Lucky Osborne tells his wife, Debi, about growing up with his grandparents, Mama Willy and Daddy Charlie, in rural Mississippi.
Originally aired February 29, 2008, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Transcript
Lucky Osborne (LO) and Debi Osborne (DO)
LO: My mother and father divorced when I was seven and we went to live with my grandparents, Mama Willy and Daddy Charlie. It was in the country. It was really in the country. We had a swamp behind the house. I used to sit in my bedroom at night on top of my bed and shoot alligators through the window with a .22 rifle. And the road ended at our garage. If somebody was coming down the road they were either coming to see us or they were lost.
DO: Now Ma Willy, I remember she was real feisty.
LO: (Laughs) One thing about Ma Willy – She had a wooden spoon that she carried all the time, alright? She carried it in her apron pocket. That thing could telescope out to 50 yards, I know for sure. ’Cause if you messed up you could not outrun that spoon. She would ping you right on the top of the head with it. I don’t care how fast you tried to run, that spoon would hurt. And my grandfather, he was quite a man. I think he finished maybe the 8th grade, maybe. But he could do anything he wanted to do. He and my grandmother – They bought a little cafe there. It’s just a little hole in the wall type place. And one day a guy – he was a sign painter, alright – he came in and he told my granddaddy, he says, ’If you feed me, I’ll paint a sign, any sign you want on the front of your cafe.’ He says, ’Just write it out and give it to me.’ So my grandfather says, ’Sure.’ So he printed out Ferrell’s Cafe real nice and then handed it to the guy. The guy goes out. A little while later he comes in and says, ’Well, your sign’s ready. I’m ready to eat.’ My grandfather says, ”Well, let’s go out and look at it.’ He went out and he looked and it was upside down. The man couldn’t read. Whatever my grandfather printed on there, that’s what he painted.
DO: Well, did he keep that?
LO: It stayed there for years. In fact, when they sold the cafe it was still there. And people used to ask him they’d say, ’Charlie, why don’t you have that sign fixed?’ He says, ’Nope. People come by here. Then they’ll stop and come in and ask me why that sign’s upside down. They always gonna drink a cup of coffee, eat a piece of, uh, hamburger or something,’ and he said, ’best advertising I ever had’