By Roy Lovelace

As told by RavenWarrior


Y'all know how it has to frost on persimmons two or three times before they are any good for eatin'. Well it was purty far down in the fall of the year and we had already had several frosts and a couple of them were hard ones. I got home from work about the usual time and I noticed that some of the persimmons way up in my tree were starting to look purty good.

After we ate supper I told the little woman I was going to climb up and pick her a few persimmons, she just loves them thangs. Well anyway I got my long ladder and climbed up in the persimmon tree to pick a few. You probably know the best ones always grow at the very top of the tree. So I climbed way up in there, about a mile maybe a little more to where the best persimmons were. I picked a small bucket almost full and came back down. It was too cold to stay up there any longer, I forgot to wear my coat and it gets cold at that altitude.

I brought the persimmons in and gave them to the wife. She was tickled almost as pink as them persimmons. After she marveled at how purty they was she decided to eat one. I told her the skins might be a little tough, them coming from so high up in the tree. She informed me that she was no wimp and that she could eat through the peelings without any trouble. She sorta nibbled at the thang a little bit but couldn't bite through. So she then placed it squarely on the lower jaw teeth and gave a hard bite. I mean she glommed down on that thang like she was mad at it or something. Then I heard an explosion and there was smoke and dust all over the place. I ask what happened, and she said she just bit a chunk out of the persimmon skin. I told her I thought something exploded, she said, “yeah, it was one of my teeth but I ate my persimmon.” I told her we better take a look at that tooth and sure enough, she had blowed the corner off of it. I asked if the tooth hurt any, she just shook her head no and grabbed another persimmon. I asked if the persimmon was any good, she assured me it was great.

I told her we probably should put something on that busted out place to protect her from pain. She said, “after I'm finished with my persimmons, we'll see.” So about four persimmons later she said if I wanted to fix her tooth now, to go ahead. I called down to Dave's and sure enough he had two kinds of tooth patching stuff in stock. We went down and got the kind that didn't have to be mixed up to patch a tooth with, but that brand wasn't much punkin. The durn stuff kept coming off as fast as I could get it in place. I think it might have been good to stick a crown back on or something like that. Well it was nearly closing time by now but I drove back to Dave's and got the other kind of tooth patching stuff that had to be mixed up and then trawled on. So I mixed it and trawled it in place. I figured it might hold through the night anyway.

I was washing that stinking stuff off my hands when I started to wonder if that smell was bothering the little woman. She assured me it wasn't. I had told her that when I said the skins might be a little tough, I never thought about it blowing up one of her teeth.

I figured that busted tooth was beginning to hurt by now but she said no. Anyway, I took her to John's the next morning to see about getting the tooth fixed. John sorta laughed and jokingly asked me if I wanted to be his partner, he said I could do the prep work and emergency work and he would do the rest. I told him it would probably take too long for an old RavenWarrior to read that much dentistry. He said, “yeah, I guess you're right, but you do good work." He must have meant it cause he left the patch in place that I put on her tooth. He made an appointment for her to come back in a few days so he could put a purty crown on that busted tooth. He still has to do the emergency work and prep work himself though.

On the way home I ask the little woman if she was still OK, she assured me she was doing fine. I reckon I asked her every day until she went back to the dentist, if the tooth had started to hurt and she said, “you seem to forget that I'm tougher than most. Shucks, I might even be as tough as you. Anyway, being married to an ole RavenWarrior all these years, some toughness is bound to rub off on a gal.”

So now I call her RavenSquaw for she is squaw of RavenWarrior. I guess y'all might want to call her Mrs. RavenWarrior.