We wonder if children are yet reading Uncle Remus or, better still, if the grown-ups are reading it to them. We have often meant to ask Mary Elizabeth Flinn if those books are still getting a play from borrowers at William Alexander Percy Memorial Library.
For our money, the creations and compilations of the late Joel Chandler Harris belong indeed to the immortals of literature. Not that we ever read them through and through, because we did not. But Daddy read them to us, and he was a past master when it came to plucking the difficult dialect off the printed page, and transforming it into living breathing folks and critters.
Some of the fondest memories of a happy childhood are geared to Uncle Remus, the Little Boy, cagy Rabbit, and the scheming Fox. Sitting there in our little chair, as close to Daddy's leather-rocker as we could draw it, and listening to him read those stories, was more than ample reward for a fellow's good behavior or good grades in grammar school. We shuddered at the picture of Brer Rabbit, hopelessly and helplessly bogged down in the bosom of the tar-baby, and at the mercy, of old Brer Fox. We shook with glee as Miz Rabbit stood beside the trap door in the kitchen floor, a kettle of boiling water in her band, and all set to give Brer the works in the cellar below. And we still revel in Brer Rabbit's comment when he met Brer Fox in the road on the morning that the latter had mistaken a wildcat's tracks for those of a dog.
"Law'sy Brer Fox", said Brer Rabbit, "you look lak somebody been after you wid a reapin hook!"
Those stories were good, but it was the build-up which gave them such a terrific reader appeal. The way Mr. Harris set stage for the various yarns that Uncle Remus spun was the trademark of your master craftsman. The poignancy of the Little Boy's approach to his old colored friend is every bit as vivid in our mind as are the triumphs of Brer Rabbit himself.
And if the Little Boy had been even the least bit out of line, in his conduct for that day, Uncle Remus somehow had gotten word of it and was not slow to rebuke- him. And though the boy might be bringing a slice of cake, a piece of pie, or some other delicacy from the big house to his old friend, the latter invariably spoke his mind.
It was this poignant relationship, between black and white, which our detractors to the North say never existed, and which most Southern sentimentalists insist is now gone with the wind.
Both these groups should have been with Old Stuff, last Sunday night, between nine-thirty and ten o'clock, in Bob Acree's front yard out here on Eureka Street. If they had, the scoffers might have been convinced, and the defeatists reassured.
It was getting along toward nine P. M. when the telephone rang. Juanita Acree was calling from Doe's Place, where she had just gotten word that her three-year-old daughter was crying up a storm back home, and that Janie, the sitter, was unable to quiet her. Would we step across the street, said Nita, and tell Cathy that her mother was on the way home right now?
"Yes, Nita", we replied, "we will go over there right now, but have you had your supper?"
Nita answered in the negative, so we told her to stay right there where she was until she had finished her supper, and that we would see to Cathy immediately.
Cathy's cheeks were wet with tears when she came to the door to greet us, but she was not crying. We took her across the street for a little visit with Mother and Louise and the dogs and kittens. Then we went back to her yard and swung her for a little while in her outdoor swing. The Burks children were home with their sitter, so Cathy and Old Stuff re-crossed the street for a visit with them. Janie, Cathy's sitter, accompanied us by invitation. George Burks found a doll for Cathy to play with, then made a place for her on the sofa beside himself and read to her from a picture- book. The two colored sitters, Irene and Janie, meanwhile passed the time of day. Exit Old Stuff.
Twenty minutes later, we observed Cathy and Janie making their way across Eureka to the Acree apartment. A little later we walked over there and looked through the window at the pair of them.
They were sitting together on the couch, and Janie had a book open on her lap. She was telling Cathy that this was the story that another little girl named Jane, who lived in this very same house, used to love to go to sleep by.
Cathy was sitting, just as close as she could, to her colored friend, with her head resting against Janie's elbow. Her eyelids were getting powerful heavy too, but there wasn't even the suspicion of a tear.
