When the World Was Flat
Two weeks after election day in the USA, I want to remind you of when the world was flat. It wasn’t that long ago. My great-grandfather Pawpaw Avery Smith who died in 1966 knew the world was flat.
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In 1964, my dad who was eight years old was sitting behind a big armchair on the rug in Pawpaw Avery’s house. Dad was reading a book and hoping to have an hour or so to himself with his cowboy adventure when he heard arguing. The shouting got louder and the two voices started heading into the living room, so Dad flattened himself to the rug because it was too late to announce his presence in the room. Sure enough Pawpaw Avery age sixty-one and his son Roy Lee who was about thirty at the time were having a heated argument about the flatness (or not) of the earth.
Pawpaw argued that the Bible said the angels stood on the four corners of the earth and corners belong to flat things.¹ Uncle Roy Lee, who’d been the first in our family to go to university and who’d been to Korea (over on the other side of the earth), argued that the earth was round.
Dad heard them becoming angrier until they fell on the floor hitting each other and Dad’s eye and Uncle Roy Lee’s eye were staring at each other on the rug.
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Dad told me this story when I once asked about why something was a certain way – something I just couldn’t understand. It was a long time ago, but it was probably something about transubstantiation, women’s rights, or why people didn’t share. His answer was this story and to say that two well-respected pillars of their community and men he’d admired ended up flat on the rug that day over their beliefs. He’d never forgotten that.
I remember telling this story to my friend R–– who grew up a Texas flatlander. He said his mother was the same as Pawpaw. She was born in the 1920s and never believed the world was round. She used to pat the hard desolate Texas earth with her hand and say, “Just look at it. Flat as a pancake.”
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The story of Pawpaw Avery and Uncle Roy Lee arguing about the earth became the first verse of my song “The World is Flat.” Billy Kemp and I wrote this song about twelve years ago and I’ve loved it ever since, but somehow it just never ended up on a record. Luckily, Billy and I performed it a couple of times and those performances were posted by fans on YouTube. So, the recording you’re hearing comes from one of those rare moments. (Here’s one link where I look like a child, have long blonde hair, and play xylophone, and here’s one from a year later).
Verse two comes from a time when I had been on tour and visited an antique shop in New Jersey. At the shop they had a lot of memorial jewelry and other funereal things. One of those things was a leg coffin. A few weeks later, when I was visiting my grandmother in Southwest Virginia, I happened to mention the leg coffin, as you do, and my grandmother said, “Uncle Bob buried his leg in its own little grave.”
You really only have to say one little thing to elicit a tremendous story from my grandmother. Mawmaw said that Bob and another man got a little too curious about another man’s moonshine still. The moonshiner shot off Bob’s leg and actually killed the other man. I don’t know what happened to the moonshiner. But this was a terrible event up on the mountain. Bob lived with a wooden leg and did have his severed leg buried. BUT, he had a pain in the stump of his leg. He asked the men who’d buried it – with its own little tombstone – which way they’d buried it. Turned out that it was upside down – toe toward the headstone end. So, the men dug up his leg coffin, turned it around, and Bob was satisfied and pain-free.
How can we possibly refute it? All that mattered was that Bob was content.
I have looked for Uncle Bob’s leg grave but unfortunately only one or two people seem to know where it is and they only saw it decades ago. So, I am still looking for it.
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Verse three tells the story of one of the great matrons of my childhood, Elsie Brown. Elsie was a fixture of my summers up at Mawmaw’s in Appalachia. She was my great-grandmother Narcie’s best friend and it seemed like hardly a day went by when she wasn’t at the kitchen table visiting with Mawmaw Narcie. They made quilts together, went to church together, and laughed together.
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There were things about Elsie Brown that fascinated little me. First of all, she walked everywhere. She wore floral polyester dresses, knee high socks, orthopedic shoes, and carried a big leather pocketbook with two short handles. All of the grown ups drove cars except Mawmaw Narcie and Elsie Brown. So, Elsie walked two and a half miles from her house to Mawmaw’s house then another mile and a half to where Smith Ridge met the main mountain road. Once I asked my great-grandmother why, if Elsie walked so much, did she never get any thinner? I thought Mawmaw was going to fall in the floor from laughing so hard. It was one of those inappropriate things a child says that tickles adults. Mawmaw said, “I don’t know, child, I guess everywhere Elsie stops to rest, someone is making dinner.” That became a line in my song!
Then I said, “Mawmaw, why does Elsie Brown wear such high-necked dresses, but rolls her knee highs down like donuts around her ankles?” This set my great-grandmother off into fits of laughter again and I never did get a satisfactory answer.
I will always remember sitting under the kitchen table playing with my dolls listening to the women talk and staring at the nylon donuts bobbing around the ankles of Elsie Brown’s orthopedic shoes.
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About ten years ago, when I was sitting down to eat with Mawmaw and Mr Kyle, Mawmaw said to me, “You know we don’t need to eat that old brown bread they’ve been telling us to eat? It turns out it doesn’t make any difference. They say we get just as much nutrition from the white bread.”
The “they” are strong characters.
The “they” are the stars of the chorus of my song.
They told people to smoke to clear their lungs. They swore by the Atkins diet. They said to “go to work on an egg,” “Milk, does a body good,” and “Guinness for health.” They said coffee was good for us and, later, that coffee was bad for us. Red wine and dark chocolate are good except when they’re bad. Some of them said that women’s wombs wandered in their bodies. They also thought cholera was caused by bad air. That didn’t work out too well. If we ever find “them,” they have a lot to answer for.
I really hope this song makes you smile. And whether you’re feeling flat or round, remember that all ellipses are ovals, but not all ovals are ellipses and you heard it here first.
Your friend,
Jeni
Revelation 7: [1] And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.
The World Is Flat © Jeni Hankins & Billy Kemp, 2012 PawPaw claimed the world was flat the Bible was how he knew it an angel standing on every corner was just the thing to prove it Uncle Roy’d been away to school and to Korea to fight for Ike He knew for a fact the world was round he ate some rice on the other side No matter how you learned it the world keeps spinning round just when you think you’ve got it they’ve turned it upside down Uncle Peg went and lost his leg to a dog on down the road he buried it in the old graveyard gave it a little tombstone Peg complained his buried leg was laid out upside down it gave him the awfullest pain, he said ‘til they turned it right end round No matter how you learned it the world keeps spinning round just when you think you’ve got it they’ve turned it upside down Elsie Brown walked miles and miles but she never did get thinner at every house she stopped to rest someone was making dinner Elsie Brown wore her necklines up and her knee-hi socks rolled down Child, put the biscuits in the oven, here comes Elsie Brown No matter how you learned it the world keeps spinning round just when you think you’ve got it they’ve turned it upside down Recording by Michael (Emmylunatic), Fredericksburg, Virginia, summer 2012. Michael (who passed away several years ago) and his wife Jackie traveled across the southeastern USA, particularly Virginia, attending roots music concerts. Michael was avid about making films and preserved many concerts on YouTube. I was always so excited to see him and Jackie while on tour. With gratitude to you, Michael.
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