Blackberries, Baptists and Largemouth Bass: The Adventures of a Boy Growing Up In The South (Southern Stories Book 1)

Excerpt:

The BIG Saturday arrived. I had deftly arranged to be “out” driving the Jeep and be gone several hours without arousing parental or sisterly suspicions. A single suspicion from either source could prove fatal to the aspirations I had in mind for the daylight hours I planned to commandeer that Saturday. Somewhere in the dim recesses of my wrinkled brain tissues there was a mental signal going off about a prior commitment (Audrey) for the evening hours.

Evening was a long way off. Right now I was turning around in Hootsie’s driveway. I needed to get Hootsie into the Jeep before Aunt Francis saw that Reed and Tom were hiding in the back. She always said it made her nervous to know we were all going to ride somewhere together and be somewhere together at the same time. To save her nerves, I usually picked Hootsie up before I swerved by to scoop up Reed and Tom; but this time that meant I would be in view of my front porch for long moments as the Jeep pulled the long steep hill from Hootsie’s driveway past my own. My chances were better I felt, if I zoomed down the hill with Reed and Tom to pick Hootsie up rather than throw Hootsie in the back of the Jeep then crawl up the hill to pick up Reed and Tom. If my mother saw me “running up and down the road” as she put it, she would find something better for me to do.

The notion that her only male offspring could be seen “riding up and down the road” by other parents produced a morbid shiver in my mother. It was usually her right index finger that did the shivering. She would point it at me as the finger ominously waggled back and forth. The next words she spoke were always identical in structure, timbre, and volume. “I am not going to have you running up and down the roads like Jimmy Tatum and Docker Tyler. I’ll find something better for you to do, Mister”.

The sight of Jimmy and Docker running up and down the roads on foot, on a bicycle, or in a car touched some deep primeval fear in my mother. I once thought it was Docker and Jimmy that made the roads such a foul place to run up and down on. When I discovered that the roads could be made equally as foul when I ran up and down on them, I knew it wasn’t all Docker and Jimmy’s fault. Whatever grand adventures I could bring my way on such roads were not adventures my mother looked forward to sharing. With my Little Green Jeep under my butt I could do more of it than my mother could imagine. Or maybe she could imagine.

My Momma raised five willful children. I was the oldest. I have four sisters. We were, for the most part brought up without benefit of parents trained in the ways of Dr. Spock and other parenting professionals. I know I have been emotionally and mentally challenged by this lack of fully trained parents. I don’t think I’ll ever discover the true depths of my pain in this lifetime. I just can’t seem to find the time. Which bass-fishing trip do I not take? Which Auburn football game do I not watch?

My mother did have one advantage when it came to raising children. It is what the guys on Wall Street call “leverage”. She was five feet two inches tall and for most of her life weighed 105 pounds or so. Her physical size was not an imposing one. At first glance there was nothing in her physical demeanor to detract from my early efforts at running up and down the roads on my bicycle. That first glance would fool you. There were indeed other glances I had to contend with. Remember, she did have her leverage. Leverage was anything she could grab a hold of and glance off my backside.