Uncle Albutt Part 2

Through a connection with his son, Uncle Albert somehow came up on a ninety-nine year lease on several acres on Dorcheat Bayou in Louisiana.  Ready to retire from farming, he decided a fish camp would provide a modest retirement income.  My father bought his farm and stock, but that’s a story for another day.  Obviously, he was a multi-talented man, able to turn his hand to any task.  His farm boasted two cabins.  He moved into the second cabin, disassembled the log house he was living in loaded it piece by piece on his old truck, and moved  it to his lease, where he went to work reassembling it just as it had originally been, except he added an additional bedroom, occasionally recruiting help from relatives with bigger jobs.  Once the reassembled house was in the dry, he took apart the second cabin, using the timber to cover over the logs and seal the house tighter.  One day, Daddy decided we’d go by and check on Uncle Albert’s progress. My older sister climbed on the unsecured log walls, tumbling them to the ground.  I was so glad she got to them before I did.  Neither Daddy nor Uncle Albert was pleased.  Daddy spent the rest of that evening and Saturday helping Uncle Albert get it back together.  None of us kids were invited along, for some reason.  When Uncle Albert was satisfied with his house, he used the rest of the salvaged lumber for fishing boats, a pier, fences, a bait shop, and outbuildings.  Soon he had a pretty good business going.  By the next spring, he had a large garden underway.

Prior to construction of his house, Uncle Albert took care of necessities,; first, a toilet before summoning all his nephews for the digging of a well, uphill from the toilet, of course.  They came, bringing all their wives and children, a festive day of barbecuing, fishing, children running wild, while the men took turns shoveling the hard red clay from the well site..  Only one man could be in the hole at a time.  The others stayed above ground, pulling the heavy dirt from the hole.  They all took their turns.  By the end of the first day, thanks to the high water table, water was beginning to seep in at a depth of twenty feet.  They dug a few feet more, set the curb so the well wouldn’t silt in, and came back the next day to build a protective well-housing.  Uncle Albert was able to draw a bit of water by the evening of the second day.

Along with all my cousins, I was desperate to be lowered by pulley and bucket as the fortunate diggers were, into the depths of that well.  Sadly, all the mothers and aunts were just as anxious to keep wayward kids out of the well, warning us away every time we came near.  However, were able to indulge in one other life-threatening activity as they focused on that well.  A gravel road ran down the steep hill along one side of Uncle Albert’s property where it intersected with another dirt road fronting his house alongside the steep-banked bayou. The occasional oil-truck, fisherman, or hunter who travelled that way would have had no expectation of kids running wild, since until only recently, it was nothing but woods.    Someone of my cousins had thoughtfully brought along their red wagon to Uncle Albert’s that day.  Naturally, we pulled that wagon to the top of the red-dirt hill, piled in as many cousins as would fit, and prepared for a thrilling coast down the steep graveled road.  There were no engineers among us.  Confident as only a cluster of kids can be, we set off for a bone-rattling ride.  That wagon clattered and bounced, held down only by the weight of kids.  A couple of the smaller ones were pitched out, left squalling in our dusty tracks.  The clattering, crying, and dust cloud caught the attention of the well-diggers and mothers who were laying out the picnic lunch, secure in the knowledge we weren’t falling in the well.  As they looked on at the screaming wagonload of kids hurtling down the hill, an oil truck approached the crossing at the bottom.  It slammed on its brakes, swerving enough to allow us to pass, though our unlikely survival was concealed by the massive dust cloud.  The wagon flew on toward the high bank of the bayou, where we were saved by a brush thicket just short of the water.

In the manner of parents at that time, once the loving parents found their children weren’t dead, they gratefully expressed their joy with beatings for all. I had one fine ride down that hill, but I never got another crack at it.

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Wordless Wednesday

New Phone

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Mother and a friend are bouncing around on a tour bus somewhere up in Maine.  I am so glad she went now before she got old.  She is only ninety.  I think the part she has liked the most so far, is that she and her friend share a lunch every day.  Mother doesn’t eat much and loves saving money.  They visited a farm yesterday, kind of interesting since she spent her first fifty-four years on a farm and couldn’t wait to get away. Anyway, I kept getting calls from Mother wanting the other kids’ numbers, numbers that hadn’t changed in years. Was her mind going? Had she had a stroke? I was worried, but didn’t want to distress her.

My sister unraveled the mystery for me. Just before leaving, Mother got a new phone and forgot to have someone programmed her numbers. There’s no way she’d do that for herself. She hates technology.

Evil Incarnate on a Pink Tricycle

imageMother gets pretty hot about a few things.  One of these is problems with mail delivery.  One day, she got to her mailbox to find her mail tattered,torn, and lying on the ground.  Worst of all, a government check had been ripped.  Somebody was going to pay for this crime!  Rabid with rage, she cornered a couple of kids who gladly gave up the perpetrator to save their own sorry hides.  They’d seen a little blonde-haired girl with pig-tails standing on her pink tricycle rifling through Mother’s box.  Mother gave the little snitches a five dollar reward after they located the child’s tricycle parked in front of a house two streets over.

Armed with this information, Mother called the Sheriff’s Department to report the heinous crime. Regaling him every shocking detail, the criminal’s description, description of the getaway vehicle, and last known address.  The deputy laughed, asking if she’d had the check back.

“Yes, but that’s not the point.  I want this stopped!  Tampering with the mail is a Federal Crime!”

“Lady, what do you want me to do, put out an APB on a little three-year-old girl on a pink tricycle?”

A Hog a Day Part 20

Image courtesy of Pixabay

I’ve got to end this series, since it is the basis of my next book and I don’t want to give it away but there are so many stories I want to share.  One is about a suicide and a mean Christian.

Mrs Rivers was as old as the hills. I believe she was born that way.   Widowed more than forty years, no one ever spoke of her husband.  It was impossible for me to imagine anyone could have ever wanted to marry her, as unpleasant as she appeared.  Still living in the house where  she raised her children, her son had built a house on her lot. My mother often remarked she’d be a trial as a mother-in-law as we drove  by and saw her dressed in a dark, long-sleeved dress and sun bonnet working her garden with a push plow. I’m sure she refused her son’s offer to plow her garden, because no one would have expected someone that old to plow.

Old Lady Rivers, as she was known, was a practicing Pentecostal, though she attended the Baptist Church just across the road from her house and interfered with its runnings as much as she was able.  While she didn’t have a vote, she did have opinions and battered the faithful with them as often as possible.  She was the first at services, wakes, and funerals, eager to share “how they took it” and why.  Never losing track of when a marriage was made, she was the first to predict should a baby appear to be coming “too soon.”

She was a skilled craftsman of gossip, eager to bear bad news or scandal. In the days before telephones were common in our rural community, it could be a challenge to get messages to people in a timely manner.   One sad day, a poor old gentlemen shot himself in the head out by his mailbox. His panicked wife called her son from next door for help.  The son covered his father with a sheet, but left the body lying awaiting the sheriff. A neighbor hurried to a local store to call the school principal to intercept his daughter, Alice Fay,  a school bus driver, before she left school with a bus load of children.  Sadly, they missed her by about fifteen minutes.  The principal summoned the coach and together, they hurried to catch up, hoping to spare her happening up on the grisly scene at her parent’s home, not realizing a couple of her stops had been eliminated.  He was behind her at every stop.

Old Lady Rivers heard the news before the bus was due.  She waited on the porch and puffed her way out to flag Alice Faye’s bus down.  The principal skidded to a stop behind the bus just as Alice Fay opened the bus door to see what the excited old lady wanted, Mrs. Rivers propped herself on her cane and announced, “Alice Faye, yore daddy done shot hisself in the head! God help him, he’s going to Hell for shore!”

Alice Faye reacted, as you might expect, erupting into hysterical tears as the principal and coach rushed up to comfort her and restore order to the traumatized children, three of whom were Alice Faye’s.  It was a horrendous situation.  The principal drove Alice Faye and her children home, and the coach finished the bus route on that awful day.  It was a shocking announcement of tragedy Alice Faye and her children could have been spared.

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Wordless Wednesday

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A Hog Day Part 19

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Between the two of us, Billy and I complained bitterly about having to march in like a row of ducks to  line the pew every Sunday.  No other kids our age sat with their parents.  We looked like real doofuses.  It was a social disaster.  Finally, I decided I’d have to work up the nerve to ask permission to sit somewhere else.  After the super ball incident, there was no way Billy would ever bring up that topic again. I knew I had to approach the subject delicately or there would be big trouble.  At our house, a question could reap consequences as serious as an actual sin.  It showed intent. I suppose it followed the same principle as “having lust in your heart.” Not only that, but whenever Daddy got news that a neighborhood kid had done something horrible, We got a preemptive lecture, just because. “Your FRIEND, Eddie, was smoking and burned down the preacher’s barn last night.  THAT’s why I don’t let you …….”. It didn’t matter that I’d never spoken two words to Eddie and despised smoking, only Daddy’s total dedication to lecturing and haranguing kept me on the straight and narrow.  But for his rigid control,  I’d have been smoking, drinking, and fornicating on the back pew every Sunday.

Not knowing how to broach the subject, one Sunday morning, I revolted.  Instead of following Daddy into pew three, I brazenly slid into pew four, right behind him. Billy followed me.  The sky didn’t fall.  Lightening didn’t strike.  The world kept spinning on its axis.  Daddy just turned and gave me a warning look, but I could tell I’d won my prize.

I pondered my victory in my heart as I sat smugly in pew four.  I found out that day, God has a sense of humor.  When we stood for a hymn, Daddy had a wedgie.  Have you ever had to spend time in church standing behind someone with a wedgie?  I experienced eternity that day as Daddy stood right in front of me with a wedgie.  Billy and I looked desperately back and forth at each other each time Daddy and his wedgie stood. I thought about reaching up and pulling it out, but feared there might be a Biblical injunction against it.  “Thou shalt not unwedge thy father’s wedgie!”  I might be turned into a pillar of salt.

I spent the next three years trying not to see Daddy’s wedgie as he stood in the pew ahead of me ever Sunday.

Shreveport Street Sign

What’s wrong with this sign?

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My nephew amended it!

Jokes

The young folks invited their elderly pastor for Sunday dinner. While they were in the kitchen preparing the meal, the minister asked their son what they were having.

“Goat,” the little boy replied.

“Goat?” replied the startled minister,  “Are you sure about that?”

“Sure.  I heard Dad tell Mom. “I guess we might as well have that old goat for dinner today.”

The minister dies and the congregation decides, after some time, that his widow, should marry again. Since it is a small village the only available candidate is the local butcher. Although very reluctantly, since she was used to living with a bible scholar, she accepts.

After the marriage, on Friday night just after taking a bath – the new husband tells his wife, “Look, my mother always said that before the beginning of the weekend it was a blessing to have sex.”

They do it and then on Saturday he tells her, “According to my father it is a blessing to have sex during the day before the Sabbath.

There they go again and when it is time to go to sleep he tells her, “My grandfather told me that one should always have sex on Sabbath night.”

Finally they go to sleep and when they wake up the next morning he tells her, “My aunt says that a Christian man always starts the Sabbath by having sex. So lets do it.”

Finally on Monday she goes out to the market and meets a friend that asks her, “So how is the new husband?”

“Well, an intellectual he isn’t, but he comes from a wonderful family.”

34     → Joke