We didn’t have a television in our home. “There’s too much trash on it,” said Momma and Daddy. Instead, we had a flat reel-to-reel tape recorder. On it Momma listened to taped sermons, male gospel quartets, and a lady named Deldelker whose voice was full and fruity and wobbled a lot.
Sally and I admired the wobbly-voiced lady extravagantly. “Listen to me,” we shrilled to each other. “I’m Deldelker.” And we would summon as full a vibrato as we could manage. For a brief period we flirted with the idea of actually becoming Deldelker when we grew up.
Pam disabused us of this notion. “You can’t sing,” she told us bluntly. “Nobody in our family can.” I didn’t know what she meant. Sally and I could and did sing, often and loudly, with full vibrato. One day it got to be too much for Momma. “I don’t want you kids doing that; it’s not nice to copy people,” she said sternly. To take our minds off Deldelker, she put a story tape on for us.
