where the hell is that damn box? the beginning

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Where The Hell IsThat Damn Box

Anyway?

The Beginning

by

V

A Memoir


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Copyright 2009 by V

First Edition

General Editor/Ghostwriter: Iyan Igma

Published by CreateSpace in Scotts Valley, CA

ISBN: 1442173521

EAN-13: 9781442173521

All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced in wholeor in part, by mechanical, electronic, or any other means, withoutpermission.

For information, contact V at [email protected] orIyan Igma at: [email protected]

Additional Copies May Be Purchased On Amazon or Fromwww.thatdamnbox.com and www.iyanigma.com

Cover design and back cover photo by Iyan Igma.

The front cover background illustration is The Scream by

Edvard Munch, which is public domain per US Copyright laws,as it was created before 1922.

All graphics used in the interior of the book, besides those listedon page 198 in further detail, were in the public domain.

This is a work of non-fiction. The names of people and placeshave been omitted and changed in several cases.

Large portions of this book was dictated, and great care has beentaken to preserve the style of the vernacular, grammar be damned.


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In Memory of My Father

I probably learned more from him thananyone else. He was the one that taughtme to think for myself. He was the one

that taught me to depend on myselfinstead of looking to somebody else to

take care of me.


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The Beginning

Introduction

Apparently the memories of everything I've donejust hang around. I can remember the things folks sayand their faces. It would be simpler for me to direct amovie than write a book. I have a photographic memory

of everything I've done in my life, and when I wasyounger I used to think my head would explode. But itdidn't.

Now, about the title. All my life I've heard peopletalking about how they had to get out of the box. Well,hell, I've always been so far out of the box I can't find it.I guess that's because I don't remember ever limiting

myself by saying I'll never do something. I was prettymuch game for most anything.

Life Motto #2

Wherever you are, whatever you do, always rememberto hit a lick.

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Where The Hell Is That Damn Box Anyway?

Special Note:

Lamentably, On 2 January 2010, V passed on, and I amcertain that by now he has made it safely to Valhalla. Vwas one of the most remarkable people I ever met. Itwas my honor and great entertainment to help him with

this project.

This book was finished when he died, however he hadnot finalized certain details. Having burnt all themidnight oil I could helping him catalog many of hismemories, I hope that this book stands as an accuraterepresentation of what he wanted and who he was

which is a far cry from how his obituary depicted him.

Iyan Igma, Ghost Writer and Editor

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The Beginning

Table of Contents

Lightning.......................................................................10The Bullwhip................................................................14Reincarnation................................................................19Playing In Church.........................................................22

The First Television......................................................24Egg Custard...................................................................28Egg Custard Recipe.......................................................30"Cute"............................................................................31Bullies...........................................................................34Speeches........................................................................38Hatchets.........................................................................43

Swamp...........................................................................45First Invention...............................................................48The Duck Hunter...........................................................49The Nest........................................................................51Log Jam.........................................................................52Swamp Folks.................................................................53Grandparents.................................................................55Fertilizer Delivery.........................................................56The Frontier Dentist......................................................59BB Gun Versus Rock....................................................63Basketball......................................................................66Pinball...........................................................................68Bored Stiff.....................................................................75

First Cigarette................................................................78Casino...........................................................................81

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The Demon And Drowning...........................................83

Broken Back..................................................................87After School Recess......................................................89Wheel Bases..................................................................94Bootlegging Begins.......................................................95FFA Camp...................................................................100The Dog......................................................................107

Chocolate....................................................................109Boy Scouts..................................................................111Cause He was Family..................................................116Jailhouse......................................................................118Bootleg Cherry Bombs...............................................123First Nookie................................................................126Shooting Off Hat.........................................................128

Go To Hell Hat............................................................130Violent Knight.............................................................131Off Camber Hill..........................................................137First Motorcycle..........................................................140A Lifeguard's Holy Terror...........................................144Thumper Camp...........................................................146Cow Sitting.................................................................148

Algebra in High School..............................................150Library Fight...............................................................153Principal's Desk...........................................................155Douglas.......................................................................157The Night of the Wedding...........................................159Driver's License..........................................................161Race Cars....................................................................163The Bet........................................................................166

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The Beginning

The Intersections.........................................................167

My Fear Factor Moment.............................................169Three Bridges Road....................................................170Theater Terror.............................................................174The Night of the Prom................................................177Skunk Story.................................................................182The Fair.......................................................................194

Jealousy.......................................................................196Smoking......................................................................197Senior Trip..................................................................199Getting Sam There On Time.......................................206Spence Field................................................................208The Dead Man.............................................................209Illustration Credits......................................................215

About V.......................................................................216About V.......................................................................216

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Lightning

I was at my Grandparent's house one night.Mother was working in town; Dad was doingsomething, although he couldn't have been working inthe fields because it was raining. I was probably fouryears old, maybe five. My Granddaddy was out on the

porch, and my Grandmother was in the kitchen fixingthe evening meal.

I was in the bedroom playing with my toys. Now,

my toys consisted of a big box of wooden thread spools,which my grandmother kept saving for me. I wouldn'thave traded my thread spools for any video game I'veever seen. I could do anything with them. I could buildthings with them. I could make vehicles with them.

My Grandfather came into the house. Then, hewalked through the kitchen into the bedroom where I

was. He called to me.

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The Beginning

He said, Vaughn, come out here. I want to show

you something.And I remember looking up at him and asking,

What?And he said, I can't tell you. I've got to show

you. Come on out here.And so, he reached out to me and took me by the

hand. We walked through the kitchen, and I remembermy Grandmother fixing the evening meal.He led me out onto the porch and pointed out into

the rain, and he said, I want you to look right overthere.

And where he pointed there was a tree abouttwelve feet tall about about maybe ten feet from the

porch where we were standing.And I said, What do you want me to look at?Again he pointed at the tree and said, Just keep

looking at it. Just keep looking at it.And I stood there looking at the tree. I'd seen it

before, and I couldn't figure out why he wanted me tolook at it now. And just about a minute after he led me

out onto the porch, a big bolt of lightning came and hitthe tree. It just split it in two. I was just ten feet awayfrom it, and I thought the thunderclap was going toknock me over.

I really didn't think about it until it was too late.But ever since I did think about it, I always wonderedhow he knew lightning was going to strike that tree,

because from the time that he got up out of his chair to

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the time the lightning struck the tree was about five

minutes. I don't know of any procedures today for howto tell where lightning was going to strike somethingfive minutes ahead of time.

Now, since that time, I've been extremely close tolightning many times. Lightning has struck the car I wasriding in four times. I remember one night at home,

lightning struck the circuits in the house. I think it gotthere through a ground strike. But I was standing in thekitchen getting something. And I heard lightning strike

just outside the house.And while I was standing there, this bright blue

light just started going all over the kitchen. It went toeverything electrical in the kitchen. It would come out

of one and go into the other. It would go from the fridgeto the stove to the water heater to the fuse panel. AndI'm just standing here in the middle turning andwatching each appliance have this blue aura on it. I justthought it was interesting having this blue light runningaround and around the kitchen, though it did burn upeverything. But I've never been afraid of lightning. I

guess when you've been that close to it, you don't haveany more fear of it.

I can tell you from experience that when lightningstrikes the car you're driving, the noise is just absolutelystunning. But the whole world just goes white. Now, I'veseen this same blue light jumping around on the outsideof a car. But that's kind of interspersed with the wholeworld going white.

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The Beginning

They mix together somehow. I never have been

able to see anything but that blue light. I never could seeanything outside the windows because everything was

just way. That's one reason I don't drive a car with acomputer chip, since I know that a lightning fries acomputer chip. (Another reason is because I don't knowwhat all exactly the computer chip does do, so I'd rather

not have it around me.)

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The Bullwhip

The same Grandfather from this lightning story,

and I was about the same age, probably four. I'm sure Iwasn't in school. I was down at their house again,though this time in the daytime. I don't know what

brought this on, but for some reason something that Ihad done got my Grandfather kind of upset at me.

He was holding his bullwhip in his hands, and hesaid something about spanking me. And I remembertaking it as a joke.

And I said something to the effect of, Well,before you spank me, you'll have to catch me.

And I took off running. And I felt that bullwhipsnap just right between my shoulder blades. And it drew

blood. It was a hard lick. And I remember just as soon as

I felt that bullwhip hit me, something different cameover me. And I stopped dead in my tracks, and turned

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The Beginning

around, and with a measured pace, I walked back to my

grandfather.My head came up just a little above his waist. He

was standing there with the whip uncoiled and layingout on the ground. He didn't move anything, and myGrandmother was standing next to him. She didn'tmove. It was just like they were frozen in time.

I walked over until I was just about a foot awayfrom him, and I looked up at him and I said, If I dosomething wrong, you can spank me. But if you ever hitme with that damn thing again, I will kill you.

I walked over to the porch and went inside, andthey just stood there kind of frozen. My Grandfather forthe rest of the time, never ever had any thought about

hitting me with anything.Now, just a few years after that, my Dad bought

me a bullwhip. I worked with it, and I worked with it. Ikept the back of my neck and shoulders bloodied fromlearning how to use it. It was a ten foot Roulette whip,the best kind they ever made. I worked with it all thetime, just every spare minute I would work with that

whip. I thought that I was going to beat myself to deathbefore I learned how to control it, but I didn't.

I got to where I could pop it so a cow would feelthe wind from the tip, but it wouldn't ever touch the cow.So, it wouldn't hurt them that bad. I got real good withmy whip.

A couple of years later, Dad saw that I was gettinggood with it and could control it. He got me a whip

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made. It was a twenty-two foot bullwhip with an eight

foot cracker on the end. He gave it to me for Christmas.That year for Christmas, from the same place that Dadhad my whip made, Mother, without conferring withanybody, ordered and gave me a feedbag for a horse. Ididn't have a horse.

I said, Where's the rest of it?

She said, What do you mean, where's the rest ofit?I said, Where's the horse?Dad finally decided that he could cut out a piece

of one side of it and keep clothespins in it. If she hadjust told Dad what she was going to do, he could havetold her that we didn't have a horse. There wasn't

anything we could do with the damn thing.I got good enough that I could actually pick a shot

arrow out of the air with those whips. I did all kinds oftricks with the neighbor kids and with anybody that Icould talk into doing it. I started off cutting newspapersout of people's hands with either one of the whips I had.I got down to a cigarette in the hand, and then I got to

taking cigarettes out of people's mouths. Then, I got sothat I could flip a quarter from between their fingerswithout touching their fingers.

And all that got boring pretty quick. And one ofmy cousins, I think he may have been a little jealous.I'm not sure. He suggested that he shoot these practicearrows next to me and at me with his bow. So, westarted off with him shooting the arrows next to me. And

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I could just flick them out of the air at will. And then we

worked up to him shooting the arrows at me, and I couldjust flick them out of the air before they got to me. Boysreally don't have to be stupid to be stupid.

At one point later on in my life, I won somemoney on a bar bet. Somehow the conversation gotaround to whips and what people could do with them.

And I told them that I was good with a whip, andnobody much wanted to believe that.And so, we wound up making a bet that I wouldn't

be able to crack that whip in that bar without hittinganything. The bar had real low ceilings, about seven foothigh, and standard height cocktail tables that went toabout three feet high. So, that meant I had about four

feet left, and this was a thirty foot whip, which meant Iwas going to have to stretch out my whip almost thelength of the bar in just a four foot space.

So, I made out my bets, and the next night Ibrought my whip. They all looked at it, and there weresome more people that said that it couldn't be done.There wasn't enough room to get a thirty foot whip to

crack in just four feet. So, I got more money bet againstme.

We were standing on a stage making up bets andputting up money. When I turned around, the waitresseshad set all of the chairs in the bar up on top of the tables

because the bar had been closing. So, the chair legs werenow sticking up on top of these tables. And that actuallyleft me about two feet, more or less, for the whip to go

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through between the ceiling and the chair legs.

So, all these guys that had been betting against metold me that it would be okay if I wanted to wait foranother night or move the chair legs. I told them I'drather them double all the bets, and I'd like to do it like itis. They were all too happy to.

I backed up on the stage and uncoiled my whip,

and it just stretched out like a rattlesnake striking, wentstraight through the air through the chair legs, andstretched out to the other end of the bar and cracked justlike a rifle shot. And I collected my money. I didn't evenhave any trouble getting the money.

They said, Anybody that can do that deserves tobe paid for it.

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The Beginning

Reincarnation

I firmly and positively believe in reincarnation. Ihad...they weren't dreams. They were memories ofthings, that I remembered when I was little that I didn't

even know what they were until later on in life.I wrote in old English. I spelled everything with

the old English spelling. The teachers didn't know I wasdoing that until I got into high school, and then I foundout that one of the reasons that I couldn't spell was

because I was honestly spelling everything in oldEnglish. Hell, when I was in grade school, the teachers

didn't even know what old English looked like,apparently.

Well, one of the things that I remember was beingin a battle. The people that I saw that I was battling withwere dressed in what appeared to be animal skins ofsome kind. The thing that struck me most was thesurface that we were fighting on.

It was something that I had never heard of or

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seen. I don't remember if I asked my parents about it,

but I'm sure I did at some time, but they didn't knowwhat I was talking about.

I found out later on in life it was the Devil'sCauseway in Northern Ireland. But the Causeway that Iwas fighting on was just barely awash with water. Itseemed to have just about an inch of water across the

hexagonal blocks that made it up. Nobody that I kneweven knew what it was until I was in high school, and inall of the pictures that I saw of it was dry.

I remember being an Oriental warrior in bothJapan and what I took to be China. In several memoriesthat I had I would be hidden inside of an enemycampground, either in logs or boulders, and the enemy

warriors would be all around me and setting on the logsthat I was around and hiding behind.

I remembered a lot of that. I have looked throughbooks of various places and pictures of various placesand just suddenly knew that I had been there, like a pileof rocks, or a castle, or a street in a town. And with this

background, I never doubted that I had been there.

The lot of the warrior is that when somebodyneeds us we're the most wonderful thing around but assoon as we've done our wonderful things, they want uskilled so they don't have to deal with us.

Another one of my dreams that I had when I wasreal little was living under water. Just going along like afish. I mean, I wasn't a fish but moved like one throughthe water.

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I remember being in a smoky cave with a bunch

of men dressed in animal skins.

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Playing In Church

Mom and Dad took myself and a slightly oldercousin to church one night. I think it was in some kindof revival. We'd gotten out of the pew and decided that itwould be a fun place to play tag. So we did. We ran

down to the front of the church and we'd tag each otherand the other one would run away.I noticed that neither Mom nor Dad was chasing

us. And it got me and my cousin a little worried, so wedecided that we had better go outside for a while, wewent out and looked in the church and they werecontinuing to have church and it got over and we got in

the car and they took my cousin home.

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And then, we went to the house. I think mother

started off. Mother started whipping me with a belt. Andwhen she got tired, Dad took over for a while. Then,mother started back.

And by this time I'm thinking, "They must betired of having a child. Hell these people are just goingto kill me for doing that."

They didn't, But I learned that playing in churchwas not the smartest move that I had ever made. Thatwas probably the beginning of the end for religion.

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The First Television

Mother worked at Friedlander's. She was a floormanager and a buyer for the women's department atFriedlander's and a world renowned cosmetician. She

sold what was at that time the most expensive and bestcosmetics in the world. Friedlander's was by far thesmallest and least exclusive store that they sold Charlesof the Ritz in the world.

The only places other than that that you could findCharles of the Ritz were in stores such as Sachs 5th

Avenue and Nieman Marcus, except for Friedlander's

down here in podunk, Georgia. They sent mother toschool in New York four times to learn different parts ofthe cosmetology. And at one time they offered her themanagership of the cosmetic department of any store in

New York, if she'd just move up there and take it,because Charles of the Ritz was such a power in thecosmetic industry that they could dictate who ran thecosmetics in Neiman's or Sachs or any place that they

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were in.

She was so well thought of by them that when sheleft Friedlander's and opened a little gift shop on theground floor of the Colquitt Hotel that Charles of theRitz went with her instead of staying at Friedlander's.She had a position that Friedlander's was trying to keepand trying to keep her happy, because they realized that

she could go anywhere in the country and do well.One of the things that they did, and this wasabout 1945 or 1946, Friedlander's used their influence inthe retail world and connections in the retail world to get3 twenty-one inch black and white (naturally)Magnavox televisions. If I remember right the Vereen'sgot one, and I believe that the Pidcock's might have got

another, and we got the third.There were only two channels available. The only

two television channels anywhere around here wereChannel Four in Jacksonville and Channel Two inAtlanta. We didn't need a movable antenna to pointanything at because there was nothing else to point anantenna towards.

They came in good. They said that at that timethat the antenna company had designed an antenna thatwas cut and designed just for channel four's frequencyand we got an antenna that was cut and designed forchannel's two's frequency. I mean it was black andwhite, it was snowy, but we hardly had any trouble outof it, whenever we wanted to watch television, wewatched television.

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They weren't on but for about six hours a day, and

then they went off and the thing went blank, and theykept gradually getting a little longer and longer. Therewere several families in the community that throughnewspapers and such would find out about TV showsand come over to our house to watch TV for one show.

And then, another family would come over and

watch their show and then leave. And there were a lot oftimes that our family would be in town, maybe groceryshopping, or we'd go to pick up mother or get somesupplies on the way back and we'd come back to thehouse and find two or three families in the living roomwatching their shows. There were six or eight whitefamilies and two or three black families that came over

and watched their shows. No one locked their doors atthat time.

If I met a family coming home they'd say come onin and make yourself at home, as they left and there'd besomeone else watching their program.

And then, one of the neighbors that had watchedour television called us and told us that he had a new

system of watching television at his house. He told usthat we could come over to his house and watch his newcolor television. None of us had ever heard of one

before, and so we loaded up and went to see what thislooked like.

And he had bought a brand new black and whiteTV with a plastic strip that you just stuck on the front ofyour television and it was translucent it had a blue streak

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across the top third of it and a pink streak in the middle

third and a green streak across the bottom third, and thattransformed your TV into a brand new color television.

And people just bought them like it was silverfalling from the sky. They bought millions. It took meless than three minutes to just hate those things. Andthey're sitting there bragging about how they're in color

and they have skin tones and the grass is green. And I'mjust sitting there thinking what in the hell are thesepeople talking about? This is crap.

And I don't remember anybody ever thinkingabout the house being full of people when you came

back, it was just normal. The only comment that I heardfrom Mom and Dad was when we'd pull into the yard,

oh yeah, this is their night. This is their program. It wasjust an ordinary normal thing. But, God almighty if Ifound somebody in my house today I'd kill 'em and eatthem before I realized that I couldn't do that in politesociety.

I was in college when I saw a real color TV forthe first time. But I do remember WAGA-color. WAGA-

color was a system whereby station WAGA in Atlantabroadcast color pictures with a black and white cameragoing to a black and white television set. Color is afrequency, and they'd use a different frequency offlashing for different lines on a screen. But I think it wasway too involved to do on a regular basis. They just didit every once in a while to show off.

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Egg Custard

About the same time, I was six years old, and wehad one of my little cousins come stay with us for awhile, maybe a week, I think, and mother was workingin town and Dad was working in the fields so we were atthe house and I was to entertain my little cousin.

And somehow we decided that we were hungry inthe middle of the afternoon. And between the two of uswe decided that we would like some egg custard

pudding. Now I had seen mother make egg custard onseveral occasions so I decided that I would make ussome egg custard. I found out that we didn't have anyeggs.

Went and got the tractor and got it cranked up. So,

I tried to get my little cousin to stand up by the tractorseat. Now I was small enough at that time that I had to

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stand on the clutch with both feet in order to put the

thing in gear, but I had driven the tractor around on thefarm before. She was afraid to stand on the tractoranyway or anywhere so I had to back the tractor up andhook it up to a trailer that we had which was really aterrible job for a six-year old kid.

But I got the thing hooked up and got her up in

the trailer and drove to the store about two miles fromthe house. I think I had found some money somewhereor I had a little money, I don't remember where themoney come from, I didn't have enough money for adozen eggs, so I bought two eggs, that's all I needed forthe custard. So, I gave my cousin the two eggs, and shecould just hold one egg in each hand. I think she was

about 4.I drove back to the house with her in the trailer in

her little frilly dress holding these two eggs in both herhands. And when we got back, I cooked us some eggcustard. It turned out great. I think that was the firstthing I cooked just altogether by myself, but sometimesoon after that I decided that I was never going to give

any woman the opportunity of starving me to death, Iwas going to know how to cook.

Life Motto #1

Where the hell is that damn box anyway?

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Egg Custard Recipe

Ingredients

2 eggs (from a chicken. Brown ain't half bad)

1 tablespoon sugar1- cups milk, warm tablespoon vanilla extract

ground nutmeg

Directions:

1. Warm your milk, but don't let the damn milk boil,or it will go and curdle the eggs.

2. Beat the eggs with a fork, after you've crackedthem, of course.

3. Add the sugar and warmed milk.

4. Pour into a greased pie dish.5. Sprinkle some nutmeg on it.6. Bake at 300F for 40 minutes, or until you can't

half stand it any longer.

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"Cute"

One of the first fights that I ever got into in schoolwas because of the damn outfit I had on. It was cute.Mothers are the ones that find "cute." Cute has gottenmore innocent boys beat up than anything else on theearth.

My little cute first grade outfit was a whiteshirt, I think it had ruffles on it, I'm not sure. It had alittle brown jacket like a sports jacket, and short pantsand a little matching cap, with a real small cap brim thatdid no good at all.

I don't think they were seniors, but they wereprobably eighth grade or ninth grade students on the

bus. They got my hat off my head and started throwingit back and forth between themselves. And, naturally, I

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ran from one to the other from one to the other chasing

the cap.Until, I realized that that wasn't doing any good,

that I couldn't ever outrun them. So, the only thing that Icould ever think of to do was to, when the ring leadergot the cap, I just dove at the ring leader. He had alreadythrown the cap, but I hit him and knocked him down in

between the bus seats.He got just luckily just kind of wedged in thesebus seats. So, I started hitting him. He couldn't get up,and I was hitting him, and it took the other two a minuteto figure out what was going on, it surprised them somuch. And I know I wasn't doing any kind of damageexcept morally, but I was beating on him.

And they ran up and started trying to pull me offof him. Well, when they pulled me, I grabbed whatever Icould get, a nostril or an eyelid or an ear, and when they

pulled on me they'd pull on whatever I had of his, andhe'd scream for them to leave me alone, and when they'dlet go I'd start beating him again. They'd hit me in the

back and then try to pull me off of him. But I just kept

beating on him.I know I didn't do any damage, hell, I was six

years old, but I was a strong little kid, but I didn't knowwhere to hit anybody, but I did what I could. I realizedyears later that if I had seen myself in that I would have

beat my own ass. You can't go into civilized societyanywhere without using a little common sense about"cute." I remember mother saying that over and over

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about that, "How cute that is; how precious that is," and

there's no power on earth that could have got methrough a day in school without getting beat up in thatoutfit.

Life Motto #2

Hit A Lick!

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Bullies

I don't quite know how it happened, but at aboutfive or six years old, I was the one elected to fight thelocal bullies, whoever they were. Somehow, since I had

been born without a reverse gear and didn't know how toback up from anything. I did that. It got to be a habit thatpretty much followed me all throughout my life. Irealized later on.

One of the first times, I think I was in the first orsecond grade. I wasn't very old, and nobody knewanything much about fighting. We had a fellow that had

failed first grade a couple of times and he was goingthrough second grade for the second time. He was fromsome place up north, I think he said New York or NewJersey. In kid speak that meant he was a lot tougher thananybody else. He was a lot bigger and older and hewould take kid's lunch money away from them.

That went on for a good portion of the year. I hada friend at that time that was a little, real skinny guy. He

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and I were walking along back of the school one day

and this bully came swaggering up to us.Well," he said, talking to my buddy, "It's your

turn to give me your lunch money today."My buddy was just scared. And I remember

saying,"He's not going to give you anything."

If memory serves, my buddy already had his handin his pocket. The guy turned and looked at me, andsaid,

"I guess, then, I'll take both of your lunch money."I said, "No, I don't think that you'll do that."

Nobody knew how to fight, but this guy was somuch bigger and stronger than everyone else in the

class. His way of fighting was to put his head down, getat least a ten or fifteen feet head start and run into a kid,knock the wind out of them, follow them down to theground, and knock the wind out of them again whenthey hit the ground. Then, he'd beat them up however hewanted.

When he lowered his head and came after me, I

remember the thought running through my mind andthinking what to do, what to do. I came up with the ideato just hit him on the top of the head since that was allthat was open to me.

So that's what I did, and he fell down like he wasdead. At that point I don't think it mattered much to meif he was dead or not, but the teachers ran over and triedto wake him up but couldn't. I think it took three of them

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to pick him up, he was like a rag doll. They carried him

in to the nurses office.I had to go to the Principal's Office which was a

daily occurrence in grammar school. I'm still his friend.Saw him not long ago. We saw each other so much... Hedidn't do anything to me, because two or three othershad told him what had happened.

I think it took them about thirty or forty minutesto get this kid awake. But years after that, he thanked mefor it, because he told me that when he got older, whenhe got to be an adult, he put some thought into what hadhappened then. He was sure that it had changed hiswhole life. I knew that he quit being the bully that day.

I've had that happen a lot. People come back and

tell me that just that one ass-beating changed their lifefor the better. So why in god's name do all the womentry to stop anyone from even thinking about a fight? Ifkids are allowed to fight at an early age, nobody getshurt very bad, the kids learn that they have to acceptresponsibility for their actions, they learn that other

people have rights, they learn that for every action there

is an opposite and maybe not so equal reaction and thatthey have to depend on themselves and pay their owndebts instead of depending on someone else to do it forthem.

It's a major part of the learning experience thathas been deleted from our young people for some kindof weird emotional reason. Bad choice. Now they'reteaching the kids that actions have no consequences.

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Good god. That nobody has to pay for their mistakes.

That's a horrible, insane thing to be teaching children,unless you want the kind of society that we've got nowwith people being shot in the streets and prisons runningover and no one being able to do anything forthemselves.

Ever since then I've always been the one to whom

that everyone has always gone to deal with the bullies ofthe world. And I did. To date I have been able to do this.

Life Motto #2

Hit a Lick

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Speeches

And I think it was some time close around there,maybe the second grade, we had a meeting of the wholeschool for some kind of motivational speaker. AlthoughI didn't hear most of what he talked about. I'm prettysure he didn't know much about what he was talkingabout. He was making a speech, and we all had to go tothe auditorium, and the whole school had to be there. I

may have been in the first grade because we were on thefront row.

I remember one of the things he said andemphasized was, and he said it in a loud voice,

"Anybody can do anything that they want to do."I turned over to my buddy and said, "That's just a

lie." My buddy laughed and I laughed, and the big

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motivational speaker said, "Son, do you want to share

that with the rest of us."I said, "No sir, I don't." Cause I didn't.He said, "Well you seem to doubt my statement

that anybody can do anything they want to do." Then, hesaid, kinda haughtily, "Why don't you tell me one thingthat you don't think I can do."

I said, "Well I don't think you can strike a matchon a wet cake of soap."He got red-faced, his face turned bright red, and

he shook his head, and you could tell that he was justfurious. And he looked at me, and now I'm a 6-year oldkid, and he has decided that his best plan is to have awar of wits with a 6-year old kid, and he said in a huff,

"And if you want to be facetious about it, youcan't roll a wheelbarrow full of smoke around this

building." And he kind of rocked back on his heels andlooked over the audience kind of smugly and self-aggrandizingly

And I said, "Yes sir, I can. And he just gotmadder.

I wouldn't have thought that anyone could havegotten madder, but he did. He was just moving the

podium up and down."You think you can roll a wheel barrow full of

smoke around the building?"I said, "Yes, sir. If you'll fill it up for me, I'll roll it

around this building."He just went nuts. I immediately felt a couple of

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teachers grab my arms, and I don't know what happened

to the big motivational speaker, but I was carried bodilydown the aisle and out of the auditorium to thePrincipal's Office, where I had to wait until he got there.I think that's why I don't like public speaking much. Ihad a bad start.

To the best of my knowledge, I am the only

person on the face of the earth that has ever passed apublic speaking course in college without ever making aspeech. The whole quarter I kept using every wile andgame and con that I could come up with to keep beingmissed on these speeches that the class had to give, andI used all the tricks that I could think of. At the end ofthe quarter, the professor called me into his office, and

he said,"I don't know how you did it, but I just realized

that you have gone the whole quarter without evermaking a speech." Then he said, "This is a publicspeaking course. I cannot, I will not pass you if you donot make a speech."

He told me that the final exam was going to be a

speech in front of an assemblage of the college. And itwas going to be an impromptu speech. The formatwould be a 5-minute speech, you'd be on stage, walk upto the podium, turn over a card on the podium with thesubject on it, and you'd have to speak five minutes on it.

The big day came. I sat through this whole dogand pony show until about half the class had made theirspeeches. He told me that if I managed to figure out

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some way to get out of the speech, he'd fail me. I sat

through the whole thing; it was getting closer to beingmy time to speak. The professor was just glaring at meacross the stage.

I got up, and walked up to the podium, and turnedover my card, and on it was written the word, "dates,D-A-T-E-S.

"Well," I said, "My speech is going to be on dates.There are a couple of kinds of dates. One you eat, andone you go out with."

And little titters went out through the audience.And then, I said, "And sometimes there is no

difference between them."The audience broke down. There were people

falling down and rolling out of chairs and falling downin the spaces between the seats, people fell out of theirseats in to the isle and couldn't get up, I saw peopletrying to get up the isle to leave that were laughing tohard to make it up the isle. The entire audience brokedown people were roaring and crying and falling overeach other all over the auditorium.

I stood at the podium watching all this for aboutfive minutes, and turned around and went back to myseat, and when I got to the professor's chair, he said,

I don't know how you did it, but I'm going tohave to pass you, because it wasn't your fault that youcouldn't make the speech.

It took about forty-five minutes to clear theauditorium, folks was laughing so hard they couldn't get

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up and get to the door. That was the end of the finals

that quarter. The other half of the class didn't get to givetheir final speeches either.

Life Motto #1


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Hatchets

One thing that I thought about an awful lot, Ilooked out the window in I think it was first grade, and I

saw this kid in the first grade class, (and I call him a kid,and I probably called him a kid then,) chasing a bunchof the class around the schoolyard with a little hatchet. Iwas in the classroom writing spelling words, I didn't geta recess in grade school, because I was always writingthese damned spelling words during recess. The teacherwas in the room, and I called her over.

I said, "Listen this guy is going to hurt thosekids."

She ran to the window and looked out and kindalaughed and came back to me, and said, "It's okay. I'msure that's a rubber hatchet."

I was only six years old, but I remember thinking,why on god's green earth would anybody ever make arubber hatchet, and why would anyone ever want to buy

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a rubber hatchet. It just astounded me that there would

be a rubber hatchet on the earth. I had been cuttingwood for fires at home for several years.

That first winter in first grade I stood behind theschool, and I saw one of the teachers cutting wood forthe school fire behind the building.

I told him, "You don't know how to cut wood."

And he kind of sneered and said, If you thinkyou know more about chopping wood than I do, showme."

Then, he handed me the axe, and from that timeonward I cut the wood for the fire at school, until theychanged their heating system, because he realized that Iwas a lot better at it than he was.

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Swamp

In very early elementary school Dad had a friendthat owned another farm about a mile away and thethree of us on occasion would go fishing in theOkefenokee Swamp. And when I got just five or sixyears old they decided that I was old enough to go withthem.

And they were both used to river fishing. We'djust go and find a good spot and walk down to the river.Then, we'd walk the river banks fishing.

And I remember the first trip I went with them.I'm sitting on the riverbank just fishing away and justhaving a good time watching the bees and the bugs and

the fish go by. And I looked around, and I didn't seeanybody.

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I got so good at it. And it was such a natural thing for

me that I'd have in later life somebody come up withsome kind of impossible situation or problem that theyhad. And they'd ask me, and I'd answer them directly

back. And I could see the light come on in their head,and they'd say,

Damn! That will work.

It might have been things they'd been worryingabout and worrying everyone they knew about for yearsand had not come close to a solution. And I'd just givethem a solution immediately back. And all of it stemmedfrom being left in situations and fights where I just hadto find a solution THEN or it was just... gone. Or I wasgone.

Bad things would happen otherwise. This didcause one problem: It was always so easy to me, that Ihardly ever managed to make any money for solving

problems for these people. It usually backfired on me.

Life Motto #1


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First Invention

At one point we had to cross a log across theSuwanee River or one of its tributaries and down underthe log was this bunch of alligators and I got across the

log somehow.I was real concerned about them alligators and

slipping. But we got back across the log on the wayback. That night, I got me some tacks and some bottlecaps and nailed those bottle caps on the soles of an old

pair of shoes.I wouldn't be worried about slipping off. I might

fall off, but I wouldn't slip off.

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The Duck Hunter

They told me about a man that they knew that hadgone fishing in the swamp from Moultrie. He was just

terrified of any kind of snake. Just the sight of a snakewould throw him into a panic.

Now, I didn't know how he managed to wind upin the swamp duck hunting. He had gone down therewhen it was just a swamp, before it was a park or game

preserve of any kind. Then, anybody could go anywherethey had guts enough to get into to hunt or fish.

He took an old wooden boat (but all the boatswere wood then.) He had some fishing tackle and ashotgun in the boat, and he was going up to Billy's Laketo shoot some ducks. He went up there and hunted allday, and it got getting close to the middle of theafternoon.

He decided that it was time for him to get out. Hestarted back to the landing, and on the way back about

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halfway back a water moccasin fell off of a limb in the

boat. Because I found out at an early age, in the swampthere's usually more snakes in the trees than on theground.

He jumped up straight in the air and when hecame down he shot the snake five times and sunk his

boat and now he's out here wading around in the swamp

with the snakes and has got quite a way to get back tothe landing. He didn't need no stinking oar, he had a gunwith him.

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The Nest

I fell in a damn alligator nest one time. I guess itwas an alligator nest. I was walking along changing

fishing spots, and I walked up over this kind of a littlemound. And the thing fell in with me and I fell in up tomy hips.

If anybody had just had an Olympic measuringdevice there, I'm pretty sure I would be in the record

books. Because I instantaneously jumped right straightup out of that hole. And I cleared the ground by a big

distance.

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Log Jam

We went over there one time and had a boat withus and went over to Billy's Lake and at that time, when

we got to Billy's Lake and the water widened out a littlebit, it looked like a log jam in front of us, and we kepton rowing and got up in the lake and realized that the

place was almost solid with alligators.We kept rowing and the alligators would lay on

the surface of the water and when the boat got aboutthree feet from them, they'd just sink down staying

exactly level, and when the boat went over them and gotabout four feet away from them they'd bob back up.

We did that all the way across the lake. Therewere just hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, ofalligators out there, just laying on top of the water.

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Swamp Folks

Later on, I was going hunting with one cousin inthe Swamp. And we decided that we'd stop by and seeanother cousin of mine, a distant cousin that I had foundout that he had a business in Fargo, I believe, so we

stopped. He had a little restaurant there and we got somefood to eat.

He sat down and talked to us for a while and toldus about places to go and invited me to come overshining deer any time I wanted to, he said that we'd usehis guns, because every time he'd run into a goodcheap .22 rifle he'd buy it for shining deer so he could

throw it away without losing anything much.I had a pleasant time. And when we left, the

cousin that was hunting with me said,I'm sure glad to get out of that place.And I said, Well, why?He said, Man, I didn't like that guy at all.And again, I said, Well, why?"And he said, Did you, did you look at him?

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I said, Yeah, I looked at him. Hell, I've been

talking to him for three hours. Of course I looked athim.

He looked over at me kinda wide-eyed and said,Well, that man would just as soon kill somebody as sayhello to him.

I said, Well, sure, that's one of the things I liked

about him. You don't have to bother figuring out peoplelike that; they're right up front with everything.I remember seeing the old-fashioned no

trespassing signs in the Swamp. They weren't signs, persay. They were a human skull on a post, which, even ifyou weren't able to read and write, anybody should beable to figure that out. Then, later on they changed to

animal skulls, but they meant the same thing.Just like all swamp folks, if they like you they'll

do just about anything in the world for you. And if theydon't like you, you better not be around them. And theworld would be better off if everybody was like that.

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Grandparents

I don't know how old I was, but I was stayingwith my sick grandparents at the hospital. The nursesand doctors pitched a bitch about me staying there

because they said that I was so young that I was notsupposed to be in the hospital without my parents. andthey told me that if I stayed I'd have to stay in the roomand I couldn't get out of the room at night.

But I finally got Mom and Dad to realize that Iwas the best one to stay up at night with my sickly

grandparents. So, I'd sit there through their sickness anddying. I guess that I always figured that that was anotherthing that made me grow up in a hurry, because I didn'tdo things kids did. I just had these things put on me anddid them. It didn't matter if I could or not, I just didthem.

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Fertilizer Delivery

On our farm we had a field on the back side of thefarm that was probably about forty or fifty acres. Thelayout of the field was so that the rows were very long.We had a road around the field, because when you got tothe end with the tractor you had to have some space toturn the tractor around, so we just made that into a roadcircling the field. When we planted anything, the tractorwould make one through, and half way back the planterwould be out of fertilizer, because it took four bags to doa round, and the planter would not hold but three bags.

When you use a mule, a through is going downone plow1, or rather one side of a row. One row or two

1 Plow: means that when you do what you're going to do through the fieldone time.

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rows or twelve rows, when you go from one end of the

field to the other, that's a through. And when you godown and come back, that's a round. We boughtfertilizer then in 200 pound bags. I watched Dad carrythe bag of fertilizer out to the middle of the field forevery round out.

And I finally was able to help Dad. I wasn't big

enough to do this, but I did it anyway. I realized that if Icould rassle a bag of fertilizer out to the back of thetruck, then work it off the truck onto my back, that Icould walk down the row out to the middle of the fieldwith the fertilizer.

And I think I was probably eight when I startedthat. And I'd get in the truck and drive it up the road to

the second to next row, and get another sack pulled backto the gate, and carry that sack out in the field. And thatled to him letting me drive the truck with the cotton tothe gin, because I was driving around in the field. So, hefigured why not?

When my Dad was thirteen fourteen years old, hewas driving. Let's see he was born in 1909 and this was

in the Depression when times really got bad, really,really bad, he was probably fifteen years old he wasdriving truck loads of produce to Miami and ClevelandOhio and Boston Massachusetts selling produce to keepthe family going.

His Dad figured he was too young to go off byhimself, and he was too young to drive the truck, so theygot an older man that didn't know how to drive to go

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with him. And Dad would drive and the older man

would sit over there so that if the cops stopped them theolder man could get under the wheel and tell them thathe was driving, but he didn't even know how to crank itup.

Dad figured that if you can do the job, then do thejob. What somebody else says or what rule somebody

else makes up should be a general starting point, whichis something I've been saying for most of my life. Abook written in generalities should not control thespecifics of any situation.

Anyway, doing things like that and catching hogswhen we had to castrate hogs. It was my job to catchthese about 100 to 150 pound hogs. And usually when I

first started doing it the hog weighed just about as muchas I did, and I had a pretty good job holding the hogs,

but I held them. And Dad would cut one and doctor itand let him go. And I'd catch another one, and I got to

be phenomenally strong, just unreasonably strong,because I had to. It never did matter if I could do a jobor not, I just did it. Just somehow found a way to do it.

Life Motto #1


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The Frontier Dentist

I was about eight years old. I fell or got hit someway and split one of my permanent teeth on the bottomright in the front. I dealt with it about as long as I could

and Mom and Dad decided that they had better take meto the dentist.

Now, there was an old dentist in town that Ialways envisioned that he had been a frontier dentist

back in the olden days. But he stayed late to see us, andwe went in his office and he was talking to me as best hecould.

He was old, he had grey hair, he was probablyseventy. He was talking to me and he said that he wasn'tgoing to hurt me because I was about eight, and he said,

I tell you what, if I hurt you, I've got a billy goatoutback, and we'll go out and let that billy goat butt meif I hurt you filling the tooth.

That didn't quite sound right to me, but I agreed.He told me he was going to give me some Novocaine to

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dull the pain so I wouldn't feel anything. When he stuck

the needle in he stuck it in too hard and it went all theway through my gum and into the base of my tongue.

So he gave me the shot of Novocaine in mytongue, and I'm eight years old and I don't know that'snot how it's supposed to work, and he's talking to Momand Dad.

And he says, Is your tooth numb?And I said, No, sir.And he said, Well, I'll give you another shot.And he did the same thing, and gave me a second

shot of Novocaine into my tongue. And we sat a littlewhile, and he asked,

Is your tooth dead?

And I said, No. You're not doing anything to mytooth. You're sticking it through my gum into mytongue.

And Mom said something to the effect of, Youknow he's not doing that!

Now by this point, everything from the shouldersup is dead and numb and I can't hardly see or talk

because these two shots of Novocaine in my tongue haddeadened everything BUT MY TOOTH.

And he said, I'll give you another shot then.And he got another needle out and gave me a shot

and didn't quite stick it all the way into the tongue thistime. But he did stick it through the gum. When he hitthe plunger, Novocaine spewed everywhere and out ofmy mouth.

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And I said, You see! I told you you weren't doing

anything to the tooth!And he said, Aw, hell, it's got to be dead by

now.And he got his drill. And of course, the minute he

touched this damn tooth, it just almost killed me, and Istarted trying to get out of this damn chair. And he got

up on top of me. I'm in the chair, and the dentist, I'msure he weighed over two hundred pounds, he got up inthe chair and he's sitting down on top of me.

We ended up with him sitting on my stomach, myDad holding my right arm, and mother and the nurseholding my left arm. And every time he touched thattooth with that drill I was coming up with all of them,

and I was trying to get to my knife.And I tried to holler one time, Let me get to my

knife! Let me get to my knife! I'll cut this bastard off ofme!

But he had both hands in my mouth.I endured just about thirty minutes of that, and all

the people that had me just barely could hold me. I gave

a good account of myself. I was just before gettingloose.

And I was thinking, Just let me get an arm free!Let me get one shot at this son of a bitch! Or just let meget my knife!

I'd have cut him if he were the Pope. Hell, GodAlmighty that hurt, 'cause he had everything deadexcept that tooth! And he was grinding away at the

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nerve of the tooth. He finally got through with it, and it

worked him down because I was trying to get him off ofme and get one arm loose. And he finally got off of meand said he was through.

And I said, Where's that damn goat?God, he almost killed me! I found out he didn't

have a damn goat. I went to the back looking for the

damn thing. The son of a bitch had done all that andlied, too. It was a miracle I didn't cut him when I got up.The Geneva conventions wouldn't have allowed

that to have happened to anybody, and I was eight yearsold. But it did take absolutely everything that fourgrown people could do to hold me in that chair while hewas doing that.

I have not been a friend of dentists since then. Ialways figured that since a lot of frontier dentists kept ahammer behind their chair that when someone came inand needed work he'd knock them on the head, sincefrontier dentists didn't have ether or Novocaine. Ifigured that's how he learned to work.

I tried to eat the next day, but I kept chewing on

my tongue. God, it must have taken a couple of days forthat to wear off! My whole head was numb; my neckwas numb. Everything but that damn tooth! I'd just tryto eat and bite my tongue, because I just couldn't feelanything. But now, the filling never fell out, I'll give himthat much.

Life Motto #2

Hit a Lick

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BB Gun Versus Rock

I had gone down to stay a week or so with myuncle in Thomasville and we were out in the yard doingsomething and this neighbor kid came by and he was a

little snooty bastard and kind of arrogant, so, and he didsomething, I forget what it was, but I think he told me todo something.

And I told him that I wasn't gonna do it, and hecame over and either kicked me or slapped me orslapped at me. So, I got on him and just right quick hadhim down on the ground just rubbing dirt in his face just

doing anything I could do to humiliate him.And my uncle ran over and made me let him up.

And he ran out of the back yard crying. And my aunt gotall bent out of shape and was ready to kill me. Shewanted to know why I had hurt the neighbor boy, and Isaid,

Now this fool jumped on Me and I didn't haveanything to do with that.

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And I think my uncle had to go somewhere and

she was in the house, and I thought, 'By god I'm notgoing inside with that crazy woman while she's stillmad.' And I sat down on the back steps.

And I heard something hit the house next to meand I looked around and I didn't see anything and aboutthat time I heard something hit the house on the other

side, and I heard it hit again and I saw the thing thattime and it was a BB and someone was shooting at mewith a BB gun. And they were just barely hitting on thesame side of the world.

But they were shooting at me, and I reached downand picked up a handful of rocks. And I couldn't see himhe was in the bushes and I picked up three good places

where he could be and I threw a rock through the firstplace and then the second and when I hit the third placeI heard a yelp, and then a few seconds later a scream,and then the noise of someone running through thewoods.

And in just about ten minutes my aunt came outand she was just fuming. I had hurt the neighbor kid,

why did I hit the neighbor kid.I said, Wait a minute, now. That idiot was

shooting at me.She said that he had just come into their house

and his mother had seen him, and he came in the housewith a gash over his eye just a bleeding and just aboutthis time my uncle came home and he ran around

because he heard her screaming and I told him that the

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guy had been shooting at me with a damn BB gun and

showed him the places on the house where the BBs hitthe house.

This kind of put my uncle in a jam because hereally didn't have much going for him he had just gottena new job, and had just moved to Thomasville. And theguy that I had split the eye for came from one of the

richest families in Thomasville and lived behind him onone of these big antebellum plantations.He got on the phone and said he had seen the gun

where her boy was shooting at me with a BB gun andseen the places on the house and that I had picked up arock and hit him in the eye and he thought that I shouldhave hit him I the eye. And that was pretty much the end

of that story.

Life Motto #2

Hit a Lick!

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Basketball

When I was in the second grade, I guess, I got hitin the face with a basketball and my nose bled, and theythought I was going to bleed to death, hell I did too, hell

it was just bleeding like a fool. We finally got the thingstopped. Afterwards, for a while I didn't have a minute'strouble with it.

Till the next year, I don't know the exact date, butit was the same month and same time of year and closeto the same day, and I was just sitting in school and mynose started bleeding again. And for about six years that

happened on close to the same day every year. I didn'tknow of any reason for it. I just knew it was about timewhen it got close to that month and day,

I'd just walk around waiting on a nose bleed, andit was a good one, too. After I had this nose bleed, it wasthrough the left nostril and the whole nostril would clotup and scab up and stay that way for a couple of weeks.And I didn't want to move the scab, because I thought

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that it would come back and start bleeding again.

I know that at one time I had a cold and my headwas about to explode and I couldn't blow my nose

because this scab was clotting up one side and I went inthe bathroom and pulled off some tissue and rolled it upand made a little hole in the scab and with my paper Ikept rolling it up and started pulling out mucous until I

had rolled out enough about the size of a baseball out ofone side of my nose and I kept thinking, good god,where is this stuff coming from, and I kept rolling androlling. I felt a lot better. This was honestly probably acup of snot.

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Pinball

Before Pinball Wizard I was a pinball wizard. Idiscovered a little country store that is now a house, thathas been a house for a good many years that had a

pinball machine there when it was a store. They called itthe Twin Pines Grocery. It was just about two milesaway from the house.

So, I'd run up there and play the pinball machineand got pretty damn good at it, and I'd get me a few rollsof nickels just about anytime I went up there, cause they

paid off in nickels, a nickel a game. Or you'd get some

free games. You could use it to play another game, and

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The Beginning

at the end you'd get a nickel for every free game you had

left. I'd make money, a couple of rolls of nickels, whichis a lot of money for a fourth grader.

They told me one day they were going to close thestore and make a house out of it, so I asked them if theyknew anybody else that had a pinball machine. And oneof the places was at the Doerun truck stop. Now the

Doerun truck stop is still there, but it hasn't operated as atruck stop for forty years, and it didn't operate as onethen. It was a whorehouse. Most truck stops try to coverit a little better than they did. There was just barelyenough room to park a car, and definitely not enough to

park a truck. Sometimes I'd drive the tractor over.But a lot of the time I'd just run over there in the

afternoon when I got out of school if I didn't haveanything else to do and the girls just went nuts over me.Course I still hadn't yet quite figured out thewonderment that girls embodied. They just went crazyover me, always making over me the whole time, whenone'd leave another two take her place and come up andhug me and talk to me and hang on me and I was

shooting pinball making money. But the guy that ran theplace was actually trying to figure out ways to keep meout of there because I was winning a lot of money on the

pinball machines.A lot of times I'd run home with my pockets full

of nickels and quarters and smelled like a whore becausefor three hours I'd had whores rubbing over me. Theyfinally shut the place down, I think a bunch of do-

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gooder women shut down my afternoon delight. I didn't

even know how to benefit from it, what a good place Iwas in. Do-gooders got no life, so the only thing theycan do is make sure nobody else has a life either. Sothey put their whole time and effort and being intotrying to keep everybody else from having a life.

Falling from grace in my Mom's eyes was a

gradual thing. Mother and I were just like, well, herworld has always been diametrically opposed to everymolecule of my world. The world was a Sunday schoolclass to her. It was just millions of Pollyanna's.

Later on when I started driving, though I stillwasn't old enough to drive, I'd get in the car to gosomewhere. And Dad and I could just go anywhere, and

we'd go anywhere and come back and have a great tripand enjoy the trip and enjoy each other. But when meand Dad and Mother'd get in the car to go somewhere, inless than a mile, Mother and I'd be fighting. I drovethem down to Florida one time. I stood it as long as Icould. I just kept gritting my teeth trying to make it backhome.

I got back to Lake City, Florida, and I pulled overto the side of the road.

And I said, God dammit I can't stand thisanymore, y'all can drive the car home, I'm going to ridethe bus or hitchhike home.

So I got out in the street and started hunting adamn bus station. She had already made me get rid ofmy Violent Knight for God's sake, what did the woman

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some time you either have to fight or capitulate and

become some kind of effeminate being.This has been done to appease a handful of weird

females. It has become unpolitically correct for womento listen to and obey what their husbands say, but to tryto listen and obey many hundreds of others that neitherknow them or care about them, ruining the basic family

unit on a whim.Being a man takes far more than just not having avagina. Men have the tools needed to guide a girl into

becoming a woman. But women have no concept of thetools that it takes to guide a boy into being a man, not awoman with a penis. At some point, you have to find away to fight something and win, when, by all logic, you

should lose. That is one mark of a man. And that's myphilosophy, and I'm sticking to it.

I took a survey, I still do it when I have a fewminutes. I go to some kind of a busy store likeWallyworld or a busy grocery store and most of themhave an area marked off in front of the entrance for

people that are trying to give them money to go across

the street. And the cars are supposed to use all caution inthat area because the people that are trying to give thestore money are trying to get into the store. And I sit andI watch that, and I've been doing that on occasion for

probably thirty five years.I have found in that time that eighty to ninety

percent of the women that I see come out of the store orstep down off the curb eyes locked straight ahead with

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never a glance from one side to the other. Men look to

see if a car's coming. In particular I figure if most peopleget a chance they're going to try to run over me. I don'tcare what the marks on the pavement say.

When two women come out of a store they neverbreak stride or miss a word, because the cars are goingto stop. If they're supposed to stop they're going to stop.

If a man's coming out of a store and he's talking to awoman, when they get to the part where the traffic's at,the man stops to look for the car that's going to hit himand the woman just walks right out.

Except in the past few years I have found thatyoung men, and I have to assume that for some reasonor another that were raised without a male influence,

will walk out in the street like women do, withoutlooking at anything.

I was stopped making my survey a couple ofyears ago at one of the drug stores in town and I sawthese two girls walking from the parking lot and theywere talking to each other and they walked directlyacross the traffic lanes looking at absolutely nothing but

each other's eyes, walked up the ramp, and stepped up tothe drug store.

Now these were just girl both just out of highschooljust beautiful girls. They walked up to the doorand just stood there and they're just talking to eachother. And then it hit me, they're waiting for someone toopen the door for them. It wasn't an automatic door, andno one was standing there to open the door for them.

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And I guess they didn't know what to do.

And neither one of them was going to open thedoor for the other because that would admit the otherwas prettier and these girls stood there for three minutes

just standing at the door and finally this guy walks upand reaches around and steps around them and opens thedoor. and I don't think either of them thanked him as

they walked right through.Of course, I've had women bitch me out foropening the door several times. You're supposed toknow automatically what they want you to do. Well,God dammit bitch if you don't want me to open the door,

put a sign on your back or your ass.

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The Beginning

Bored Stiff

In the third grade, I was figuring out how long it

would take to drive to different stars at different speeds.I was doing my homework, I'd devised some way to doit in roman numerals. I don't remember how, but itworked. My reading material was the Iliad and theodyssey and the classics. But after 3rd grade I was just

bored stiff.The only good thing I can think of was I kept

writing reports on the Iliad and the Odyssey all throughcollege. Every time someone hit me up for a report itwas one of those, whichever one struck me. I guessthat's really one of the ways that I was able to do somuch. I'd just float through the year, and then the lasttwo weeks of the year I'd read all my books.

I didn't want to do very well on the tests. I keptdumping answers so I wouldn't do very well because I

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I know in the third grade I did two things: I sweet

talked all of the girls in the class my first recess to writethe words for me. But we got caught. I didn't think aboutthere being different hand writing. So we got caught,and all the girls got punished, which wasn't what I hadin mind.

Immediately after that, I made a machine out of

various things, I devised a machine out of rubber bandsand pencils. I used two pencils as a rail. I think I had onerubber band and a string. I tied those together with astring on one end and a rubber band on another, and thenI lined up sharpened pencils between the rails, and Icould write sixteen words at a time. And that worked forquite some time until the teacher came in unexpectedly

and found me working the thing on my desk. Then Iwent to the Principal's Office. Again.

Life Motto #1


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First Cigarette

I don't know how or where I found them or how Igot them. My first cigarette was a Picayune Cigarette,which Picayune Cigarettes will melt the hair off of yourhead. I don't know what they have in them. I alwaysheard that the tobacco was mixed in with donkey shitand things of that nature, and it may have been. Theywere many times stronger than any other cigarette thatI've ever been around, except Home Runs. Home Runs

were pretty close to being the same as Picayune.I got my pack of Picayunes and I went down inthe woods with my dog and my gun, and smoked mycigarette, coughed up half of a lung trying to smoke thething. I finally got it smoked, and I decided that it wastime to go back to the house, stood up, and just dovehead first into a clump of bushes, and then started

getting sick. Between drunk and sick it took about three

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hours to get started back to the house. That was the

second worst exposure to tobacco that I remember everhaving.

The first and worst was when a cousin andmyself, he was a couple of years older than me, and Idon't think I had started to school, I'm sure I hadn't. Istole a whole plug of Brown's Mule chewing tobacco

from my Dad's desk. And my cousin and I went up tothe barn and we got this plug of Brown Mule split inhalf. We kept chewing and breaking and mashing anduntil we got the thing into our mouths and we werechewing on it, or trying to chew on it.

And my cousin said, "Well, you know what weneed to do now, don't you?"

And being a big grown up four, I said, "Sure Ido!"

And he says, "Now we're supposed to swallow it."And both of us did it. He honestly thought that

was what you were supposed to do. He wasn't trying topull anything over on me. And both of us went tostraining and pulling off pieces and swallowed it.

My god I was sick. He was sick, and we werethrowing up and everything tasted like tobacco, and wewere sick for two or three days. I couldn't go to schoolfor a week, and just bad sick, wrong sick, it was fortyyears before I ever made any effort to try to chewtobacco again. I smoked, but chewing was somethingthat was foreign to me for about 40 years, every time Isaw a plug of chewing tobacco or a bag of chewing

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Casino

We had a casino built up in the roof of one of mybuddy's Mother's garage. And we'd get up there and wehad two tables going. We'd play cards just about allnight. And we did that for a while.

I would wait until the folks went to bed, then I'dsneak out of the house and run over to Doerun. It was

seven miles. I'd spend the night playing poker, andusually won some. I won more playing pool than I did

poker, but the pool gave me a good stake for playingpoker.

And then, three or four in the morning I'd runback home and get a couple of hours sleep and then getup and go to school. I never made any kind of effort to

time how fast it took me. I had to get there and the bestway I had was to run, and so I ran.

Everybody smoked or chewed tobacco or used itin some manner. We found out that we had to havesomething to do with all this tobacco since peoplespitting and getting rid of their plugs of tobacco and

snuff. And people would have to pee.And we didn't want to have to keep crawling

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down out of the casino to do it. So we got a gallon jug

and used that. People would put their tobacco juice andplugs in it, and pee in it. And this went on for a month orso, and the jug got full.

So my buddy said that he was going to findanother jug or clean that out, and he told me, I think thenext day or the day after that, that he'd started thinking

about it, and he got an old rag and strained he liquidthrough it into another jug. And he sold it to this oldblack guy walking along the street that worked at thegin.

We figured it would kill him. But it didn't. He wasback a week later wanting more of that stuff. We toldhim he'd have to give us two or three weeks. And we

had a steady customer. We'd fill it up once a month andhe'd come and get it. I think he went missing after aboutthree months, but I'm not sure.

Life Motto #2

Hit a Lick

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The Demon And Drowning

I went from the best teacher that I ever haddirectly to the worst teacher that I ever had. She was ademon that just happened to be teaching in this school.With her, I went to the Principal's Office usuallymultiple times a day, because everything I did and

everything that anybody else in the class did I had to goto the Principal's Office.

I was sitting in class one day in my desk, and thisteacher was at her desk, probably ten to twelve feetaway from me checking in the books for the library.There was one of my buddies a couple of rows over thatapparently said something or did something or made afart noise. This teacher jumped up from checking in her

books and started screaming at me.I think I had been asleep, so I wake up to this

woman screaming at me, and I'm sitting there trying tofigure out what in the hell she's talking about and whyshe's screaming, and she hauls off and throws a book at

me, and I remember watching the book come at me, andright before it hit me, I ducked my head down.

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And it went right over my head and hit the girl in

back of me's head and knocked the girl and the deskover. And the teacher's just jumping up and down on the

books that she raked off her desk, telling me to go to thePrincipal's Office. I got out of the door, and that's when Idecided that I wouldn't go.

For a couple of years, I found out that if I smiled

cutely enough and talked sugary enough, I could hustlethe lunch room ladies into giving me extra peachcobbler when we had peach cobbler, and I loved it.

And I said, "Well, I know what I'll do. I'll just goto the lunch room."

I told the ladies that I wanted some more of thatgood peach cobbler. So they fixed me a big bowl of

peach cobbler, and I sat down at a table and startedeating it. I don't know why they thought I was in thelunch room at 1:30 PM, but they didn't seem to thinkanything of it, so I ate my cobbler and crawled under thetable and went to sleep.

When I woke up, they were in the back of thelunchroom. So, I got up and walked around to the front

of the school. There was a big crowd gathered by thepond to the south of the campus. I decided to find outwhat had happened. I just stood there trying to figure outwhat had happened. There was a pond close to theschool grounds, and there were a couple of boats outthere. And these people were just watching the boats,and then one of the teachers turned around, saw me, andgrabbed me.

where the hell is that damn box? the beginning

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