never been kissed by a boll weevil...

"Never been...never been kissed by a boll weevil," she sighs...with jaw-dropping insight.  "What's a girl to do?"  To be honest, not one of those hot, come hither, gotta have you kisses that a girl never forgets belonged to a boll weevil.  I have received my fair share of kisses a girl is oh so happy to file away under look what I just endured.  Sorry guys, I'm sure you felt the same way.  So, here's the deal.  Now, you would have to be from Kingstree to really understand the boll weevil kiss and know what all the fuss is about.  I put myself on the fast track.  I graduated from high school a year early.  I read every book I could get my hands on, visited my grandparents, memorized  the gospels-in particular the Gospel of Mark-(and please forgive me, O Holy Father, I'm not all that fond of it to this very day), picked and shelled butter beans, jumped cotton bales at the gin in Salters, and "put-in" tobacco.  Always had to "hand," never could "string," and was always looking up...up into the top of the barn to be exact...thinking how can he, whoever he was on that particular day, perch so precariously and fling his arms about all at the same time?  But what I really wanted was to drive the tractor...as in, how fast can it go, or take off exploring down some never before traveled lane?  Let's throw in some good works (they were genuine) and my various jobs...paying and otherwise.  They. Tried. To. Domesticate. Me.  The sad truth is I spent far too much time being serious...serious enough for forty boatloads of people.  I was around adults solving serious problems or enjoying them.  I'm not sure which.  But the fact of the matter is, I missed my boll weevil childhood and adolescence.  I missed all the fun.  Not good.  Must be corrected.  So, here I sit on my Folly with a bad Butler dog trying to figure out how to correct something I just recognized as missing from my life.  "No," I must say to my past and those who inhabited it.  "The ferris wheel in Myrtle Beach does not in anyway make up for missing a boll weevil kiss.  And you know what I mean!"

"It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive."  Bruce Springsteen 

KHS 1970

lucky strike or L.S.M.F.T....

Lucky Strike was a three-legged hound dog.  I can still see her hobbling around the yard at Route 2, Box 72, Salters...loping in and out around the giant oaks...lounging under the porch in the heat of the day, gazing into the beyond...usually to Union Presbyterian.  Maybe she felt the call.  She always seemed deep in thought.  Strike, as we called her, lost a leg in a chance encounter with an electric fence...probably while on a chase.  She never gave up hunting though.  Her uneven gait became her gift.  Daddy called her the "arithmetic dog"...put down three and carry one.  Country people have dogs that are useful...they hunt, they bark at night-prowling strangers, they round up stray children and beasts, they whiz through the woods in chase, and they ride shotgun in pickup trucks.  I always loved Strike from a distance.  It now seems odd to me that I think of her almost every day.  I don't recall ever playing with Strike, chasing her, having her chase me, throwing a ball, or running through the fields with her, but there was something in those lonesome eyes that still calls to me across the years.  Strike was one of us much like Pet and Black, the mules, and Tony's dog, Rambo.  Yes, she was named after a cigarette brand...the same brand that would spark the cancer that would eventually wring the life out of a man ill-suited for happiness.  So, I guess I can't think of Strike and not think of him.  The lucky part I haven't figured out yet!