decade of Light. After eating a ’mater, she might remark to him, “I’d like to climb a tree,” but she wouldn’t climb him. In time, she spoke of “climbing the walls,” but she never again climbed Isaac until the Decade of Light was over. And he went on drinking, so that she looked to him too small, less than three feet high, to climb him anyway.
Oddly enough, all of the energy or voluptuousness or libido or lubricity generated by the love apple cannot be discharged through sex alone. There is a generous residue that seeks other outlets, so during the peak of ’mater-pickin time the women commenced frenzies of quilting bees, and the men devoted all their spare time to the game they called Base Ball, originated by Jacob Ingledew years before. The equipment remained unrefined: a hickory stake for a bat, a round chunk of sandstone for a ball, gunnysacks for bases; but the men spent so much time playing it during ’mater-pickin time that they perfected it in many ways: some players were so strong they could knock the rock clear out of the field, which constituted a “free run home,” while the pitchers, in order to thwart this type of batter, learned how to make the rock actually “curve” instead of going in a straight line, and some pitchers, by applying their tobacco juice to the rock, could really confuse and harass the batter. Isaac Ingledew, once the greatest batter and pitcher of all, was still in his thirties, and tried to play, but could not: he would swing at the rock before it was halfway to him.
Every five years during the Decade of Light, that is, twice, Stay More hosted a gala reunion of the G.A.R., the veterans who had fought with Jacob and Isaac during the War. These men would come, with their families, from all over Newton and adjoining counties, and hundreds of primitive tents would be pitched in the Field of Clover, and a great time would be had by all. The women of Stay More would spend days in their kitchens preparing banquets. The menfolk kept the stills running night and day, and shot all the game out of all the woods. The reunion began on a Second Tuesday of the Month and lasted only three days, but that was long enough to eat up all the food and drink all the liquor and