The Button Jar

Now, listen up chilluns, I is going to tell y’all a story. This heres is a sure true one, not like one of does fake ones yours mamas and papas tell you about in the night. This heres a tale as true as the sweltering heat down here in Arkansie. It starts right down here, in a small teeny town, shuh enough. Now climb on up into ole Pauline’s lap, an let me tell you young’ns a story y’all never forgit.

        When my mother was a just up and hitched, she’d do the laundry outside by her own hands, not inside like some of dose lazy machinery things nowadays. Now she had this real nice ring that Cecil got her ‘for they’s were married and all. It was one of her most precious belongs. So when she’d go outside and all to wash the clothes, she’d take off the nice little ring and put in a button jar. Now I suppose y’all don’t understand the importance of a good ole button jar. Well, down ways here in the South all respectible women folk have button jar to keep the buttons that come off clothes and all. They save dem for special projects, like new sewed-up clothes, toys, and just about anything. Well, anyways after she put the ring in the jar, Bessie Ellen started on the laundry. She was hanging the clothes up to dry, when she spied a twister on the horizon. The wind was a already startin’ to pull dem drawers and such off the line! Por Bessie Ellen was so frightened, she dropped the sheet she was a holdin’ and ran down to the cellar. There she stayed, shivering, and wishing Cecil was home. Lawd did that wind blow! When it finally stopped, she crept outside to see the damage. The button jar was a missin’. Bessie Ellen searched nearby for it, but it was no wheres to be found.

Three days after the tornado, after everything was fixed up as good as it could be, my papa, Cecil, decided to take Bessie Ellen to dinner, to help calm her jumped up nerves. Now, back then no one went to dinner, diners were rare, and theys were not quaint and pertty like you young’ns believe. They ain’t like the ones on the tee-vee, even so, it was a very special treat to go out, ‘specially if you por. Now the only diner was a far away, in another town, so they quickly hitched up the horses, and started out. Russellville Diner was a hole in the wall, and never busy, so they easily found them’s a table. The lady sitting next to dem, had a pretty ring on, and Bessie Ellen, being a polite lady, told her so. They started up a conversation, and the lady next to dem said that she’d found it outside the diner, in a pile of buttons. When Bessie Ellen excitedly told her about the twister and the button jar, the woman gladly gave it back.

Now, chilluns, I tell you this so that you understand this: miracles can happen, somebody just a needs to pass dem on. So don’t neither one of you forgit, Tracy and Kelly you hear me? Don’t forgit the small miracles that happen.