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My Grandmother Loved Soap Operas

By Gary Carden
Gary Carden

Gary Carden

 My grandmother loved soap operas. When I was a student at Western Carolina College, I would come home every week or two to beg money and get my clothes washed. If it was a weekday, I would usually find her with the door locked and the phone off the hook. She always sat on the couch in the living room, all bowed over with her chin in her hands and her elbows on her knees, peering through her bifocals at stuff like "General Hospital" and "Days of our Lives."

Sometimes I would bang on the door for a long time before she turned the lock and opened the door.

"Hush, now. Don't talk. I'm watching my programs."

"I don't understand why you lock the door," I would say.

"I don't want to be bothered. Now, hush."

I would tip-toe about the room like I had come late for church on Sunday while she watched nurses bend over dying patients. Violins whined and wives shed tears and clutched the hands of departing relatives or lovers while heart monitors twittered and beeped.

"With him dead, I guess she'll take up with that peckerwood intern," she said, shaking her head at the bad judgment of young women. "Peckerwoods" were what my grandmother called folks she didn't like.
"Is he the one with the clipboard," I said.

"Hush. I want to hear this."

We were a little late getting a television, and when I was in high school, I felt sorely deprived because I couldn't see Jack Benny and Red Skelton. I had to be content with "The Squeaking Door" and "Suspense" on nighttime radio, while my grandmother listened to "The Romance of Helen Trent" and "Our Gal, Sunday."

Then, Grandpa got a black and white Bendix television in a cow-trade. Until then, I didn't know that Bendix made televisions, and I sometimes wondered if it was made from washing machine parts when the picture would whirl and shift like soapy water.

Grandpa put the Bendix in a corner of the living room where it sat like a great one-eyed alien from Alpha Centuri and stared back at us. Mostly, it just produced snow and crooked lines.

Western North Carolina was one of the last places to get decent television reception. At first, Grandpa ran bare copper wire to the top of the ridge and managed to get Channel Four in Greenville, S.C., but the wires didn't work when it rained and the lines was usually hopelessly tangled by wind and squirrels. As it was, we had to be content with one channel. We didn't bicker about what to watch since the choice was "turn it on" or "turn it off."

When the first translators showed up, things got a little better. We got a station is Knoxville. Grandpa took a liking to Caz Walker, and Grandma got hooked on TV soap operas. Sometimes she would sit on the porch at night shelling peas and heaving great sighs.

"What's wrong, Momma?" (I called my grandmother, "Momma.")

"I'm worried about Lureene."

"Who is Lureene?"

"That nurse on General Hospital who was in that car wreck. She is pregnant, too."

"Momma, that story isn't real. Those are just actors."

"Hush, you don't know what you're talking about." Then, she gave me a pitying look. "I see a little college has gone to your head."

Grandpa started watching "The Beverly Hillbillies." Sometimes, he would laugh so hard, he would have to go and stand on the porch until he could stop. Up at WCU, the teachers had told me about "Appalachian stereotypes," and assured me that the depiction of mountain people on "The Beverly Hillbillies" was an insult. I tried to explain that to Grandpa.

"Grandpa, them people are making fun of mountain people."

He was surprised. "I don't know them people," he said. "Never met anybody like them that I recollect." Then, he laughed some more.

The TV was still undependable because lightning was always striking the translators. "Your Friend Four" in Greenville issued a lot of advice about what to do if the folks in the hollers of Jackson and Swain and Macon counties lost their reception. We were supposed to call the number that they printed on little flyers that came in the mail.

One afternoon, I came home to find my grandmother watching a strange image on the Bendix. It looked like a huge comb with a lot of broken teeth and it slowly rolled up the screen amid an ocean of snow. However, the sound of "General Hospital" was perfect and my grandmother listened intently. "Momma, there's no picture on the TV."

"Hush, I know what they look like," she said.

I immediately called our Friend Four in Greenville.

"We don't have a picture in Rhodes Cove up in Jackson County," I said.

"That can't be," said the voice from Four. "Someone would have called." I explained that I was doing that. He promised to look into it.

When Grandpa came home, he asked about the TV.

"Is it fixed yet?" he said. "I miss Caz."

I told him I was working on it. He shook his head.

"Things have been bad, and they are gonna get worse." He always said that. My grandmother nodded in agreement. They didn't seem to be especially unhappy about the unpromising future of Appalachian TV reception.

A few days later, I came home to find my grandmother standing in the road waiting for me. She was pretty excited. This was 1954, and we didn't get many visitors up the little dirt road into the cove - usually just cows, insurance salesmen and the Watkins man. She had a letter from our Friend Four.

"Some jasper brought this. He was driving a truck with a TV antenna sticking through the roof," she said.

"Jasper" was what my grandmother called people she didn't know but that she bore no ill will. The note said that lightning had struck our translator, but that it would be repaired. The note also said that Four had learned that the translator had been out for two weeks.

"Why do you suppose no one called?" the note concluded. When we got back to the living room, my grandmother clicked on the Bendix and settled on the couch.

"Momma," I said, "how long has your TV picture been gone?"

"Maybe two weeks, give or take a day or two," she said.

"Why didn't you call 'Your Friend Four'?"

She looked at me pityingly and shook her head.

"Because I knowed that there was nothing we could do about it," she said, as though she was puzzled as to why I couldn't see the obvious. "It disappeared because of sun spots or the will of God." She turned up the volume. "If it comes back, that will be nice, but if it don't, I can learn to live without it. Now, hush, I'm watching my program."

When Grandpa got home, I told him the TV was fixed.

"Well, I'll bedogged," he said. He pondered that fact for a minute. "It won't last, of course. Things have been bad and they are gonna get worse." He turned on the TV and settled on the couch. "In the meanwhile, let's see how Caz and Jethro are doing."

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