Interview questions from Barb

1. Who was your favorite neighbor as a child and why?

My best friend, Nancy, who lived across the street from me. Nancy was three months older than I and we were friends from the very beginning. My mom has pictures of the two of us doing everything together from the time we shared a play-pen until they moved away when I was in kindergarten. Behind Nan's house was steep bank covered with large, sharp stones, and one day as we were carrying the stones that had slid down the bank back to the top, Nan dropped hers and it tumbled down the slope and smashed into my fingers as I was picking up a stone. It hit me so hard that it knocked one of my fingernails off! Poor Nan was so upset she ran screaming into the house. Her older sister, Karen, wrapped my finger in a towel and walked me home. After I got home from my trip to the emergency room, Nan sent over a little china tea set that she had begged her mother to buy for me – she was afraid I would never play with her again! But of course I would because Nan always let me have my own way. She was the youngest of five and I was the firstborn, so naturally, even though she was older than I, I got to boss her around. :-p


2. Are there any stories, traditions, or objects that have been handed down through generations of your family?

About all I know of my Daddy's side of the family is that the first of them to come to America were apparantly a disreputable lot. They found out the authorities were planning to put them on a boat to Australia, so they came to America to escape! I guess that was the Price side of the family – the Pyle men were mostly ministers. One Price ancestor even married a Choctaw woman, LIttle Fawn Beside the Stream, at a time when to do so was incredibly scandalous. She lived to be 103 years old and smoked a corncob pipe! We went to my grandmother Pyle, nee Price, for Thanksgiving every year. She always made macaroni and cheese because it my brother's and my favorite dish. My Daddy taught me how to make cornbread dressing just like grandmother's and I still make that dressing and macaroni and cheese for Thanksgiving every year. I have several quilts made by my grandmother – I have slept under her quilts all my life. I also have her mother's potato masher that I use quite often.

My mother's grandfather McConnell was the youngest of eight children, and his mother died not too long after he was born. His oldest sister had just had a baby, so she took in her baby brother and nursed him. Their father, Robert Houston McConnell, was named after Sam Houston, who was a family friend. I have seen the McConnell family genealogy – it has been traced back to a James McConnell, who was born in 1715 in Ulster Ireland, and emigrated to Pennsylvania no later than 1745. On her mother's side of the family, the first Davis in America was a 13-year-old stowaway named Jonathan, who ran away from home to escape a cruel stepfather. He fought during America's War for Independence and was at Valley Forge. After the war, he settled in Pennsylvania, but his son moved to South Carolina. His grandson moved to Georgia near the GA/AL border at about the same time that the Cumbies from South Carolina (Mike's family) were moving to Alabama. After the War Between the States, many people in that area moved to Arkansas, including several Cumbies – the ones who stayed in Alabama changed their name spelling to Cumbee. When my great-grandfather Davis asked my great-great-grandfather Foster for his daughter's hand, he was told "Yes, as long as you don't move to Arkansas." They married, and shortly after that, they moved to Arkansas in a covered wagon. They never saw their families again. :-( Once when I was about 17 years old my mom asked me if there was anyone I was interested in, and I told her I didn't know anyone worth marrying besides my cousins. After Mike and I were engaged, we found out that we are distant cousins! After he retires, we hope to move back to that part of Alabama where both of our families come from and put down some roots!


3. If you could change one thing about our federal government, what would you change and why?

I suppose you mean the structure of the government or how it functions, and not the people in the governnemt, or else I'd just wave a magic wand and make them all think like me. ;-) Trying to think of just one thing that will make any real difference almost has me daunted. First, I thought about repealing the 14th amendment, which would essentially reinstate the 10th, but the Constutition is mostly ignored anyway, so that wouldn't do much good. Then I thought about de-federalizing the military, so that when the President wants to send troops anywhere, he not only has to ask Congress to declare war, but he would also have to ask the state governors to send their troops. I think this would keep us out of all these overseas imbroglios, but it would still leave the leviathan bureaucracy in place. Something that might be more effective, and I have to credit Pieter with this idea, is to abolish all direct taxes – income tax, inheritance taxes, Social Security et al. This would force the federal government to stay within Constitutional bounds.


4. Which one and why?

Beatrix Potter or A.A. Milne?
Beatrix Potter! I love her paintings, but especially her stories – the wry sense of humor ("This is a fierce bad Rabbit; look at his savage whiskers and his claws and his turned-up tail."), and understatement ("...don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your father had an accident there; he was put into a pie by Mrs. McGregor."). My favorite scene is where Old Mr. Benjamin Bunny is looking for little Benjamin Bunny and his orphaned nephew Peter Rabbit, who have been trapped under a basket all afternoon after stealing vegetables from Mr. McGregor's garden.

At length there was a pitter-patter, pitter-patter, and some bits of mortar fell from the wall above.

The cat looked up and saw old Mr. Benjamin Bunny prancing along the top of the wall of the upper terrace.

He was smoking a pipe of rabbit-tobacco, and had a little switch in his hand.

He was looking for his son.

Old Mr. Bunny had no opinion whatever of cats. He took a tremendous jump off the top of the wall on to the top of the cat, and cuffed it off the basket, and kicked it into the greenhouse, scratching off a handful of fur.

The cat was too much surprised to scratch back.

When old Mr. Bunny had driven the cat into the greenhouse, he locked the door.

Then he came back to the basket and took out his son Benjamin by the ears, and whipped him with the little switch.

Then he took out his nephew Peter. [The illustration shows Peter getting a whipping, too.]

Then he took out the handkerchief of onions, and marched out of the garden.

Breakfast or dinner?
I tell you what, if I had roomservice I'd pick breakfast every time. I love breakfast food – scrambled eggs, cheese grits and sausage, biscuits and gravy, sliced fresh tomatoes, hashbrowns.... Alas, these days we ususally have cold cereal, except for Sundays when I try to have something especially nice like blueberry muffins, or peach cobbler. So, in the real world I will choose not our everyday suppers – they are usually fairly plain – but our Sabbath dinner – special prayers and blessings, all the best dishes on the table and sometimes candles, sweet bread, wine, good food, and hymns.

Jackson or Lee?
Since I know so much more about Lee, I will have to pick him. The two were totally different in very complementary ways, but were very similar in the essentials, as far as I can tell. Last year I read Steve Wilkin's biography of Lee, Call of Duty. It was so good that I think every Christian man ought to read it.

Mountains or beach?
That is soooo tough! I prefer living in the mountains to anyplace else on earth (I am an Arkansas hillbilly, after all, of Scottish and Welsh descent), but the ocean is so therapeutic. Lying on the beach with the wind caressing you and the sun pressing down on you, the sound of the waves and the seagulls and little children playing, are all like a giant soul massage. Right now I'm feeling like a massage.

Chopin or Mozart?
I love listening to them both, but I can actually play a few things Mozart composed, so I'll pick him.


5. How has your parenting style changed over the years?

I couldn't think of a single bloomin thing so I asked Mike (is that cheating?). I've gotten better at noticing and nurturing the differences between the boys and the girls, so that a large part of my teaching them points them to becoming godly men/husbands/fathers and godly women/wives/mothers. I hope I have also gotten better at recognizing the difference between childishness and sin.

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