麦克怀念自己背后的祖母

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Welcome to this storycorps podcast, in this episode, Mike Kilgore talks about his grandmother.

Her full name was Sara Louisa Matilda  Elizabeth Nowles, I think she was named after all her grandmothers, and probably a few other people.

Kilgore spent much of his childhood at his grandmother's house in rural Alabama. Here he remembers an incident that involved with his grandmother, and a wild flower called rabbit tobacco ,which is sometimes smoked like a cigarette.

I remembered one night I went to my grandmother's, and cousin Jimmy was staying with me, and we were doing the things boys would do. We decided we would smoke the rabbit tobacco. Then we rolled up it in newspaper, and we sat right there, and we were,you know, not even inhaling it, but we thought we were big shots(大人物).

But anyway, I saw the pickup lights coming up the hill, and I knew it was daddy come to check on us. And my granny, she had an old,little potbellied heater(大肚炉子), and we grabbed up(抓起) that big, old pile of rabbit tobacco, and instead of shoving（猛推） it under the bed, we put it in that old potbellied stove. And of course, the smoke just went everywhere, we were opening up windows, trying to get all the smoke out, and Daddy started beating on the door wanting to know if everybody's all right.

Daddy came in there and he smelled it, he said: “you boys, y'all been smoking, and he pulled off his belt. He could pull it out in one flash like that. And she said: “Cecil Kilgore(塞西尔.基戈尔), you’re not going to lay a hand on those boys, this is my house, and as long as they are here, you are not gonna lay on them." And she was his mother, he respected his mother, and he left.

From that night on, off and on(有时), basically, I'd spend the night with her. And, we would talk, you know, bad things would happen in school, little things would happen. And I remember, she'd say, “ Mikey, if you looked at the bad, the good’s going to always pass you by. And birds always sing after the storm.” She'd just said things like that all the time.

And when I was 15 years of age, my aunt called Daddy up ,she said,"Cecil, we made, take mama to the hospital to the doctor , she’s trouble in breathing.” I heard the call,the phone was on the wall of the hallway, where my bedroom door was there. I said: “let me go with you.” So I was with her when she passed away. And she had smile on her face, and she said she could hear the angels, she said she could hear them singing. And I will never forget that.

Mike Kilgore remembering his grandmother in Indianapolis, to see photos and to make reservation for your own interview, visit storycorps.net, while you there, learn more about storycorps' first book, "listening is an act of love", out in Paper back now . ……

Major support for StoryCorps is provided by State Farm and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Our podcasts are supported by the Fetzer Institute as part of its campaign for love and forgiveness.

Learn more at loveandforgive.org. Our StoryCorps interviews are housed at the American Folklife Center at the library of congress. And you can hear storycorps on the radio Fridays on NPR's morning editon.

This is Katie Saimen for this StoryCorps podcast. Thanks for listening.