The Beginning

I've been trying to write this, even years before my stroke, I just always get bogged down by the memories of the first and last gal that I have ever fallen in love with. Nina, my wife of 19 years, and I both had similar memories and knew of each other's feelings and how those times were never to be again. Her and I truly respected each other, and over the years, became much more than "friends with benefits." I've written about this more than once, discarded it many times, however I like the basis and folk involved so much I'm trying again. It looks like the semi-coherent sequence that my poor old self will be able to tolerate will be John W. and the Frog, this one, The Beginning, and, damn, I am having a hard time coming up with the third title without sounding like a Harlequin book! The fourth is easy, it's already called Babies' Names because it has damn-near nothing to do with babies' names! You'll understand if I can ever get it together...

...this is a follow-up from John W. and the Frog. Read it before...

...The Beginning

Following all the “fun” in Destin, I returned to Grand Bay to heal!

The Duck family had a little tin-topped cracker shack in the middle of a mature pecan orchard that was used by visiting family members and the occasional freshly divorced one! The “shack” was also used for huge Cajun crab boils, weddings (including my 2 month marriage! Don't ask ;o), all kinds of good stuff.

The building was not in use so I asked for it. Mine for the rest of the month. All kinds of good summertime things to do; took my brother and sister 4-wheeling down the 9 mile length of the state-owned length of Dauphin Island, shrimping with my father, his wife, and a passel of half-grown boys (we had extras in case we accidentally drowned a few!), a good time was had by all, especially me!

Between forays including visiting old high school chums and one retired CIA contract employee (story to be told), I'd return to the shack. Eventually, the last day of vacation came and I was laying in a hammock out front reading and thinking this was a mighty fine world! My mother called from the hardware store her and my step-father owned and asked if I'd mind picking up Freddie, my younger brother, at Tim's. “Sure, just give me directions”.

I'd known Timmy for a few years as he was a nephew of my step-father which made him my, oh the hell with it! I tried this on a previous missive and spent the next day bum-fuzzled trying to figure out if I was right! Cajuns have big families, a divorce or ten, re-marriage to who?! Every now and then one of them will marry an Anglo (or ten!) and really screw up the genealogy. However, parts of the clan get it simplified by brother-sister weddings for a while (keeps everything in the family!) until they start growing eyeballs on their cheekbones and ears the size of bat wings!

ANYWAY, (sometimes I get frustrated with myself for wool-gathering), someone that must have hated me had dropped the boys and Bo-cat off a few mornings earlier. A pair of young teenage boys with big smiles bodes ill! ...I'd taught Freddie well. ...sigh...

Well, one of the young hoodlums climbed a tree with a string tied to a piece of red cardboard which he dangled at the base of the tree. The other hoodlum held Bo-cat until staring and tail-twitching said the cardboard needed some pussycat discipline! You know what's gonna happen don'tcha?! Cat charges cardboard, hoodlum one yanks cardboard up at last moment, cat slams into tree. Young hoodlums chortle. Hoodlum two retrieves stunned kitty-cat, pets and soothes him while returning to the launch point. Cat starts staring and tail-twitching, gets released... Lather, rinse,repeat until Bo don't where to go! The hoodlums leave laughingly with Bo left in the yard presumably entertained by his crossed-up vision. Poor Bo, his troubles have not ended. Seems the mad mama mockingbird who was previously trying to run hoodlum #1 out of her tree (won't work, boys are just apt to eat her. BTW, mockingbird tastes like shit), shifts her bloody-minded attention to Bo. Poor Bo, I go out and rescue him. Mama bird shifts all her love to me and I'm not having any. No, I don't eat her. Tastes like shit, remember?

Oh yeah, I'm supposed to pick up Freddie at Tim's. ...go down road out front to hardware store, turn left, go 2 miles to Hugh Fort road, turn right and go ½ mile to 2^nd house on left...

Fred and Tim are shooting hoops next to the garage and joined in the game is a lovely young blue-eyed blonde gal. Now I have lived in the San Francisco – Silicon Valley area for more than five years which has a plenitude of pulchritude and prior to that, the Washington/Northern Virginia area when going to school where there were 4 secretaries per worthless bureaucrat and up 200 per brainless congressthing. You might get the impression my opinion of that thing that calls itself the federal gummit isn't very high. Try a snake's rectum.

There is something special about this young lady. We introduced ourselves and, I don't know how, never have been able, to explain what passed that moment. Whatever it was, was very powerful.

Fred, the eternal goof-ball, made a hat-full of grinning comments on the way back. I thought he needed exercise, maybe tying him to the bumper and having a brisk trot on the way back would be about right...

An aside (again), 2 years earlier I had sent him a airline ticket to San Francisco over Thanksgiving plus a few extra days. Being 13, he “needed” a flight attendant to accompany him. Do you see the makings of a disaster?

Fred and his stewardess came down the separate arrival ramp used for handicapped and accompanied passengers and right-off, I knew the training he had gotten from our father and myself, his ten year older brother, was successful! His stewardess, a young, svelte, somewhat rumpled young woman wearing a scowl (it didn't become her), asked me “does this thing belong to you?” Yep, the boy done good...

OK, back to Fred not having to trot behind mom's car – we policed the shack, gathered our goodies, and took the Land Cruiser back to our dad's place in Creola. I don't remember a tremendous amount about the evening other being somewhat distracted and Fred's grin. ...have to, maybe tie a concrete block to his feet and take him out to the end of dad's pier...

Mobile, New Orleans, LA, San Francisco, San Jose. Another August gone. Time to go back to work. Granny started the Great Scot Thanksgiving Get-Together again after granddad's death a few years ago and I had never missed but one over all the years. Besides, I've a few questions...

San Jose, San Francisco, LA, New Orleans, Mobile. Since my great-grandmother had 12 kids, (5 kids, “keep that thing away from me”, 10 kids, “dammit, I SAID keep that thing away! 11^th kid (my granny), “you do that again and we are going to have trouble...”, 12^th kid... I have not found any records of my great-grandfather after the 12^th and the kids weren't talking. Go figure. I won't try to describe the clan get-together as it'll take forever and you will know less anyway! ..a LOT of fun!

Fred and I took granny's greenhouse rather than wander through the bodies occupying the 6 bedrooms downstairs (some were supposed to be something else), and the 4 upstairs. Besides, the temperature was to be in the 20's, somebody needed to feed the greenhouse wood stove, and, most importantly there were possums and coons outside that needed shooting! Maybe a Fred as well if he keeps up with the shit-eating grin! What did he know that I didn't?

We went out hunting that night and Fred just about blew my head off. It seemed that granny's old .410 shotgun had a broken safety that we didn't know about. A .410 is awful loud when it goes off next to one's ear!

...thought I'd never find this 40 year old photograph. Granny's greenhouse after the hunt. The game was for my friends in California. We'd dress them out and granny'd freeze them in individual plastic bags full of water for the flight back. I could never see what my friends saw in possum, tastes like shit. ...just like mockingbird. Raccoon, on the other hand, tasted just fine. Just like dog! 


My questions were kinda halfway answered by my 15 year old, snot-gobbling, grinning, hoodlum, brother. The grin was like our dad's when he was up to no good and mine when it was a good idea not to turn your back on me! We taught him well... I was gonna have to strangle him.

At least it was another memorable Thanksgiving worthy of the title. Mobile, New Orleans, LA, San Francisco, San Jose. Back to the salt mines. I'll miss Christmas due to work but I will make New Years Eve. Those were always fun and this year's was to be at my sister's house. R.M., my step-dad and former best friend of my father, and Wayne, my soon-to-be ex brother-in-law, rigged up 4 TV's as usual to watch all the festivities at once. Gracie, my sister, picked me up at Mobile International Cow Pasture and hauled me up to dad's for a few days of frolic before New Years.

New Years Eve rolled around and found me at Gracie's socializing with relatives, in-laws, and outlaws (I know that's old, however, in my case, at least one of mine got hung and several more needed it). I was sitting on the couch talking with a couple of gals with a space between my right side and the person to my right when the front door opened to admit more guests. Can't remember what two of them looked like, don't even remember what flavor they were.

The third was different. She was a pretty, little, blue-eyed blonde with a happy-making smile! Rotten sister! That's why she had rigged the extra space on the couch!

...to be continued