Warm weather is limited here in Cedar Grove, Tennessee. No longer can we depend upon the stifling heat of summer to make us sweat when we exit our homes or cars. Temperatures have been dipping into the mid sixties when our side of the globe darkens. Light heats up our side into the low nineties. The soy beans are filling out, growth spurred more by time of daylight than by heat. Corn is kerneling based more on water availability in the soil than heat. And cotton is bowling from water gathered by a deeply sent tap root to suck up the last of the ground water that has not been replenished in any meaningful way for over a month now.
The streams are now only sluggish trickles. Fish are holed up in the deeper areas carved out for just such dry times to give our aquatic zoonotics a fighting chance to survive this drought. Melancholia weighs heavy on my shoulders.
Another summer of life wasted, and again no great accomplishments to speak of in my 58 misspent years slogging across this earthly realm. In 1965, I shared an upstairs bedroom with my older brother in a house with no air conditioning. In the summer we would lie awake before sleep in the stifling heat and talk. It was during one of these special moments when it was too hot to sleep that he predicted I would never amount to anything. I was not big and strong enough to be a good football player. I was too lazy and stupid to ever be a scholar of any note. And my teeth were coming in crooked which would prevent me from entering public life as an actor or politician. In his final argument that warm summer's night as we waited for our upstairs bedroom to cool down enough to sleep, praying for a breeze as an escape from the dreadful heat, he finished with: "Jack, I sure as hell would not want to be you!"
As my tears slipped silently onto my pillow, I was more than determined to show that lousy son of a bitch and all my detractors that they were wrong! I could make something of myself. All I had to do was set my mind to it. They would see.
Next day, my mother and grandmother were taking their annual pilgrimage to Memphis to buy our school clothes at Goldsmith's Department Store. I was invited so I could try on some clothing, but as was my habit, I, instead, sent my regrets, preferring to play outside in the creek catching snakes and turtles. This was the year I would be attending Junior High School. Moving on from the safe haven of the elementary school and up where stories of horrible acts of cruelty were perpetrated on the smaller students.
A well known tactic called "poling" was in vogue at our school, and it did not involve politics or voting in any shape or manner.
Briefly, poling involved four larger male students preying on a smaller male, new to the Jr. High School. Each of the four larger student grabs a limb and they carry the struggling waif feet first, legs parted rapidly towards the nearest telephone pole and drive the unfortunates open pelvis and his man junk into the pole after which he is dropped on his ass, left to roll around on the ground holding his crotch. This was amusing as long as you were not the sacrificiianato of this festival of barbarism. Most seventh graders had not as yet developed a large twig or berries, but the custom was to roll about on the ground and feign agony in case any of the hotties had witnessed your most recent misfortunes. You did not want anybody to know that your junk was not much larger than a vagina.
I was never poled. I was leery and fast, and spent my mornings before school well away from the light poles. Anyway back on point, if there is one to this treatise.
My older brother always went with Granny and Mother on that day long toddle to Memphis and was rewarded with the newest fashions from London, Paris, and New York City. He always looked like he stepped out of the Brooks Brothers Store. He struck a dashing figure, the envy of all the other boys at our school and the desire of all the girls! With my hopelessly waifish habitus and my large hideous teeth which came in in no particular orderly way, my mother and her mother, bought what ever was on the sale rack for my attire. That year I got a nifty pair of pink corduroy bell bottom pants which I wore with my dazzling black and white saddle oxfords! My pants were accented with either a white dress shirt, or a bright blue dress shirt with a frill in front like Tom Jones used to wear.
I was not dressed for success, nor was I expected to succeed. I owe my speed and agility to being chased around by packs of fashion policemen who wanted to change my wardrobe out there on the campus commons.
I grew up and was mentored by my father, a truly kind and generous soul, who backed me in what ever endeavor I pursued. He was my facilitator. When there was a lull in the excitement, he would come home with bows and arrows. Then my friends and I would entertain ourselves taking shots at each other from a hundred yards away. I owe my keen eye to watching for arrows shot my way by my pals the Chump brothers. Our favorite bow shot was straight up, and our Ben Pearson 50 lb draw bows could send a cedar target arrow up and out of sight. Then we had to strained to spot the arrow as it stopped in the upper atmosphere and turned on its side ever so briefly and then disappeared from sight once more as it hurled back towards its release point at 32 ft per second squared. This is when the fun began. We ran away from the release point at variable distances and awaited our fates. We called that diversion dodge arrow. No body caught an arrow, but it was not because we used good judgment. We had guardian angels, exhausted but mighty fine guardian angels.
After the arrows fell silent, father came home with a case of dynamite, TNT, the real stuff. Back then all you had to do was to be a farmer and sign a form and you could buy all you wanted at the local farmer's Coop. This is the stuff every 14 yr old boy and pals yearn to play with! One pal loved it so much he wanted to demolish a county bridge with some of it, but I prevailed upon him after some explanation of what the consequences might be to forgo his unbridled passion to commit this act of wanton destruction.
We blew up stumps, firewood, trees and a lot of dirt. Our biggest bundle was an eight stick load to celebrate New Years which we set off in our front yard moments after midnight without adult supervision. As I said we had some powerful guardian angels. The New Year's Eve explosion prompted calls to the local police from all over town. We lived just outside the city limits at that time.
Naturally a father that arms his children with bows and arrows and dynamite, must support children with guns. We had guns all over the house, BB, pellet, 22 rifles, 30'06, shotguns in all gauges and we hunted all the seasons, squirrel, dove, duck, rabbit, quail, and raccoon. We learned how to shoot and stalk squirrels in the great bottoms of West Tennessee. We also got fairly good at avoiding landowners and the game warden by walking in opposite directions from the road. We did not poach game, but figured we really did not need to discuss our prizes with anybody. My avoidance of the local game warden came one morning after my father had taken my brother and me out to shoot doves when we were ages 10 and 11. We had bagged a couple of birds that morning and up walks the game warden who engages my father in small talk and asked if we had any success. When my brother and I proudly displayed our two dead birds he wrote my father a ticket for $225, since we had taken doves illegally before noon.
We did not know the law, $225 was a fortune in 1963. My father went to court and only had to pay 20 dollars for the court costs as it was a small town and my father socialized with the judge. The game warden was furious the fine was waived.
I have never been checked since, out in the field. I was a quick learner.
The heat is still stifling here midday, and my brother's prediction all those years ago are on the mark. I have not amounted to a hill of beans as my mother was fond of saying. What ever they say about me, for now I am sure that tomorrow is another day.
It could happen. Even, as they say, a blind pig picks up an acorn now and then. Now where did I put that dynamite?
Jackson Delano Maybolt, President Urban Poverty Law Center
"You know you got to wear your brother's hand-me-downs when you gained weight in your 30's." Mother Maybolt, 1922-2008
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