The Chan Clan Sisters

Having reconnected with some dear friends from my childhood on Facebook, my mind is flooded with memories of my growing up in the small town of Goodman, Mississippi. I don't know if Goodman was unique as far as small towns in the south go, but with absolutely nothing to do, we were never bored.

My best friend, Melissa Upchurch lived right next door to me. Her older sister, Sandra, was one of the popular girls who I wanted to be like and I felt honored when she hung out with us because she clearly had better things to do. Steve, the oldest Upchurch, was always making trouble and making fun of us. He had nicknames for all of us.  No one was spared.  Mine was 'Bushwoman' because of my tangled mass of kinky curly hair.   Melissa was 'Moose'.  Sandra was 'Gut'.  There was also John Lowe, ' The Natural', Hugh Shaw, 'Hugh Baby', Melody Young, 'Smelly Melly', and my sister, Paula, is 'Pooty' to this day; you get the picture.  Some of his names were flattering; others, like mine, not so much.

One summer, sometime in the mid 70s, Sandra, Melissa and I came up with the idea to create a singing and dancing group and put on shows for the neighborhood.  We needed cash to be able to purchase candy and soda from Cauthens', the convenience store down the road, the one my Daddy always sent me to to buy his Winstons.  (Yes, I was buying cigarettes at 10 years old.).  Anyway, we gathered in Sandra's room and went over different options for the name of the group.  We came up with The Chan Clan Sisters.  Catchy, huh?  Coming up with the name was the easy part though.  Now, we needed to write some songs, choreograph some dance moves and create our costumes.  Sandra and I had similar unruly hair and usually we would just drape a towel over our heads with headbands to hold them in place and pretend that was our hair. We were going for the 'Cher' look.  Somehow, though, Sandra had managed to get an actual long hair wig!  She looked beautiful, just like Marsha Brady.  I was stuck with the towel.  Melissa already had pretty long hair with just a few soft curls.

We worked for what seemed like weeks to perfect our act.  We had done a pretty good job and were about ready to set a date for the big show.  That's when Steve came to us with a proposal.  He would be our manager.  We were extremely skeptical given Steve's reputation for trickery.  Steve was always up to no good and we were sure his motives could not be in our best interests.  But, he was a smooth talker and convinced us that we needed a manager to handle ticket sales, crowd control, etc.  So, it was done.  Steve Upchurch was named manager of The Chan Clan Sisters.  Somehow, with that job came no actual work, just the title.  We would go to him with our ideas and he'd just say, "Sure, great..."  We decided the venue would be my driveway.  We set out lawn chairs and potted plants were strategically placed for extra flare.  We rehearsed our numbers day and night.  We walked the neighborhood selling our homemade show tickets for 50 cents each.  By the night of the show we were set.  Butterflies filled our stomachs as we did our last minute preparations.

The show was an absolute success! We got applause and a standing ovation. My towel stayed on my head, as did Sandra's wig. Sandra, Melissa and I were so caught up in the excitement of the moment, we didn't realize our money box had gone missing. We had collected at least 7 dollars, which was enough to keep us in cracker jacks and candy cigarettes for 3 or more days. Where had our money gone?

Steve had been lurking around all afternoon, before the show, not really helping, but we just assumed he was making sure we had everything under control, kind of a supervisory roll. After the show, he was nowhere to be found. Deduction:  the cigar box with the money was gone and Steve was gone....Steve took our money!

We split up and went out to find Steve. I was hoping I wouldn't find him first, because, quite frankly, I was afraid of him. Sandra and Melissa had fire in their eyes though.  So, off we went.  Sandra went toward the 'gulley', a drop off at the end of our street, where we would sometimes play army because you could pretend like you were in the trenches.  Melissa decided to look behind Smelly Melly's house.  There were some trees and overgrown brush back there.  I took off toward 'The Natural's house, which was the opposite direction of the the gully, kind of standing alone on a big hill on the way to Cauthens'. I took Pooty along for backup.  Of course, I had no idea what I was going to do if I did find Steve, but, nevertheless, off we went.

Now, keep in mind, Goodman is a really small town.  We were all within a half mile radius of each other, if not closer.  It was late afternoon and there were dark clouds gathering, most likely to produce a thunderstorm, as often was the case on summer evenings.  We stepped up the pace of our search so we could make it inside before the rain began.  Pooty was a really fast runner, even at the very young age of 5, so she ran ahead of me to look for any sign of Steve.  Unfortunately, (or fortunately, I was thinking), there was no sign of him anywhere.

Sandra, Melissa, Pooty and I returned to the scene of the crime to discuss our next move.  As we were chatting, we heard, off in the distance a loud, horrific scream or cry or something.  It came from up the hill, from the only direction we had not searched.  The sound got closer and closer until we saw a figure running toward us.  Steve?  Was that Steve?  As he approached us, we noticed that the area around his mouth and cheeks was all swollen and misshapen and red.  He was crying!  Yes, Steve Upchurch, town bully, was crying!  What in the world had he gotten into?

Well, it turns out that Steve did not know that his hiding place of choice was also the spot where my Daddy, Chris Haley, had developed his latest hobby, raising bees.  Daddy had the full bee raiser's suit... mask, gloves, coveralls.  He would be completely covered at all times to prevent getting stung and he still got stung on occasion.  Unfortunately, Steve was not wearing anything but shorts and a t-shirt when he discovered the bees.  After he had spent our money, he had taken his bag of Cauthens' goodies up the hill to what he thought would be the ideal hideaway.  He opened up his bag of cotton candy and began stuffing his face.  As the cotton candy mixed with the Mississippi humidity and his sweat, it created a sticky sweet film around his mouth.  Well, you can guess what happened when the bees got a whiff of that!  Poor Steve.  The bees swarmed and attacked.  He was stunned, not knowing what was happening.  There is nothing scarier than a swollen, red faced, screaming Steve.

Well, suffice it to say, Steve learned his lesson.  Mr. Upchurch, aka Buddy, felt so bad for us girls that he paid us back the money Steve had stolen plus 3 extra dollars!  It had started to rain at this point so we decided that we'd make our trip to Cauthens' first thing the next morning.

The Chan Clan sisters went on to perform many more shows.  I eventually got my own long haired wig and we never hired another manager.