1
00:00:01,480 --> 00:00:06,360
Last fall, I received an email
from a man in South Mississippi who wrote

2
00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:11,599
that his brother had published a book, a collection of short stories remembering his

3
00:00:11,839 --> 00:00:17,440
childhood and some of the funny circumstances
of his adult life. I read the

4
00:00:17,440 --> 00:00:21,480
first two chapters and immediately call the
man back and I told him I would

5
00:00:21,559 --> 00:00:26,679
narrate the book. I think these
stories were initially posted on social media for

6
00:00:26,839 --> 00:00:31,000
fun, but with a growing list
of readers, he was prodded to publish

7
00:00:31,039 --> 00:00:35,640
the stories. And it's my understanding
that the writer resisted for a time and

8
00:00:35,679 --> 00:00:41,280
finally gave into peer pressure and published
the book. The author's name is Beau

9
00:00:41,479 --> 00:00:47,920
Ray. The title of Bo's book
is as per y'all's requests. The book

10
00:00:47,920 --> 00:00:52,240
You Were About to Hear is available
to buy on Amazon, and the audio

11
00:00:52,439 --> 00:00:58,719
version is available on Audible. I'll
paste the links in the description. Thank

12
00:00:58,759 --> 00:01:02,920
you, Brad and Beau for allowing
me to read this and share your memories

13
00:01:02,960 --> 00:01:07,400
with this audience. It has been
one of the most enjoyable projects this amateur

14
00:01:07,640 --> 00:01:14,840
and unpolished narrator has done. This
reading is about three and a half hours

15
00:01:14,879 --> 00:01:19,560
long. It's not a monster story, it's a people's story. Mostly you

16
00:01:19,599 --> 00:01:25,319
will laugh, you will identify with
some struggles he has as an adult male,

17
00:01:26,040 --> 00:01:30,079
and you'll be moved by a tribute
to Bow's brother who he lost a

18
00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:34,519
while back. And if you were
born like me at the end of the

19
00:01:34,560 --> 00:01:42,840
boomer generation, you will remember and
now as per y'all's requests written by Beau

20
00:01:44,120 --> 00:02:01,120
Ray. Author's note, I currently
reside on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I'm

21
00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:07,000
just an ordinary guy with ordinary but
unique memories. I've lived a charmed life

22
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:13,199
with great parents and great brothers and
a perfect wife. I've collected and written

23
00:02:13,240 --> 00:02:17,240
these stories over the years, with
friends and family encouraging me to assemble them

24
00:02:17,280 --> 00:02:23,000
into a book, and so here
we are. The poetry comes to me

25
00:02:23,120 --> 00:02:27,360
spontaneously and without warning, and there's
nothing I can do to stop it,

26
00:02:27,599 --> 00:02:30,960
and I'm compelled to write it down. Some people have attacks of gout.

27
00:02:31,560 --> 00:02:38,199
I have poetry attacks. Mark Twain
said, I like a good story well

28
00:02:38,360 --> 00:02:44,919
told. That's the reason I'm sometimes
forced to tell them myself. So if

29
00:02:44,919 --> 00:02:47,599
you're in the market for a well
told good story, you should pick up

30
00:02:47,599 --> 00:02:53,879
a copy of the Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, because the following is a collection

31
00:02:53,000 --> 00:03:00,479
of mediocre stories told with a fourth
grade level mastery of grammar. For years,

32
00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:04,120
people have been pestering me to put
all these stories in a book.

33
00:03:04,639 --> 00:03:07,120
Well, now look what you've done. I hope you're happy with yourselves.

34
00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:12,599
I hope you enjoy reading these stories
as much as I enjoyed living them.

35
00:03:13,159 --> 00:03:21,719
As per y'all's requests, Reader Reviews, best book I've read this year,

36
00:03:22,319 --> 00:03:27,560
Bo's mother, January two. It
was the perfect thickness to put under the

37
00:03:27,639 --> 00:03:30,479
leg of our wobbly kitchen table.
Bigger than Old Man in the Sea,

38
00:03:30,560 --> 00:03:37,000
yet smaller than War and Peace,
Bo's brother. If I could read,

39
00:03:37,319 --> 00:03:42,439
I bet he'd be really good.
Several of Bo's friends. I never thought

40
00:03:42,479 --> 00:03:46,759
he'd amount to much. Apparently I
was right, Bo's fourth grade English teacher.

41
00:03:49,240 --> 00:03:54,080
There seems to be a disproportionate number
of poop stories. Homeless guy behind

42
00:03:54,159 --> 00:04:00,599
the Exon if he spent half as
much time mowing them is writing these silly

43
00:04:00,759 --> 00:04:05,159
stories? We could find the other
El Camino in the front yard, Bow's

44
00:04:05,199 --> 00:04:13,120
wife. Did I mention the unusual
number of poop stories? Homeless guy again

45
00:04:13,319 --> 00:04:27,839
behind the Exxon? Chapter one?
Mima also and popaws. Even though we

46
00:04:27,839 --> 00:04:31,839
resided in Jackson, Mississippi, we
lived on the Gulf coast, and Jackson

47
00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:35,199
is where we went to school,
to the doctor, and to bed on

48
00:04:35,399 --> 00:04:41,879
time. The coast is where we
fished the bayous and hunted bob white quails

49
00:04:41,879 --> 00:04:46,360
and the tall pines, and guzzled
Bark's root beers by the wooden crateful.

50
00:04:46,439 --> 00:04:50,839
Life for a boy was good down
there. Many a Friday and nearly every

51
00:04:50,879 --> 00:04:57,560
holiday throughout the year, we'd load
up in Daddy's nineteen sixty two Chevy Biscayne,

52
00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:02,720
affectionately known as Choka Boom and head
for long beach off weed sputter,

53
00:05:03,120 --> 00:05:09,120
Mama, Daddy, Me and my
brothers, Brody and Brad. In boytime,

54
00:05:09,279 --> 00:05:14,079
the drive was longer than a trans
atlantic voyage, but in real time

55
00:05:14,319 --> 00:05:19,519
it was about three hours south down
Highway forty nine. The stretch from Jackson

56
00:05:19,639 --> 00:05:26,759
to Hattiesburg was nearly intolerable, mile
after mile of cow pastures and thick woods,

57
00:05:26,800 --> 00:05:30,439
with the monotony occasionally broken by the
glow of a neon oasis as we

58
00:05:30,560 --> 00:05:36,000
passed a motel, a truck stop, or a restaurant. Southward, we

59
00:05:36,160 --> 00:05:43,240
drifted down the asphalt and concrete river
in the Chocapoom. You could tell by

60
00:05:43,240 --> 00:05:47,439
the changing landscape when we were getting
close to our destination. Lying on the

61
00:05:47,480 --> 00:05:51,839
floorboard in the back seat, I
was hypnotized by the vibrations of the car,

62
00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:58,160
the rhythmic thump of the tires hitting
the expansion joints in the concrete sections

63
00:05:58,240 --> 00:06:02,759
of the highway, and the warmth
of the exhaust passing under me. Looking

64
00:06:02,839 --> 00:06:06,480
up and out the rear window,
I saw the canopy of the woods turned

65
00:06:06,519 --> 00:06:13,120
to tall pines. There was hardly
any undergrowth except for sage grass, a

66
00:06:13,160 --> 00:06:18,759
coastal pine savannah I believe the scientists
call it. The Chugga Boom rumbled south

67
00:06:18,879 --> 00:06:24,680
into the northern fringes of Gulf Port, marked by rows of tiny pink howses

68
00:06:24,680 --> 00:06:29,319
with happy little black children playing in
the dirt yards. This portion of the

69
00:06:29,360 --> 00:06:33,480
trip was especially exciting on any Christmas
morning trip, as it seemed every kid

70
00:06:33,519 --> 00:06:39,279
there had gotten a bike for Christmas, and the shiny spokes flashed like tensil

71
00:06:39,519 --> 00:06:44,920
in honor of the season in the
bright, clear morning sun. A few

72
00:06:44,920 --> 00:06:48,959
blocks further south, we whizzed by
the Coca Cola plant a few blocks more

73
00:06:49,160 --> 00:06:55,040
and the air became fragrant, scented
with the smell of salt water sea life

74
00:06:55,040 --> 00:07:00,040
and sunshine. Once you hit Highway
ninety, you were there the beach,

75
00:07:00,560 --> 00:07:06,040
heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla, or
whatever you call the good place your chosen

76
00:07:06,120 --> 00:07:13,759
deity sends you after you die.
We were at that good place Memo's House,

77
00:07:16,879 --> 00:07:23,800
Chapter two, The Magic Truck.
Mam and Daddy were originally from Long

78
00:07:23,959 --> 00:07:28,600
Beach, as were their parents and
my grandparents. My mama's parents, Ralph

79
00:07:28,680 --> 00:07:32,519
and Mary, were known by the
grandkids as Memo and Paupaul. Me ma

80
00:07:32,600 --> 00:07:36,879
A worked in the school cafeteria,
and Paupaul was a carpenter and worked for

81
00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:43,839
Roy Anderson. To hear Paupo describe
it, you'd believe he single handedly built

82
00:07:43,879 --> 00:07:48,879
every structure on the Mississippi Gulf coast
since the last Biloxi Indian crafted a tepee.

83
00:07:49,600 --> 00:07:54,680
Now, I don't know for a
fact that the Biloxis actually built tepes,

84
00:07:54,759 --> 00:07:57,920
but of course, as a kid, you just assumed all Indians lived

85
00:07:57,959 --> 00:08:03,879
in teepees. If one brick were
set atop another anywhere in Harrison County,

86
00:08:03,319 --> 00:08:09,279
Paupaul either did it or supervised it. We had no idea who this Roy

87
00:08:09,319 --> 00:08:13,879
Anderson fellow was that Paupaul worked for. We just knew he worked for him

88
00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:18,240
because his name was on the side
of Paupaul's truck. Paupaul's work truck was

89
00:08:18,279 --> 00:08:22,560
the totor of all things good.
Like most work trucks, it had a

90
00:08:22,600 --> 00:08:28,240
gun rack in the back window that
held an umbrella a level in blueprints.

91
00:08:28,240 --> 00:08:33,240
It also had a toolbox in the
bed and a ladder rack on top.

92
00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:39,200
The toolbox wasn't shiny metal like the
ones today. It was wooden with galvanized

93
00:08:39,240 --> 00:08:43,799
tin on the top and sides.
A simple wooden box covered in metal,

94
00:08:45,200 --> 00:08:48,320
very similar to the arc of the
Covenant, I imagine, only with better

95
00:08:48,399 --> 00:08:54,399
things inside. Popaul had built a
toolbox himself right after he had gotten back

96
00:08:54,399 --> 00:09:00,600
from beating the Germans on Guam.
He was a sebee in Worldorld War II

97
00:09:00,759 --> 00:09:05,559
and had been sent to Guam.
Drawing on my vast knowledge of history,

98
00:09:05,799 --> 00:09:09,279
I knew he had defeated the Germans
in World War two, and thereby deduced

99
00:09:09,279 --> 00:09:15,480
that Paupaul, having participated in the
war and having been sent to Guam,

100
00:09:15,720 --> 00:09:20,320
must have killed every German on Gwam, probably with his pocket knife. Anyway,

101
00:09:20,360 --> 00:09:24,799
I was sure that he built his
own toolbox, as well as a

102
00:09:24,799 --> 00:09:31,000
lot of other amazing things surely we
thought there must have been something much better

103
00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:35,919
than tools in that toolbox, because
he kept a padlock on it. In

104
00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:41,039
our minds, a padlock wasn't a
security device so much as it was an

105
00:09:41,039 --> 00:09:46,320
invitation, an invitation to enter at
all costs. On the rare occasions that

106
00:09:46,399 --> 00:09:50,759
it was opened in our presence,
we'd strain our eyes rapidly taking in all

107
00:09:50,840 --> 00:09:56,360
that was inside before it was snap
shut and the padlock again secured. All

108
00:09:56,399 --> 00:10:01,879
we ever saw, of course,
was tools. Why on earth would anyone

109
00:10:01,960 --> 00:10:05,879
want to keep someone us out of
their tools. It just didn't make sense

110
00:10:05,919 --> 00:10:11,200
at all. Our dad didn't lock
up his tools, though admittedly the few

111
00:10:11,279 --> 00:10:18,480
he had were rusty and spread all
over, generally because we left them outside.

112
00:10:18,559 --> 00:10:22,480
The ability to use tools is,
after all, what separates us from

113
00:10:22,519 --> 00:10:26,840
the monkeys, and since we couldn't
get to Paul Paul's tools, that left

114
00:10:26,919 --> 00:10:31,720
us right smack dab there with the
monkeys, toolless and stinky, millions of

115
00:10:31,840 --> 00:10:39,240
years of evolution rendered senseless by a
simple padlock. It makes perfect sense now,

116
00:10:39,440 --> 00:10:43,039
though, why Paul Paul didn't want
us meddling in his tools. Besides

117
00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:46,279
the fact that they were expensive and
he used them to make a living.

118
00:10:46,120 --> 00:10:52,159
Idle hands may be the devil's workshop, but busy boy hands with tools can

119
00:10:52,200 --> 00:10:58,240
become his global manufacturing facility. Welcome
to Beelzebub Co. Inc. Makers of

120
00:10:58,320 --> 00:11:05,480
Mayhem and all things unholy. A
shudder at the thought. From dawn until

121
00:11:05,519 --> 00:11:11,360
three pm Monday through Friday, that
latter rack carried pipes, ladders, and

122
00:11:11,480 --> 00:11:16,240
lumber, and on Saturday mornings before
dawn, that truck carried a fourteen foot

123
00:11:16,279 --> 00:11:22,399
aluminum john boat atop the ladder rack, a nine point five horsepower Johnson outboard,

124
00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:28,919
and three very sleepy boys to the
swamps of the Pearl River. Until

125
00:11:28,960 --> 00:11:33,200
the day he died. Papaul carried
the warranty card for his outboard and his

126
00:11:33,320 --> 00:11:37,320
wallet, even though it had expired
more than forty five years ago. You

127
00:11:37,399 --> 00:11:43,919
can never be too safe when it
comes to warranty issues. We always took

128
00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:48,720
egg sandwiches and fishing cookies with us, as well as enough Bark's root beer

129
00:11:48,759 --> 00:11:52,559
to live on for a year should
we for some reason become stranded in the

130
00:11:52,600 --> 00:11:58,679
swamp. Papaul bought Barks by the
case and we consumed it by the case.

131
00:11:58,559 --> 00:12:03,879
He believed it had medicinal purposes.
After all, it said right there

132
00:12:03,919 --> 00:12:07,759
on the carton good and wholesome.
A product may be good, or it

133
00:12:07,840 --> 00:12:13,080
may be wholesome, but a product
that is both is indeed a rarity.

134
00:12:13,960 --> 00:12:20,320
Fishing cookies were really just nut or
butter cookies, not particularly marked to anglers,

135
00:12:20,399 --> 00:12:22,919
but since we took them every time
we went fishing, from that time

136
00:12:24,039 --> 00:12:28,200
forth and forevermore, they shall be
known as fishing cookies. I mean,

137
00:12:28,240 --> 00:12:33,159
while would pack a brown paper a
and p sack full of eggs, sandwiches,

138
00:12:33,159 --> 00:12:35,919
and cookies, and pour up a
thermos of coffee for Paul Paul and

139
00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:41,120
wish us good luck as we climbed
into the truck and she climbed back into

140
00:12:41,159 --> 00:12:46,360
bed. I have no idea exactly
where we went in those swamps, because

141
00:12:46,399 --> 00:12:50,360
it was always dark when we left
the house, and it was usually still

142
00:12:50,480 --> 00:12:54,879
dark as we left the dock and
motored at terrific speeds up and down the

143
00:12:54,919 --> 00:13:01,559
foggy byues Pau. Paul wasn't a
big believer in modern fishing equipment and anything

144
00:13:01,639 --> 00:13:07,519
invented after the stick he considered modern. We used cane poles because they were

145
00:13:07,519 --> 00:13:13,480
not susceptible to the problems of mechanical
contrivances that had a higher than average failure

146
00:13:13,559 --> 00:13:18,120
rate in the hands of young boys. The cane poles were fool proof and

147
00:13:18,159 --> 00:13:22,440
easy to operate, and had no
moving parts except the butt in where it

148
00:13:22,440 --> 00:13:28,639
connected to one of us, and
that part moved plenty. I guess a

149
00:13:28,639 --> 00:13:33,720
boy could technically be considered a moving
part, but probably more accurately, could

150
00:13:33,799 --> 00:13:39,600
be considered an energy source like the
Sun or un nuclear reactor. We weren't

151
00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:45,240
fueled by hydrogen or uranium, though, but by pure sugar pumped into our

152
00:13:45,240 --> 00:13:50,879
bloodstream by root beer and cookies.
Papaul would, however, occasionally abandon his

153
00:13:52,039 --> 00:13:56,480
lyddite ways and bring his wind up
rigs, as he called them, was

154
00:13:56,519 --> 00:14:01,240
a beautiful gem like Swedish made ruby
red and Ambast five thousand, or his

155
00:14:01,399 --> 00:14:07,519
fly rod with a Martin automatic reel
on it. These were not mere fishing

156
00:14:07,559 --> 00:14:11,639
poles, no sir, but magic
wands, as far as we could tell,

157
00:14:11,799 --> 00:14:16,200
shiny and mechanical. They needed input
from the fishermen to conjure fish from

158
00:14:16,279 --> 00:14:22,600
thin air or brackish water. As
was the case, these things caught fish

159
00:14:22,639 --> 00:14:28,720
without bait. A few twinkling twirly
gizmos, the snagless sally, the jitterbug

160
00:14:28,840 --> 00:14:33,000
or the cork bodied, rubber legged
bug was all it took to pull green

161
00:14:33,080 --> 00:14:37,639
trout and bluegills from the slick black
water as vapors rose from its surface like

162
00:14:37,679 --> 00:14:43,000
a simmering cauldron in the wheat pre
dawn light. It was indeed magic.

163
00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:48,240
We heartily lusted for such things,
but were forced to make do with the

164
00:14:48,279 --> 00:14:54,759
cane poles and worms. Fetching the
worms was generally as exciting as anything,

165
00:14:54,840 --> 00:15:01,240
though they were usually purchased the day
before our outings from the apply. Named

166
00:15:01,240 --> 00:15:05,159
a worm man, he lived in
a little white house, just like all

167
00:15:05,200 --> 00:15:09,799
the other little white houses on his
street, except his had a poorly hand

168
00:15:09,879 --> 00:15:15,960
lettered sign out front that proclaimed the
availability of both red worms and nightcrawlers,

169
00:15:16,759 --> 00:15:22,600
a veritable ichthological buffet. I believe
he may have sold crickets too, but

170
00:15:22,679 --> 00:15:26,919
my Pau Paul was not a cricket
man, and on occasion when Paul Paul's

171
00:15:26,960 --> 00:15:31,759
tree had some on it, we'd
use cataba worms, but as a general

172
00:15:31,879 --> 00:15:37,120
rule we used regular old worms.
We drive into town, meaning gulf Port,

173
00:15:37,320 --> 00:15:39,960
somewhere off twenty fifth Street, and
Pau Paul would pick up a couple

174
00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:46,360
of round cardboard containers full of worms
he'd open them and poke them a bit

175
00:15:46,399 --> 00:15:50,320
with his finger to make sure they
were lively and juicy, and we'd concur

176
00:15:50,440 --> 00:15:54,000
on both of their liveliness and juiciness, and he'd pay the man make a

177
00:15:54,039 --> 00:16:00,240
little small talk, and then we'd
be on our way. The next day,

178
00:16:00,559 --> 00:16:03,039
under a warm summer sun, deep
in the swamps of the Pearl River,

179
00:16:03,600 --> 00:16:08,279
we'd catch shell crackers and bluegills in
the old green trout, and even

180
00:16:08,440 --> 00:16:15,159
a lost wayward crab until the worms
coffee or root beer gave out, and

181
00:16:15,200 --> 00:16:18,720
then we'd head for the truck with
a rusty metal comb and ice chest full

182
00:16:18,720 --> 00:16:22,720
of fish, bellies full of barks, and a lifetime full of memories.

183
00:16:27,639 --> 00:16:33,320
Chapter three, The Great White Hunters, Strange crops, and honky talk quail.

184
00:16:36,039 --> 00:16:41,159
As summer cooled into fall and fall
darkened into winter, Popaul's magic truck

185
00:16:41,279 --> 00:16:47,360
transformed yet again. It became a
hunting truck, a bob white quail hunting

186
00:16:47,440 --> 00:16:52,799
truck to be exact. This simple
transformation was accomplished easily enough by placing the

187
00:16:52,840 --> 00:16:56,399
dog box in the bed of the
truck. Now, the dog box was

188
00:16:56,440 --> 00:17:00,759
basically a wooden doghouse type of fair
that fit in the back of the truck

189
00:17:02,120 --> 00:17:06,880
and was used to transport the dog
to and from the hunting grounds. Paupaul

190
00:17:07,039 --> 00:17:14,000
always owned Britney Spaniels, although nowadays
I think they're just called Britney's. The

191
00:17:14,039 --> 00:17:18,400
two we hunted with were Buttons first, and after she died, Brent sniffed

192
00:17:18,400 --> 00:17:23,799
out our birds. We knew coail
season was fast approaching when the dog box

193
00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:30,240
was loaded into the truck. On
more than one occasion in the late fall,

194
00:17:30,359 --> 00:17:33,480
when returning from one of the last
fishing trips of the season, Papaul

195
00:17:33,519 --> 00:17:37,839
would pull to the side of the
road near any wooded pine prairie and blow

196
00:17:37,839 --> 00:17:42,400
his quail call. Now I call
mimicked the call of a female quail,

197
00:17:42,680 --> 00:17:48,839
and Old Bob White, hearing it, would reply, Bob White. I

198
00:17:48,880 --> 00:17:52,839
knew Old Bob's days were numbered.
As Paul Paul made a mental note of

199
00:17:52,880 --> 00:17:56,839
the place and we'd return several weeks
later. And one of Paul Paul's favorite

200
00:17:56,880 --> 00:18:02,480
places to hunt was the Penal Farm
of Town. Now I know it was

201
00:18:02,599 --> 00:18:07,279
land owned by one of the timber
companies that bordered the penal facility on which

202
00:18:07,319 --> 00:18:11,960
the prisoners operated a farm, But
then we had no idea what a penal

203
00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:15,720
farm was nor what grew there.
We knew a cotton field yielded cotton,

204
00:18:17,119 --> 00:18:22,039
and a cornfield produced corn, and
a cow pastured Gray's cows. Paupaul told

205
00:18:22,119 --> 00:18:27,000
us what a penal farm grew?
What else but penises? Now that was

206
00:18:27,119 --> 00:18:33,039
terribly funny to three little boys.
Heck, it's still funny. Buttons and

207
00:18:33,160 --> 00:18:37,480
later bred flush many birds from the
fields and marsh bottoms near the penal farm.

208
00:18:38,359 --> 00:18:42,359
Paupaul would often lament the fact that
there were fewer and fewer birds and

209
00:18:42,440 --> 00:18:48,119
more and more people in these woods. But we didn't understand. We would.

210
00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:52,920
Later one day, after hunting several
of our usual spots, Paupaul decided

211
00:18:52,960 --> 00:18:57,240
to try a new place. We
pulled off the road near an old,

212
00:18:57,279 --> 00:19:03,880
deserted, run down honky toll,
surrounded by encroaching woods. Paupaul was right,

213
00:19:03,240 --> 00:19:07,000
there were quail there. Before we
got out of the truck, we

214
00:19:07,039 --> 00:19:11,480
saw a covey of birds at the
rear of the dilapidated building. Paul Paul

215
00:19:11,559 --> 00:19:15,720
swears they were flying up under the
eve of the building to pluck wasp from

216
00:19:15,720 --> 00:19:22,400
a large nest hanging there. As
the diffused light of the warm late autumn

217
00:19:22,440 --> 00:19:26,319
sun waned. We sat and watched
the birds for a few minutes. I

218
00:19:26,359 --> 00:19:30,319
don't recall if we even left the
truck cab that afternoon. I don't think

219
00:19:30,359 --> 00:19:34,000
we did, as it was late
and by the time we unloaded the dog

220
00:19:34,119 --> 00:19:38,680
and loaded our shotguns it would have
been too dark to shoot. But I

221
00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:44,079
think I understood the lesson of a
honky tonk quail. Paul. Paul was

222
00:19:44,200 --> 00:19:48,119
right again. There were more and
more people in these woods. I don't

223
00:19:48,119 --> 00:19:59,440
remember hunting quail much after that season
Chapter four A lot like camelots lot,

224
00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:06,079
A boy's neighborhood was his kingdom,
and like real kingdoms, they varied in

225
00:20:06,279 --> 00:20:11,799
size and natural resources. Some contained
wooded sections and some had creeks or ditches,

226
00:20:12,160 --> 00:20:17,839
while others had schools or parks within
their borders. Now, most borders

227
00:20:17,839 --> 00:20:22,480
were determined by large thoroughfares, which, like the rivers or mountain ranges and

228
00:20:22,559 --> 00:20:29,599
real kingdoms made ideal borders. Any
advancing hordes bent on pillaging and plundering a

229
00:20:29,680 --> 00:20:34,240
nearby kingdom were generally stopped by a
four lane thoroughfare and their moms warning not

230
00:20:34,359 --> 00:20:41,279
to cross such. A boy's social
ranking in his kingdom was determined much like

231
00:20:41,319 --> 00:20:47,279
a real kingdom, again by the
dangerousness of the items he owned. Simple

232
00:20:47,359 --> 00:20:52,359
kid logic dictated that the more dangerous
an item was, the more we desired

233
00:20:52,400 --> 00:20:56,039
it. Had it been allowed,
we'd have ridden around the neighborhood with a

234
00:20:56,079 --> 00:21:02,000
twelve gauge and a half dozen hand
grenades trapped up our handlebars. But alas

235
00:21:02,160 --> 00:21:07,160
our parents were killjoys, most boys
had some sort of pocket knife. Your

236
00:21:07,160 --> 00:21:11,559
first one was usually a worn out
or broken one passed down from your daddy

237
00:21:11,880 --> 00:21:17,640
or some older male figure. Mine, as you would assume, came from

238
00:21:17,680 --> 00:21:22,240
my Paupaw. I think one of
its three blades was broken off when I

239
00:21:22,319 --> 00:21:26,240
got it. I was pretty sure
he had broken it off. Stabbing hitler

240
00:21:26,319 --> 00:21:32,440
on guam. Gradually breaking off the
remaining blades of your hand me down cutlery,

241
00:21:32,880 --> 00:21:37,279
honing your knife, throwing skills,
and stabbing pine trees and such afforded

242
00:21:37,319 --> 00:21:42,880
you the opportunity to upgrade, and
in our neighborhood, this was usually accomplished

243
00:21:42,880 --> 00:21:48,720
at the Stop and Go convenience store. They had a first rate knife display

244
00:21:48,759 --> 00:21:53,519
case. Every visit there would result
in my asking for and the accompanying parents

245
00:21:53,599 --> 00:22:00,759
denial of the purchase of the mother
of pearl handled subject of my life lust

246
00:22:00,079 --> 00:22:06,880
the slim Gem that was a fine
five dollars oriental made knife as a boy

247
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:11,400
was likely to find anywhere. It
was perfect as it had all three of

248
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:15,640
the qualities I was looking for.
It was big, it was shiny,

249
00:22:15,039 --> 00:22:21,480
and it was cheap. The giant
bowie knife was also always attractive, but

250
00:22:21,519 --> 00:22:26,519
the mother of pearl handle on the
slim gem really sold it. Much like

251
00:22:26,599 --> 00:22:33,359
the persistent drip of a Chinese water
torture. My begging eventually caused about a

252
00:22:33,480 --> 00:22:40,680
temporary insanity, and my mother relented. That beautiful slim gem was mine,

253
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:45,799
my own excalibur. My supremacy within
the kingdom was then well established, as

254
00:22:45,839 --> 00:22:51,039
all the other boys gave me the
stink eye as I lorded my elegant slim

255
00:22:51,119 --> 00:22:55,160
Gem over them, till the next
week when some other kid would get a

256
00:22:55,160 --> 00:22:59,640
Samurai sword, and not just any
old sword, mind you, but his

257
00:22:59,759 --> 00:23:02,640
dad, he's real, honest to
God, took it off a jat and

258
00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:07,000
chopped his damn head off with it. Samurai sword, Now that's hard to

259
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:11,279
compete with. Right there. Edged
weapons fell out of favor, though,

260
00:23:11,279 --> 00:23:18,599
as more powerful and lethal projectile weaponry
was acquired Archery was dabbled in by a

261
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:23,359
few, but wasn't taken seriously because
of the difficulty of the accuracy placing shots

262
00:23:23,599 --> 00:23:29,640
and the expensive arrows which were easily
lost. We only knew one kid with

263
00:23:29,720 --> 00:23:33,759
a bow, so he was an
oddity. Even without the bow, he

264
00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:37,119
was an oddity. Most bows were
far too difficult for a boy to draw,

265
00:23:37,400 --> 00:23:41,160
owing to the fact that they generally
belonged to their dads and had to

266
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:45,880
draw a weight greater than the kid
wielded it wide, but that didn't stop

267
00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:51,279
them from using them any more than
our dad's golf clubs, being too long

268
00:23:51,319 --> 00:23:56,160
and left handed, kept us from
hitting rocks with them. One kid,

269
00:23:56,200 --> 00:24:00,160
however, was particularly taken with archery
and persisted in the use of his dad's

270
00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:07,240
bow despite the sixty pound drawway.
Naturally, in our minds, bows had

271
00:24:07,279 --> 00:24:11,960
one purpose and one purpose only,
and that was the shooting of cowboys.

272
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:15,759
The boy with the bow was by
default an engine, while the rest of

273
00:24:15,839 --> 00:24:21,839
us were cowboys and assorted pale faced
Western figures that needed a good killing.

274
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:26,119
Now, we cowboys would run around
hiding behind trees and out buildings while the

275
00:24:26,200 --> 00:24:32,160
engine would launch and retrieve his lone
arrow. This was a real bow and

276
00:24:32,480 --> 00:24:37,119
a real arrow, mind you.
And this went on until one day Squanto

277
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:41,279
connected with one of the cowboys.
Luckily he was hitting the head, so

278
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:47,640
nothing important was damaged, and penetration
was limited due to the badly worn and

279
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:51,720
blunted arrow and the fact that the
engine could only draw the bow a few

280
00:24:51,759 --> 00:24:56,200
inches. On TV, the arrows
would rarely actually hit the cowboys, but

281
00:24:56,279 --> 00:25:02,680
would most times lodge harmlessly in the
tree or building behind which the cowboy was

282
00:25:02,799 --> 00:25:07,200
hiding. Should you be hit,
you'd simply pluck the arrow out of your

283
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:11,480
guts, or break it off if
it had penetrated your whole body, plug

284
00:25:11,559 --> 00:25:15,079
the hole with a filthy bandanna,
and poured some whiskey on it. And

285
00:25:15,079 --> 00:25:21,079
by next week's episode, instead of
the maggoty festering, perforated colon painfully killing

286
00:25:21,119 --> 00:25:26,279
you, you were fit as a
fiddle and shooting engines again. I surely

287
00:25:26,319 --> 00:25:30,519
had worked this way in real life, too, we wrongly surmised. I'm

288
00:25:30,519 --> 00:25:34,519
thankful to this day that none of
us was familiar with the story of William

289
00:25:34,599 --> 00:25:40,759
Tell, so archery, while both
deadly and fun, never really gained much

290
00:25:40,799 --> 00:25:45,359
of a foothold in our kingdom.
The BB guns were next up the list

291
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:52,880
of enviable deadly weapons. Every boy
eventually had a BB gun. We were

292
00:25:52,079 --> 00:25:56,440
very respectful of the power of our
BB guns and for the most part,

293
00:25:56,559 --> 00:26:02,599
used them safely. We rarely shot
at each other and seldom caused any property

294
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:07,440
damage to speak of. All the
kids in our neighborhood became adults with two

295
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:11,400
functional eyes, even if they didn't
become much else. I'm sure one kid

296
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:15,559
had a BB lodged under the skin
an inch below his eye, but as

297
00:26:15,599 --> 00:26:19,880
they say, a miss is as
good as a mile plus years later,

298
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:25,119
it made for good theater when he
made the girl squeal when he'd moved around

299
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:30,599
with a magnet. Bottles and birds
were our preferred targets, though, and

300
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:37,039
we roam the neighborhood stalking the wary
sparrow with the same intensity and concentration as

301
00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:42,960
any legendary African big game hunter,
rhino or sparrow. There was little difference

302
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:48,079
in the stalk and the shot and
the kill. Some may not agree,

303
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:53,319
but I believe the predator instinct is
still within us, deep in the basic

304
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:59,720
programming of our brains, leftover for
when our ancestors hunted the wooly mammoth,

305
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:06,759
the predator instinct, like our appendix
was more necessary for our survival. I

306
00:27:06,759 --> 00:27:11,400
think the instinct is still there even
for those of us in which the appendix

307
00:27:11,599 --> 00:27:15,960
isn't. Moving up from the bb
gun was the more powerful pump up pellet

308
00:27:17,039 --> 00:27:22,279
rifle, the Benjamin pellet rifle to
be exact, or the Sheridan if you

309
00:27:22,319 --> 00:27:26,200
didn't mind a wonky communist sized five
millimeter pellets that were hard to get and

310
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:32,400
expensive. Now, these pneumatic rifles
were just one step down from a real

311
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:38,400
powder burning gun. It's still suitable
for suburban neighborhood usage. Any excess energy

312
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:44,640
that might have been wasted on mowing
grass or washing windows or some other type

313
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:49,440
of nonsense was expended on pumping up
one of these beasts. We all looked

314
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:56,559
like Johnny Wisemeller from pumping these things
a thousand times a day. The Benjamin

315
00:27:56,720 --> 00:28:02,519
could break the strongest of bottles,
bottles that at red riders and deflicted bebies

316
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:07,519
like bullets off of Superman's chest.
It could also handily dispatch any neighborhood game,

317
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:14,720
including the squirrel, which was the
ultimate neighborhood trophy. A kid might

318
00:28:14,759 --> 00:28:19,519
occasionally take a slow, puny,
sickly squirrel with a daisy spitting image if

319
00:28:19,559 --> 00:28:25,559
you had an incredibly lucky shot,
but the Benjamin would knock them from the

320
00:28:25,599 --> 00:28:30,839
top of the tallest pine tree deader
than disco. If you had a Benjamin,

321
00:28:30,039 --> 00:28:33,880
you may as well have had a
bazooka or a full auto Tommy gun,

322
00:28:34,279 --> 00:28:45,160
as you were the unquestioned king of
the neighborhood. Chapter five Fishing Royalty

323
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:52,160
and Sparkly Major Awards. The rigs
we used to fool our wary saltwater prey

324
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:56,680
were the exact same poles we used
in the rivers, but instead of a

325
00:28:56,720 --> 00:29:00,279
big water worms on the hook,
we used a big water shrimp. Over

326
00:29:00,319 --> 00:29:04,799
the Labor Day weekend, in nineteen
sixty eight, Long Beach held its first

327
00:29:04,839 --> 00:29:11,319
fishing rodeo and in the biggest,
most blatant disregard for the rules of boyhood.

328
00:29:11,759 --> 00:29:15,799
Whereas the older brother always got to
be first at everything, Brody went

329
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:22,559
and won the whole shebang. He
caught a fourteen ounce speckled trout that won

330
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:27,079
him both the Largest Fish Award and
the King Fisherman Award, not one,

331
00:29:27,119 --> 00:29:33,720
but two giant, gleaming silver trophies
with the brilliant blue annidized name plates that

332
00:29:33,839 --> 00:29:38,519
shone like sapphires at the bottom and
leaping fish atop them. They were the

333
00:29:38,519 --> 00:29:44,240
most fabulous things I had ever laid
eyes on. No king had ever owned

334
00:29:44,279 --> 00:29:49,519
anything as splendid, and the treasures
of Solomon paled by comparison. I was

335
00:29:49,599 --> 00:29:53,039
certain that God had one of these
trophies on either side of his throne.

336
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:57,480
I learned the meaning of jealousy that
day, for I was green with envy.

337
00:29:59,079 --> 00:30:03,440
Mama still has those trophies, but
now they kindle fond memories as opposed

338
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:07,839
to a blinding jealous rage. You
see, a trophy was among the ultimate

339
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:12,119
possessions a boy could have, next
to a pump up pellet rifle or possibly

340
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:18,279
a shwin stingray. What you did
to win the trophy didn't really matter one

341
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:23,400
whit as its size and reflective properties
were the most important thing. Your trophy

342
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:27,799
could have been for fishing or baseball, or a Nobel something or another.

343
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:33,960
Regarding physics or the pinewood derby,
it didn't really matter as long as you

344
00:30:33,039 --> 00:30:38,920
had one or better. Yet,
several pen on metals were a weak substitute,

345
00:30:40,039 --> 00:30:42,920
and it took quite a volume of
metals a dozen or more. Something

346
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:48,039
akin to the number and assortment on
a ten horned dictator's uniform to equal the

347
00:30:48,119 --> 00:30:53,480
shine value of even the smallest of
trophies. I would dare say that had

348
00:30:53,519 --> 00:30:59,000
there been a choice between those trophies
or a check for ten thousand dollars,

349
00:30:59,279 --> 00:31:03,160
that Brody would have taken the trophies. I know I would have, And

350
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:08,000
fifty years later I occasionally fish from
that same rock piled jetty in the Long

351
00:31:08,039 --> 00:31:12,759
Beach Harbor, perhaps standing on some
of the same rocks that burned our bare

352
00:31:12,799 --> 00:31:23,000
feet in those award winning days fifty
summers past. Chapter six. The white

353
00:31:23,039 --> 00:31:29,359
trash at the end of the street. Our prisons are full of murderers,

354
00:31:29,599 --> 00:31:34,279
thieves, crooks, kidnappers, politicians, and various other forms of undesirables,

355
00:31:34,839 --> 00:31:41,680
but apparently the lowest form of human
life known to exist freely wanders are streets

356
00:31:42,559 --> 00:31:47,759
that would be white trash. According
to Mama, there was nothing lower.

357
00:31:48,599 --> 00:31:52,240
She never threatened bad behavior by saying, you boys better behave y'all want people

358
00:31:52,279 --> 00:31:56,839
to think y'all are politicians. No, she'd say, y'all better straighten up.

359
00:31:56,839 --> 00:32:00,440
But these people are going to think
y'all are white trash. We'd have

360
00:32:00,559 --> 00:32:06,319
rather died than been thought of as
white trash. Unfortunately, however, the

361
00:32:06,359 --> 00:32:09,759
family that lived at the end of
me Mall Street was white trash. White

362
00:32:09,759 --> 00:32:15,079
trashiness must not be a visible malady, since they all looked very much like

363
00:32:15,279 --> 00:32:19,839
us. They too, ran around
barefooted and shirtless from the day school let

364
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:25,200
out until schools started back the day
after Labor Day. Our summer wardrobe consisted

365
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:30,480
of cut off blue jeans and dirt. Anything else was strictly optional and left

366
00:32:30,519 --> 00:32:35,880
to the discretion of the wearer.
We would occasionally put on shoes, but

367
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:38,799
the soles of our feet were generally
much harder and blacker than the soles of

368
00:32:38,839 --> 00:32:45,480
any shoe and could likely draw sparks
from concrete. There were two boys around

369
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:51,279
our ages and an older sister that
comprised the spawn of the white trash family.

370
00:32:52,119 --> 00:32:55,519
I hesitate to mention their names because
those that aren't in a correctional or

371
00:32:55,599 --> 00:33:00,359
rehabilitative institute, or have it been
killed in a our fight, may seek

372
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:07,440
retribution. I believe in hindsight that
it was the older sister that garnered them

373
00:33:07,519 --> 00:33:12,559
admission to the realm of white Trashtom, but I'm not one to start rumors.

374
00:33:14,079 --> 00:33:16,960
We were forbidden to play with any
of them. Play, by our

375
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:22,279
definition, meant to engage in pleasurable
activity. Therefore, we felt free to

376
00:33:22,319 --> 00:33:27,480
merely interact with the white trash family
as long as we didn't enjoy it.

377
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:31,880
The white trash boys rode their bikes
up and down me Mall Street, knowing

378
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:36,799
I believe that we were not to
play with them. It was during one

379
00:33:36,799 --> 00:33:40,799
of these taunting rides past me Mall's
house that I decided to interact with the

380
00:33:40,839 --> 00:33:46,440
oldest boy. It was spring or
early summer, so thick tufts of wild

381
00:33:46,559 --> 00:33:52,200
onions sprouted everywhere in the yard.
If you've ever pulled one of these up,

382
00:33:52,319 --> 00:33:54,960
you know what. A large water
of dirt comes up with the stalks.

383
00:33:55,720 --> 00:34:00,160
When grasped by the stalks and throne, this botanical whistle flies like a

384
00:34:00,279 --> 00:34:07,279
dark dirt first stabilized by the trailing
stalks. I thought it would be very

385
00:34:07,319 --> 00:34:12,679
sporting to toss one of these onion
darts at the white trash of velocipede jockey

386
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:17,360
as he sped past. After several
passes, he was feeling quite confident of

387
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:21,679
his skills, and he rode by
on the near side of the street.

388
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:28,239
An I let fly a particularly accurate
onion projectile. It was on a perfect

389
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:32,599
trajectory for his head, and sensing
the unavoidable, he took evasive action,

390
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:39,039
which consisted of rapidly ducking and slamming
his forehead into the handlebar stem. Now

391
00:34:39,079 --> 00:34:44,519
this would have been incredibly hilarious had
he not opened a sizeable gash on his

392
00:34:44,639 --> 00:34:49,639
head. As the blood began to
flow, he pedaled to his house and

393
00:34:49,679 --> 00:34:55,079
I ran inside Memo's house. I
felt horrible, not particularly because I'd kill

394
00:34:55,159 --> 00:34:59,599
someone with a clump of onion grass, but I really didn't want to be

395
00:34:59,639 --> 00:35:02,280
locked up for the rest of my
life, because I was only seven and

396
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:07,199
I had lots of plans Paul.
Paul assured me that he probably was not

397
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:12,719
dead, and I was feeling a
little better until the police car pulled up.

398
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:16,360
It might not be possible for a
seven year old to die from heart

399
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:22,880
failure, but I came very close. Apparently, White trash Boy had gone

400
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:27,199
home and told his mama that I'd
thrown a brick at him. I wish

401
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:30,679
that, at seven, I had
had the strength to throw a brick any

402
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:35,920
appreciable distance, but alas it was
merely a wad of dirt. White trash

403
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:40,679
Boy had lied to his mama and
sick the police on me. You just

404
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:52,880
can't trust White Trash. Chapter seven, God Bless America and Chinese Fireworks.

405
00:35:52,840 --> 00:36:00,639
Another interaction with the White Trash family
involved fireworks. Fireworks are the kid equivalent

406
00:36:00,679 --> 00:36:04,840
to corn liquor. Nothing good ever
came from a misuse of either one of

407
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:09,920
these products, and generally a story
rapidly deteriorates after the uttering of the words

408
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:16,119
liquor or fireworks. As in this
story, we weren't allowed to have fireworks

409
00:36:16,199 --> 00:36:22,000
and bottle rockets and Roman candles or
any other pyrotechnic device that launched a projectile

410
00:36:22,599 --> 00:36:28,760
of This effectively ruled out most fireworks. We were stuck with the most mundane

411
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:34,360
of all fireworks, sparklers and snakes. Snakes were the worst, because after

412
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:37,599
lighting them, you were done.
You simply watched as a small black pellet

413
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:43,719
became a stinky, fragile, black, twisted cylinder of ash. Now,

414
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:46,280
this may have been a neat parlor
trick before the Civil War, but was

415
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:52,480
hardly worthy of the moniker of fireworks. The sparklers were nearly as boring,

416
00:36:52,599 --> 00:36:57,800
but at least you could wave them
around wildly in circles, spewing hot sparks

417
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:00,199
in every direction, and as they
spoke ut out, you were left with

418
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:06,280
a glowing red, hot metal rod. After several boxes of snakes, the

419
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:10,440
boredom was intolerable. The sparklers were
our only hope, but we knew their

420
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:16,000
destructive powers were near zero, and
so we held out little hope. Being

421
00:37:16,039 --> 00:37:20,519
the oldest and the leader of our
band, I quickly sprang to action and

422
00:37:20,559 --> 00:37:24,920
devised a plan. We would use
the sparklers in the usual fashion, running

423
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:30,199
around at full speed while twirling one
in each hand, But when they were

424
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:34,239
just about to go out, we
would throw them into the air and watch

425
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:38,480
as they cut a fiery trail through
the night sky like Haley's comet. Well,

426
00:37:38,519 --> 00:37:44,000
it was a brilliant plan, and
timing was everything. You didn't want

427
00:37:44,039 --> 00:37:47,079
to throw them too soon and waste
valuable sparks that you could have waved in

428
00:37:47,159 --> 00:37:52,960
wild circles, looking like a doomed
helicopter. You also didn't want to throw

429
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:57,039
them too late, only to see
the boring, faint dog glow of a

430
00:37:57,079 --> 00:38:01,679
hot metal wire arcing through the summer
sky. Ideally, your sparkler would sizzle

431
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:07,920
through the sky like a shooting star
and die shortly after impact. The White

432
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:14,280
Trash down the street were apparently prouder
of our nation's independence because they had real

433
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:19,920
firecrackers. Not to be outdone,
we inched closer and closer to the property

434
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:23,800
line so they could see our jubulation
and national pride as we tossed our sparkler

435
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:29,960
skyward in an attempt to make them
look fun. The White Trash had been

436
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:34,679
celebrating for several days and had even
camped out the night before in a tent

437
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:42,480
in their sideyard. After several minutes
of this impromptu pyrotechnic competition, night suddenly

438
00:38:42,519 --> 00:38:46,480
turned to day. One of the
White Trash kids yelled fire, and we

439
00:38:46,599 --> 00:38:53,199
all quickly realized that their tent was, as professional firefighters say, fully involved.

440
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:58,159
By the time a hose could be
pulled from the house to the camp

441
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:01,400
site, which was fifty feet at
the most, the tent was, again,

442
00:39:01,519 --> 00:39:07,920
as professional firefighters might say, gone, nothing but a smoldering black spot

443
00:39:08,039 --> 00:39:13,880
in the grass, surrounded by charred
ropes attached to stakes. Now this was

444
00:39:13,960 --> 00:39:17,960
before the days of government mandated fire
retardants. In fact, I believe this

445
00:39:19,039 --> 00:39:24,760
particular tint was actually manufactured by soaking
canvas in gasoline and gunpowder. At any

446
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:29,280
rate. It was the most exciting
thing we had lit the whole night.

447
00:39:30,639 --> 00:39:34,559
I'm not trying to escape blame,
but the fact that I had thrown a

448
00:39:34,599 --> 00:39:39,280
sparkler in the general direction of the
tent right before the blaze is hardly proof

449
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:45,039
that I in fact had destroyed their
tent. I suspect being white trash and

450
00:39:45,079 --> 00:39:51,119
all that the older sister smoked,
and that smoldering cigarette which she had left

451
00:39:51,159 --> 00:39:54,400
in the tent hours earlier, had
caused the tent to burst into flames at

452
00:39:54,400 --> 00:40:00,360
exactly the same moment I threw my
sparkler. The white trash had we already

453
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:02,679
called a law on me twice,
so thank god. The tent blaze was

454
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:07,079
over in a matter of twenty seconds, and the fire department wasn't needed.

455
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:14,079
Everyone stood around, stunned and astonished
that a tent could disappear so quickly.

456
00:40:15,239 --> 00:40:20,519
After a brief period of lamenting and
finger pointing, the festivities resumed, but

457
00:40:20,559 --> 00:40:24,800
were much calmer and more subdued than
before then. The celebrations sputtered to an

458
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:30,800
inn like a wet sparkler. The
hot summer night was thick with the smell

459
00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:37,960
of sulfur and tin smoke. As
we dragged ourselves inside and chugged one last

460
00:40:37,039 --> 00:40:43,199
root bear and fell into bed as
black and grungy and smelly as snakes.

461
00:40:45,519 --> 00:40:52,199
Chapter eight. I must go down
to the sea again. Wanderluss must be

462
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:58,960
genetic, a natural desire to explore
and go new places. If not,

463
00:40:59,119 --> 00:41:01,360
I guess everyone would stay where they
were born, and there'd be an awful

464
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:07,800
lot of people in just one place. As kids, we first walked everywhere

465
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:13,320
we wanted to go. Then bicycles
expanded our range greatly, like the horse

466
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:20,119
did for the earliest explorers. Imagine
if our prehistoric ancestors had had bicycles when

467
00:41:20,159 --> 00:41:24,079
they crossed the land bridge of the
Bearing Straits, instead of wandering around the

468
00:41:24,079 --> 00:41:30,159
frozen northern plains eating woolly mammos,
they could have gone straight to Florida and

469
00:41:30,199 --> 00:41:35,480
bought a condo and retired by passing
one hundred thousand years of human history.

470
00:41:37,119 --> 00:41:40,400
Theoretically, with a bicycle and a
boat, you could travel every square inch

471
00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:45,800
of the globe. Our family didn't
have a boat when we were real young,

472
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:49,880
but Paul Paul did, and it
soon became apparent that a boat could

473
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:54,760
take you places you couldn't otherwise go. We always wanted Pauppal to launch his

474
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:59,599
boat in the Long Beach Harbor so
we could fish the waters of the Gulf

475
00:41:59,639 --> 00:42:04,440
and be on We may as well
have asked him to juggle flaming chainsaws,

476
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:08,760
as that was probably more likely to
happen. As we got older and more

477
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:14,360
confident and a little more independent,
it dawned on us that perhaps we could

478
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:19,519
go fishing on our own. Pop
All seemed to be wasting a significant portion

479
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:22,920
of his life working, and we
were sure that fish would buy it on

480
00:42:23,039 --> 00:42:30,280
other days than just Saturday. We
had nearly everything we needed, fishing poles

481
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:34,800
and a desire to catch fish,
and Papa had a boat. The only

482
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:38,960
thing we liked was a way to
transport the boat other than the aforementioned bicycles.

483
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:45,599
Our planning eventually led us to the
obvious conclusion that if we intended to

484
00:42:45,679 --> 00:42:51,159
use Papol's boat, then it had
better be in a body of water nearby.

485
00:42:52,159 --> 00:42:54,639
The closest water, the Gulf of
Mexico, was, of course,

486
00:42:54,840 --> 00:43:00,679
at the south end of Jeff Davis
Avenue, and we could practically from me

487
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:05,559
Mao's house. It was decided that
the golf would be the scene of our

488
00:43:05,639 --> 00:43:08,519
next piskine harvests, and we just
needed to put a fine point on the

489
00:43:08,599 --> 00:43:15,760
details. At this stage in our
journey through life, my friend Todd Wallace

490
00:43:15,039 --> 00:43:22,519
usually accompanied us on our adventures,
providing extra muscle and brain power. What

491
00:43:22,599 --> 00:43:25,960
we lacked in one we more than
made up for in the other, although

492
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:31,239
the particular trait found lacking, whether
muscle or brain power, varied from task

493
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:37,559
to task. With our plan finalized, we approached Paul Paul about dropping us

494
00:43:37,559 --> 00:43:42,000
off at the harbor early the next
morning as he left for yet another wasted

495
00:43:42,119 --> 00:43:45,360
day of laboring in the hot sun. Now this was not met with the

496
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:52,000
level of enthusiasm we had hoped it
would be. He was pretty emphatic that

497
00:43:52,119 --> 00:43:55,679
he did not want his outboard used
in salt water, and really didn't want

498
00:43:55,760 --> 00:44:00,960
us to operate it in any water, whether salt water, from water or

499
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:07,800
holy water. Luckily, our plans
made allowance for such inconveniences. We said

500
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:12,599
we'd be willing to paddle if he'd
just give us a lift to the beach.

501
00:44:13,679 --> 00:44:17,960
We knew that paddling versus motoring meant
we'd probably be limited to twenty miles

502
00:44:19,079 --> 00:44:23,199
or so offshore, as opposed to
say, having lunch in Havana, but

503
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:29,039
it was a compromise we were willing
to make. Our counter offer to paddle

504
00:44:29,280 --> 00:44:35,320
wasn't met with any more enthusiasm than
our original suggestion, and was instead rebuked

505
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:39,559
with the seemingly impossible, sarcastic reply
of if you can get it there,

506
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:45,119
you can use it now. I'm
sure this statement was made with the same

507
00:44:45,199 --> 00:44:50,559
intent meant by when pigs fly,
but in only the way boys can.

508
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:57,199
We actually took this as not only
permission, but a challenge. The next

509
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:00,519
morning, we were out in the
yard loading our stuff from the boat Paul.

510
00:45:00,559 --> 00:45:05,239
Paul had long since left, headed
out to build a new hospital or

511
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:09,679
orphanage or some such nonsense. Me
Ma asked just what we were doing,

512
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:15,159
and we explained that we were taking
Paupaul's boat to the harbor to go fishing.

513
00:45:15,079 --> 00:45:20,519
She expressed disbelief, but we assured
her that he did indeed say we

514
00:45:20,599 --> 00:45:25,679
could use it. The naval architects
that designed that fine fourteen foot aluminum craft

515
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:32,239
had wisely foreseen just such as scenario
where boys would be forced by stubborn adults

516
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:37,760
to carry their craft to the water, and they had wisely placed handles on

517
00:45:37,880 --> 00:45:42,880
the boat, two aft and one
at the bow. That's an auticle talk

518
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:46,199
right there. There were four of
us, so we could trade off as

519
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:52,000
we grew tired, and in short
order should be joining the golf breeze and

520
00:45:52,159 --> 00:45:59,360
productive fishing. I briefly longed for
my shepherd's coat hang Glider Sea chapter thirteen,

521
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:02,920
to ashing a sail from old Man
in the sea style, but soon

522
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:09,960
dismissed such tangential planning as detracting from
the current endeavor. The boat by itself

523
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:14,719
was pretty heavy, and the paddles
and fishing gear and the root bears didn't

524
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:17,760
do anything to make it any lighter. But we didn't have but three quarters

525
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:22,199
of a mile or so to go, and we were eager to get going,

526
00:46:22,599 --> 00:46:27,079
so off we went. The first
ten feet or so was easy,

527
00:46:27,599 --> 00:46:30,760
got a little harder after that.
We had all day and not so much

528
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:35,119
else to do, which was a
good thing, so we plotted on.

529
00:46:36,039 --> 00:46:37,920
Now. I believe most of the
root beers were gone by the time we

530
00:46:37,960 --> 00:46:43,760
had reached the railroad tracks just to
block away. Now. Our task was

531
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:47,880
not made any easier by the fact
that the pavement was only slightly less hot

532
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:53,559
than free flowing magma. We probably
ate the egg sandwiches just south of the

533
00:46:53,599 --> 00:46:58,599
tracks. It's a good thing we
brought the life jackets because the boat seats

534
00:46:58,639 --> 00:47:01,599
got hot in the sun, and
sitting in a boat on a sidewalk along

535
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:07,400
Jeff Davis Avenue eating egg sandwiches would
have been unbearable had we not had the

536
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:12,280
life jackets to sit on. Now
I realized that that is a run on

537
00:47:12,639 --> 00:47:16,360
sentence that ended in a preposition,
but rules aside, I think it conveyed

538
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:22,920
the scene nicely. By about three
o'clock we had made it to Elix barber

539
00:47:22,039 --> 00:47:27,000
shop and about a third of the
way to the Gulf. We were tired

540
00:47:27,039 --> 00:47:31,800
and hungry and out of root beer. We also learned a valuable and undeniable

541
00:47:31,960 --> 00:47:37,800
truth of life, that being that
while on a road trip, at whatever

542
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:43,840
point you decided to turn around,
you are exactly halfway done. There was

543
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:51,280
great consternation and much brain power expended
in solving our predicament. We discussed just

544
00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:53,599
how we could get the boat in
the trunk of a car, or lay

545
00:47:53,639 --> 00:47:58,760
it on the railroad tracks and allow
passing train to push it to New Orleans.

546
00:48:00,159 --> 00:48:02,800
Just leave it there on the sidewalk
in front of Elix and Hope Paul

547
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:08,559
Paul wouldn't notice it was gone.
Our situation was growing desperate and there was

548
00:48:08,599 --> 00:48:15,840
no resolution in sight. As we
sat there in the brawling sun, dehided

549
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:21,559
brains of buzzing, we noticed a
familiar vehicle approaching. It was Paul Paul

550
00:48:21,679 --> 00:48:25,039
and a is Ry Anderson truck boy. Were we glad to see him?

551
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:30,199
I only wish that I could have
said the same for him, but he

552
00:48:30,199 --> 00:48:35,440
didn't seem as happy about the whole
ordeal as we might have. Thank God,

553
00:48:35,519 --> 00:48:39,599
one of the benefits of Paul Paul's
inconvenient construction job was an early afternoon

554
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:44,920
quitting time. We never did make
it to the gulf in Paul Paul's boat,

555
00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:47,519
and had I known how to type, I might have sent off a

556
00:48:47,519 --> 00:48:52,840
sternly worded letter to the manufacturer of
the boat, advising them of the waste

557
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:58,880
of time and money it was putting
handles on a boat. But instead we

558
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:07,840
went home and had a root beer
or twelve, Chapter nine, Our Narrow

559
00:49:07,119 --> 00:49:15,320
Escape from the shallow end of Davy
Jones. Locker Yachting is a leisurely pastime

560
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:20,440
enjoyed by the wealthy, and on
the odd occasion, dangerously dabbled in by

561
00:49:20,480 --> 00:49:27,119
the underclasses. We were the occasional
dangerous dabblers, having never owned a boat

562
00:49:27,159 --> 00:49:30,880
of any size, My daddy decided
we had to make up some time.

563
00:49:30,039 --> 00:49:35,480
So we by passed the starter boats, you know, the small outboard powered,

564
00:49:35,639 --> 00:49:38,960
center console trailer boats, and we
went straight for the thirty three foot

565
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:44,920
twin engine offshore fishing boat. Now, I'm sure in my dad's mind the

566
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:49,280
decision went something like this, Well, it has a steering wheel, a

567
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:52,360
couple of shifters, and a couple
of throttles. I can drive a stick.

568
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:58,119
Plus it's cheap. How hard can
it be? Of course, that

569
00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:04,519
same question could be asked of a
Saturn five rocket minus cheap part. In

570
00:50:04,559 --> 00:50:07,119
those days, Daddy did something at
the bank. I'm still not sure to

571
00:50:07,159 --> 00:50:12,039
this day just what it was,
but it involved credit and credit cards and

572
00:50:12,079 --> 00:50:16,920
a knowledge of win. Certain things
like boats way beyond your nautical capabilities became

573
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:22,880
available due to the lack of payment
by their original captains. Thus was acquired

574
00:50:23,079 --> 00:50:29,519
the bees Hive. It was a
thirty three foot Silverton a few years old,

575
00:50:29,639 --> 00:50:35,599
sporting twin Chrysler V eights that just
loved that in Bargo era marina gasoline

576
00:50:35,719 --> 00:50:42,039
like a hobo loves ripple. Navigating
was not really that hard, since anywhere

577
00:50:42,079 --> 00:50:45,440
you wanted to go with Southish,
and returning from wherever you went was always

578
00:50:45,639 --> 00:50:51,920
Northish. Assuming the compass work,
we could always get reasonably close to home.

579
00:50:52,559 --> 00:50:55,320
At worst, we could possibly end
up in Mobile Bay or in the

580
00:50:55,400 --> 00:51:00,800
Louisiana Marsh, but mostly we made
it back to the Long Beach. Harbor.

581
00:51:01,119 --> 00:51:06,880
Ship Island, Cat Island, Horn
Island were the only real obstacles and

582
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:12,079
all highly visible. Also, allowing
a fourteen year old kid to plot courses

583
00:51:12,119 --> 00:51:17,159
for a day's adventuring pose little risk. There was no GPS in those days.

584
00:51:17,559 --> 00:51:22,840
You worked off a paper chart with
parallel rules and dividers. You decide

585
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:28,320
on a heading and hammered down for
the predetermined amount of time and eventually arrived

586
00:51:28,360 --> 00:51:35,159
within about plus or minus twenty miles
of your intended destination. Nautical navigation is

587
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:38,639
dead simple, and frankly, I'm
flummixed by how long it took to discover

588
00:51:38,719 --> 00:51:44,920
the New World. There was never
a time I remember that we went out

589
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:49,280
without some event. Even the day
we picked the thing up was exciting.

590
00:51:50,559 --> 00:51:54,840
It was at Diamond Head Yacht Club
we all boarded for our maiden voyage out

591
00:51:54,880 --> 00:52:00,519
to the Jordan River and into the
Bay of Saint Louis, and back leaving

592
00:52:00,639 --> 00:52:05,599
was simple enough, as Dad idled
forward out of the slip and headed for

593
00:52:05,639 --> 00:52:09,519
the briny blue or in this case, the brackish Brown. Returning a few

594
00:52:09,559 --> 00:52:14,880
hours later from our maiden voyage,
found that the wind had picked up considerably

595
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:21,119
and we were to enjoy our first
docking experience. Trying to back into a

596
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:25,800
slip and a stout wind is a
tough thing for an experience captain and downright

597
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:31,800
impossible for that Jackson Banker with the
new boat. After several tries and bouncing

598
00:52:31,840 --> 00:52:37,400
off numerous sail boats, Daddy finally
drove it up a small canal and grounded

599
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:40,039
it, and one of us leapt
off the bow the boat and got the

600
00:52:40,079 --> 00:52:45,039
harbormaster. He kindly backed our boat
in for us, and I'm certain to

601
00:52:45,079 --> 00:52:51,719
this day the folks dining in the
restaurant over the harbor still remember that incident

602
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:57,960
and that their Thanksgiving dinner conversations begin
with you remember back in nineteen seventy four

603
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:00,159
when we were eating at the yacht
club that Saturday, and that guy and

604
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:05,719
that silverton hit every single boat in
the harbor. I wonder if he's still

605
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:09,320
alive. Well, Lord knows he's
lucky he still is, but it ain't

606
00:53:09,360 --> 00:53:14,280
from lack of trying to die on
the high seas and kill his whole family

607
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:19,719
with him. God does indeed watch
over fools and children, and fools with

608
00:53:19,880 --> 00:53:27,320
children. Our talking improved with time, not so much because Daddy's abilities improved,

609
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:31,679
but we devised a method where we'd
liso the pilings and then manhandle the

610
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:37,639
boat into the slip with the lines. And what we liked in seamanship we

611
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:43,480
more than made up for in rodeo
skills. One of our last trips out

612
00:53:43,639 --> 00:53:47,719
was one of the most adventurous.
My Paupa and my friend Rodney were along

613
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:52,519
for the experience that day. Up
until the point that we thought we were

614
00:53:52,559 --> 00:53:57,400
all going to die, it had
been a fun, uneventful day, but

615
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:04,119
as I said, they never remained
uneventful. We were somewhere between Ship Island

616
00:54:04,159 --> 00:54:07,239
and Long Beach when my dad noticed
that, even at full throttle, the

617
00:54:07,239 --> 00:54:13,519
boat just wasn't moving very fast.
The engine RPMs made it sound like we

618
00:54:13,519 --> 00:54:17,159
were really moving, but we were
barely making headway. Now, boats are

619
00:54:17,159 --> 00:54:23,199
made of mostly corrodible materials and operated
in a highly corrosive environment, and they

620
00:54:23,239 --> 00:54:30,079
require constant, meticulous maintenance. We
would have no truck with such tomfoolery.

621
00:54:30,840 --> 00:54:34,639
Our way was such that you used
things until they broke, and then you

622
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:38,599
repaired it with whatever you had on
hand. Well, this philosophy worked fine

623
00:54:38,639 --> 00:54:44,360
with lawnmowers and bicycles and even cars, but it's less than idea when it

624
00:54:44,400 --> 00:54:47,840
comes to boats and especially airplanes.
And thank god we never got one of

625
00:54:47,840 --> 00:54:52,719
those. As in aside, and
on a somewhat related note, let me

626
00:54:52,800 --> 00:55:00,400
say that Jaguar xkes of the era
were actually manufactured defective, so in our

627
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:04,199
defense, it wasn't really our fault
that it was constantly in the shop.

628
00:55:04,760 --> 00:55:09,599
But I digress. My Paupaul left
the flybridge to go down and have a

629
00:55:09,599 --> 00:55:15,159
look at the engine compartment. He
was a CBE in World War Two,

630
00:55:15,239 --> 00:55:20,039
and even though his specialty was construction, we reasoned that seb's were part of

631
00:55:20,039 --> 00:55:23,800
the navy. Thus he was the
most experienced sailor on board, and what

632
00:55:23,840 --> 00:55:30,159
we needed was a Navy machinist mate, but we had a first class carpenter

633
00:55:30,199 --> 00:55:35,239
and that would have to do.
Upon opening the engine hatches, he discovered

634
00:55:35,280 --> 00:55:38,599
the bilge was flooded and the motors
about half submerged, but still running,

635
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:44,519
and Papaul suggested that Daddy point the
boat at the nearest piece of land that

636
00:55:44,599 --> 00:55:47,239
he could see, and had that
way, and then Paul Paul jumped down

637
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:52,039
into the warm water to look for
the problem. Daddy passed the wheel to

638
00:55:52,079 --> 00:55:57,800
me and said head for the Gulf
Port Harbor, which was just a nondescript

639
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:02,719
lighter spot on the horizon when viewed
through the atmospheric haze. I'm sure at

640
00:56:02,719 --> 00:56:07,079
this time Rodney was thinking he never
should have gotten involved with these crazy people,

641
00:56:07,599 --> 00:56:12,800
but now it was not the time
for regrets. Now. Daddy rushed

642
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:16,320
to the radio and the salon and
frantically issued a may day, we were

643
00:56:16,400 --> 00:56:22,960
sinking. Time after time he repeated
mayday, may day, may day,

644
00:56:22,400 --> 00:56:29,360
but with no reply. It eventually
became obvious, even though Daddy had no

645
00:56:29,519 --> 00:56:35,639
formal nautical communications training, that the
microphone attached to the radio that wasn't turned

646
00:56:35,679 --> 00:56:39,840
on would not work with the radio
that was turned on. He eventually sorted

647
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:45,639
out that problem and shortly had the
coastguard and bound, and in the meantime

648
00:56:45,719 --> 00:56:51,559
pap Paul had figured out the problem
in the bilge through the whole connection feeding

649
00:56:51,599 --> 00:56:55,440
the engine cooling water had broken.
I can't imagine why, and it was

650
00:56:55,480 --> 00:57:01,400
flooding the boat. He simply closed
the seacock and allowed the bilge pump to

651
00:57:01,480 --> 00:57:07,519
evenly remove the water from the boat
as we waved off the coastguard and limped

652
00:57:07,519 --> 00:57:12,199
home. I was glad to learn
what a seacock did, but couldn't help

653
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:15,639
but think it'd be a cool name
for a Marina restaurant that served fish and

654
00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:22,599
chicken. They say heroes aren't made, that they are born, or perhaps

655
00:57:22,679 --> 00:57:25,480
the other way around. I don't
really know, but what I do know

656
00:57:25,719 --> 00:57:31,199
is that memories can be foggy under
situations of duress, and I suspect that

657
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:36,920
may be why some people remember that
day differently, and some may have You

658
00:57:37,039 --> 00:57:39,960
believe that when I was passing out
life jackets, I held one back and

659
00:57:40,000 --> 00:57:45,360
secured it around my fishing poles that
I had gathered up in the frenzy of

660
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:51,480
sinking. Whether that's a result of
the brain fabricating things under stress or the

661
00:57:51,639 --> 00:57:55,559
truth, we may never know.
The way I recall it was that I

662
00:57:55,679 --> 00:58:00,760
passed out life jackets to the women, Mama and Case, and the children

663
00:58:00,960 --> 00:58:06,079
Me Brody, bred and Rodney,
leaving the captain in the ship's carpenter,

664
00:58:06,159 --> 00:58:09,039
doomed to go down with the ship, and by down I mean eight or

665
00:58:09,119 --> 00:58:15,880
possibly ten feet. In reality,
they could have both probably remained seated on

666
00:58:15,960 --> 00:58:19,079
the fly bridge with the rest of
the boat sitting on the bottom of the

667
00:58:19,159 --> 00:58:22,360
sound, and not gotten their shoes
wet and waited on rescue in the shade

668
00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:27,880
of a beemony top while we and
my fishing poles all bobbed around in the

669
00:58:27,880 --> 00:58:32,760
boat and life jackets. We eventually
made it home, tired, sunburned and

670
00:58:32,840 --> 00:58:37,719
smelling like a chum bucket and hungry. I sure could have gone for a

671
00:58:37,840 --> 00:58:44,880
number five combo fried shrimp and a
chicken leg down at Seacock's Fish and Chicken.

672
00:58:45,239 --> 00:58:53,159
But alas, some dreams are not
to be Chapter ten, The Ghosts

673
00:58:53,360 --> 00:58:59,920
of Christmas' Past. Even though I
was only in my second year my former

674
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:05,000
education, I was pretty sure there
were twelve months in the year, or

675
00:59:05,079 --> 00:59:10,760
such was the government propaganda being spewed
at Iola Tapley Wilkins Elementary School in Jackson,

676
00:59:10,760 --> 00:59:16,440
Mississippi in nineteen sixty nine. We
could recite the months in order and

677
00:59:16,519 --> 00:59:23,920
even spell most of them except February. February the second month. It didn't

678
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:28,960
matter that the year had twelve months, since kids really only cared about June,

679
00:59:29,280 --> 00:59:35,519
July, August and December, summer
and its blissful ignorance free from organized

680
00:59:35,599 --> 00:59:39,480
learning, and Christmas. All those
other months were just filler put on the

681
00:59:39,519 --> 00:59:45,280
calendar by some monks to make the
time between summer and Christmas some type of

682
00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:50,760
character building experience. If it wasn't
fun, it was always said to build

683
00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:54,519
character, put hair on your chest
or make your bone strong. Lord,

684
00:59:54,800 --> 01:00:00,000
we should have all been calcified,
Harry pillars of virtue. Any other time

685
01:00:00,159 --> 01:00:06,280
that wasn't actually Christmas Day or summer
break was merely time spent waiting for them

686
01:00:07,039 --> 01:00:14,320
post Christmas awaiting summer, or post
summer awaiting Christmas. We weren't completely oblivious

687
01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:17,400
to the passage of time, and
would have agreed with Einstein if we had

688
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:22,639
known who he was, that the
speed of time can indeed very since recess

689
01:00:22,760 --> 01:00:29,119
went much faster than did math.
The first memories I have of the marking

690
01:00:29,280 --> 01:00:34,719
of the passage of time, other
than the large molasses fill malfunctioning clocks that

691
01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:39,159
hung over the blackboards, was noticing
the changing covers on the Ladies' magazines by

692
01:00:39,239 --> 01:00:45,880
checkout stands at the local grocery store
in July. As you hung on the

693
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:51,159
outside of the Liberty Supermarket buggy filled
with snacks of sugar, packets of kool

694
01:00:51,199 --> 01:00:54,280
aid, and pounds of maloney and
weenies, you didn't care too hoots about

695
01:00:54,320 --> 01:01:00,960
how today's modern housewife hosted a backyard
summer gathering. Heck, we were living

696
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:07,760
it eventually, though, those publications
featured covers filled with yellow leaves and orange

697
01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:14,840
pumpkins and brown pie crusts. The
turkeys they sliced next month on the covers

698
01:01:14,880 --> 01:01:17,800
were always juicy, and if it
took extra long for Wanda to ring up

699
01:01:17,840 --> 01:01:23,000
your mama's grocery purchase, retrieve her
Virginia slims from the rack behind the register,

700
01:01:23,599 --> 01:01:28,920
and dispense the S and H green
stamps, and then relate her weekly

701
01:01:29,039 --> 01:01:34,679
trials, you could actually begin to
smell that turkey from memory. The absolute

702
01:01:34,800 --> 01:01:38,920
best covers, of course, were
the upcoming Christmas specials. They touched every

703
01:01:39,000 --> 01:01:44,760
soul, greens and reds, and
silvers and gold and tensil and lights,

704
01:01:44,800 --> 01:01:52,400
and every imaginable tasty treat. Those
particular magazine covers and ads within were captivating.

705
01:01:52,039 --> 01:01:57,400
Just close your eyes and you can
see them too. A late winter

706
01:01:57,599 --> 01:02:02,119
sun sets behind a claborate country church, offering just the faintest smudge of pink

707
01:02:02,159 --> 01:02:07,079
through the dark woods. In the
distance, stars already filled the darkest part

708
01:02:07,119 --> 01:02:13,400
of the sky, and snow blankets
everything. A pair of cardinals snuggle on

709
01:02:13,440 --> 01:02:17,280
a frosty limb in the foreground,
as one horse, open sleeve filled with

710
01:02:17,440 --> 01:02:22,639
presents, makes its way down a
narrow lane toward the warm glow issuing forth

711
01:02:22,679 --> 01:02:29,199
from the church windows. The quintessential
image of Christmas, all neatly wrapped up

712
01:02:29,239 --> 01:02:34,519
in one image, inviting you to
sample the smoothness and the flavor of America's

713
01:02:34,559 --> 01:02:39,480
favorite cigarette or Kentucky Bourbon. These
ads were so beautiful and powerful that,

714
01:02:39,599 --> 01:02:44,760
even though I was only eight,
I thought of asking Sanna for a fifth

715
01:02:44,760 --> 01:02:49,239
of Old Granddad and a carton of
pall Mall's, you know, for their

716
01:02:49,239 --> 01:02:54,320
flavor and smoothness. To this day, there is but one Christmas magazine cover

717
01:02:54,519 --> 01:03:00,280
memory that haunts me, not in
a Jacob Marley type way, but in

718
01:03:00,599 --> 01:03:07,079
what a bunch of line bastards type
way. I remember being particularly enthralled by

719
01:03:07,079 --> 01:03:13,559
a cover photo of stained glass cookies. They were just simple sugar cookies with

720
01:03:13,639 --> 01:03:19,440
openings cut in them, and were
filled with crushed life savers that supposedly melted

721
01:03:19,519 --> 01:03:24,840
to fill the opening with beautiful transparent
colors, producing cookies that rivaled the windows

722
01:03:24,960 --> 01:03:30,079
in the cathedrals of France. Or
so the blurb on the cover said.

723
01:03:30,960 --> 01:03:38,480
Exceedingly accurate timing was necessary to produce
these cookies, accuracy apparently achievable nowhere else

724
01:03:38,519 --> 01:03:45,599
on Earth except the Betty Crocker NASA
Atomic Time Keeping Cookie Production Facility, located

725
01:03:45,639 --> 01:03:50,000
deep underground in one of the Rocky
Mountain States. Try as she might,

726
01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:54,239
Mama could never coordinate the melting of
the life savers to coincide with the cookie

727
01:03:54,320 --> 01:04:01,039
part being the perfect dunness. One
or the other was all overdone or underdone.

728
01:04:01,639 --> 01:04:05,760
You either had perfect cookies with bumpy
glass in which some of the letters

729
01:04:05,760 --> 01:04:10,880
from life savers could still be read, or if you got them hot enough,

730
01:04:10,920 --> 01:04:15,880
the life savers would flow nicely filling
the opening of your now black cookies.

731
01:04:15,760 --> 01:04:20,119
And as far as I'm concerned,
there should be no statute of limitations

732
01:04:20,159 --> 01:04:30,159
for prosecuting cookie fraud. Chapter eleven
the Wish Book. You'd think the stained

733
01:04:30,159 --> 01:04:36,079
glass window cookie debacle would have soured
a youth on the commercialization of the entire

734
01:04:36,159 --> 01:04:42,760
Christmas experience. But you'd be wrong. There was, in fact a printed

735
01:04:42,920 --> 01:04:48,599
assemblage that embodied the entire Christmas experience
neatly and holy within its shiny, soul

736
01:04:48,840 --> 01:04:54,800
altering pages. To this day,
I can remember its arrival in the mail,

737
01:04:55,480 --> 01:04:59,920
the way it smelled, the way
its newly sheared pages and static attraction

738
01:05:00,079 --> 01:05:05,079
and offered slight resistance upon first opening
it. Oh the things it contained.

739
01:05:05,559 --> 01:05:12,320
And I'm speaking, of course,
of the Seers Wish Book. It usually

740
01:05:12,480 --> 01:05:16,000
arrived in a timely manner, in
keeping with the season, and as best

741
01:05:16,039 --> 01:05:20,400
as I can recall, it wasn't
delivered with the Labor Day half off all

742
01:05:20,480 --> 01:05:28,159
barbecue grill circulars like today's first holiday
advertisements. At the time, my daddy

743
01:05:28,280 --> 01:05:32,199
actually worked for Seers, which,
with the popularity of the Wishbook, you'd

744
01:05:32,199 --> 01:05:36,880
have thought was tantam out to working
for Santa Claus himself. Besaus was not

745
01:05:38,079 --> 01:05:42,360
the case, and he had very
little to do, nothing at all really

746
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:45,360
with the Wishbook, unless, of
course, you'd like to set your purchases

747
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:50,440
up on a ninety day easy payment
plan. You see he was an account

748
01:05:50,559 --> 01:05:58,719
executive in the finance department and calculated
interest payments on Missus Lewis's new avocado green

749
01:05:58,800 --> 01:06:04,639
Ken Moore refrigeration. On our frequent
trips to Sears in downtown Jackson, we

750
01:06:04,760 --> 01:06:10,599
learned a lot. I don't actually
recall seeing exactly where my dad conducted his

751
01:06:10,760 --> 01:06:15,119
daily tolls, but I do know
it wasn't at the popcorn machine, at

752
01:06:15,119 --> 01:06:18,800
the candy counter that filled the store
with the aroma a fresh popped corn,

753
01:06:19,159 --> 01:06:24,639
or even in the automotive department where
men changed tires on loud, hissing,

754
01:06:24,800 --> 01:06:29,760
clanking machines that a boy could watch
for hours. He didn't even work in

755
01:06:29,760 --> 01:06:33,440
the basement that could function as a
fallout shelter should brash Nev get a little

756
01:06:33,480 --> 01:06:38,239
deep in the vodka and grow bored
with just looking at the big red button,

757
01:06:39,159 --> 01:06:44,639
the very same basement that was transformed
yearly into a Christmas toy wonderland.

758
01:06:45,760 --> 01:06:49,199
I'm not sure what Daddy had done
to deserve such a poor job as credit

759
01:06:49,280 --> 01:06:54,880
manager, as opposed to running the
popcorn machine, or changing tires, or

760
01:06:54,920 --> 01:06:58,719
even helping set up the toy land, but he managed to keep us in

761
01:06:58,800 --> 01:07:04,119
kool aid, weening and space food
sticks the day the mailman left the wishbook

762
01:07:04,159 --> 01:07:11,400
in our mailbox until we actually unwrapped
the presence selected from within its pages were

763
01:07:11,480 --> 01:07:15,639
heady times. Indeed, Brody,
Brad and I would each select a unique

764
01:07:15,639 --> 01:07:21,599
color of crayon to circle the particular
booty we desired from the wishbook. We

765
01:07:21,599 --> 01:07:27,400
were usually relegated to colors such as
burnt sienna, raw umber, and the

766
01:07:27,679 --> 01:07:30,480
like, since all the real colors
had long since been used up or broken

767
01:07:30,519 --> 01:07:36,599
into pieces too small to even use. Even brick red was unusable, having

768
01:07:36,639 --> 01:07:42,840
been just weeks ago used to nub
in a Thanksgiving drawing which depicted a large

769
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:47,920
number of semi nude Indians. Some
items had multiple circles, while some had

770
01:07:48,000 --> 01:07:54,480
single circles, and there were even
portions of the Wishbook that remained a pristine

771
01:07:55,559 --> 01:08:00,639
Now you'd see these silly sections as
you flip past them heading to the toyes

772
01:08:00,000 --> 01:08:06,480
and wonder just why on earth anyone
would have any interest whatsoever in receiving underwear,

773
01:08:08,000 --> 01:08:12,840
a hand carved Meershan pipe, or
a vacuum cleaner with twice a suction

774
01:08:13,079 --> 01:08:15,720
of the next best selling model,
or, for that matter, a pair

775
01:08:15,760 --> 01:08:21,119
of tusskin jeans are. We poured
over our copy of the wishbook for hours,

776
01:08:21,239 --> 01:08:28,279
like scholars studying the Dead Sea scrolls, only with more intensity. We'd

777
01:08:28,279 --> 01:08:33,039
work ourselves into a frenzy with anticipation, sometimes even to the point of sickness.

778
01:08:34,079 --> 01:08:41,079
Our cardboard fireplace roared with imitation flames, and the fake aerosaw snow piled

779
01:08:41,159 --> 01:08:46,159
up in the quarters of the windows
as we daily circled more toys. Thumbtacked

780
01:08:46,239 --> 01:08:50,800
and tape to our front door was
the full size image of Sanna holding the

781
01:08:50,840 --> 01:08:56,720
door wide open and showing off all
the goodies under the tree. Within the

782
01:08:56,800 --> 01:09:00,479
tensil twinkled on our tree, and
the pieces that got to the giant multicolored

783
01:09:00,520 --> 01:09:05,479
bulbs wrinkled in the heat, the
same bulbs that threatened to burn the whole

784
01:09:05,520 --> 01:09:11,279
season to the ground, but for
just one more degree caused the Scotch pine

785
01:09:11,319 --> 01:09:15,920
to release it's heavenly scent. It
is a shame that today's kids have no

786
01:09:16,079 --> 01:09:21,159
idea what a wishbook is, and
an iTunes gift card is a far cry

787
01:09:21,279 --> 01:09:29,600
from weeks of joy circling creepy crawlers, evil knieval daredevil figures, incredible edibles,

788
01:09:29,840 --> 01:09:35,279
and verty birds and Strange changed machines
and hot wheels, supercharger sprint sets.

789
01:09:40,199 --> 01:09:45,520
Chapter twelve, The Christmas we all
became criminals. I'm not sure what

790
01:09:45,600 --> 01:09:51,079
the statute of limitations is for pillaging
government property, but I'm betting it's not

791
01:09:51,279 --> 01:09:59,119
forty five years. Hence the burden
lifting confession and telling of this tale.

792
01:09:59,279 --> 01:10:01,359
Back in the seven in ease,
my family and I were quite skiers.

793
01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:08,279
I know it's difficult to imagine snow
skiers from Mississippi, but such was indeed

794
01:10:08,319 --> 01:10:12,800
the case. In fact, though, I became so proficient that one year

795
01:10:12,960 --> 01:10:18,159
I placed third in a Saint Patrick's
Day slalom competition against bonafide, long haired,

796
01:10:18,239 --> 01:10:25,600
rocky mountain bred fogelbird listening hippie kids. I fancied myself the hillbilly version

797
01:10:25,760 --> 01:10:30,920
of Jean Claude Kelly, a Dixie
land of Franz Clumber. I was to

798
01:10:30,000 --> 01:10:35,159
skiing what Jamaican's were of Bob's letting. It was indeed a glorious day for

799
01:10:35,279 --> 01:10:42,520
the Confederate ski team. One year, we decided to spend Christmas vacation in

800
01:10:42,600 --> 01:10:46,920
Breckenridge, Colorado, and my brothers
and I eagerly agreed to forego any Christmas

801
01:10:46,960 --> 01:10:53,760
presents in exchange for the trip.
As Christmas Day approached and began to register

802
01:10:53,880 --> 01:10:58,159
with us that there would be no
tree, no presents, no prey lanes,

803
01:10:58,560 --> 01:11:03,039
and no Christmas curls at my aunt
Martha's church on Christmas Seed, This

804
01:11:03,159 --> 01:11:06,840
Christmas was shaping up to be just
like any other of the three hundred and

805
01:11:06,880 --> 01:11:13,720
sixty four days that weren't Christmas Day. It became obvious what we needed to

806
01:11:13,800 --> 01:11:17,239
do. We needed a tree,
and that's where the pillaging comes in.

807
01:11:18,640 --> 01:11:23,880
It was two days before Christmas,
so any trees remaining at the grocery store,

808
01:11:24,239 --> 01:11:28,039
a grocery store that had never even
heard of grits, by the way,

809
01:11:28,319 --> 01:11:32,520
were just broken, twisted sappy sticks
with most of the limbs gone.

810
01:11:32,600 --> 01:11:38,720
And as luck would have it,
Breckinridge is located in the Arapahoe National Forest,

811
01:11:39,880 --> 01:11:44,399
there are literally millions and millions of
Christmas card perfect trees just there for

812
01:11:44,520 --> 01:11:47,680
the knifing. We were staying in
a condo that was very well equipped with

813
01:11:47,760 --> 01:11:53,920
everything necessary for a ski vacation,
but with hardly anything at all suitable for

814
01:11:54,000 --> 01:12:00,439
lumberjackerie. Our quest for a chainsaw
or axe was fruitless, finding only half

815
01:12:00,479 --> 01:12:04,640
a bottle of peppermint snops, a
fair of fawcet poster and an Ozark Mountain

816
01:12:04,720 --> 01:12:10,319
Daredevil's eight track tape in the closet. The best we could do was a

817
01:12:10,399 --> 01:12:14,279
large butcher knife from the kitchen drawer, and that would have to do.

818
01:12:15,920 --> 01:12:20,199
We all loaded up in our nineteen
seventy two International travel All, a metallic

819
01:12:20,359 --> 01:12:27,920
moss green marvel of modern mechanization with
the imitation wood side paneling, and cranked

820
01:12:28,000 --> 01:12:33,199
up Jackie Blue and headed to the
forest. Since Breckinridge is wholly located within

821
01:12:33,239 --> 01:12:38,239
the forest, we didn't have far
to go. The best I recall,

822
01:12:38,359 --> 01:12:42,640
we went about two blocks off the
main street and basically just chose the tree

823
01:12:42,760 --> 01:12:46,000
closest to the street. They were
all so perfect it was hard to go

824
01:12:46,039 --> 01:12:50,479
wrong. Really, I just couldn't
believe everybody wasn't out harvesting a tree with

825
01:12:50,560 --> 01:12:56,560
their own butcher knife or corkscrew or
garlic press. I wanted to shout,

826
01:12:56,760 --> 01:13:00,680
do y'all not see all these perfect
Christmas trees? What on on earth is

827
01:13:00,720 --> 01:13:03,920
the matter with you? People?
Don't buy those gooey sticks at the grocery

828
01:13:03,960 --> 01:13:10,039
store with no grits. But they
had trouble with my southern accent, and

829
01:13:10,079 --> 01:13:14,439
they wouldn't have understood me anyway.
Besides, that just left more trees for

830
01:13:14,600 --> 01:13:19,760
us. We made no particular effort
at stealth when acquiring our tree, all

831
01:13:19,880 --> 01:13:25,720
dancing about in brightly colored ski wear
and throwing snowballs while Daddy beat the tree

832
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:30,560
down with a dull knife. We
dragged our freshly butchered tree back to the

833
01:13:30,640 --> 01:13:34,439
vehicle and tied it to the top
with all the pride and revelry required for

834
01:13:34,479 --> 01:13:41,560
such an occasion. It was an
exquisite tree. Several years later we learned

835
01:13:41,560 --> 01:13:45,039
that it is illegal to just will
and illy shank a Christmas tree in the

836
01:13:45,159 --> 01:13:49,920
national forest. But I'm almost sure
nobody missed that particular tree. And eventually

837
01:13:50,039 --> 01:13:56,079
the grocery store started selling grits.
So really everything turned out good in the

838
01:13:56,199 --> 01:14:00,319
end. Y'all keep this under your
hats, though, if the g men

839
01:14:00,359 --> 01:14:05,520
come snooping around, I'll deny everything. Tree coppers will never take me alive.

840
01:14:10,800 --> 01:14:16,000
Chapter thirteen, Angels we have heard
on high and my plans to soar

841
01:14:16,199 --> 01:14:21,960
amongst them. In December of nineteen
sixty seven, on the stage of a

842
01:14:23,039 --> 01:14:28,640
small elementary school somewhere in Little Rock, Arkansas, a Christmas play was taking

843
01:14:28,720 --> 01:14:32,560
place. I was a shepherd in
that play, and my lines were as

844
01:14:32,680 --> 01:14:36,960
Luke related. And Lo, the
Angel of the Lord came upon them,

845
01:14:38,359 --> 01:14:43,319
and the glory of the Lord shown
around them, and they were sore afraid.

846
01:14:44,640 --> 01:14:49,079
As I spewed forth my memorized scripture
and nearly two my breakfast. I

847
01:14:49,159 --> 01:14:56,319
truly doubt that anyone, shepherd or
not had ever seen any soreer afraid than

848
01:14:56,399 --> 01:15:00,720
I was at that moment. I'm
sure I was quite the dash shepherd.

849
01:15:00,840 --> 01:15:05,439
Since Mama had made my shepherd's garb. My costume was not very elaborate and

850
01:15:05,600 --> 01:15:12,079
consisted of a drab brown and orange
rectangular piece of heavy course upholstery type cloth

851
01:15:12,359 --> 01:15:15,840
that was secured around my neck with
a headband and hung low to about my

852
01:15:16,000 --> 01:15:21,399
knees in the back. If ancient
shepherds had shopped at the same fabric store

853
01:15:21,399 --> 01:15:27,039
as Mama, they likely would have
picked this very same fabric, perhaps even

854
01:15:27,159 --> 01:15:30,560
altering scripture. And Lo, the
Angel of the Lord came upon them,

855
01:15:30,600 --> 01:15:36,800
And the Angel confusedeth greatly, saying, verily I asketh ye, do ye

856
01:15:36,880 --> 01:15:44,199
wear it upon thy heads? The
coverings from the cushions of thine davenport The

857
01:15:44,239 --> 01:15:47,720
rest of my costume was just what
I'd have normally worn a school, probably

858
01:15:47,840 --> 01:15:53,399
blue plaid pants and a blue twill
shirt. I think this is what I

859
01:15:53,439 --> 01:15:57,079
wore every day for about three years, without the head dress, of course,

860
01:15:57,520 --> 01:16:00,640
because every picture we had from that
era sh me sporting the same trendy

861
01:16:00,680 --> 01:16:05,960
plaid pants and blue shirt, and
this ensemble did little to boast her belief

862
01:16:05,960 --> 01:16:13,399
in my sheep herting abilities. For
several years after my theatrical debut, we

863
01:16:13,560 --> 01:16:17,479
always had that very large piece of
coarse fabric in the hall closet. It

864
01:16:17,520 --> 01:16:21,960
really wasn't good for anything, but
was too good to throw away, and

865
01:16:23,000 --> 01:16:26,840
then one day, like a bolt
from the blue, I had a brainstorm

866
01:16:27,000 --> 01:16:30,880
or perhaps an aneurysm. This piece
of cloth was big enough to allow some

867
01:16:31,039 --> 01:16:35,079
type of flight, and it was
large enough for a small parachute, even

868
01:16:35,119 --> 01:16:42,319
though small isn't necessarily a desirable quality
in parachutes. But with a parachute you

869
01:16:42,359 --> 01:16:45,840
still had to get up into the
wild blue yonder, and I didn't know

870
01:16:45,920 --> 01:16:49,880
anyone with an airplane, so that
pretty much ruled out a parachute. That

871
01:16:49,960 --> 01:16:56,479
really only left one option as far
as flight was concerned, a hang glider.

872
01:16:57,399 --> 01:17:01,079
Now, I had seen them on
TV in their construction seemed ridiculously simple.

873
01:17:01,880 --> 01:17:06,359
So I decided a hang glidder it
would be, and my plan practically

874
01:17:06,399 --> 01:17:12,800
formed itself. I had the covering
and some material for the frame. I'd

875
01:17:12,880 --> 01:17:16,920
have this knocked out by lunch and
be airborne by early afternoon. Centers of

876
01:17:16,960 --> 01:17:21,960
gravity in Bernoli's principles of flight be
damned. They meant little to me at

877
01:17:23,000 --> 01:17:27,239
this point, as I could not
be bothered by such technicalities. I had

878
01:17:27,239 --> 01:17:30,840
a flying machine to build, and
building the frame was just as easy as

879
01:17:30,880 --> 01:17:35,640
I thought it would be. I
formed a giant V by nailing together two

880
01:17:35,680 --> 01:17:41,279
eight foot long pieces of leftover one
by two molding, and this formed the

881
01:17:41,319 --> 01:17:45,279
outline of my machine. Now I
needed a good comfortable handle to hang from

882
01:17:45,560 --> 01:17:49,039
and to steer with, so I
cut the head off a hole and nailed

883
01:17:49,039 --> 01:17:54,439
it to the handle across my frame. And I used extra nails here for

884
01:17:54,520 --> 01:17:59,079
safety reasons. I'm just guessing,
but I bet this is where the saying

885
01:17:59,319 --> 01:18:03,640
fly off the handle originated. What
other twelve year old glider builders probably have

886
01:18:03,920 --> 01:18:11,159
used too few nails. At this
point I was practically finished. All that

887
01:18:11,319 --> 01:18:14,800
was left was to cover the frame
with the shepherd's cloth, and I was

888
01:18:14,840 --> 01:18:19,039
ready for takeoff. I stretched the
cloth tightly over the frame and tacked it

889
01:18:19,079 --> 01:18:25,199
into place every few inches, with
roofing nails done, and man, did

890
01:18:25,239 --> 01:18:29,600
it look good. I couldn't believe
how easy it was to construct a first

891
01:18:29,680 --> 01:18:33,640
rate flying machine. And why didn't
everyone else have one of these? Oh

892
01:18:33,640 --> 01:18:38,479
well, it was their loss,
And besides, that left more room in

893
01:18:38,520 --> 01:18:44,640
the skies for me. Seeing how
quickly this was coming together, I already

894
01:18:44,680 --> 01:18:49,000
loosely formulated a plan for launching my
machine, and launching off of the house

895
01:18:49,039 --> 01:18:54,000
would only allow for a very limited
flying time, so I had to locate

896
01:18:54,079 --> 01:19:00,680
somewhere much higher. On TV,
the glider pilots launched from cliffs overlooking the

897
01:19:00,720 --> 01:19:04,760
Pacific Ocean. The closest thing to
a cliff in our neighborhood was located on

898
01:19:04,800 --> 01:19:12,119
the grounds of Wingfield High School.
The campus was comprised of three terraced levels,

899
01:19:12,600 --> 01:19:15,960
the faces of which sloped at about
thirty degrees, and from ground level

900
01:19:16,119 --> 01:19:20,399
to the second level was about fifteen
feet, and about the same between the

901
01:19:20,439 --> 01:19:25,840
second and the third levels. There
was a place there, however, that

902
01:19:26,039 --> 01:19:30,159
went from the first level to the
third, a thirty foot cliff with a

903
01:19:30,199 --> 01:19:35,199
thirty degree face, just perfect for
glider launching. Why this place wasn't covered

904
01:19:35,279 --> 01:19:41,279
up with glider enthusiasts was beyond me, but I viewed it as merely my

905
01:19:41,359 --> 01:19:45,640
good fortune. Wingfield was about a
quarter mile from my house, and I

906
01:19:45,720 --> 01:19:49,880
decided to walk there with my glider
instead of trying to carry my machine on

907
01:19:49,920 --> 01:19:54,560
my bike, which would have been
very difficult given the size of my flying

908
01:19:54,640 --> 01:19:59,399
machine. It also would have meant
another trip back to the school to retrieve

909
01:19:59,479 --> 01:20:04,199
my bike once I had flown home. Walking that far while carrying my glider

910
01:20:04,279 --> 01:20:09,880
gave me plenty of time to plan
my flight. I figured I'd first circle

911
01:20:09,960 --> 01:20:14,039
the school a couple of times to
get a feel for operating my glider,

912
01:20:14,439 --> 01:20:17,000
and then I'd set out over the
neighborhoods and over the houses of a few

913
01:20:17,079 --> 01:20:25,039
friends, finally landing at my house. I was both excited and proud as

914
01:20:25,119 --> 01:20:30,920
I walked along Scanlon Drive, carrying
my machine and dreaming of places to visit.

915
01:20:30,720 --> 01:20:36,199
I can only imagine what passing motorists
and earthbound homeowners thought as I walked

916
01:20:36,199 --> 01:20:42,880
past with my glorious flying machine.
So great was there envy that their mechanical

917
01:20:42,960 --> 01:20:49,119
laughter was probably the only way they
could express jealousy of that magnitude. Arriving

918
01:20:49,319 --> 01:20:54,680
at my departure site, I made
ready for flight, which was not an

919
01:20:54,760 --> 01:21:00,560
involved procedure. I firmly grasped the
hoe handle about to way away from the

920
01:21:00,680 --> 01:21:02,720
edge of the hill a few feet
to allow for a running take off.

921
01:21:03,279 --> 01:21:06,520
I took a deep breath and tightened
my grip and ran as fast as I

922
01:21:06,520 --> 01:21:12,319
could over the edge of the drop
off. And it worked. I was

923
01:21:12,399 --> 01:21:15,840
flying, not as far or as
high as I had hoped, but I

924
01:21:15,920 --> 01:21:21,239
was flying nonetheless. Actually, I
flew no higher or no further than I

925
01:21:21,279 --> 01:21:27,039
would have had I not had a
flying machine. Truthfully, I guess I

926
01:21:27,119 --> 01:21:30,159
was just falling through space with a
whole handle, molding, nails, and

927
01:21:30,239 --> 01:21:38,000
several yards of fabric, temporarily buoyed
by dreams and ignorance. The ghosts of

928
01:21:38,079 --> 01:21:42,680
two great thinkers were relieved that day. Their laws held hard and fast,

929
01:21:42,840 --> 01:21:48,079
undeniable, unwavering, and unforgiving.
Bernoli's laws of flight would not be challenged,

930
01:21:48,119 --> 01:21:54,720
and Galileo's laws governing falling bodies proved
true. Yet once again, I

931
01:21:54,720 --> 01:21:59,520
didn't bother to carry my creation back
home, since it had somehow become heavier

932
01:21:59,760 --> 01:22:11,039
after testing Chapter fourteen six mini bikes
and a micro bus. With apologies to

933
01:22:11,159 --> 01:22:17,680
Beck, my memory of Christmas past
is the warm, intoxicating elixir that sues

934
01:22:17,760 --> 01:22:25,159
the spastic seizures of any current Christmas
season. With the revelry of Christmas present

935
01:22:25,279 --> 01:22:30,039
comes visits to Christmas's past. The
selection of the family tree was always a

936
01:22:30,039 --> 01:22:34,560
special occasion. Now I'm sure everybody
all over the world has a memory of

937
01:22:34,720 --> 01:22:40,680
just where they bought their trees.
As a South Jackson boy, anything we

938
01:22:40,840 --> 01:22:45,560
bought, if it didn't come from
Sears downtown, was bought from some merchant

939
01:22:45,600 --> 01:22:50,000
on Ellis Avenue between Highway eighty and
Westland Plaza, And so it was with

940
01:22:50,079 --> 01:22:57,520
our Christmas trees. At the northwest
corner of the intersection of Highway eighty and

941
01:22:57,640 --> 01:23:02,640
Ellis Avenue stood Gibson's Department Store,
and every year in their parking lot appeared

942
01:23:02,640 --> 01:23:10,079
a Christmas tree huckster right after Thanksgiving. I vividly remember one particular outing to

943
01:23:10,119 --> 01:23:14,239
buy our tree. It was some
year in the early seventies, as we

944
01:23:14,319 --> 01:23:18,600
all loaded up into our nineteen sixty
eight VW van and headed to the Christmas

945
01:23:18,640 --> 01:23:24,960
tree lot. The van was an
acquisition from the prior Christmas, when my

946
01:23:25,079 --> 01:23:30,359
Daddy came home with it loaded with
six mini bikes. We didn't ask questions.

947
01:23:30,000 --> 01:23:33,840
He was a wheeler dealer and it
wasn't unusual to come home and find

948
01:23:33,880 --> 01:23:39,720
new things a boat, a motor
home, a Jaguar, the car not

949
01:23:39,800 --> 01:23:44,039
the animal, although alive jaguar would
have not been all that surprising, either

950
01:23:44,600 --> 01:23:47,159
a pile of rifles, or,
in this case, a micro bus jam

951
01:23:47,239 --> 01:23:53,399
full of mini bikes. The little
bus had been a boring white, but

952
01:23:53,479 --> 01:23:57,439
at some point Daddy took it and
had the van painted a bright yellow.

953
01:23:58,039 --> 01:24:03,199
It was fantastic, like a rolling
Beatles album, and since we hauled all

954
01:24:03,239 --> 01:24:10,359
the tiny motorcycles in it, the
bus smelled perpetually like gasoline. The previous

955
01:24:10,399 --> 01:24:15,159
owner had glued turquoise colored carpet to
the floor and walls, making for a

956
01:24:15,199 --> 01:24:20,239
garish color combination, and we loved
it. We always had a Scotch Pine,

957
01:24:20,520 --> 01:24:25,479
so like the ten or so years
before, my dad bought another Scotch

958
01:24:25,560 --> 01:24:29,840
Pine. But this year we also
bought a wreath with a red bow that

959
01:24:29,920 --> 01:24:33,479
fit perfectly around the VW logo on
the front of the little German bus,

960
01:24:33,880 --> 01:24:39,000
and with our Scotch Pine tied atop
the van and the wreath on the front.

961
01:24:39,359 --> 01:24:44,199
It was a bell bottom scene straight
out of psychedelic hippie versions of Norman

962
01:24:44,319 --> 01:24:49,760
Rockwell paintings. Here half a century
later, when I passed a Christmas tree

963
01:24:49,840 --> 01:24:55,640
lot anywhere, I think back to
that Christmas with the little yellow micro bus

964
01:24:55,920 --> 01:25:00,600
outfitted with its wreath for the season, and I can smell the lingering fragrances

965
01:25:00,640 --> 01:25:06,439
from that Christmas. Most folks remember
the sense of evergreen, gingerbread and peppermint.

966
01:25:08,159 --> 01:25:16,960
I remember evergreen and gasoline. Chapter
fifteen, the dance of the sugar

967
01:25:17,119 --> 01:25:24,960
alternative plum Fairy. We've all seen
the bumper stickers lose weight. Ask me

968
01:25:25,159 --> 01:25:30,640
how well it's really no secret.
Calories in must be less than calories out.

969
01:25:31,000 --> 01:25:38,079
It's a very simple mathematical equation.
Calories in must be less than calories

970
01:25:38,119 --> 01:25:43,920
out, or for the dyslexic,
calories out is greater than calories in.

971
01:25:45,199 --> 01:25:49,720
With the existence of Little Debbie's Christmas
tree snackcakes around at yule Tide, that

972
01:25:49,880 --> 01:25:56,680
simple formula isn't as simple as it
appears. But take heart, as there

973
01:25:56,800 --> 01:26:03,199
is another holiday treat that can help. Did the claws cleanse while sitting around

974
01:26:03,199 --> 01:26:09,159
the outside fireplace. One evening near
Christmas, I was lamenting, that's a

975
01:26:09,159 --> 01:26:13,359
better sounding way to say, whining
that I sure missed having a big old

976
01:26:13,439 --> 01:26:17,079
mug of hot chocolate and that there
ought to be a Keto low carb version.

977
01:26:18,319 --> 01:26:21,880
Jennifer, being the good wife she
is, knuck off to the kitchen

978
01:26:23,000 --> 01:26:29,000
to make my wishes come true.
She mixed vanilla almond milk cream and cocoa

979
01:26:29,000 --> 01:26:32,399
powder and a saucepan and brought it
to a boil, and to sweeten it,

980
01:26:32,520 --> 01:26:36,560
she added several of the sugar alternatives
we use, along with a new

981
01:26:36,600 --> 01:26:42,520
one we're trying. And oh my, it was delicious, so delicious,

982
01:26:42,560 --> 01:26:46,119
in fact, that I had two
very large mugs of it. About thirty

983
01:26:46,119 --> 01:26:51,960
minutes after it was invented, the
Claws cleans was named. That's common knowledge

984
01:26:53,000 --> 01:26:58,159
that some of the artificial sweeteners can
have a laxative effect. Well guess what.

985
01:26:58,920 --> 01:27:02,920
That newest sweet we tried didn't just
have a laxative effect. It bordered

986
01:27:03,000 --> 01:27:09,119
on what I call propulsive. This
was not a passing thing either, at

987
01:27:09,199 --> 01:27:14,840
least not in one sense. For
about twelve hours, my enters sounded like

988
01:27:14,960 --> 01:27:19,760
you'd put billiard balls in the clothes
dryer. During my ensuing hours in the

989
01:27:19,800 --> 01:27:24,279
bathroom, I had plenty of time
to work on my marketing plan for the

990
01:27:24,399 --> 01:27:30,520
Claw's Cleans. Water is approximately eight
pounds per gallon, and with conservatively five

991
01:27:30,600 --> 01:27:36,279
gallons of ejective produced, I ciphered
that I had easily lost at least forty

992
01:27:36,279 --> 01:27:41,720
pounds in one night. Now I'm
thinking that the marketing sales pitch for the

993
01:27:41,760 --> 01:27:46,600
Claw's Cleans would cause a consumer to
forgive the process considering the amazing results.

994
01:27:47,159 --> 01:27:53,960
And I'm thinking a festive, glossy
brochure with maybe some gold full highlights or

995
01:27:54,079 --> 01:27:58,760
glitter of some sort, and then
some catchy prose. How does this sound?

996
01:28:00,119 --> 01:28:03,720
Enjoy our rich, hot, delicious
holiday Claws Cleans, and after a

997
01:28:03,800 --> 01:28:09,479
short, pleasant, seven hour bathrooms
day, you'll be a new forty pounds

998
01:28:09,560 --> 01:28:14,680
lighter U, just in time for
the holiday office party. Maybe have a

999
01:28:14,720 --> 01:28:18,479
photo of a skinny model in a
slinky party dress sipping cocktails at the bottom

1000
01:28:18,520 --> 01:28:24,399
of the brochure, or cousin Eddie
with a moose glass full of Claws cleans,

1001
01:28:24,439 --> 01:28:30,680
exclaiming it's the gift that keeps on
giving Clark. There will of course

1002
01:28:30,760 --> 01:28:35,199
be assorted small print disclaimers at the
bottom, warning not to drink Claws cleans

1003
01:28:35,439 --> 01:28:42,000
before doing strenuous exercise, to wear
an extra large adult diaper for twelve hours

1004
01:28:42,239 --> 01:28:46,760
after consuming product, and that we
are not responsible for repainting your house should

1005
01:28:46,760 --> 01:28:53,840
you sneeze. You know, just
the typical legal stuff. If anybody would

1006
01:28:53,920 --> 01:28:57,479
like to try some, I can
provide free samples. If you'd like to

1007
01:28:57,479 --> 01:29:00,920
be able to squeeze into that sequin
to party dress, or if you'd just

1008
01:29:01,079 --> 01:29:05,039
like to make room for a few
boxes of Little Debbies Christmas tree caches.

1009
01:29:05,840 --> 01:29:15,720
The results are guaranteed. Chapter sixteen, The Gods of Rock. At one

1010
01:29:15,760 --> 01:29:18,840
point in my life I thought I
needed to know how to play a guitar.

1011
01:29:19,720 --> 01:29:24,680
A few guys that I knew that
could play were considered cool, and

1012
01:29:24,800 --> 01:29:30,039
Hendrix and Page and Townshend seemed to
be doing okay, too well. Actually

1013
01:29:30,199 --> 01:29:32,880
Hendrix was dead, but other than
that he seemed to be doing okay.

1014
01:29:34,119 --> 01:29:39,199
Brody decided that he'd like to play
too, so off we went to Worland's

1015
01:29:39,359 --> 01:29:44,640
Music, where we bought a couple
of Japanese made les Paul copies. Mine

1016
01:29:44,760 --> 01:29:48,000
was black and his was sunburst,
and we bought a small peevy amp.

1017
01:29:48,880 --> 01:29:53,800
We had all we needed to conquer
the rock world, except the ability to

1018
01:29:53,880 --> 01:29:59,000
play. We solved that little problem, too sweet by signing up for six

1019
01:29:59,159 --> 01:30:02,600
lessons. I figured the last three
lessons would be just a waste of time

1020
01:30:03,000 --> 01:30:08,079
since the first three would be all
we'd really need. Plus we'd probably be

1021
01:30:08,199 --> 01:30:12,840
out on the road somewhere touring with
the band. The first lesson was a

1022
01:30:12,880 --> 01:30:16,359
real eye opener. We showed up
with our new axes, ready to rock.

1023
01:30:17,279 --> 01:30:23,039
We were led to a tiny little
soundproof room where we were instructed to

1024
01:30:23,079 --> 01:30:28,760
take our guitars from their cases.
We nailed that first step. I figured

1025
01:30:28,800 --> 01:30:32,640
we were well on our way to
start them so easily mastering our first instructions.

1026
01:30:33,760 --> 01:30:36,600
Now, I was skeptical of our
teacher, what with her being a

1027
01:30:36,720 --> 01:30:41,680
lady and all. But if Anne
and Nancy Wilson could do it, I

1028
01:30:41,760 --> 01:30:45,279
figured maybe she could too. My
hopes, however, were dashed when she

1029
01:30:45,359 --> 01:30:49,600
pulled out something she called a tuning. For Law was baffled, thinking,

1030
01:30:49,920 --> 01:30:54,319
what the heck is she trying to
pull? I want to play guitars,

1031
01:30:54,359 --> 01:30:57,399
not work on them. I mean, I had just spent three hundred and

1032
01:30:57,479 --> 01:31:00,880
fifty dollars on a brand new guitar, he's telling me it isn't even tuned.

1033
01:31:01,600 --> 01:31:05,640
Furthermore, she went on, it
would have to be tuned periodically for

1034
01:31:05,680 --> 01:31:11,159
the rest of its life. Well, I was a little dismayed but humored

1035
01:31:11,199 --> 01:31:16,239
by her following her instructions in tuning
my guitar. This took nearly half the

1036
01:31:16,319 --> 01:31:20,600
lesson time, and I was beginning
to have doubts about this lady. But

1037
01:31:20,680 --> 01:31:28,439
after the excruciating, extended tuning session, I was certain my guitar was ready

1038
01:31:28,479 --> 01:31:33,560
to gently weep, as if to
intentionally delay my ascent to rock stardom.

1039
01:31:33,720 --> 01:31:40,000
She next launches into a lecture on
notes and chords and measures and such.

1040
01:31:41,039 --> 01:31:45,720
While every good boy may indeed do
fine, it seemed a bit tangential to

1041
01:31:45,760 --> 01:31:48,359
what I was seeking, like with
learning golf and having to use all those

1042
01:31:48,399 --> 01:31:53,199
other clubs in the bag as opposed
to just hitting the ball in the hole

1043
01:31:53,279 --> 01:31:59,279
off the tee. Perhaps she had
misunderstood exactly what type of lessons we wanted.

1044
01:32:00,199 --> 01:32:03,520
I didn't want lessons on how to
teach classical guitar. I was looking

1045
01:32:03,560 --> 01:32:08,199
to learn how to play songs,
you know, smoke on the water and

1046
01:32:08,279 --> 01:32:13,119
walk this way, assorted Van Halen
tunes, or even Johnny B. Good

1047
01:32:13,159 --> 01:32:17,760
in some Freebird or Stairway to Heaven
for the slow dance sections. It was

1048
01:32:17,800 --> 01:32:23,279
inevitable that I had to ask,
just to prove her abilities, can you

1049
01:32:23,359 --> 01:32:27,439
even play Stairway to Heaven? Well, sure, she said, and she

1050
01:32:27,520 --> 01:32:32,560
took my guitar and launched into the
Zeppelin classic. Great her bona fides assured.

1051
01:32:33,000 --> 01:32:38,319
Now we could get down to business. I'm thinking, surely, the

1052
01:32:38,359 --> 01:32:43,600
next thing she'd have us do is
practice our star spangled banner Hendrick style with

1053
01:32:43,720 --> 01:32:48,279
our teeth, or at least some
Pete Townshend style wind milling exercises clockwise or

1054
01:32:48,399 --> 01:32:54,119
counter clockwise, it didn't matter.
But nope, not even some old school

1055
01:32:54,199 --> 01:32:59,119
chuck Berry duck walking or lighting.
Even the tiniest amount of lighter fluid squirted

1056
01:32:59,159 --> 01:33:02,560
on our new guitar yours. This
was turning out to be a nightmare.

1057
01:33:04,159 --> 01:33:10,920
Eventually this torture ended and we were
sent off to practice scales or chords or

1058
01:33:11,000 --> 01:33:16,000
some such nonsense until our next lesson. I don't remember going back, so

1059
01:33:16,119 --> 01:33:20,359
let this be a lesson to all
you guitar teachers. When a teenage boy

1060
01:33:20,479 --> 01:33:25,479
shows up with an electric guitar,
the first thing you do is show him

1061
01:33:25,520 --> 01:33:29,520
how to plug it in and turn
it up to eleven, and then slide

1062
01:33:29,560 --> 01:33:32,760
the pick up and down the strings
while working that whammy bar like a chimpanzee

1063
01:33:32,920 --> 01:33:39,279
freebasing red bull. And if he's
agreeable, I'm sure he will be light

1064
01:33:39,359 --> 01:33:44,319
it on fire and swing that new
Chinese strat over your head like a sledgehammer

1065
01:33:44,560 --> 01:33:48,119
and smash the heck out of his
tiny little amp. If the amp should

1066
01:33:48,199 --> 01:33:54,399
spew sparks and catch on fire too, then so much the better. He'll

1067
01:33:54,439 --> 01:33:59,920
be back next week, I guarantee
you. As for me, I quick

1068
01:34:00,119 --> 01:34:03,880
league grew bored of tuning and trying
to make chords and all the other tomfoolery,

1069
01:34:04,159 --> 01:34:08,760
and I sold my guitar and put
the money towards something that didn't require

1070
01:34:08,800 --> 01:34:13,880
all that silly musical knowledge. I
bought a giant set of drums. You

1071
01:34:13,920 --> 01:34:17,439
don't have to read music. There
are no chords, and tuning is optional.

1072
01:34:18,279 --> 01:34:21,279
All you need to know is how
to hit things and count, and

1073
01:34:21,439 --> 01:34:27,600
usually only to four. The only
things simpler is a kazoo rock. On

1074
01:34:30,520 --> 01:34:40,039
chapter seventeen, verily doth thy smoketh
thy swine. Barbecue joints are about as

1075
01:34:40,119 --> 01:34:45,159
ubiquitous throughout the South, as are
cracker barrels, yet each is a unique

1076
01:34:45,319 --> 01:34:48,880
entity in its own right, the
barbecue joints. That is, because the

1077
01:34:48,880 --> 01:34:55,560
cracker barrels country fried steak is the
same in Tuscaloosa as it is in Tallapoosa.

1078
01:34:56,640 --> 01:35:00,800
There's nothing wrong with consistency, and
cracker barrel has that down pat But

1079
01:35:00,880 --> 01:35:08,680
barbecue joints, true barbecue joints,
are the very essence of uniqueness. About

1080
01:35:08,720 --> 01:35:14,199
the only thing they have in common
other than delicious smoke assorted barnyard animals is

1081
01:35:14,239 --> 01:35:17,800
their name. And even that topic
is particularly ornery, what with all the

1082
01:35:17,840 --> 01:35:26,800
barbecue versus barbecue versus barbecue, on
and on. One common trait most good

1083
01:35:26,880 --> 01:35:30,479
barbecue joints have is that at one
time they've all been burned down. The

1084
01:35:30,560 --> 01:35:35,560
really good ones have burned down several
times. Most all of them are just

1085
01:35:35,760 --> 01:35:42,159
ramshackle, wobbly wooden structures, built
of light or not pine and infused with

1086
01:35:42,359 --> 01:35:46,359
years and years of pork fat smoke. Honestly, I'd be more surprised if

1087
01:35:46,399 --> 01:35:53,399
they didn't burn down. The combination
of fire and wood and grease just has

1088
01:35:53,520 --> 01:35:59,479
the structure is fully involved written all
over it. Heck, the first chickens

1089
01:35:59,520 --> 01:36:02,119
to come out of a newly rebuilt
joint, or probably cooked with the charred

1090
01:36:02,159 --> 01:36:09,000
remains of the previous building. A
tasty bird smoked for hours over the charcoal

1091
01:36:09,079 --> 01:36:14,319
made by the fire of the last
structure is a delicious Southern phoenix of sorts.

1092
01:36:15,640 --> 01:36:20,279
Barbecue is a very personal thing too, like religion. Some like sweet

1093
01:36:20,319 --> 01:36:27,319
barbecue and prefer the King James version
of the Holy Word, while other blasphemers

1094
01:36:27,439 --> 01:36:32,960
prefer Carolina style barbecue and the trendy
NSV or some other hippie perversion of the

1095
01:36:33,000 --> 01:36:40,159
Good Book. But the truth be
told, all barbecue is good. Unfortunately,

1096
01:36:40,520 --> 01:36:45,359
most of the heathen or heathen,
as my memo said, non Christian

1097
01:36:45,560 --> 01:36:50,279
religions like Judaism and Islam. For
example, consider a pulled pork sandwich was

1098
01:36:50,479 --> 01:36:57,279
law on top on one way ticket
to Shoal in succulent sliced brisket with a

1099
01:36:57,359 --> 01:37:01,920
perfect pink smoke ring and a side
of beans insureds reincarnation as a dong beetle.

1100
01:37:02,119 --> 01:37:08,720
For the Hindus, the Buddhists are
a little more culinarily tolerant. But

1101
01:37:08,800 --> 01:37:14,439
have you ever seen real Chinese food? About half of it should technically go

1102
01:37:14,520 --> 01:37:18,680
to the gut pile. I'm sure
all these other religions have their beloved delicacies,

1103
01:37:19,000 --> 01:37:24,840
but I'm sticking with Jesus in a
pork but cooked fourteen hours over pecan

1104
01:37:24,920 --> 01:37:34,960
wood. Hallelujah. Chapter eighteen,
A Briefer History of Time. Time has

1105
01:37:35,000 --> 01:37:41,680
always fascinated me. It really only
has importance to mortal beings. We only

1106
01:37:41,720 --> 01:37:45,960
measure it because we have limited quantity
of it. Next to a creator who

1107
01:37:46,000 --> 01:37:53,399
inexplicably loves us. It is the
most precious thing in our lives. In

1108
01:37:53,439 --> 01:37:57,600
the hereafter, a clock will have
as much use as a blind man has

1109
01:37:57,600 --> 01:38:01,079
for the really big boxes of crayons, the one with the sharpener on the

1110
01:38:01,119 --> 01:38:06,600
back, and all the good colors
like Rasmataz silver and gold and Coarellian blue.

1111
01:38:08,560 --> 01:38:13,119
So, to borrow a partial title
from Stephen Hawking, Here's a briefer

1112
01:38:13,399 --> 01:38:18,880
history of time. I find it
amusing that TV producers have seemingly settled on

1113
01:38:19,039 --> 01:38:25,680
twenty years as being the threshold for
nostalgia. Take Happy Days, for instance.

1114
01:38:26,359 --> 01:38:30,079
It came out in the seventies,
and it was about life twenty years

1115
01:38:30,159 --> 01:38:33,680
prior. In the fifties, as
a fifth grader, I was enthralled by

1116
01:38:33,680 --> 01:38:40,039
the antics and rituals in everyday life
of these most ancient of peoples, and

1117
01:38:40,079 --> 01:38:44,159
as far as I'm concerned, the
nineteen fifties, in the eighteen sixties,

1118
01:38:44,439 --> 01:38:48,800
and the Jurazic era were all relatively
about the same place on the timeline,

1119
01:38:49,159 --> 01:38:55,000
and I doubt I'd have even questioned
it had Phonsie ridden up on a triceratops

1120
01:38:55,159 --> 01:39:00,439
as opposed to a motorbike. I
was also totally oblivious to the fact that

1121
01:39:00,479 --> 01:39:04,600
I was watching a show about my
parents' teenage years, as I envisioned them

1122
01:39:04,680 --> 01:39:12,319
as possible Civil War participants. What
I viewed as ancient history were there yesterdays.

1123
01:39:13,399 --> 01:39:16,640
There was, however, a huge
difference between nineteen fifty five and nineteen

1124
01:39:16,800 --> 01:39:24,279
seventy five, far different than between
two thousand and twenty and twenty. Between

1125
01:39:24,399 --> 01:39:29,960
nineteen fifty five and nineteen seventy five, we went from straight leg Levi's to

1126
01:39:30,159 --> 01:39:35,079
elephant bell bottoms, from hot rods
to oil embargoes, from white T shirts

1127
01:39:35,079 --> 01:39:41,720
to Paisley's psychedelics, and from chastity
and Purity to the Summer of Love,

1128
01:39:41,920 --> 01:39:47,199
and from Sobriety to LSD, from
Spotnick to Beatnicks, and from the Cleavers

1129
01:39:47,239 --> 01:39:54,039
May Feel to the Moon there was
indeed a vast difference in those two times.

1130
01:39:54,359 --> 01:39:58,319
Now about the only thing to change
in the last twenty years is that

1131
01:39:58,439 --> 01:40:02,079
all electronics now have more memory,
and the world has gotten smaller, while

1132
01:40:02,199 --> 01:40:08,319
cell phones have gotten larger, and
China now manufactures everything on the planet,

1133
01:40:08,760 --> 01:40:13,920
and there are a few more fast
and furious movies. I think, in

1134
01:40:14,039 --> 01:40:18,560
keeping with the twenty year nostalgia theory, each decade since the advent of TV

1135
01:40:19,000 --> 01:40:25,319
has had its tribute twenty years later. As we've already covered, the fifties

1136
01:40:25,359 --> 01:40:29,680
were honored in the seventies, and
the sixties were relived in the eighties by

1137
01:40:29,680 --> 01:40:34,479
the best show ever to oscillate across
the airwaves, the Wonder Years. The

1138
01:40:34,520 --> 01:40:42,119
seventies were a flashback in the nineties
on the imaginatively named That Seventies Show.

1139
01:40:43,199 --> 01:40:47,000
There was even a short lived spinoff
of That Seventies Show about the eighties called

1140
01:40:47,000 --> 01:40:54,680
Astoundingly That Eighties Show. As the
decades since have all become so similar,

1141
01:40:54,800 --> 01:40:59,000
the twenty year theory looks to be
less and less like a hard fast rule

1142
01:40:59,279 --> 01:41:04,640
and maybe just a chronological anomaly applicable
to the late twentieth century, and as

1143
01:41:04,680 --> 01:41:10,520
a current resident of the timeline near
the dot mark twenty twenty two, I

1144
01:41:10,560 --> 01:41:14,239
can't, for the life of me
think of anything appealing about the turn of

1145
01:41:14,279 --> 01:41:18,439
the century, other than being relieved
to mark that milestone, Remembering that as

1146
01:41:18,479 --> 01:41:24,520
an eighteen year old in nineteen seventy
nine, I noted I'd be a decrepit

1147
01:41:24,640 --> 01:41:29,399
thirty nine years old at the stroke
of two thousand, and I wondered if

1148
01:41:29,439 --> 01:41:32,600
I'd still be able to choose solid
food or walk, or if I'd like

1149
01:41:32,720 --> 01:41:38,640
my new nursing home. But other
than the fact that Princess Song nineteen ninety

1150
01:41:38,720 --> 01:41:43,960
nine finally had a use, and
that the number two thousand made cool eyeglasses

1151
01:41:44,000 --> 01:41:47,359
for New Year's Eve, what with
the two o's as eye holes, I've

1152
01:41:47,439 --> 01:41:54,199
essentially become stagnant as a species.
I think we truly peaked in the fifties

1153
01:41:54,199 --> 01:42:01,520
and sixties, and I'm truly glad
to have lived it. Chapter nineteen,

1154
01:42:02,079 --> 01:42:09,239
the probe ning there are certain things
we do as humans that occur seemingly simple.

1155
01:42:09,560 --> 01:42:14,600
For completing so many trips around the
sun, complete thirteen trips, and

1156
01:42:14,680 --> 01:42:17,560
if you're a Jewish boy, you
break in the booty at your bar mitzvah,

1157
01:42:18,119 --> 01:42:23,920
make sixteen round trips and you can
operate an automobile. And after fifty

1158
01:42:24,000 --> 01:42:30,359
round trips, the medical establishment tells
us that we need a colonoscopy. Now.

1159
01:42:30,399 --> 01:42:35,439
Colonoscopy is a word derived from the
Greek terms colon meaning poop tube and

1160
01:42:35,560 --> 01:42:43,840
scapi means look up, hence the
modern medical term colonoscopy, literally meaning look

1161
01:42:43,920 --> 01:42:46,479
up your poop tube. Now,
my Greek is limited, so I may

1162
01:42:46,520 --> 01:42:53,560
be a little off base, but
not much as lost in the translation at

1163
01:42:53,600 --> 01:42:57,680
fifty two. I'd dodge the button
bullet for two years, but I'd given

1164
01:42:57,760 --> 01:43:01,479
into the pressure of conventional wisdom,
and I've grown weary of waiting on the

1165
01:43:01,520 --> 01:43:06,680
aliens. Honestly, I was hoping
for an alien abduction by now, and

1166
01:43:06,800 --> 01:43:12,399
since by most all accounts, a
thorough probing is part of the standard alien

1167
01:43:12,439 --> 01:43:17,800
abduction exam, considering their advanced knowledge
and tools, that the alien procedure would

1168
01:43:17,840 --> 01:43:23,279
be more pleasant and they would be
kind enough to just leave a notarized written

1169
01:43:23,399 --> 01:43:29,199
document with the test results for an
inclusion in my medical record and any insurance

1170
01:43:29,279 --> 01:43:34,880
reimbursements. I'd also imagine that should
they find any anomalies in my bowels,

1171
01:43:35,239 --> 01:43:41,439
they'd have the technology to instantly cure
any maladies, and I'd be deposited back

1172
01:43:41,479 --> 01:43:45,079
in my bed, none the worse
for wear, and with a good story

1173
01:43:45,079 --> 01:43:49,199
to boot. It does seem odd, though, that any civilization that has

1174
01:43:49,359 --> 01:43:56,880
mastered interstellar travel would do so simply
for the opportunity to look up the backside

1175
01:43:57,079 --> 01:44:01,520
of any new life forms they discovered. Who knows, maybe we did that

1176
01:44:01,560 --> 01:44:09,199
to aliens we found at Roswell and
this is just payback. Imagine Kirk traveling

1177
01:44:09,239 --> 01:44:14,479
the galaxy only to peer into the
nether regions of triples and then zooming off

1178
01:44:14,520 --> 01:44:19,279
at warp speed in the USS endoscope
to probe the Gorn. Knowing what we

1179
01:44:19,439 --> 01:44:24,600
know now, I'm sure mister Sulhu
would have been a proponent, but I'm

1180
01:44:24,600 --> 01:44:30,039
not sure about the rest of the
crew. I'm not real versed in interplanetary

1181
01:44:30,079 --> 01:44:34,119
species interactions, so maybe, unlike
just sniffing each other's butts like dogs,

1182
01:44:34,479 --> 01:44:40,399
the standard protocol throughout the universe involves
a good probing. Now, I don't

1183
01:44:40,439 --> 01:44:45,319
know Stephen Hawking can figure all that
out anyhow. The aliens let me down,

1184
01:44:45,560 --> 01:44:49,840
so I'm left to be probed by
mere human doctors. Luckily, the

1185
01:44:49,920 --> 01:44:54,640
doctor doing my procedure is older and
has done quite a few of these,

1186
01:44:55,000 --> 01:44:59,279
and I would dare say that he's
been up more backsides than the village people

1187
01:44:59,479 --> 01:45:03,600
and Fredick Mercury combined. But like
Captain Kirk, he's going where no man

1188
01:45:03,680 --> 01:45:10,640
has gone before. Actually, since
you're unconscious for the procedure, you really

1189
01:45:10,680 --> 01:45:15,840
don't expect any discomfort. And frankly, they could just insert a twelve foot

1190
01:45:15,880 --> 01:45:19,680
long section of three foot covert and
crawl in like coal miners with pickaxes and

1191
01:45:19,760 --> 01:45:26,159
carbide lanterns on their hard hats,
and you'd be none the wiser. The

1192
01:45:26,239 --> 01:45:30,359
catch, and there's always a catch, is what they euphemistically called the prep.

1193
01:45:31,800 --> 01:45:36,399
Prep is a common word short for
preparation, and we all know it

1194
01:45:36,439 --> 01:45:42,920
means to make ready for an event. Prep can involve everything from simply making

1195
01:45:42,960 --> 01:45:46,920
a phone call to reserving a seat
for dinner, to years of organizing a

1196
01:45:47,039 --> 01:45:51,479
program to send a man to the
moon like the Apollo missions. The prep

1197
01:45:51,520 --> 01:45:58,239
for dinner is obviously less involved than
sending a rocket into space. Prep is

1198
01:45:58,279 --> 01:46:04,039
relative and its intensity equal to the
task being undertaken. In this particular instance,

1199
01:46:04,279 --> 01:46:09,840
where you are prepping for a flanking
mission, prep means that your entire

1200
01:46:09,960 --> 01:46:15,560
eleimitary canal from your wisdom teeth down
to your exit sphincter must be as clean

1201
01:46:15,640 --> 01:46:20,880
as the day you first drew breath, squeaky clean. Actually, my examples

1202
01:46:20,920 --> 01:46:27,720
of prep involving dinner reservations in space
travel is more illustrative than I thought in

1203
01:46:27,760 --> 01:46:32,640
this situation, since it involves ingesting
something and then expelling it like a Saturn

1204
01:46:32,720 --> 01:46:38,840
V rocket. To give you a
visual, not that you ask for one

1205
01:46:38,920 --> 01:46:44,239
nor want one, let's enlist the
help of the amazing Guido, the sword

1206
01:46:44,359 --> 01:46:49,159
swallower at the local carnival. Imagine
Guido goes to the local pay and spray

1207
01:46:49,239 --> 01:46:55,000
car wash. He inserts his one
dollar and twenty five cents into the slot

1208
01:46:55,439 --> 01:47:00,479
and he chooses hot foamy soap from
the selection dial. Goes into his act,

1209
01:47:00,840 --> 01:47:06,039
his sequined robes sparkling in the sunlight. He inserts the wine fully down

1210
01:47:06,079 --> 01:47:13,079
his gozle and pulls the trigger.
A three thousand psi burst of foul foamy

1211
01:47:13,159 --> 01:47:18,760
fluid flows freely from the flamboyant freaks, flapping floodgates like flatulence through a flashy

1212
01:47:19,000 --> 01:47:26,399
flugelhorn. And while it bordered on
being Sussian, you've got to admit that

1213
01:47:26,560 --> 01:47:32,479
was some first rate alliteration right there. Guido's demonstration and my eighth grade English

1214
01:47:32,520 --> 01:47:39,079
experiment give you some idea of the
prep. Movie Prep is the brand name

1215
01:47:39,239 --> 01:47:44,000
of the heinous witches brew responsible for
the cleansing, and I'm sure that the

1216
01:47:44,000 --> 01:47:47,880
makes of movie Prep are allied with
Satan, because only through the dark arts

1217
01:47:47,920 --> 01:47:54,239
and sorcery can one lid of liquid
be magically converted within the confines of the

1218
01:47:54,319 --> 01:48:00,960
human gut into twenty gallons of the
violess substance. Only demons can now they

1219
01:48:01,000 --> 01:48:04,399
sure missed the boat. However,
when it came to naming the product,

1220
01:48:05,119 --> 01:48:10,920
most products have a name that somewhat
describes what they do. Hamburger Helper,

1221
01:48:11,279 --> 01:48:16,880
Mister Clean, and Ultra Bright toothpaste
are all good examples. I suggest Movie

1222
01:48:16,960 --> 01:48:25,920
Preps seriously reconsider naming their product something
like Mount Vesuvius Intestinal polish or General Will

1223
01:48:26,039 --> 01:48:32,800
m t. Sherman's Cleansing Elixir.
The catchy advertising copy practically writes itself the

1224
01:48:32,920 --> 01:48:42,560
suvious the power to destroy civilizations,
or Pintubo feel the pyroclastic flow of cleanliness,

1225
01:48:43,239 --> 01:48:47,920
or the General's Elixir. We go
through you like Sherman through Atlanta.

1226
01:48:47,960 --> 01:48:53,600
But enough of that they can write
their own copy. I'm given to understand

1227
01:48:53,640 --> 01:48:58,920
that the current medical dogma says that
one should have a colonoscopy every ten years.

1228
01:48:59,439 --> 01:49:02,039
Assuming that that doesn't change in the
next few years, my math puts

1229
01:49:02,079 --> 01:49:08,720
the next violation occurring in the year
twenty twenty four. Surely, within the

1230
01:49:08,760 --> 01:49:13,199
span of a decade, the aliens
will step up their game and maybe partner

1231
01:49:13,279 --> 01:49:17,960
with Google or Apple and offer their
eyegut services or Google Probe free with the

1232
01:49:18,000 --> 01:49:24,920
purchase of the iPhone twenty seven,
unless socialized medicine puts the aliens out of

1233
01:49:25,000 --> 01:49:30,800
work too, in which case we're
all doomed to an existence of polypy colons

1234
01:49:30,840 --> 01:49:38,760
and solid bowel movements. I'm pulling
for the aliens. PS postop nine thirty

1235
01:49:38,880 --> 01:49:45,680
am Wednesday. All went as scheduled, and I have a colon and an

1236
01:49:45,920 --> 01:49:51,239
esophagus as clean as a polished alabasterer. I'm still under the effects of the

1237
01:49:51,439 --> 01:49:56,800
drugs and I was told I'd be
gassy, but no such luck. And

1238
01:49:57,319 --> 01:50:02,279
after I'd practiced farting freebird for the
last few days off for nothing. It

1239
01:50:02,399 --> 01:50:08,920
was a holy enjoyable experience, except
for the prep. So if you're over

1240
01:50:09,079 --> 01:50:14,239
fifty, you get your wrinkly old
butt out there and schedule your own rectal

1241
01:50:14,359 --> 01:50:24,600
violation. The proper fall alone is
worth it. Chapter twenty Monkey Shines.

1242
01:50:26,439 --> 01:50:30,960
Hurricane Katrina left us both homeless and
officeless, So after a few years of

1243
01:50:31,039 --> 01:50:36,000
renting, it came time to build
my wife a new dental office. As

1244
01:50:36,039 --> 01:50:41,680
the male spouse, it fell upon
me to organize and oversee the construction of

1245
01:50:41,720 --> 01:50:45,800
a modern, efficient medical facility.
It's not that I'd ever done anything like

1246
01:50:45,880 --> 01:50:49,720
that before, but it seemed a
manly thing to do, and Jennifer was

1247
01:50:49,720 --> 01:50:55,199
too busy doing dentistry, and the
autumn flounder run was all but over.

1248
01:50:56,079 --> 01:50:59,760
I figured I was way in over
my head, and I reckon that commercial

1249
01:50:59,800 --> 01:51:05,000
could instruction would be akin to rocket
scigns. Being the perceptive sage I am,

1250
01:51:05,319 --> 01:51:10,399
it didn't take me long to come
to the conclusion that most construction workers

1251
01:51:10,479 --> 01:51:16,399
are illiterate cretans with rusty out of
pond tools and severe substance abuse problems.

1252
01:51:17,279 --> 01:51:20,920
I surmised it wouldn't take more than
a few days to train monkeys to do

1253
01:51:21,000 --> 01:51:27,079
most of their jobs. After calling
all the local pet stores, it became

1254
01:51:27,239 --> 01:51:31,199
obvious that the fatal flaw in my
plan was the actual acquisition of the needed

1255
01:51:31,399 --> 01:51:36,359
semion laborers. A few stores had
some of the smaller varieties, but what

1256
01:51:36,479 --> 01:51:42,199
I really needed was about a couple
of dozen of hearty chimpanzees, not a

1257
01:51:42,239 --> 01:51:46,239
handful of pygmy marmosets that could barely
pick up a hammer and let alone well

1258
01:51:46,319 --> 01:51:51,520
to red iron. They'd probably just
grow tired and lazy after a few wells

1259
01:51:51,560 --> 01:51:56,680
and start throwing poop at one another, just like the human welders. But

1260
01:51:56,760 --> 01:52:01,399
at least I could shoot the monkeys. Plan really started to unrival when I

1261
01:52:01,479 --> 01:52:05,560
learned the cost of monkeys. Since
no one had the number or type of

1262
01:52:05,600 --> 01:52:11,119
monkeys I required in stock, I
was left to import them or get the

1263
01:52:11,199 --> 01:52:15,960
leftovers from the medical testing labs.
The lab monkeys were mostly sick or dying

1264
01:52:16,079 --> 01:52:20,199
or had three arms, which should
have been an advantage, but alas,

1265
01:52:20,359 --> 01:52:26,119
instead of hammering with the extra arm, they merely flung twice the poop.

1266
01:52:27,439 --> 01:52:31,039
I had a really great follow up
plan to offset the initial purchase price of

1267
01:52:31,079 --> 01:52:36,640
my labor force by having a big
fundraising barbecue at the conclusion of construction.

1268
01:52:38,439 --> 01:52:43,439
A feeding monkeys pulled port wouldn't have
really netted me a return on my outlay.

1269
01:52:43,840 --> 01:52:47,359
So my ingenious plan was to barbecue
the monkeys and sell the sandwiches to

1270
01:52:47,399 --> 01:52:53,319
the folks in the area. Monkey
sandwiches may not sound appetizing, but I

1271
01:52:53,439 --> 01:52:58,479
planned to sell them for only two
dollars, undercutting my competition and making it

1272
01:52:58,600 --> 01:53:02,680
up in volume. The whole monkey
business sort of fell apart before it got

1273
01:53:02,720 --> 01:53:08,399
started, so I was left to
deal with the only other animal sporting opposable

1274
01:53:08,479 --> 01:53:13,840
thumbs, or, in some cases, due to drunken circular saw fights,

1275
01:53:13,960 --> 01:53:16,920
just a single thumb. Now,
I'm not going to go so far as

1276
01:53:16,920 --> 01:53:21,800
to say all criminals are manual laborers, but I can say with some certainty

1277
01:53:21,840 --> 01:53:29,560
that all manual laborers are criminals.
In Mississippi, contractors must be licensed,

1278
01:53:29,920 --> 01:53:33,359
and I suspect it's for the same
reason sex offenders are required to register.

1279
01:53:34,000 --> 01:53:41,279
They need to know where the criminals
are. The requirements to obtain a contractor's

1280
01:53:41,319 --> 01:53:45,640
license are pretty stringent. One must
have a truck, preferably twelve years old

1281
01:53:45,720 --> 01:53:50,720
or older, and a magnetic sign
attached to the door displaying your business name

1282
01:53:51,159 --> 01:53:57,760
and the disconnected cell phone number of
your last girlfriend. The truck is the

1283
01:53:57,840 --> 01:54:02,479
workman's best friend, like the cowboy
trusty paint, and unfortunately, most workers

1284
01:54:02,560 --> 01:54:09,239
trucks are far less reliable than the
cowboys mount The monkeys would have lived on

1285
01:54:09,439 --> 01:54:15,840
site and totally done away with the
transportation problem. But I digress. Most

1286
01:54:15,880 --> 01:54:20,680
workers trucks operate only intermittently. On
cold, rainy, wet days when work

1287
01:54:20,800 --> 01:54:25,680
is called off, I'd see them
motor by the job site with their deer

1288
01:54:25,760 --> 01:54:30,479
rifles in their window racks and ice
chests full of malted aiming fluid bouncing in

1289
01:54:30,560 --> 01:54:34,880
the beds of their trucks. Of
course, on the next sunny, temperate

1290
01:54:34,960 --> 01:54:40,239
day, the farthest they can coax
Old Blue is to the corner tavern,

1291
01:54:40,560 --> 01:54:45,520
where they go in and discuss for
the next twelve hours what could potentially be

1292
01:54:45,680 --> 01:54:50,279
wrong with their trucks. Despite all
the setbacks, our nine month long project

1293
01:54:50,520 --> 01:54:56,279
was done well ahead of schedule,
taking a mere fourteen months and going over

1294
01:54:56,399 --> 01:55:03,319
budget of paltry thirty five Percent's office
turned out beautifully and has worked flawlessly for

1295
01:55:03,439 --> 01:55:09,000
her. She, her staff,
and her patients love the new office.

1296
01:55:09,720 --> 01:55:15,920
Plus I learned a few very important
things about commercial construction when importing monkeys,

1297
01:55:15,079 --> 01:55:21,640
always poke holes in the shipping container
and never lend a drywall hangar twenty dollars

1298
01:55:21,800 --> 01:55:32,119
for beer, Chapter twenty one.
God save the Queen's fine china. There

1299
01:55:32,159 --> 01:55:36,960
are some things that seem to endure
well past their usefulness. Heck, that

1300
01:55:38,079 --> 01:55:43,720
might even be the definition of tradition. One of those useless traditions was,

1301
01:55:44,119 --> 01:55:46,960
and I'm not sure if it still
exists, but it did thirty plus years

1302
01:55:46,960 --> 01:55:54,800
ago when I got married, the
buying of fine dinnerware. My mama obviously

1303
01:55:54,840 --> 01:55:59,720
skipped that tradition, though, because
as a child most of our glassware originally

1304
01:55:59,800 --> 01:56:05,239
held jelly and was made by Bama
or Gorum. Most every other prospective bride,

1305
01:56:05,239 --> 01:56:11,359
though from Eve up through those in
the nineteen nineties, mine included beat

1306
01:56:11,399 --> 01:56:16,039
the trail to the local department stores
either Gafers or McRae's to pick out a

1307
01:56:16,079 --> 01:56:21,239
fine china pattern and sterling, as
well as their everyday plates and forks.

1308
01:56:23,680 --> 01:56:29,520
The fine china was meant to be
enduring and added to or pieces replaced throughout

1309
01:56:29,520 --> 01:56:34,279
a lifetime of entertaining, visiting potentates
and such. You'd never know when you

1310
01:56:34,359 --> 01:56:39,399
might be mowing the yard and the
Queen of England stops by for a spot

1311
01:56:39,439 --> 01:56:44,000
of tea, and you'd better have
a full lead crystal Lady Anne iced tea

1312
01:56:44,039 --> 01:56:49,399
glass at the ready, her Highness
could eat her scones whatever those are off

1313
01:56:49,439 --> 01:56:56,319
the wedgewood, strawberry and vine pattern
scone plate. I'm just assuming they make

1314
01:56:56,359 --> 01:57:00,640
a royal scone plate, since there
is apparently a specialized pea for nearly everything

1315
01:57:00,760 --> 01:57:06,399
else. I mean, what kind
of barbarian would serve the queen some sweet

1316
01:57:06,680 --> 01:57:11,960
iced tea from a gravy boat and
offer up fresh scones from a soup to

1317
01:57:12,079 --> 01:57:17,119
reen? You can never be too
prepared, hence the enduring tradition of owning

1318
01:57:17,159 --> 01:57:23,600
a compotier. Should the Queen also
request compote with her scones. Although I'm

1319
01:57:23,640 --> 01:57:27,720
not one hundred percent sure what either
of those two things are or whether they

1320
01:57:27,760 --> 01:57:32,920
would ever even possibly be served together, that doesn't preclude one from owning such

1321
01:57:33,000 --> 01:57:38,880
pieces, though as similarly, I
own a giant wrench big enough to twist

1322
01:57:38,880 --> 01:57:44,600
the lugnots off a locomotive, although
like an accent salad plate, I suspect

1323
01:57:44,600 --> 01:57:48,399
I'll never really need it, and
no wonder one needs a butler. The

1324
01:57:48,439 --> 01:57:54,720
sterling can be mighty complicated, should
the Queen wish to put butter on her

1325
01:57:54,800 --> 01:57:59,399
scones, and again, not knowing
what that is, that may make as

1326
01:57:59,479 --> 01:58:03,159
much sinse is her buttering her hat. She could choose from about eight different

1327
01:58:03,199 --> 01:58:09,720
butter knives. Don't mistake the master
butter knife with the individual use knives,

1328
01:58:09,840 --> 01:58:15,359
lest the queen think you a ghost. Some of the less used pieces include

1329
01:58:15,359 --> 01:58:19,199
the lemon forks, the sardine spoon, and cracker spoon. But there is

1330
01:58:19,239 --> 01:58:26,560
the possibility, however, slim,
that a Norwegian print suffering with scurvy could

1331
01:58:26,680 --> 01:58:30,000
have a flat in front of your
place, and it would be kind of

1332
01:58:30,039 --> 01:58:34,399
you to offer him a lemon and
some sardines and crackers. The larger of

1333
01:58:34,439 --> 01:58:40,680
the two tomatoes servers, in addition
to serving tomatoes in grand fashion, does

1334
01:58:40,880 --> 01:58:45,439
just as good a job serving tiny
little pancakes or getting the last pickle out

1335
01:58:45,439 --> 01:58:48,680
of the jar, assuming your butler
doesn't have time to find your pickle fork.

1336
01:58:49,800 --> 01:58:55,600
I suspect the single time butter pick
was just made of leftover parts as

1337
01:58:55,640 --> 01:58:59,960
a joke, and some southerns soon
to be bride just had to have one.

1338
01:59:00,560 --> 01:59:05,039
I finally got curious enough to google
scone. Well, it turns out

1339
01:59:05,079 --> 01:59:10,279
it's just a biscuit. You can
throw a handful of blueberries into the mix

1340
01:59:10,319 --> 01:59:14,439
too, if you like. And
I'm sure there is a dedicated sterling silver

1341
01:59:14,600 --> 01:59:19,920
blueberry biscuit making fork somewhere in your
pantry. Ask your butler, and if

1342
01:59:19,960 --> 01:59:25,960
the Queen does drop by, just
call your biscuits scones. She'll be impressed.

1343
01:59:26,479 --> 01:59:33,840
I know I would be Chapter twenty
two something odd in the punch Bowl.

1344
01:59:35,520 --> 01:59:41,720
It started innocently enough, as most
disasters do, with a simple conversation,

1345
01:59:42,920 --> 01:59:46,520
like when JFK said, Jackie,
I'm thinking about visiting Dallas, or

1346
01:59:46,560 --> 01:59:50,399
when Lincoln told his wife that he
had tickets to a new play over at

1347
01:59:50,399 --> 01:59:57,239
Ford's Theater. My ensuing escapades didn't
get me shot in the head, but

1348
01:59:57,359 --> 02:00:00,319
there was a moment where I wish
it had. You see, my wife

1349
02:00:00,399 --> 02:00:05,520
had several of Robert Saint John's cookbooks, and I enjoyed reading his pieces in

1350
02:00:05,560 --> 02:00:12,039
the newspaper. So when my sweet
mama got when that mister Saint John was

1351
02:00:12,119 --> 02:00:16,319
going to appear at the Great Southern
Club, she called and surprised us with

1352
02:00:16,439 --> 02:00:20,960
the gift of a couple of tickets. That's where it all started going wrong.

1353
02:00:23,439 --> 02:00:27,640
It was a typical weekend night in
downtown Gulf Port. There was no

1354
02:00:27,680 --> 02:00:30,960
one about except at the eating and
drinking establishments, so we were lucky to

1355
02:00:31,039 --> 02:00:35,319
park up front since we were running
a bit late. We spoke to the

1356
02:00:35,399 --> 02:00:41,279
security guard and took the elevator to
the top floor, and we were greeted

1357
02:00:41,319 --> 02:00:44,479
at the door of the club,
and we told a nice lady that we

1358
02:00:44,479 --> 02:00:47,600
were there for the Robert Saint John's
event, and she ushered us to a

1359
02:00:47,640 --> 02:00:53,920
private dining room. We were met
there by a couple of very prim ladies

1360
02:00:53,960 --> 02:00:59,640
attired in eveningwear and sporting gloves.
No less, I didn't know mister Saint

1361
02:00:59,720 --> 02:01:03,119
John at that point, and I
still don't, but I assume he must

1362
02:01:03,119 --> 02:01:08,920
be one classy guy if he has
women of his caliber working the door and

1363
02:01:08,960 --> 02:01:14,039
collecting his loot. I was sure, if the commercials were correct, that

1364
02:01:14,119 --> 02:01:19,199
he enjoyed gray poupon at every meal. The elegant ladies looked us up and

1365
02:01:19,239 --> 02:01:24,279
down in a quizzical manner, but
I just assumed they were admiring my red

1366
02:01:24,319 --> 02:01:29,119
and white, vertically striped polo shirt
and a fairly fresh pair of deck shoes.

1367
02:01:30,680 --> 02:01:33,880
Now, we've all heard of the
fight or flight reaction when placed in

1368
02:01:33,920 --> 02:01:40,279
a stressful situation. Although I'm not
sure it's ever been tested in this exact

1369
02:01:40,359 --> 02:01:45,279
situation. That situation being that we've
now entered a dining room filled with people

1370
02:01:45,439 --> 02:01:50,520
in formal attire. Jennifer looked at
me, and I looked at her,

1371
02:01:50,920 --> 02:01:55,840
and I think she had already made
the flight decision, but I, for

1372
02:01:55,880 --> 02:02:01,119
some explicable reason, had decided to
fight abed her hand and assess the situation,

1373
02:02:01,319 --> 02:02:04,640
and chose the table in the middle
of the room. We walked over,

1374
02:02:04,760 --> 02:02:09,319
and I pulled out a couple of
chairs and proclaimed, the good evening

1375
02:02:09,439 --> 02:02:14,279
ladies and gentlemen, would you all
mind if we joined you. Remember,

1376
02:02:14,319 --> 02:02:16,960
these fine folks are in evening wear, and I'm in that shirt that I

1377
02:02:17,039 --> 02:02:23,560
described earlier. It looked for all
the world like a war's waldo goes to

1378
02:02:23,640 --> 02:02:28,760
the Penguin hatchery image, or possibly
a clown in a mob funeral. And

1379
02:02:28,800 --> 02:02:31,800
I admitted that we were apparently under
dressed, but that I had no idea

1380
02:02:31,840 --> 02:02:38,520
that mister Saint John commanded such hyebrow
audiences. One of the kind of elegant

1381
02:02:38,600 --> 02:02:44,279
ladies at our table explained that this
was the annual formal event for their private

1382
02:02:44,359 --> 02:02:47,720
supper club, and I'm sure in
her mind she was wondering just how Waldo

1383
02:02:47,880 --> 02:02:53,600
and his plus one were able to
get tickets. Honestly, I was wondering

1384
02:02:53,640 --> 02:02:59,199
the same thing at that time.
About this time, a very fortuitous break

1385
02:02:59,239 --> 02:03:03,119
in the unpleasant and presented itself in
the standing and pledging of allegiance to the

1386
02:03:03,199 --> 02:03:08,439
flag. Heck, I looked half
like a flag myself, so maybe that's

1387
02:03:08,479 --> 02:03:12,680
why many of them were looking at
me. I don't know. One lady

1388
02:03:12,760 --> 02:03:17,920
remained conspicuously seated, however, and
this was long before the whole Colin Capernick

1389
02:03:18,039 --> 02:03:24,239
thing, so I didn't figure she
was protesting anything. One of the other

1390
02:03:24,319 --> 02:03:29,359
ladies at our table, who had
apparently arrived early so as to extract maximum

1391
02:03:29,359 --> 02:03:33,119
benefit from the open bar, loudly
proclaimed, well, I see someone doesn't

1392
02:03:33,159 --> 02:03:39,680
know how to respect the flag.
The seated woman then stood up and spat

1393
02:03:39,800 --> 02:03:44,920
back in an obvious British accent.
I'm a British subject and I don't pledge

1394
02:03:44,920 --> 02:03:48,720
to your flag. Now this is
getting fun, I think, hoping that

1395
02:03:48,720 --> 02:03:54,279
the limey chick would break out a
cricket bat or a spotted dick, whatever

1396
02:03:54,319 --> 02:03:59,119
that is, and things would get
real. But such wasn't the case,

1397
02:03:59,159 --> 02:04:03,520
and we return to our civil chit
chat. Eventually, mister Saint John did

1398
02:04:03,560 --> 02:04:08,640
take the podium, and it turned
out to be a pleasant, enjoyable evening

1399
02:04:08,720 --> 02:04:14,479
after all, complete with an invitation
to join their club and directions to several

1400
02:04:14,600 --> 02:04:19,439
formal wear providers. I replied,
with the same enthusiasm I use on the

1401
02:04:19,520 --> 02:04:26,359
Jehovah's witnesses, that I'd be thrilled
to join their ranks. Should mister Saint

1402
02:04:26,439 --> 02:04:30,159
John ever be in your neck of
the woods, I could highly recommend that

1403
02:04:30,239 --> 02:04:33,520
you see him, but I'd enquire
about the dress code just to be sure.

1404
02:04:38,479 --> 02:04:45,039
Chapter twenty three He sent Quail.
Two thousand and eight was a year

1405
02:04:45,199 --> 02:04:49,840
of leaving. In February, Brody
left us suddenly, and seven months later

1406
02:04:49,960 --> 02:04:55,880
Paul Paul left to go see him. Jennifer and I moved into our little

1407
02:04:55,880 --> 02:05:00,119
house on the Bay that October.
Not long after that, maybe with a

1408
02:05:00,359 --> 02:05:04,640
year, I heard a pleasantly familiar
but wholly unexpected sound, the call of

1409
02:05:04,680 --> 02:05:10,760
a Bob White Quail. This call
was followed by another, but from a

1410
02:05:10,760 --> 02:05:16,319
slightly different location. There were two
Bob White's calling, and memories came flooding

1411
02:05:16,359 --> 02:05:20,239
back from years before, when Paupaul, Brody, Brad and Eye hunted the

1412
02:05:20,279 --> 02:05:26,000
tall pine forests just north of the
smell of salt air, where the rivers

1413
02:05:26,039 --> 02:05:30,239
turned sweet. Wild quail were hard
to find forty five years ago, and

1414
02:05:30,359 --> 02:05:34,600
even harder to find now, which
was why it was so surprising to hear

1415
02:05:34,760 --> 02:05:41,720
their familiar call so far from their
usual haunts. I call my quail,

1416
02:05:41,840 --> 02:05:45,800
Brody and Paul Paul, and after
five years, they are still here.

1417
02:05:45,960 --> 02:05:49,359
Early one morning, when I went
down to the pier, the toss'es ara

1418
02:05:49,520 --> 02:05:54,800
spook about to see if any trout
were interested. I heard them call.

1419
02:05:55,680 --> 02:05:59,560
Anyone else hearing them would hear the
same, Bob White, But I hear

1420
02:05:59,680 --> 02:06:04,079
more. I hear We're here,
and all is well. Some people may

1421
02:06:04,119 --> 02:06:09,760
think it sacrilegious or bordering on the
occult, to think that wild animals may

1422
02:06:09,800 --> 02:06:15,520
bring comfort from beyond, But I'm
not so sure. God used birds many

1423
02:06:15,600 --> 02:06:19,359
times to bring comfort. Noah sent
out a raven, and then the dove

1424
02:06:19,520 --> 02:06:26,199
that returned with the olive leaf.
God directed the ravens to feed Elijah,

1425
02:06:26,279 --> 02:06:30,359
and when the Israelites were fleeing Egypt, they asked and he brought them quail.

1426
02:06:31,399 --> 02:06:36,520
I asked for comfort, and I
too was brought quail. I've enjoyed

1427
02:06:36,520 --> 02:06:41,279
my quail for the last five years, and I've not mentioned them to anyone.

1428
02:06:41,479 --> 02:06:45,079
So when I received this text from
Brad, I laughed out loud as

1429
02:06:45,079 --> 02:06:48,359
I read it. Haven't heard a
real Bob White call outside in years.

1430
02:06:48,760 --> 02:06:54,119
I just heard one outside Mama's house, and he gave me goosebumps. It

1431
02:06:54,199 --> 02:06:58,359
made me think of Paupaul. I
called and told him of my out of

1432
02:06:58,439 --> 02:07:01,399
place quail too, and we both
agreed. It was indeed odd to hear

1433
02:07:01,439 --> 02:07:06,640
the Bob whitecall within the suburban environment
a stone's throw from the Gulf, but

1434
02:07:06,720 --> 02:07:13,239
for both of us it stirred memories
of happy times, and people passed and

1435
02:07:13,399 --> 02:07:20,960
joy at the thought of the visit. Chapter twenty four. The summer of

1436
02:07:21,119 --> 02:07:30,319
sixty nine nineteen sixty nine was only
fifteen years distance when Brian Adams waxed nostalgic

1437
02:07:30,359 --> 02:07:34,119
about it. Fifteen years is nothing. I have socks older than that,

1438
02:07:34,960 --> 02:07:41,439
really, But the summer of nineteen
sixty nine, currently fifty years distance,

1439
02:07:41,600 --> 02:07:45,079
did indeed have some sort of magic
about it. It was a summer of

1440
02:07:45,159 --> 02:07:50,199
deeply embossed memories. I was only
eight, so the summer of sixty nine

1441
02:07:50,359 --> 02:07:56,359
really didn't mean to me on Catalina
Circle in South Jackson, Mississippi. What

1442
02:07:56,520 --> 02:08:01,600
it meant to the doped up hippies
in the height Asbery neghborhood in San Francisco,

1443
02:08:01,840 --> 02:08:05,600
or for the kids on Max Gasker's
farm. It wasn't the Summer of

1444
02:08:05,720 --> 02:08:11,600
love that was nineteen sixty seven,
but it was summer and I loved it,

1445
02:08:11,880 --> 02:08:16,560
so that was close enough. I
wasn't totally removed from the hippie scene,

1446
02:08:16,640 --> 02:08:20,479
though, since my mama and Daddy
were, although ancient, seemingly only

1447
02:08:20,479 --> 02:08:24,479
in their twenties, and when we
weren't listening to an old miss football game

1448
02:08:24,520 --> 02:08:30,439
on the radio, we listened to
Jimmy Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Big

1449
02:08:30,479 --> 02:08:33,840
Brother and the Holding Company, Blood, Sweat and Tears, and occasionally a

1450
02:08:33,880 --> 02:08:39,760
little Johnny Cash on a brown plastic
eight track player. The fashions and wild

1451
02:08:39,880 --> 02:08:45,239
colors of the era were particularly appealing
to me, as I remember, on

1452
02:08:45,319 --> 02:08:50,319
occasion dressing like my mama had shopped
for me at a second hand discount clown

1453
02:08:50,479 --> 02:08:56,680
clothing store. Stripes worn with plaids
of totally contrasting palettes were completely acceptable.

1454
02:08:58,840 --> 02:09:03,880
My absolute favorite thing of the hippie
era, however, was, bizarrely enough,

1455
02:09:03,079 --> 02:09:09,600
the psychedelic pencils with which I scribbled
my way through the third grade.

1456
02:09:09,640 --> 02:09:13,199
I smile when I think about those
pencils. I love those pencils. I

1457
02:09:13,279 --> 02:09:18,279
still do. I vividly remember writing
with them while sitting at my desk in

1458
02:09:18,359 --> 02:09:26,520
an unair conditioned portable classroom outside of
a OLDA Tapeley Wilkins Elementary School. The

1459
02:09:26,560 --> 02:09:31,600
smell of the freshly mimograph tests,
still damp from the reproduction process, was

1460
02:09:31,680 --> 02:09:37,319
intoxicating, while the sweltering heat of
September and the muffled, hypnotic droning of

1461
02:09:37,359 --> 02:09:43,880
a large fan dulled our senses.
The trance was occasionally broken, though,

1462
02:09:43,159 --> 02:09:48,800
when a kid would vomit after lunch
and the fan would disperse the fragrance of

1463
02:09:48,880 --> 02:09:54,079
milk, Salisbury steak and green peas
and sheet cake throughout the hot classroom,

1464
02:09:54,199 --> 02:09:58,960
leading to a few other kids wasting
their thirty five cent lunch too, until

1465
02:09:58,039 --> 02:10:03,239
the waves of st and the janiture
arrived with his bucket. But the swirls

1466
02:10:03,279 --> 02:10:07,680
of colors on the floor paled by
comparison to the colors on my pencils,

1467
02:10:09,039 --> 02:10:15,520
which thrilled my soul as I vainly
struggled with numerators and denominators and the smell

1468
02:10:15,680 --> 02:10:22,000
of vomit. The pinnacle of mankind's
technological achievements occurred in nineteen sixty nine.

1469
02:10:22,079 --> 02:10:28,520
Two. That was, of course, the July twentieth moonlanding. One small

1470
02:10:28,600 --> 02:10:33,119
step and all that, it is
difficult to accept the fact that in the

1471
02:10:33,159 --> 02:10:39,239
following half century weave as a species
have done nothing even remotely as amazing.

1472
02:10:39,720 --> 02:10:46,439
We've rested on our lunar laurels and
failed. The social experiments have been all

1473
02:10:46,520 --> 02:10:50,079
the rage for the last fifty years, and only the invention of the wheel

1474
02:10:50,159 --> 02:10:54,479
could weakly compare to the moon landing. And I suppose that taking the wheel

1475
02:10:54,520 --> 02:11:00,199
with us to the moon on Apollo
fifteen was the best of both achievements.

1476
02:11:01,199 --> 02:11:05,039
I fear America's best days are behind
her, as the pride we felt when

1477
02:11:05,079 --> 02:11:11,199
our flag was planted in the lunar
dust has now been replaced with hatred of

1478
02:11:11,279 --> 02:11:16,479
anything American, the worship of mediocrity, and the normalizing of evil. And

1479
02:11:16,560 --> 02:11:22,279
I'm glad to have lived through the
best of our existence as American men rode

1480
02:11:22,359 --> 02:11:28,960
rockets to the moon. On returning
to Iola Tapeley Wilkins Elementary School in the

1481
02:11:28,960 --> 02:11:33,319
fall of nineteen seventy there was a
new plaque on the wall outside the principal's

1482
02:11:33,359 --> 02:11:37,760
office commemorating the moon landing. I'd
like to think it is still there,

1483
02:11:37,800 --> 02:11:41,920
and would one day like to look
at it again. Given the current trend

1484
02:11:41,960 --> 02:11:46,359
of destroying history. As such,
I'd not be surprised to see it having

1485
02:11:46,439 --> 02:11:50,880
been removed. There is no way
to mention nineteen sixty nine and not mention

1486
02:11:52,000 --> 02:11:56,560
the muscle cars of the day,
just like space travel, cars reached their

1487
02:11:56,680 --> 02:12:03,600
zenith in nineteen sixty nine, had
Mustangs and Terrenos, and GM had Camaros,

1488
02:12:03,680 --> 02:12:09,520
and Corvettes and GTOs and Firebirds.
Mopar had their Kudahs and Roadrunners and

1489
02:12:09,600 --> 02:12:13,880
super bees. Muscle cars ruled the
earth. They were everywhere, and they

1490
02:12:13,880 --> 02:12:20,119
were fairly cheap too. Imagine pulling
up to school in a nineteen sixty nine

1491
02:12:20,239 --> 02:12:24,479
Boss three O two Mustang in Grabber
blue, or a four to twenty seven

1492
02:12:24,600 --> 02:12:30,199
Corvette convertible, although as a two
seater a couple of us kids would have

1493
02:12:30,279 --> 02:12:33,359
to ride on the luggage track on
the trunk, not that that would have

1494
02:12:33,359 --> 02:12:39,319
been any big deal as the school
was fairly close, but alas we had

1495
02:12:39,359 --> 02:12:45,159
a nineteen sixty two Chevy Biscayne with
holy floorboards, and in nineteen sixty eight

1496
02:12:45,239 --> 02:12:50,159
Olds ninety eight. Now sure of
the Olds had a super plush navy blue

1497
02:12:50,239 --> 02:12:54,680
velure interior and lighters and ash trays
and all four doors, but we rarely

1498
02:12:54,760 --> 02:12:58,399
had a reason to smoke a cigar
on the way to school, so such

1499
02:12:58,399 --> 02:13:03,760
a luxury were lost on us.
The closest we got to a muscle anything

1500
02:13:03,920 --> 02:13:11,239
was a Seers Screamer bicycle or a
handful of hot Wheels cars. We eventually

1501
02:13:11,279 --> 02:13:15,680
did step up our automobile game,
but in nineteen sixty nine, in the

1502
02:13:15,760 --> 02:13:20,479
lap of luxury as opposed to on
the luggage rack, it seemed that the

1503
02:13:20,479 --> 02:13:24,520
most enduring memories of nineteen sixty nine
all took place over a twenty nine day

1504
02:13:24,640 --> 02:13:30,359
span, just a few short weeks
after the moon landing, as the hippies

1505
02:13:30,399 --> 02:13:35,239
were gathering at Woodstock, the clouds
were gathering in the golf as Hurricane Camille

1506
02:13:35,239 --> 02:13:41,600
began to form. While Hendrix the
Who and Jefferson Airplane rocked Woodstock, Camille

1507
02:13:41,680 --> 02:13:48,039
rocked the Mississippi Gulf coast. I
recall returning to the coast with Memo and

1508
02:13:48,079 --> 02:13:52,840
Paul Paul to the surreal world after
Camille, a side i'd see again as

1509
02:13:52,880 --> 02:13:58,000
an adult after Hurricane Katrina. As
a child, the devastation was fascinating.

1510
02:13:58,479 --> 02:14:03,319
You knew nothing thing of insurance and
rebuilding and lives lost. You just thought

1511
02:14:03,399 --> 02:14:07,600
it was cool that there was a
ship in the highway. Years later,

1512
02:14:07,960 --> 02:14:13,399
I'd get to experience total devastation through
the eyes of an adult, and I

1513
02:14:13,439 --> 02:14:16,600
can honestly say the view through the
eyes of a child is far less red

1514
02:14:16,640 --> 02:14:22,479
and blurry. But we lived through
both storms and came out changed and probably

1515
02:14:22,560 --> 02:14:28,359
for the better. As God's plan
is confusing at times, yet always perfect,

1516
02:14:28,199 --> 02:14:33,439
the summer of sixty nine was indeed
special, eventful, and memorable,

1517
02:14:33,680 --> 02:14:37,720
although I'm sure I'm the only one
who will sum it up as the summer

1518
02:14:37,800 --> 02:14:48,319
of pencils, spacemen, and devastation. Chapter twenty five tep grave, H

1519
02:14:48,399 --> 02:14:56,960
two, HDL extras and cold fusion
two out of three ain't bad. After

1520
02:14:56,039 --> 02:15:01,680
observing the phenomenon for years, I
finally decided to postulate a theory. It's

1521
02:15:01,720 --> 02:15:07,800
what I call the theory of enhanced
personal gravity. You may call it tep

1522
02:15:07,880 --> 02:15:11,640
graph from here on out, since
it sounds cool and if I'm to be

1523
02:15:11,720 --> 02:15:16,760
known for something, the father of
tep graph sounds especially cool. My theory

1524
02:15:16,840 --> 02:15:26,199
states that an individual's personal gravity increases
proportionately with regards to the specificity and uniqueness

1525
02:15:26,239 --> 02:15:31,359
of said individual's quest to make a
retail purchase, and such increase is inversely

1526
02:15:31,439 --> 02:15:37,960
proportional to the size of the establishment
and the number of other individuals within the

1527
02:15:37,000 --> 02:15:43,920
structure. For example, I go
to the world's largest Walmart in search of

1528
02:15:43,039 --> 02:15:50,439
synthetic chartreuse left handed helical ball bearing
oil. It is three o'clock in the

1529
02:15:50,479 --> 02:15:54,439
morning, and there are only two
other shoppers in the establishment. My theory

1530
02:15:54,560 --> 02:16:00,600
says that my personal gravity will increase
to a level of irresistible force, and

1531
02:16:00,640 --> 02:16:03,880
the two other shoppers will immediately be
drawn to the exact same spot in the

1532
02:16:03,960 --> 02:16:09,479
store where I'm standing, right in
front of the synthetic shar truce left handed

1533
02:16:09,600 --> 02:16:15,319
helical ball bearing oil. Of yet
to work out the specifics, but just

1534
02:16:15,479 --> 02:16:18,840
like cold fusion, something is going
on and I intend to get to the

1535
02:16:18,880 --> 02:16:24,920
bottom of it. Another phenomenon I've
observed, and one that is very similar

1536
02:16:26,000 --> 02:16:31,159
to the tep graph theory, is
known as the hank Hill Home depot Low's

1537
02:16:31,199 --> 02:16:37,680
theorem or H two HDL. That
theory suggests that the likelihood of finding a

1538
02:16:37,760 --> 02:16:46,440
knowledgeable and helpful employee diminishes with the
specificity and technical complexity of the item sought.

1539
02:16:46,280 --> 02:16:50,879
For instance, if you come in
just looking for something general like hardware

1540
02:16:52,079 --> 02:16:56,239
or lumber, then the helpful female
clerk with the six inch nails who doesn't

1541
02:16:56,280 --> 02:17:01,639
know an Edison based light bulb from
a survalve can point in a vague direction

1542
02:17:01,920 --> 02:17:07,159
and mumble some indistinguishable aisle number and
gets you close enough that you can wander

1543
02:17:07,200 --> 02:17:13,239
around until you find the empty peg
upon which what you came for generally hangs.

1544
02:17:13,120 --> 02:17:16,639
If, on the other hand,
your request is for a particular item,

1545
02:17:18,079 --> 02:17:22,360
like the theorem's namesake quest for some
WD forty and a tap and die,

1546
02:17:22,840 --> 02:17:28,120
then the likelihood of your being directed
to a location within the store,

1547
02:17:28,200 --> 02:17:33,399
even remotely near the item you see, falls to practically zero. At that

1548
02:17:33,479 --> 02:17:39,680
point, the helpful, well trained
professional usually deploys the often concurrent reaction known

1549
02:17:39,760 --> 02:17:48,520
in scientific circles as the extra task
revelation an alternate solutions maneuver extras, whereby

1550
02:17:48,600 --> 02:17:54,360
the helpful professional, who has no
idea what you're asking for, queries you

1551
02:17:54,559 --> 02:17:58,079
on the task that you are trying
to accomplish. And then directs you to

1552
02:17:58,159 --> 02:18:01,559
the products he used to solve the
problem. For instance, if you have

1553
02:18:01,600 --> 02:18:07,680
a titanium joint that needs welding,
and you ask for argone shielding gas and

1554
02:18:07,680 --> 02:18:13,719
some one sixteenth two percent serrated tungsten
electrodes, the helpful professional has no idea

1555
02:18:13,760 --> 02:18:18,360
what you asked for, so he
quizzes you, what are you trying to

1556
02:18:18,440 --> 02:18:22,600
do? You reply, well,
I'm trying to weld titanium. The helpful

1557
02:18:22,719 --> 02:18:28,959
professional immediately initiates the extras maneuver and
says, with all certainty, Oh,

1558
02:18:30,040 --> 02:18:33,600
you don't need all that stuff.
You just need some JB WELLD and some

1559
02:18:33,799 --> 02:18:39,520
duct tape. It'll work just as
good. The extras maneuver is rarely successful,

1560
02:18:39,639 --> 02:18:43,760
and the proper response to the usual
query of what are you trying to

1561
02:18:43,799 --> 02:18:48,319
do is I'm trying to get out
of here? Where's the exit? The

1562
02:18:48,319 --> 02:18:54,799
helpful professional then points you down an
aisle blocked by a beeping perpetually in reverse

1563
02:18:54,879 --> 02:19:00,639
forklift, surrounded by seven people with
flags and exquisite nails, and, as

1564
02:19:00,719 --> 02:19:03,600
luck would have it, as you
wander around the store looking for a way

1565
02:19:03,600 --> 02:19:11,319
out, you find an entire pallett
of synthetic shartrus left handed helocal ball bearing

1566
02:19:11,399 --> 02:19:22,479
ole for fifty percent off Chapter twenty
six, Operation Holy Turkey. Mission prep

1567
02:19:22,559 --> 02:19:28,520
is critical to mission success, and
I'm sure somebody famously said that, but

1568
02:19:28,600 --> 02:19:33,159
I don't know who, so we'll
just go with Abraham Lincoln or JFK for

1569
02:19:33,280 --> 02:19:37,760
now. My mission to buy six
turkeys for our churches Boys and Girls Club

1570
02:19:37,840 --> 02:19:45,319
Thanksgiving dinner was thwarted yesterday badly.
I went to two different Walmarts, one

1571
02:19:45,360 --> 02:19:50,840
of them twice and to win Dixie. My first Walmart trip was nearly successful,

1572
02:19:50,879 --> 02:19:54,280
as they had the required number of
turkeys, but I did a poor

1573
02:19:54,360 --> 02:20:00,040
job of acquisition. As I was
loading said turkeys into my buggy, a

1574
02:20:00,120 --> 02:20:05,360
large man who looked just like mister
T walked between me and my buggy as

1575
02:20:05,399 --> 02:20:09,520
if I weren't even there, and
snatched up the last turkey as I was

1576
02:20:09,600 --> 02:20:15,399
reaching for it. I kid you
not, As these were essentially holy turkeys

1577
02:20:15,680 --> 02:20:20,079
meant for a church function, I
felt it was inappropriate to go upside his

1578
02:20:20,159 --> 02:20:24,159
head with a twenty pound frozen turkey. Plus he was really big, so

1579
02:20:24,200 --> 02:20:28,120
I bent my tongue and I left
turkeylus. Next, I went to one

1580
02:20:28,120 --> 02:20:33,719
of the little neighborhood Walmarts, thinking
i'd fare better, but such was not

1581
02:20:33,920 --> 02:20:37,319
the case. While they had the
required number of turkeys, they were somehow

1582
02:20:37,520 --> 02:20:41,600
different and were twice the price,
And since I was buying more than one

1583
02:20:41,680 --> 02:20:48,639
hundred pounds of gobbler, that was
a substantial difference price wise, sixty eight

1584
02:20:48,719 --> 02:20:52,280
cents per pound is one thing,
A buck seventy eight is another thing.

1585
02:20:54,440 --> 02:20:58,319
Now, I'm not trying to cheap
out on these underprivileged kids, but I

1586
02:20:58,399 --> 02:21:03,719
et sixty eight cents per pound turkey
and I enjoy it. Thus Plan B

1587
02:21:03,920 --> 02:21:09,559
fails miserably, and on to Plan
C. I was within spitting distance of

1588
02:21:09,600 --> 02:21:13,079
when Dixie, so I decided,
what the heck, I'll just take a

1589
02:21:13,120 --> 02:21:18,760
look, see and evaluate the situation. Bingo, plenty of turkeys in just

1590
02:21:18,879 --> 02:21:24,000
ninety eight cents per pound with the
card. I briskly loaded the bountiful,

1591
02:21:24,040 --> 02:21:28,159
big beautiful butter balls and the buggy. I love alliteration, and I made

1592
02:21:28,200 --> 02:21:33,639
my way to the checkout stand.
That's where the mission met resistance. Well,

1593
02:21:33,680 --> 02:21:37,719
I'm sorry, sir, but you
can only buy one turkey with a

1594
02:21:37,760 --> 02:21:43,079
card. Drafts foiled again. I
consider just leaving them there in the checkout

1595
02:21:43,159 --> 02:21:48,520
line, But remember these are holy
birds, so I politely returned them from

1596
02:21:48,520 --> 02:21:54,159
whence they came. So far I
had loaded and unloaded eleven twenty pound birds

1597
02:21:54,479 --> 02:22:00,440
and it wasn't even arm day.
I don't really have body parts days.

1598
02:22:00,559 --> 02:22:05,920
It just sounded good. But now
on to Plan D. At the rate

1599
02:22:05,959 --> 02:22:09,520
I was using up plan letters,
I feared running out of them by the

1600
02:22:09,639 --> 02:22:13,399
end of the day, but I
realized, like the hurricane namers, I

1601
02:22:13,440 --> 02:22:18,559
could resort to the Greek alphabet should
the need arise. I felt better about

1602
02:22:18,600 --> 02:22:22,159
the mission naming plan, but not
so much about the actual mission. Okay,

1603
02:22:22,319 --> 02:22:26,559
I'll just go back to the big
Walmart and have the courteous associates retrieve

1604
02:22:26,680 --> 02:22:33,360
me the required turkeys from the back
wherever. That is sure enough. I

1605
02:22:33,399 --> 02:22:37,239
saw a man near the turkey freezer
who was unable to avoid making eye contact

1606
02:22:37,280 --> 02:22:43,399
with me and quickly sprint away as
they usually do, so I asked about

1607
02:22:43,479 --> 02:22:48,760
obtaining six turkeys from the back.
He said the turkeys were in the freezer

1608
02:22:48,799 --> 02:22:54,040
truck outside and that he couldn't access
that particular area. I pointed out that

1609
02:22:54,200 --> 02:22:58,680
it was a mere ten days until
Thanksgiving and their turkey cooler was completely empty,

1610
02:22:58,840 --> 02:23:01,399
and that probably was a good thing. But he assured me that in

1611
02:23:01,559 --> 02:23:07,760
just sixteen short hours the next day, at seven am, they would indeed

1612
02:23:07,959 --> 02:23:11,959
move numerous turkeys from where they were
currently located on the property to the turkey

1613
02:23:13,040 --> 02:23:16,360
cooler. Now, I no Sam
Walton, but if I had folks wanting

1614
02:23:16,399 --> 02:23:22,600
to buy turkeys, and the turkeys
were actually there on the property and Thanksgiving

1615
02:23:22,719 --> 02:23:26,760
was just days away, I'd have
someone doing nothing but moving turkeys from the

1616
02:23:26,840 --> 02:23:33,280
back to the cooler where folks could
actually buy them. On to plan Epsilon,

1617
02:23:33,639 --> 02:23:39,520
I mean e As I said,
mission prep is critical to mission success.

1618
02:23:39,680 --> 02:23:43,639
So I girded my loins, saggy
as they were, and hopped in

1619
02:23:43,760 --> 02:23:46,479
my truck early the next day and
I headed to Walmart, hoping to find

1620
02:23:46,520 --> 02:23:52,079
turkeys stacked to the ceiling. To
put me in the proper mood, I

1621
02:23:52,239 --> 02:23:56,360
listened to mercy mees I can only
imagine, and this boosted my spirits and

1622
02:23:56,440 --> 02:24:01,360
made me confident of success. The
closer I got to Walmart, however,

1623
02:24:01,520 --> 02:24:07,079
the less confident I became in success. Mercy Me just wasn't cutting it.

1624
02:24:07,079 --> 02:24:11,479
It was time to take the gloves
off. Kids were counting on me.

1625
02:24:11,239 --> 02:24:16,479
Nothing would do but five finger death
punches bad company. I turned it up

1626
02:24:16,559 --> 02:24:22,360
to about thirty two maybe thirty five, and I rolled into the parking lot

1627
02:24:22,879 --> 02:24:26,559
and victory was mine. I threw
my truck into park and I jumped out

1628
02:24:26,559 --> 02:24:31,479
while yelling cover me. I wasn't
talking to anyone in particular, and there

1629
02:24:31,559 --> 02:24:35,239
was virtually nobody else in the walmart
to hear me, but it just kind

1630
02:24:35,239 --> 02:24:43,680
of spontaneously came out. After listening
to five FDP, I donned my useless

1631
02:24:43,760 --> 02:24:48,239
paper mask, I grabbed the sun
sanitized COVID freeze, square wheeled buggy from

1632
02:24:48,280 --> 02:24:54,079
the parking lot, and I strode
in, singing Bad Company under my breath,

1633
02:24:54,559 --> 02:24:58,680
just like you just did. Yeah, I heard you. I was

1634
02:24:58,719 --> 02:25:05,239
pleasu surprised to find a very helpful
young man replenishing the turkey freezer, and

1635
02:25:05,319 --> 02:25:07,600
I told him what I wanted,
and he even helped me place six of

1636
02:25:07,639 --> 02:25:13,319
the largest birds he had in my
buggy. It's possible he heard me singing

1637
02:25:13,399 --> 02:25:18,959
Bad Company and didn't want any part
of that, but who really knows.

1638
02:25:18,840 --> 02:25:24,799
Anyhow, the mission was now complete, at least the acquisition part. The

1639
02:25:24,840 --> 02:25:30,000
cooking part comes next Sunday, so
stay tuned for perhaps another exciting mission.

1640
02:25:30,760 --> 02:25:39,680
I'm thinking Oreo's riding the storm out
might be useful. Chapter twenty seven,

1641
02:25:39,200 --> 02:25:46,040
A Puka lips well I experienced the
first recently, I changed my first dirty

1642
02:25:46,120 --> 02:25:50,239
diaper, and by mind, I
don't actually mean I was wearing a diaper,

1643
02:25:50,440 --> 02:25:56,399
but that I changed my little nephew, Dalton's diaper. Jennifer and her

1644
02:25:56,440 --> 02:26:00,440
mama left to run an erin and
they warned me that he may make poopy,

1645
02:26:00,840 --> 02:26:03,079
and that should he do so,
I could just wait for them to

1646
02:26:03,200 --> 02:26:07,159
return, and they changed him when
they got back. Well, they had

1647
02:26:07,200 --> 02:26:11,680
been gone for all of forty three
seconds, and he decided to blow.

1648
02:26:11,520 --> 02:26:15,840
There was no way I could stay
in the same room with that vile odor

1649
02:26:15,959 --> 02:26:20,559
emanating from Junior's huggies. I knew
that I was in for an event,

1650
02:26:20,840 --> 02:26:24,200
so I got creative and decided to
change him in the bathtub. That way,

1651
02:26:24,319 --> 02:26:31,000
any errant duty could just be hosed
down the drain. Dalton didn't understand

1652
02:26:31,040 --> 02:26:35,719
my plan and refused to cooperate,
so a conventional changing was in order.

1653
02:26:37,520 --> 02:26:41,840
Once that first velcrow tab is loosen, it's on and there's no going back.

1654
02:26:43,760 --> 02:26:48,680
I was convinced the apocalypse had happened. In Junior's drawers. It was

1655
02:26:48,840 --> 02:26:56,239
full bore ww F style, no
holds barred mud wrestling extravaganza. I would

1656
02:26:56,239 --> 02:27:01,479
have guessed the infant's entire elementary canal
could maybe half a cup, but apparently

1657
02:27:01,520 --> 02:27:07,000
they're just descending colon holds enough to
fill a milk pail. When someone says

1658
02:27:07,040 --> 02:27:11,840
they have a twenty pound baby,
I now know what they really mean is

1659
02:27:11,840 --> 02:27:16,600
that they have a five pound baby
and fifteen pounds of poorly digested, strained

1660
02:27:16,639 --> 02:27:20,920
turkey. I had not seen anything
that disgusting since the dump hose on our

1661
02:27:22,000 --> 02:27:26,719
FEMA trailer busted loose when Jennifer was
emptying it. Now, that was funny,

1662
02:27:26,840 --> 02:27:30,680
but karma has a way of getting
you back. It was traumatic for

1663
02:27:30,760 --> 02:27:33,840
both me and Dalt, and he
cried and I gaged, and it was

1664
02:27:33,879 --> 02:27:39,280
truly an event to behold. I
now have to ask who the heck designed

1665
02:27:39,280 --> 02:27:43,159
the baby wipes. They should not
be six by eight. They should be

1666
02:27:43,200 --> 02:27:48,799
at least the size of a standard
bathtowel. It was like trying to clean

1667
02:27:48,879 --> 02:27:52,840
up the Exon Valdez spilled with a
water Burger napkin. And as first go

1668
02:27:54,280 --> 02:27:58,239
I'd have to rank this one weigh
down on the scale. I don't think

1669
02:27:58,319 --> 02:28:03,399
I'll be doing that again without a
respirator and salad tongs and an incinerator.

1670
02:28:03,319 --> 02:28:09,079
I think the stinct molecules actually sended
my old factory nerves since it took several

1671
02:28:09,120 --> 02:28:13,760
hours for the smell to leave me. And it's been a while now and

1672
02:28:13,840 --> 02:28:20,920
I'm almost back to normal. But
thanks for asking. Chapter twenty eight,

1673
02:28:22,479 --> 02:28:28,319
Hunter Gatherers. There are two vastly
different schools of thought in the Ray household

1674
02:28:28,399 --> 02:28:33,760
with regards to grocery shopping. The
first method, which we'll call Method A

1675
02:28:35,399 --> 02:28:39,319
or the Right Way, and Method
B, which we'll call the crazy Lady

1676
02:28:39,399 --> 02:28:46,040
way. Method A involves keeping a
running list of needed items on your shopping

1677
02:28:46,079 --> 02:28:52,879
app on your smartphone and systematically and
with economy of motion, gathering those items

1678
02:28:52,920 --> 02:28:56,520
and then getting the heck out of
Walmart. One of the biggest problems with

1679
02:28:56,639 --> 02:29:01,760
Walmart is that they'll just let any
in there. I'm a big proponent of

1680
02:29:01,879 --> 02:29:07,760
Method A. I get my multi
meal Captain Crunch knock off cereal, a

1681
02:29:07,799 --> 02:29:11,559
gallon of fat free milk, a
case of bottled water, and the biggest

1682
02:29:11,559 --> 02:29:16,840
sized package of megastuff Oreos they have, and maybe pick up a rotisserie chicken

1683
02:29:16,000 --> 02:29:20,879
at the register, and then I
blow that pop stand A Jennifer is a

1684
02:29:20,920 --> 02:29:28,760
practitioner of Method B or the Crazy
Lady way. A Method B involves gathering

1685
02:29:28,799 --> 02:29:33,680
a seemingly random assemblage of items procured
on multiple trips down the same aisles over

1686
02:29:33,840 --> 02:29:41,079
and over again. It usually takes
a minimum of three circuits through the grocery

1687
02:29:41,120 --> 02:29:46,079
side of the store, with occasional
forays into hard goods and pharmacy side of

1688
02:29:46,120 --> 02:29:50,559
the store. I call these three
trips the initial random pass, the filling

1689
02:29:50,760 --> 02:29:56,040
pass, and the clean up loop. Magellan went around the world in less

1690
02:29:56,040 --> 02:30:03,239
time than it takes to make a
Method B trip through w The initial random

1691
02:30:03,319 --> 02:30:07,959
pass is just what it sounds like. Imagine if you were standing at the

1692
02:30:07,000 --> 02:30:11,079
front of the store and let loose
a double alt load of buckshot. The

1693
02:30:11,200 --> 02:30:16,479
nine random items that were struck by
the blast or put into the buggy with

1694
02:30:16,559 --> 02:30:20,159
no thought whatsoever as to why you
need them or how you intend to use

1695
02:30:20,239 --> 02:30:28,040
them. Now you understand the initial
random pass. An example of items picked

1696
02:30:28,120 --> 02:30:33,399
up in the initial random pass could
be tofu, baloney, bananas, cocktail,

1697
02:30:33,760 --> 02:30:37,959
toothpicks shape like little swords, a
hammer, charcoal, a twenty four

1698
02:30:39,040 --> 02:30:41,879
pack of Glow in the Dark condoms, a yellow cake mix, and a

1699
02:30:41,920 --> 02:30:48,000
file. You'll notice that none of
these ingredients combine to make anything useful unless

1700
02:30:48,040 --> 02:30:54,479
you're providing the ord'euvs for the horny
society of vegetarians with no sense of taste

1701
02:30:56,159 --> 02:31:03,479
HSOVSOT or foraging horseshoe user planning a
prison break. This is where the fill

1702
02:31:03,520 --> 02:31:07,360
in pass becomes necessary. Now you
make your own way back to the rear

1703
02:31:07,399 --> 02:31:11,879
of the store and you start over, and this time you try to pair

1704
02:31:11,000 --> 02:31:16,399
things with the assortment of things already
in the buggy that can be combined to

1705
02:31:16,440 --> 02:31:20,559
make a meal, and maybe some
bread to go with the tofu baloney or

1706
02:31:20,600 --> 02:31:24,559
with the bananas if you like,
an Elvis style treat, a few hamburger

1707
02:31:24,559 --> 02:31:28,440
patties to make use of the charcoal, and a couple of containers of icing,

1708
02:31:28,799 --> 02:31:31,799
one for the cake and the other
to eat while waiting for the cake

1709
02:31:31,840 --> 02:31:37,079
to bake. The fill in passes
a little less nonsensical than doctor Zeus on

1710
02:31:37,360 --> 02:31:43,799
meth, but just barely. The
cleanup loop is really just a method a

1711
02:31:45,120 --> 02:31:48,920
with an appetizer of chaos. Again, it involves going back to the rear

1712
02:31:48,920 --> 02:31:52,799
of the store, only this time
to gather a handful of items you truly

1713
02:31:52,920 --> 02:31:58,799
need to complete the meal you've planned
for the guests that are probably already at

1714
02:31:58,840 --> 02:32:03,319
your house. The clean up loop
often includes stopping at wind Dixie, since

1715
02:32:03,360 --> 02:32:07,399
you have to pass it on the
way home anyway, to pick up a

1716
02:32:07,440 --> 02:32:13,319
crucial yet forgotten ingredient for an integral
part of the planned meal, for instance,

1717
02:32:13,360 --> 02:32:18,440
the green beans for the green bean
casserole. If all goes well,

1718
02:32:18,639 --> 02:32:22,719
then when you arrive home you were
still married, plus you have five hundred

1719
02:32:22,799 --> 02:32:28,399
cool little plastic swords. Stay tuned
for the upcoming treatise entitled The Kitchens Sink,

1720
02:32:28,879 --> 02:32:39,840
Indoor compost Pile, or Impromptu Sterile
Home. Surgical Sight Chapter twenty nine,

1721
02:32:39,440 --> 02:32:46,840
Target Sighted bombs Away. Nothing would
do except that we attend the grand

1722
02:32:46,879 --> 02:32:52,680
opening of the new Target store,
and thus begins the hilarity. I hate

1723
02:32:52,719 --> 02:32:56,760
crowds and would have sooner gouch my
eyes out with a spoon, then go

1724
02:32:56,879 --> 02:33:01,520
to the opening of the newest purveyor
of Chinese Jump. Jennifer was insistent,

1725
02:33:01,680 --> 02:33:05,559
so I put the spoon away and
got in the car. We blended into

1726
02:33:05,559 --> 02:33:09,799
the river of people flooding into the
store, and the automatic door slid open

1727
02:33:11,239 --> 02:33:16,280
to reveal the brand spanking new target, sporting that new store smell. That

1728
02:33:16,440 --> 02:33:22,120
was where the pleasantry of our outing
ended. Unseen to Jennifer was a trail

1729
02:33:22,239 --> 02:33:26,399
of poo stretching from the threshold of
the door all the way to the display

1730
02:33:26,440 --> 02:33:31,319
of roasted nuts thirty feet into the
store. The length and breadth of this

1731
02:33:31,440 --> 02:33:37,479
bile hazard was quite impressive, and
the sheer quantity ruled out an infant or

1732
02:33:37,559 --> 02:33:41,840
any service animal smaller than a service
elephant. Jennifer did, in fact have

1733
02:33:41,920 --> 02:33:48,200
an encounter with the offensive leavings.
She didn't really step in it, but

1734
02:33:48,280 --> 02:33:52,399
sort of kicked it in midstride as
she flowed with the masses into the store.

1735
02:33:52,360 --> 02:33:56,760
Horrified, she panicked, and not
knowing what to do, she froze

1736
02:33:56,799 --> 02:34:01,399
like a deer in the headlights.
There she and the entrance of the new

1737
02:34:01,440 --> 02:34:05,239
target, surrounded by hundreds of people
flooding into the new store, seemingly stuck

1738
02:34:05,319 --> 02:34:09,440
to the floor with pooh glue.
While the mind layer was somewhere ahead of

1739
02:34:09,520 --> 02:34:16,440
us, headed to the depenzile.
No doubt, she quickly evaluated her options.

1740
02:34:16,920 --> 02:34:20,120
Option one was that she would continue
into the store as if nothing happened,

1741
02:34:20,639 --> 02:34:24,440
or Option two was that she should
just leave the store, or Option

1742
02:34:24,639 --> 02:34:28,840
three was that she should create some
sort of diversion by pointing at the Aunt

1743
02:34:28,879 --> 02:34:33,440
Jemima look alike in the Moo mooo
on the writing grocery buggy and loudly say

1744
02:34:33,840 --> 02:34:39,520
ooh, and then run into the
stores. Everybody was looking at Jemima.

1745
02:34:39,040 --> 02:34:43,920
Personally, I'd have chosen the Aunt
Jemima option, but that's just me.

1746
02:34:45,680 --> 02:34:50,719
Others entered the store and began to
become aware of the hazard and went around

1747
02:34:50,760 --> 02:34:56,440
the shah Nola like Johnson around Earnhardt. She chose option one. We quickly

1748
02:34:56,559 --> 02:35:01,399
merged with the other shoppers streaming into
the store and beat a hasty trail deep

1749
02:35:01,479 --> 02:35:05,719
within the bowels of the store,
putting as much distance between us and the

1750
02:35:05,799 --> 02:35:11,399
front door fecal festival as possible.
I'm pleased to get to use the word

1751
02:35:11,440 --> 02:35:16,319
bowels in this story, but I
digress. Once clear of the scene,

1752
02:35:16,440 --> 02:35:20,479
Jennifer was still faced with what to
do with the stinker on her toe,

1753
02:35:20,920 --> 02:35:24,639
still attached and looking very much like
a little dec dipped comb on the tip

1754
02:35:24,680 --> 02:35:30,840
of her brand new spears. Not
wanting to spread the joy, she walked

1755
02:35:30,879 --> 02:35:33,479
like a peg legged pirate with the
leg held stiff and the toe of her

1756
02:35:33,520 --> 02:35:39,680
shoe elevated. It looked to me
like an uncomfortable way to walk, But

1757
02:35:39,760 --> 02:35:43,120
then I've never had a turn stuck
to my toe and Target, so I

1758
02:35:43,159 --> 02:35:48,319
can't really speak from a position of
experience. Our minds frantically sought a plan

1759
02:35:48,520 --> 02:35:52,239
as to where to drop the offending
hitchhiker. I mean, what kind of

1760
02:35:52,280 --> 02:35:58,879
department store doesn't have a carpet somewhere
in the store. Our options were growing

1761
02:35:58,000 --> 02:36:03,959
fewer as we go further into the
store, dropping a pineapple on her foot,

1762
02:36:03,000 --> 02:36:07,079
and the produce department was starting to
look good, except we ran into

1763
02:36:07,120 --> 02:36:11,920
some friends just as we approached the
grocery section, so the pineapple wipe was

1764
02:36:13,000 --> 02:36:18,600
foiled. Just stepping out of her
shoes and abandoning them in midile was an

1765
02:36:18,600 --> 02:36:22,399
option, but they were brand new
sperries and appeared to be salvageable well.

1766
02:36:22,440 --> 02:36:28,840
She eventually just resigned herself to continue
the pirate walk until she could hobble outside

1767
02:36:28,879 --> 02:36:31,959
to the grass, all the while
shopping as if she were wearing two perfectly

1768
02:36:33,000 --> 02:36:37,360
good shoes. While our first trip
to Target was certainly eventful, I think

1769
02:36:37,399 --> 02:36:48,799
I preferred the traditional greeterer at Walmart
Chapter thirty oh la lah. Some things

1770
02:36:48,840 --> 02:36:54,479
can be learned by trial and error. Others can be learned by experience.

1771
02:36:54,280 --> 02:36:58,360
When the lesson is uncomfortable, it's
always best to learn by the experience of

1772
02:36:58,399 --> 02:37:03,440
others. I suspect this tale will
only benefit but a few souls, but

1773
02:37:03,479 --> 02:37:09,200
then so be it. It's a
tale that must be told. I recently

1774
02:37:09,280 --> 02:37:15,120
installed a bidet in our bathroom.
As I recall from my high school French

1775
02:37:15,200 --> 02:37:22,200
bidey pronounced beiday is French for butt
washer. Actually I took Latin in high

1776
02:37:22,239 --> 02:37:24,840
school, but the Lattish people didn't
have a word for butt washer, and

1777
02:37:24,920 --> 02:37:31,319
apparently they weren't big on personal hygiene
tersus foreman is the best I can do

1778
02:37:31,399 --> 02:37:37,959
in lightin But that isn't a very
pleasant name for a bathroom appliance. The

1779
02:37:37,000 --> 02:37:43,360
bidet is probably the only decent contribution
the French have made to modern society,

1780
02:37:43,399 --> 02:37:48,559
excepting French fries and French bread.
But how far can two side dishes really

1781
02:37:48,600 --> 02:37:54,040
take a civilization? The bidet is
the crowning achievement of the French. Anyhow,

1782
02:37:54,079 --> 02:37:58,239
back to the lesson. Since our
house is elevated, the plumbing is

1783
02:37:58,319 --> 02:38:05,280
exposed to the elements underneath, and
the incoming water temperature fluctuates accordingly. It

1784
02:38:05,360 --> 02:38:09,920
is December, so cold weather is
to be expected by this time. You've

1785
02:38:09,959 --> 02:38:15,000
probably put two and two together,
and so as to not offend the sensibilities

1786
02:38:15,040 --> 02:38:18,200
of some, allow me to just
say that a blast of thirty two point

1787
02:38:18,319 --> 02:38:24,600
three degree water to the nether regions
could be described as brisk. It'll probably

1788
02:38:24,680 --> 02:38:30,719
be years before the long jump from
a seated position becomes an Olympic event,

1789
02:38:31,280 --> 02:38:35,879
but until such time I can safely
assume I currently hold the world record.

1790
02:38:35,879 --> 02:38:41,200
So in summary, as if you
really needed telling, when you go to

1791
02:38:41,239 --> 02:38:46,079
buy your bidet, be sure to
spring for the warm water model. That's

1792
02:38:46,120 --> 02:38:54,840
all for today's lesson, Chapter thirty
one. Grinnin like a muse eating briars.

1793
02:38:56,559 --> 02:39:00,920
Everyone has a meuse, you know, that thing that drives you to

1794
02:39:01,000 --> 02:39:05,520
create something. To some is the
traditional Greek goddess. To the people in

1795
02:39:05,559 --> 02:39:11,799
the caves of Lascal, it was
the reindeer and mammos they hunted. I

1796
02:39:11,879 --> 02:39:16,319
discovered today that my muse is a
forty two inch craftsman writing lawnmower. I

1797
02:39:16,360 --> 02:39:20,559
suppose that a forty eight inch or
even a fifty two inch might work too,

1798
02:39:20,600 --> 02:39:26,399
But why mess was something proven I
have a theory as to why certain

1799
02:39:26,440 --> 02:39:30,520
things come to me on my mower. I suspect that some part of my

1800
02:39:30,680 --> 02:39:35,440
brain is otherwise occupied, leaving the
other parts wholly unsupervised, thus free to

1801
02:39:35,559 --> 02:39:41,520
wander around in unfamiliar places. Now, I'm sure there have been detailed psychological

1802
02:39:41,559 --> 02:39:46,159
studies on such things, and if
not, there should be. So whether

1803
02:39:46,280 --> 02:39:50,680
your muse urges you to blow paint
on your hand in a dark cave,

1804
02:39:52,399 --> 02:39:56,319
or string words together as you slaughter
weeds, you just go where she leads.

1805
02:39:58,440 --> 02:40:01,680
So while the artists can create an
image with pigments, it's possible to

1806
02:40:01,719 --> 02:40:07,680
do the same with words. Writing, however, is much cheaper than painting,

1807
02:40:07,840 --> 02:40:11,159
as you don't need all those brushes
and chemists and paint and whatnot.

1808
02:40:13,120 --> 02:40:16,000
All you need is possibly a dictionary, and maybe not even that. If

1809
02:40:16,040 --> 02:40:20,360
you're bothered to remember a whole mess
of words, they don't even have to

1810
02:40:20,399 --> 02:40:26,399
be real words. I mean,
look at doctor Zeus Gredunza. Indeed,

1811
02:40:26,680 --> 02:40:31,120
Zeus does prove though that you need
just a touch of crazy to string words

1812
02:40:31,159 --> 02:40:37,159
together in a manner others find pleasing. Not too eccentric. Minds you,

1813
02:40:37,559 --> 02:40:41,280
lest people start labeling your assemblages as
to catch her in the riyosh or a

1814
02:40:41,360 --> 02:40:46,719
manifesto of some sort or other.
That's not to say that you need to

1815
02:40:46,760 --> 02:40:52,079
hack off one of your ears while
dying from an untreated case of syphilis,

1816
02:40:52,639 --> 02:40:58,760
but it is hard to argue with
the brilliance of story night to little eccentricity,

1817
02:40:58,840 --> 02:41:03,159
however, and you'd do as well
write an assembly manual or a cookbook,

1818
02:41:03,479 --> 02:41:05,879
which, if you think about it, cookbooks are really just food assembly

1819
02:41:05,959 --> 02:41:11,399
manuals. Nope, the trick is
to find that perfect amount of derangement not

1820
02:41:11,559 --> 02:41:18,040
to my uncomfish, no hacking off
of appendages, but also not writing cookbooks

1821
02:41:18,200 --> 02:41:24,719
or Ikia manuals either. It's a
very fine line, really, So follow

1822
02:41:24,760 --> 02:41:28,200
your muse unless she says she knew
vincent, and then wash your hands really

1823
02:41:28,200 --> 02:41:33,799
good first, and then go get
a writing more. I recommend the Red

1824
02:41:33,879 --> 02:41:43,559
forty two inch model, Chapter thirty
two, The Scent of Blessings. When

1825
02:41:43,600 --> 02:41:46,440
I ride my bike, it always
gives me a chance to think and ponder

1826
02:41:46,600 --> 02:41:54,159
and admire, sort of a rolling
worship service. This evening's ride started pretty

1827
02:41:54,159 --> 02:42:00,559
blandly, with overcast guys and weak
failing light peeking between the dull colorless clouds,

1828
02:42:01,280 --> 02:42:05,399
not much of a sunset at all, with not much to look at

1829
02:42:05,479 --> 02:42:09,680
in the pale twilight, another sense
took over, and oddly enough, it

1830
02:42:09,799 --> 02:42:15,040
was smell. One neighbor was just
finishing up his yard and the scent of

1831
02:42:15,120 --> 02:42:20,520
freshly mode grass filled the thick,
hot air. It is said that smells

1832
02:42:20,559 --> 02:42:24,680
can trigger memories more vividly than any
other sense, and in this case it

1833
02:42:24,760 --> 02:42:30,600
did indeed, And for a moment, it was nineteen sixty nine and I

1834
02:42:30,680 --> 02:42:35,760
was in the third grade again at
Iola Tapley Wilkins Elementary School, staring out

1835
02:42:35,760 --> 02:42:41,559
the open windows at the men pushing
lawnmowers around the school as the teacher paused

1836
02:42:41,559 --> 02:42:46,920
her lesson while they passed. The
roar of the mowers died as they continued

1837
02:42:46,959 --> 02:42:50,680
around the building, and the earthly
scent of wet grass filled the classroom and

1838
02:42:50,799 --> 02:42:58,639
mingled with the other sense of chalk
dust and floor wax. The lesson resumed,

1839
02:42:58,879 --> 02:43:01,760
but we were all in talksated on
the vapors of fresh cut grass,

1840
02:43:03,200 --> 02:43:09,040
dreaming of summer and baseball and swimming
in anything but math. Around the corner,

1841
02:43:09,159 --> 02:43:15,200
another neighbor was apparently boiling shrimp or
crabs. The sharp smell of a

1842
02:43:15,239 --> 02:43:18,239
shrimp bowl that will take your breath
away also means that there will soon be

1843
02:43:18,319 --> 02:43:24,319
a feast, for shrimp aren't really
bowled as a snack. It is an

1844
02:43:24,319 --> 02:43:28,000
event, and there is always a
gathering of some import when the boiling pot

1845
02:43:28,079 --> 02:43:35,680
hits the fire. Birthday's, mother's
day, Father's day, graduations, marriages,

1846
02:43:35,879 --> 02:43:39,680
deaths. The pot is not fired
up for just any trivial occasion.

1847
02:43:41,799 --> 02:43:46,399
Family is almost always integral to a
shrimp bowl, as are corn taters,

1848
02:43:46,799 --> 02:43:52,479
sausage, and just like Shakespeare's witches
brew, there is power in that building

1849
02:43:52,559 --> 02:43:58,799
cauldron, the power to conjure many
things in stirfine memories and south the pain.

1850
02:44:01,600 --> 02:44:05,399
Saturday is obviously one of my neighbour's
laundry nights too. As I rode

1851
02:44:05,479 --> 02:44:11,000
past, I smelled the flowery fragrance
of drying laundry and was again transported to

1852
02:44:11,079 --> 02:44:16,719
my youth, where I slept under
crispy clothesline dried sheets that, while they

1853
02:44:16,719 --> 02:44:20,600
didn't smell like my neighbor's perfumed laundry, had a feel in fragrance all their

1854
02:44:20,639 --> 02:44:24,440
own. And it was a cocktail
of sense, mixing the smells of my

1855
02:44:24,559 --> 02:44:30,799
MEMA's house with the scents of nature
and ivory, soap and salt air.

1856
02:44:31,200 --> 02:44:35,600
My mema was a very old lady
before she ever got a machine to dry

1857
02:44:35,680 --> 02:44:41,920
her clothes, and her sheets may
have thereafter been softer, but they certainly

1858
02:44:41,040 --> 02:44:48,000
weren't as memorable. As I pondered
these smells, it occurred to me that

1859
02:44:48,079 --> 02:44:52,040
what I was smelling was the sense
of blessings. These scents of shrimp,

1860
02:44:52,600 --> 02:44:58,479
laundry, and grass represented the blessings
of food, clothing, and shelter,

1861
02:44:58,600 --> 02:45:03,719
three basic blessings that we probably all
take for granted. So to mix the

1862
02:45:03,760 --> 02:45:09,639
axioms of counting your blessings and stopping
to smell the roses, I was able

1863
02:45:09,680 --> 02:45:18,520
to roll by and smell the blessings. May we all be grateful. Chapter

1864
02:45:18,600 --> 02:45:24,639
thirty three, Deep Fried Parrot and
Dolphin kebabs in a garlic IOLI. I

1865
02:45:24,639 --> 02:45:28,639
think anybody that knows me can agree
that there are lots of people smarter than

1866
02:45:28,680 --> 02:45:35,200
me. Or I I'm not sure. See lots of people are smarter than

1867
02:45:35,239 --> 02:45:39,760
me. However, I have yet
to be brainly tested by anything in the

1868
02:45:39,799 --> 02:45:45,120
animal or plant kingdom. The tic
tac toe Playing chicken doesn't count, as

1869
02:45:45,159 --> 02:45:48,639
I was not at the top of
my game and I suspect the chicken was

1870
02:45:48,760 --> 02:45:52,840
cheating. That happened in Mexico,
and I didn't speak Spanish, and the

1871
02:45:52,959 --> 02:46:00,440
chicken didn't oblow much ingless, so
there was a communication problem. Other than

1872
02:46:00,479 --> 02:46:03,760
that chicken, though, which we've
all agreed doesn't count. I'm certain I

1873
02:46:03,799 --> 02:46:09,799
could mentally best anything else in the
plant or animal kingdom, except maybe for

1874
02:46:09,079 --> 02:46:13,879
some of the great apes or the
more cunning monkeys. They might come close

1875
02:46:13,959 --> 02:46:18,879
in a Sudoku tournament, but I'm
sure I could take them in an arm

1876
02:46:18,920 --> 02:46:24,680
wrestling contest. The cunning monkeys,
not the great apes. Those things are

1877
02:46:24,719 --> 02:46:28,799
strong. Also, minor birds and
parrots, although they are no chicken,

1878
02:46:30,120 --> 02:46:33,840
might put up a good showing,
but a little crisco and flour, and

1879
02:46:33,079 --> 02:46:39,920
just like the chicken, the competition
is eliminated. So I think we've established

1880
02:46:39,000 --> 02:46:45,000
that there may be a few non
delicious, crispy fried and mental competitors in

1881
02:46:45,040 --> 02:46:50,600
the animal kingdom, but very few. Just an FYI, pulled chimpanzee is

1882
02:46:50,719 --> 02:46:58,000
nowhere near as good as pulled port. I can, however, state emphatically

1883
02:46:58,120 --> 02:47:01,000
that there is nothing in the plant
king them that can fool me, except

1884
02:47:01,000 --> 02:47:05,920
maybe that vine that has the thorns. The gallons of round up mixed with

1885
02:47:05,000 --> 02:47:11,120
gasoline and then let on fire can't
even kill. I suspect there are some

1886
02:47:11,239 --> 02:47:16,079
of these vines growing in the core
of the Fukushima reactor and that's what caused

1887
02:47:16,120 --> 02:47:20,920
it to fail. So other than
this vine and possibly kudzu, I'm certain

1888
02:47:20,959 --> 02:47:26,159
I'm smarter than most plants, except
maybe the venus fly trap. But at

1889
02:47:26,239 --> 02:47:31,079
each disgusting house flies on purpose,
I just eat them if I'm asleep in

1890
02:47:31,120 --> 02:47:35,079
the hammock with my mouth wide open, and even then I don't really enjoy

1891
02:47:35,159 --> 02:47:41,079
them much. A grass is stupid, though, why just this morning I

1892
02:47:41,120 --> 02:47:45,280
outwitted it handily, and try as
I might, I just can't get it

1893
02:47:45,319 --> 02:47:48,319
to grow where I want it.
However, it thrives in my flower beds,

1894
02:47:50,479 --> 02:47:54,239
being marginally smarter than grass. It
dawned on me that if I were

1895
02:47:54,239 --> 02:47:58,799
to cover the bear areas in my
yard with mulch and then an ounce so

1896
02:47:58,840 --> 02:48:01,600
that the grass might hear me that
I was putting in a new bed,

1897
02:48:03,040 --> 02:48:09,719
than grass would practically spring forth overnight. Mosilic grass now chuckle at my slightly

1898
02:48:09,840 --> 02:48:16,319
higher cunning than a capuchin monkey.
Dolphins, dang, I forgot dolphins.

1899
02:48:16,879 --> 02:48:22,520
They are smart and cute and athletic
jumping through those rings is not at all

1900
02:48:22,559 --> 02:48:26,239
as easy as they make it look. Plus all the questions you have to

1901
02:48:26,280 --> 02:48:33,040
answer afterwards in the legal fees hardly
make it worth trying. On an unrelated

1902
02:48:33,120 --> 02:48:41,040
note, dolphin kebabs aren't too bad. They taste like Mexican chicken. Chapter

1903
02:48:41,079 --> 02:48:46,639
thirty four. It's springtime and love
is in the air, literally, and

1904
02:48:46,719 --> 02:48:52,920
it's disgusting. Well, I just
mowed my yard for the first time this

1905
02:48:52,079 --> 02:48:58,520
spring. Notice I said mowed my
yard as opposed to I mowed my grass,

1906
02:48:58,799 --> 02:49:03,840
because frankly, very little grass was
involved in the venture. The mowing

1907
02:49:03,879 --> 02:49:07,079
did nothing to improve the quality of
my yard. But I do now have

1908
02:49:07,159 --> 02:49:11,879
a broad assortment of weeds, all
nearly the same height. It's sort of

1909
02:49:11,959 --> 02:49:16,440
like stacking empty beer cans in a
neat pyramid as opposed to just leaving them

1910
02:49:16,479 --> 02:49:22,799
on the table or in the aquarium. It really serves no purpose but looks

1911
02:49:22,840 --> 02:49:28,719
marginally better. So it is with
mowing weeds. While I was mowing,

1912
02:49:28,799 --> 02:49:33,000
I noticed huge amounts of pollen in
the air, which got me to thinking

1913
02:49:33,079 --> 02:49:37,280
about what pollen really is. It's
the reproductive matter of plants, and it's

1914
02:49:37,440 --> 02:49:43,559
everywhere which is kind of disgusting.
It's in our eyes, it's in our

1915
02:49:43,680 --> 02:49:48,399
hair, We're practically covered in it. Just going outside is like using Hugh

1916
02:49:48,440 --> 02:49:54,479
Hefner's hot tub after a particularly randy
party where the guests list included an assortment

1917
02:49:54,520 --> 02:50:00,840
of Kardashians. It's a veritable botanical
orgy, what with the live folks getting

1918
02:50:00,879 --> 02:50:03,600
lively down by the water, and
the crept myrtles are doing the nasty and

1919
02:50:03,719 --> 02:50:09,040
the flower beds and there's a pine
tree three way going in the neighbor's yard.

1920
02:50:09,799 --> 02:50:15,600
Imagine it's nineteen seventy three and you've
stumbled on to the set of a

1921
02:50:15,719 --> 02:50:22,159
drug fueled three day long art movie
shoot in a condo outside Malibu. But

1922
02:50:22,360 --> 02:50:28,040
just replace the humans with various types
of plants, and it's just non stop

1923
02:50:28,120 --> 02:50:33,440
tree on tree action until at least
May. Ugh. I now have a

1924
02:50:33,479 --> 02:50:39,440
headache and Anita shower. Another bad
thing about spring, besides the mowing and

1925
02:50:39,479 --> 02:50:45,120
the continual tree sex more an autumn
person myself, is that the gnats come

1926
02:50:45,159 --> 02:50:50,959
out in full force. If you've
ever experienced the torment of the Salt Marsh

1927
02:50:50,040 --> 02:50:56,360
gnat, just imagine millions of hungry, tiny little ghost vampires nearly invisible to

1928
02:50:56,440 --> 02:51:00,600
the naked eye, yet each able
to drink a full pie of blood.

1929
02:51:01,719 --> 02:51:05,280
If they were twice as big as
they are, they'd kill you. And

1930
02:51:05,360 --> 02:51:09,799
frankly, I think the Egyptians got
off easy with the locusts and the frogs.

1931
02:51:09,399 --> 02:51:13,879
If God had really wanted to punish
them, he'd have sent the gnats.

1932
02:51:15,079 --> 02:51:18,799
Pharaoh would have had the Israelites packed
up by nightfall, and four Baptist

1933
02:51:18,920 --> 02:51:24,159
churches would have opened the next day, and the new Moses Land theme park

1934
02:51:24,159 --> 02:51:28,200
would be adding a red Sea flowme
ride such as the Power of the Gnat.

1935
02:51:28,959 --> 02:51:33,639
Now I've got a headache and I
need to close the blinds. The

1936
02:51:33,680 --> 02:51:41,680
Indian hawthorns are up to page thirty
seven in the Kamasutra, chapter thirty five

1937
02:51:43,520 --> 02:51:50,280
and miles to mow before I sleep. When driving down Highway ninety along the

1938
02:51:50,319 --> 02:51:54,440
beach, the traveler just passing through
might think that Hurricane Katrina was but a

1939
02:51:54,479 --> 02:52:00,719
distant memory, since the mostly healed
scars that are left along the wall are

1940
02:52:00,760 --> 02:52:05,559
obscured by the flashing neon of casinos, gas stations, and fast food joints.

1941
02:52:07,360 --> 02:52:11,200
However, there are thousands and thousands
of vacant lots just north of the

1942
02:52:11,280 --> 02:52:18,559
sparkling Gulf waters all the way from
the Pearl River to the Alabama state line.

1943
02:52:18,600 --> 02:52:22,719
Of these vacant lots represent the dreams
and lives of many families. Christmases

1944
02:52:22,799 --> 02:52:28,719
celebrated and birthdays accumulated, weddings performed, and Easter eggs hunted, and deaths

1945
02:52:28,840 --> 02:52:35,239
mourned. Entire lives lived in that
one hundred foot by one hundred and forty

1946
02:52:35,280 --> 02:52:39,360
foot piece of dirt, and bent
and twisted remains of chain link fences marked

1947
02:52:39,360 --> 02:52:46,280
the borders that contain these dreams.
Not only trees were torn up by their

1948
02:52:46,360 --> 02:52:50,799
roots, but people too, just
the same force. The people that lived

1949
02:52:50,840 --> 02:52:56,079
on these parcels have since created new
lives, some nearby and others distant,

1950
02:52:56,159 --> 02:53:01,879
but their connection to their grassy plots
cannot be severed. Most folks would drive

1951
02:53:01,000 --> 02:53:05,040
by the old man on the mower
and not think twice about it. But

1952
02:53:05,159 --> 02:53:11,399
it causes me wonderment. Manys the
time I've passed a pickup truck on the

1953
02:53:11,440 --> 02:53:15,319
side of a barren road and seen
an old man on the mower while his

1954
02:53:15,440 --> 02:53:20,840
wife swelters in the truck waiting with
cold drinks. These are the people that

1955
02:53:20,000 --> 02:53:24,319
used to live on that plot.
Of ground, and although they no longer

1956
02:53:24,360 --> 02:53:28,840
have a home there, they seem
oddly drawn to maintain an overgrown, vacant

1957
02:53:28,879 --> 02:53:33,120
lot. In the dog days of
summer, they'll mow knee high parched grass,

1958
02:53:33,559 --> 02:53:37,120
as if to pronounce, Hey,
this is still mine, and I

1959
02:53:37,200 --> 02:53:43,639
will not surrender. They tend it
as the living tend to grave, and

1960
02:53:43,719 --> 02:53:48,719
they defiantly proclaim their attachment to that
dirt. They mow where their kids played

1961
02:53:48,760 --> 02:53:52,360
with a new puppy, and they
mow over the place where they buried the

1962
02:53:52,399 --> 02:53:56,520
same dog as a member of the
family fifteen years later, while the kids

1963
02:53:56,520 --> 02:54:01,440
were off at college, and they
mow under the tree their grandfather planted seventy

1964
02:54:01,479 --> 02:54:07,520
five years ago and still yields pe
cons that they pick up from the dead

1965
02:54:07,559 --> 02:54:11,120
brown grass every autumn and use to
make pies for their Sunday school class.

1966
02:54:13,120 --> 02:54:16,840
They mow around the concrete piers that
once supported the porch where they sat and

1967
02:54:16,959 --> 02:54:22,239
cried when they learned that their son
wasn't coming back from some jungle in a

1968
02:54:22,319 --> 02:54:26,959
place they'd never even heard of.
And they mow over the broken concrete of

1969
02:54:26,040 --> 02:54:31,879
the driveway lost to time in the
creeping Saint Augustine, and they can still

1970
02:54:31,959 --> 02:54:37,399
see in their mind's eye the brand
new nineteen sixty nine Osmobile ninety eight gleaming

1971
02:54:37,600 --> 02:54:43,840
in the sun, a treat for
the years of hard work and sacrifice.

1972
02:54:43,920 --> 02:54:48,959
They don't mow to make the grass
shorter, They mow to make the memories

1973
02:54:48,239 --> 02:55:00,639
longer. Chapter thirty six. Lasts
in the blink of an eye have a

1974
02:55:00,680 --> 02:55:05,680
sinister yet compassionate habit of sneaking up
on you. It's for the best,

1975
02:55:05,719 --> 02:55:09,799
though, because if they didn't creep
in covertly, you'd never forever be stuck

1976
02:55:09,840 --> 02:55:15,680
in a place on a timeline,
last, come ephemerally with nary a hint

1977
02:55:15,719 --> 02:55:20,319
of their presence, and passing Only
much later do you even realize what they

1978
02:55:20,360 --> 02:55:24,239
really were. Had you known that
it was the last time your child would

1979
02:55:24,239 --> 02:55:28,399
reach for your hand in a crowded
parking lot, you'd have stood there in

1980
02:55:28,440 --> 02:55:33,680
the cold for hours holding his hand. Had you known she'd never ask you

1981
02:55:33,760 --> 02:55:37,799
to read about the Red Fish and
the Bluefish ever again, you'd have made

1982
02:55:37,879 --> 02:55:43,680
that story last as long as war
and peace. Had you known your spouse

1983
02:55:43,719 --> 02:55:48,520
would never again return home, you'd
have kissed her twice when she left.

1984
02:55:48,399 --> 02:55:52,079
If you'd known that it was the
last fishing trip you would take with your

1985
02:55:52,120 --> 02:55:58,319
brother, you would have cast well
past dusk into the night, and had

1986
02:55:58,360 --> 02:56:03,159
you known it was your last dinner
together before they moved miles and miles away,

1987
02:56:03,719 --> 02:56:07,360
you'd have insisted that your friends have
another piece of dessert. Had you

1988
02:56:07,440 --> 02:56:11,959
known it'd been the last time you
pass through a town, you'd have driven

1989
02:56:11,079 --> 02:56:16,440
more slowly and waved at the old
couple on the porch swing, perhaps experiencing

1990
02:56:16,479 --> 02:56:22,399
a last of their own that they'd
only learned of the next morning when only

1991
02:56:22,479 --> 02:56:28,920
one of them awakened. I suppose
that lasts often lead to first and the

1992
02:56:28,000 --> 02:56:35,319
excitement of the first salvesdy aches of
the lasts. Being human means that lasts

1993
02:56:35,319 --> 02:56:39,559
you're cumulative, and eventually everything will
become a last, up until the two

1994
02:56:39,760 --> 02:56:46,520
ultimate lasts, your last breath and
your last heartbeat. So take lots of

1995
02:56:46,639 --> 02:56:52,440
pictures and cherish every single moment,
because you never know which of those moments

1996
02:56:52,840 --> 02:57:03,639
might be a last. In disguise. On the Anniversary of Desolation, written

1997
02:57:03,840 --> 02:57:11,760
on the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the sun shone strong on the sparkling

1998
02:57:11,840 --> 02:57:16,959
waters and tanned the faces of Southern
daughters who enjoyed their lives under the live

1999
02:57:18,000 --> 02:57:24,000
oak trees, whose branches swayed in
a salty breeze. Their children ran down

2000
02:57:24,239 --> 02:57:28,840
a long sandbar, scratching in the
sand their names and stars, as generations

2001
02:57:28,920 --> 02:57:33,600
before had done the same, until
the wind blew and the water came.

2002
02:57:35,479 --> 02:57:41,760
The stately homes watching over the sound
had witnessed much amid their grounds. Christmases

2003
02:57:41,920 --> 02:57:48,040
passed, colored eggs hid for hunting, fireworks and picnics with rails hung in

2004
02:57:48,120 --> 02:57:54,600
the bunting hot golden turkeys and sweet
pecan pies, and even a rare flake

2005
02:57:54,719 --> 02:58:01,239
from steel winter skies. The old
cypress swing creek on orange rusty chains,

2006
02:58:01,000 --> 02:58:07,639
until the wind blew and the water
came. With sun baked skin and broken

2007
02:58:07,760 --> 02:58:13,440
backs. Men trawl, shrimp and
fill oyster sacks, just like their pawpalls

2008
02:58:13,440 --> 02:58:18,440
and their uncles and fathers. They
wrestle a living from these bountiful waters.

2009
02:58:20,280 --> 02:58:24,200
Old wooden boats made by men long
since gone, work hard through the night,

2010
02:58:24,600 --> 02:58:30,200
and then bring their crews home.
For decades prior, men have done

2011
02:58:30,399 --> 02:58:37,479
just the same until the wind blew
and the water came. Blackwater rivers creep

2012
02:58:37,559 --> 02:58:43,639
down to the bays where sleepy gaiters
bask, and warming rays where the egret

2013
02:58:43,719 --> 02:58:48,040
hunts, and the mullet jumps,
and turtles lounge on cypress stumps. The

2014
02:58:48,159 --> 02:58:54,200
lazy bayous wind through the trees,
and snails ride the grass that blows in

2015
02:58:54,280 --> 02:59:00,920
the breeze serenely flowed the rivers known
by Indian names, until the wind blew

2016
02:59:01,440 --> 02:59:07,120
and the water came. She rowed
ashore on her wicked broom, a whirling

2017
02:59:07,280 --> 02:59:11,520
mass, this gray typhoon. She
waved her wind and cast her spells,

2018
02:59:11,920 --> 02:59:18,399
unleashing demons from beneath the swells.
Both sinners and saints suffered in this mix.

2019
02:59:18,959 --> 02:59:24,719
When poker chips floated with the crucifix
in the darkened, churning witches brew

2020
02:59:26,440 --> 02:59:37,680
When the water came and the wind
blew. Time, our most precious gift

2021
02:59:37,760 --> 02:59:41,600
cannot be measured by balance, vessel, or rule. But with a mechanical

2022
02:59:41,639 --> 02:59:48,239
device we measure our lives. It
ticks constant, cold, and cruel.

2023
02:59:52,280 --> 03:00:00,479
Luna Venus and Soul. Venus chased
Luna across the sky, a celestial race

2024
03:00:00,520 --> 03:00:05,399
in the heavens high and al.
The Baron followed closely by, while in

2025
03:00:05,559 --> 03:00:11,280
awe in silence, there said I
Soul came to see such game. Then

2026
03:00:11,399 --> 03:00:16,319
Venus blinked and lost her flame.
Luna continued her steady pace, her luster

2027
03:00:16,639 --> 03:00:26,639
dulled by soul's bright face. Sanity. The veil of sanity has but only

2028
03:00:26,719 --> 03:00:33,280
one side. So sheer is the
shelter where within we hide. For beyond

2029
03:00:33,319 --> 03:00:39,559
its boundary lived the nightmares and dreams
of hobgoblins and devils and all wicked things.

2030
03:00:39,239 --> 03:00:43,120
Should the veil be moved aside by
a lilting breeze, allowing you to

2031
03:00:43,159 --> 03:00:48,159
glimpse all of these, dare not
to linger in o terry too long,

2032
03:00:48,760 --> 03:00:54,200
lest they entice you to stay with
the sirens song. They dispense a random

2033
03:00:54,319 --> 03:01:00,799
concoction of pleasure or pain. It's
a toss of the coin when going insane,

2034
03:01:00,959 --> 03:01:05,120
six of one or a half a
dozen of the other, an injection

2035
03:01:05,280 --> 03:01:09,440
of one tincture of another. What
you will get is far from certain.

2036
03:01:09,559 --> 03:01:20,000
Should you ever wander outside the curtain, dog days in the delta and dusty

2037
03:01:20,040 --> 03:01:26,120
porch chairs, delta painters rock,
where the august heat slows even the clock

2038
03:01:26,079 --> 03:01:31,479
ochre talk covers everything, and at
night the frog and the locusts sing,

2039
03:01:31,959 --> 03:01:37,120
and lesser stars than Sirius let loose
of the sky and fall toward us in

2040
03:01:37,200 --> 03:01:43,159
vast green oceans reaching out of sight, are desolate and depressing, though filled

2041
03:01:43,159 --> 03:01:46,959
with life. When the dog star
rises, it brings such as these,

2042
03:01:48,440 --> 03:01:56,399
the hope of the harvest and the
autumn breeze. Just the other day,

2043
03:01:56,760 --> 03:02:01,479
Twas just the other day, I
said, When I was just beginning to

2044
03:02:01,559 --> 03:02:05,760
walk, I skinned my knee and
bumped my head, and shortly after learn

2045
03:02:05,799 --> 03:02:09,639
to talk. Off to school,
I went to learn reading Dick and Jane

2046
03:02:09,639 --> 03:02:16,879
and ciphering math, a questioning spirit
with time to burn, exploring Frost's less

2047
03:02:16,920 --> 03:02:24,680
travel path. Then the child morphed
into a man unlike Darwin's monkeys can I

2048
03:02:24,799 --> 03:02:28,920
learned Poe and Twain, and of
pioneers headed west, and the traits of

2049
03:02:30,040 --> 03:02:35,360
moving bodies and those that are at
rest. Some things made sense and others

2050
03:02:35,479 --> 03:02:41,200
not. But miles of roads still
lay ahead, and scarcely looked up to

2051
03:02:41,280 --> 03:02:46,760
the clock, for we can sleep
when we are dead. Now sign posts

2052
03:02:46,760 --> 03:02:50,040
appear along the way sooner than I
would fear reading. But just the other

2053
03:02:50,200 --> 03:02:56,479
day, when the truth is,
it's been so many years, life is

2054
03:02:56,520 --> 03:03:01,479
nothing more than memories. As we
rush headlong toward the grave, Some discarded

2055
03:03:01,600 --> 03:03:05,760
instantly, and others bound and saved. And as the end drawls, still

2056
03:03:05,879 --> 03:03:11,280
nearer, will all be heard to
say, For at that point our time

2057
03:03:11,399 --> 03:03:18,799
is dearer. Seems all my life
was just the other day. The cow

2058
03:03:20,399 --> 03:03:24,040
I pull one tee, then the
other, because one's for milk, and

2059
03:03:24,040 --> 03:03:30,000
one's for butter, one's for cream, and one's for cheese. I wish

2060
03:03:30,040 --> 03:03:39,239
my cow had more of these.
A fisherman's view of life. A lone

2061
03:03:39,399 --> 03:03:45,959
gull cries, a mullet flies,
A pelican sits and watches with an intent

2062
03:03:46,079 --> 03:03:50,840
gaze, and a crash in the
waves. A hapless fish he catches as

2063
03:03:50,840 --> 03:03:54,920
an old man fishes. He sits
and wishes for days that are long since

2064
03:03:56,120 --> 03:04:00,559
pasted. A second look at an
empty hook, and he makes another cast.

2065
03:04:01,000 --> 03:04:05,159
The tide rolls in and then out
again, as it has for untold

2066
03:04:05,280 --> 03:04:11,719
ages. Our lives are just books, and time is a crook that slowly

2067
03:04:11,840 --> 03:04:18,079
steals our pages. The ebbing tide
makes small crabs hide among the drying rocks,

2068
03:04:18,639 --> 03:04:24,159
while shrimping men over diesels den make
deals along the docks. The sun

2069
03:04:24,239 --> 03:04:28,600
sinks slow, and the wind it
blows. Another day is pasted. It's

2070
03:04:28,680 --> 03:04:37,639
almost night, but in the pale
moonlight there's time for one more cast an

2071
03:04:37,680 --> 03:04:43,799
ode to Poe. In the deepest
part of the night, when the clock

2072
03:04:43,920 --> 03:04:50,360
runs slow, comes a velvet cloaked
visitor who goes by Poe dread in fear,

2073
03:04:50,639 --> 03:04:54,200
phillis clutch hoping joy are gone.
As such, there's no way back

2074
03:04:54,200 --> 03:05:00,040
from the sooty hell, my rapid
heart. The tale it tells. He

2075
03:05:00,120 --> 03:05:03,959
is easily heard above the clock's two
bells as the master prepares to cast his

2076
03:05:05,120 --> 03:05:11,079
spells an unwanted guest, though I
feel strangely obliged to tolerate his visit from

2077
03:05:11,120 --> 03:05:16,799
the other side, the executioner of
peace, the bringer of woe, this

2078
03:05:18,000 --> 03:05:24,520
tormented man, this man named Poe. The way is dark and rife with

2079
03:05:24,680 --> 03:05:30,639
crags. As the specter opens and
unloads his bags, squeaky brass, latches

2080
03:05:30,719 --> 03:05:35,120
in creaking leather, and a palette
hand withdraws one black feather from the carcass

2081
03:05:35,159 --> 03:05:39,000
of the raven, though I know
not whether he is dead or alive,

2082
03:05:39,680 --> 03:05:43,920
as the scent of death would be
masked by the heather from the vapors of

2083
03:05:43,959 --> 03:05:48,879
an earlier team made in the corner
of the weather. Wicked, vile,

2084
03:05:50,040 --> 03:05:56,000
simmering potions, sickening salves, unduans, and lotions stirred and twirled, and

2085
03:05:56,079 --> 03:06:03,719
nauseating motions concocted of species from across
seven black oceans. The sorcerer worked his

2086
03:06:03,920 --> 03:06:09,440
recipes slow this evil cook, this
man named Poe, in hopes of avoiding

2087
03:06:09,479 --> 03:06:16,959
the fortunes of Fortunado, an expert
vnor in wine aficionado. When pride drove

2088
03:06:16,040 --> 03:06:22,639
his quest for the Amantillado, I
summoned up a whiff of false bravado.

2089
03:06:22,799 --> 03:06:26,799
Fearing the trial and mortar board,
he wielded with weak, shaky breath.

2090
03:06:26,879 --> 03:06:33,000
My voice box yielded, and then
asked my tormentor, shall I see dawn

2091
03:06:33,120 --> 03:06:37,280
upon my door? And then came
his answer, So dread an answer,

2092
03:06:37,840 --> 03:06:46,840
no, never more, never more. Here and now and there and then.

2093
03:06:50,239 --> 03:06:54,319
There are only two places we all
have been. That's here and now

2094
03:06:54,399 --> 03:06:58,760
and there and then. While here
and now are the present tents, there

2095
03:06:58,799 --> 03:07:03,600
and then can be passed her hens
then lives in our memories is known as

2096
03:07:03,639 --> 03:07:09,440
the past, but it's also the
future, and the die yet cast the

2097
03:07:09,440 --> 03:07:13,840
then in there that are yet to
be, or shaped by the here and

2098
03:07:13,879 --> 03:07:18,159
now You see the then and there's
wise and hows are determined by your hear

2099
03:07:18,239 --> 03:07:24,239
and now spend them wisely do what's
right, so that then in there you'll

2100
03:07:24,239 --> 03:07:28,520
sleep at night. Here and now
is your chance to mend. And then

2101
03:07:28,559 --> 03:07:37,879
in there, at the very end, the preacher and the teacher. When

2102
03:07:37,920 --> 03:07:41,639
the teacher is done, she is
said to have taught. But when the

2103
03:07:41,680 --> 03:07:46,559
preacher is done, has he not
brought? Of course he hasn't. We

2104
03:07:46,639 --> 03:07:56,159
all know he's preached. So pray
tell why the teacher hasn't teached? Autumn,

2105
03:07:58,479 --> 03:08:01,479
As your sky is filled with the
orange butterflies, and narrow a cloud

2106
03:08:01,520 --> 03:08:07,520
is seen, A cooling breeze rustles
the leaves that turn to gold from green.

2107
03:08:11,520 --> 03:08:18,120
A midnight haunting. The mind works
differently in the dead of night,

2108
03:08:18,760 --> 03:08:24,360
slower the pleasantries fast as the fright. Once awakened, long before first light,

2109
03:08:24,600 --> 03:08:28,680
my mind torments me throughout the night, when fast my brain should be

2110
03:08:28,719 --> 03:08:35,159
asleep. Ghosts wonder its crevices,
dark and deep, things long since passed

2111
03:08:35,239 --> 03:08:39,760
and deeply stored, or torn from
their moorings. When the mind is bored,

2112
03:08:41,959 --> 03:08:46,799
while half awake yet half a slumber, the ghosts in my mind soon

2113
03:08:46,920 --> 03:08:50,920
grow in number. Though a twisted
dream, they begin they're traveling a tapestry

2114
03:08:50,959 --> 03:08:58,319
of memories. They're soon unraveling.
They open hidden boxes and spread all around

2115
03:08:58,840 --> 03:09:05,280
things that were never in tended,
unbound. Fond memories tortured now are haunting.

2116
03:09:05,840 --> 03:09:11,799
The past is longed for, the
future is daunting, an aching sadness

2117
03:09:11,799 --> 03:09:18,079
for things long gone yet waiting for
no man. Time marches on outside my

2118
03:09:18,200 --> 03:09:22,959
windows. A wind chime rings,
a random tune on a night's winds wings

2119
03:09:22,760 --> 03:09:28,239
away in the distance. A train
whistles, moaning keeps ghosts in my mind

2120
03:09:28,360 --> 03:09:33,760
from roaming anymore on the sleepless night. As dawn approaches with welcomed light.

2121
03:09:37,600 --> 03:09:43,719
The artist and the poet. What
the artist does is pigment. The poet

2122
03:09:43,760 --> 03:09:48,200
does with a pen. The artist
makes us sea without, and the poet

2123
03:09:48,319 --> 03:10:00,719
see within dead reckoning over jagged waves. Are ships with captain think our course

2124
03:10:00,760 --> 03:10:05,479
alone. We steer, not decided
by us. Our courses they happen,

2125
03:10:05,000 --> 03:10:11,280
yet not by chance. New ports
draw near. We're only passengers, though

2126
03:10:11,360 --> 03:10:16,520
at the wheel, pretending control,
we order hoist all her sheets full speed

2127
03:10:16,520 --> 03:10:22,399
ahead, goes brass, wood and
steel, our luminous weight, changing the

2128
03:10:22,440 --> 03:10:26,399
courses of those we meet, just
as ours was altered by the others.

2129
03:10:26,440 --> 03:10:33,239
We passed under billowing sail and creaking
masts, each ship moves the other to

2130
03:10:33,360 --> 03:10:37,639
alternate ends, directing their course much
more than the winds. The altering of

2131
03:10:37,799 --> 03:10:43,440
plot by just one tiny degree then
brought our ship eventually alongside of me.

2132
03:10:46,280 --> 03:10:50,040
We think it is us who steer
by the stars, when in truth it

2133
03:10:50,079 --> 03:10:54,760
is the maker of those very same
stars who makes the winds blow that drive

2134
03:10:54,840 --> 03:11:00,280
us along. While in the rigging
whistles a familiar song, an old time

2135
03:11:00,399 --> 03:11:05,559
hymn, and clanging ship's bell says
to us that all is well, Yes,

2136
03:11:05,280 --> 03:11:15,280
all is well the purpose of life. I'm just passing through, though

2137
03:11:15,799 --> 03:11:18,840
I know not why. I breathe, love, live, and die.

2138
03:11:20,079 --> 03:11:22,479
For my purpose, I beg a
glue to lead a nation, as some

2139
03:11:22,600 --> 03:11:30,159
men do, or silently pass my
task unknown and sleep anonymously under a yet

2140
03:11:30,280 --> 03:11:35,440
quarried stone. Perhaps my task is
a cumulative thing, not to strum the

2141
03:11:35,520 --> 03:11:41,280
heart, but merely pluck one string
and then another in no recognized tone,

2142
03:11:41,319 --> 03:11:46,719
seemingly out of sync with the comic
metronome, never hearing the sound of the

2143
03:11:46,799 --> 03:11:54,680
symphony complete but a few single notes
without sustain. Fading fleet, Should the

2144
03:11:54,719 --> 03:11:58,680
smallest cog missing inside the clock then
render its heart a tick with no talk?

2145
03:12:00,719 --> 03:12:05,479
The entire mechanism would then be of
no avail other than to mark the

2146
03:12:05,520 --> 03:12:09,760
time that the small cog failed.
The parts of the machine must exist in

2147
03:12:09,840 --> 03:12:16,559
the hole if we are to hear
the chimes and the hours told. A

2148
03:12:16,680 --> 03:12:20,760
night's bright armor is but one rivet, shy of deciding whether the warrior might

2149
03:12:20,840 --> 03:12:26,840
live or die. So, whether
cogg or rivet or vibrating string, we

2150
03:12:26,959 --> 03:12:31,239
all have our part in this mystical
thing called life, where nothing is certain

2151
03:12:31,760 --> 03:12:37,799
except its end and the unknown links
of the paths we wind. To believe

2152
03:12:39,040 --> 03:12:43,280
you've a purpose, yet know it
not. Is to deny yourself and acknowledge

2153
03:12:43,479 --> 03:12:52,559
your God. This has been as
per y'all's requests, written by Beau Ray,

2154
03:12:54,280 --> 03:13:03,600
read to you by Cameron Buckner.
People for t