4. Mama’s Nice Little Man

It was not until we were well settled in the comfortable parsonage at Monroeville, and were receiving almost daily calls from our town neighbors and country parishioners, that I began to realize that I was my mama’s nice little man; and I don’t mean my mama’s nice little boy, but my mama’s nice little man.

Whoever among you has had the good fortune to have spent his or her childhood in a village rectory, manse or parsonage usually situated adjacent to the church or in its close vicinity, will probably confirm my recollection that this house, although it was our home, belonged to the membership of the church.

I am not about to say that it was common practice for some trustee and/or his wife to barge in and inspect our housekeeping with the proprietary air of a landlord assessing the probable mistreatment of a furnished apartment. That never happened to us. But it is obvious that our callers would feel a little more free to visit us than they might have felt had we lived in a house with which they were unacquainted. For the older ones this place had many memories, reaching back through the years, memories of ministers and their families who had lived happily here, memories of donation parties and weddings and perhaps also memories of private, tearful consultations about what to do with headstrong young Susie, who was bent on going to Chicago and finding a job, or what could be done to persuade Jim not to marry that Catholic girl in Decatur.

Sometimes our callers from the country came primarily to get acquainted and show their friendliness. As often as not they brought along a bushel of russet apples or huge baking potatoes or a pair of cleanly dressed Plymouth Rock fryers. Not infrequently some weary woman from the Massilon neighborhood candidly confessed that she had just dropped in to warm her toes while she waited for Paw to get the horses shod or have his hair cut. But, whatever their motive in coming to see us, they were sincerely welcomed.

If Papa happened to be at home there would be no lack of entertainment, no matter how shy our visitors were, or how long they tarried. Papa could keep an interesting monologue rolling endlessly and effortlessly, with no assistance whatsoever. But if Mama had a family of timid and untalkative people on her hands, she soon ran down; and, after unsuccessfully assuring them several times, in her best pluperfect tone, that it had been very good of them to come and see us, she would call me in for presentation.

(I hereby resent, with bared teeth and elevated bristles, your hasty allegation that I must have been a smug little smart-aleck. I was not! But I was not shy. I had lived mostly in an adult world. By precept and example I had been taught, probably better than a normal child of six, how to accept an introduction to a stranger; but I was not a natural exhibitionist.)

Mama would beckon me to her side, moisten her finger tips and smooth back my hair to let the folks see my high, intellectual forehead (which, at this writing, although perhaps no more intellectual is certainly much higher) and present me as her nice little man.

With an introduction of that nature, I had my work cut out for me. Doubtless you will concede that it would have been a brutal stab in my devoted mama’s back if, after that impressive fanfare of trumpets and drums, Mama’s nice little man had stumbled across the room with a finger in his mouth. Not for me was any such unfilial behavior. No, sir! I would march confidently toward the stunned strangers, bow from the waist, smile maturely; and, extending a firm little hand, would assure them that I was most happy to make their acquaintance. And if I was convinced that my suave performance had knocked them speechless I might add that I hoped they were well or tell them it was a nice day, whether it was or not.