No Excuses. J. Larry Simpson I
nice young lady asked, an older lady in the office if she knew anything or someone to help. The younger ladies knew nothing of the famous spot. The gentle older lady said she knew someone who could help.
“Call Cheryl. She’ll remember!”
Wow.
Very excited, I called Cheryl’s number, got the answering machine, and told her what my interest was. Before the evening was over, Cheryl sent me an e-mail with a nice and knowledgeable response.
Being very excited, as I was also, she described the Black Hawk as the meeting place almost all the townspeople, but especially the young people.
But to top that, Cheryl said, “I worked in the grill from 1954 and into the summer of ’56!”
Amazing! She worked there for two to three months that I went there with Jeanie and Happy weekly. I’m quite sure I knew this lovely lady, saw her, or was waited on by her. Or did I? I can have no doubt, but that in the mystery of the streams of life I surely met Cheryl in the summer of ’56, or did I?
Sandy and I drove to Westville in early spring of 2018 to meet with Cheryl. She didn’t make the proposed rendezvous, and I couldn’t reach her by phone. I can only hope that life is good for a once upon a time Black Hawk Grill girl.
Story 4
The Road Will Push You
Having finished first grade at ole Bethel Grove in Memphis, I really only remember the third grade in Jeffersonville, Indiana.
I surely wasn’t a faultless child. Besides, I wasn’t going to be ignored. I would get a name for myself. A few of the boys started talking big, so I thought, Just “spit” on the floor! Dad and John “spit,” so why not me? Besides, “this is a way I can get in with the guys.” I was always having to always get in with all these new guys in all these new places.
So with a careful gathering of “spit” in my mouth and rolling it around, I let it fly down with a splatter on the floor. The boys laughed; the stern lady teacher didn’t.
“Here she comes,” Bobby said.
With fire flashing out of her ears, her teeth gritted, and those big brown eyes “smoking.”
“What in the world do you mean—do you have no manners?”
And other such questions.
I was caught. I was guilty. I was ashamed.
Of course, I knew better. But to get a place among the “boys,” I did it. Mrs. tooth gritter paddled me.
I carried a note home, and as I expected, Mom and Dad would be hurt and upset. They disciplined me with some old-fashioned discipline.
I never did it again.
The road will push you. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Ms. Fire Eyes spanking was just an “ole-time whipping.” I got one in almost every school. The difficult matter in going to so many different schools and more than once, two schools in a single grade is the education and learning gaps I have.
Often remarking about that to make fun of myself, someone will say, “That’s not true.” In 1958, after we left California, we landed in Dundee, Illinois, in March. They were studying Illinois history, and I was lost. They being more advanced in math; I was lost. Besides, their accents were strange. Two months of school were lost, and it was enough to open up some new gaps of loss of schoolin’.
Having gone to two different schools in the third, sixth, eighth, ninth, and tenth grades, I have learning gaps! Some of these moves kept us out of school a few days to a couple of weeks. Education gaps!
How have I made it? I’m not sure, but I’ve got no excuses.
We were happy moving. The good side of following the highway is the education we got in meeting people, learning how to handle ourselves, seeing America, and love of family. But the road will “push you.”
Look, there’s no excuses even for a trailer boy.
Story 5
Adventures 1
John Wayne to Kim Darby as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, “Baby sister, I was born game, and I intend to go out that way!”
God put a natural explorer’s heart in me. “I was born game!”
The road gave me the occasion constantly to stimulate my adventuresome nature. Traveling gave me a big world to view and enter into. It always stirred my imagination.
To this day, when driving, I have to see what is around the bend or over the hill. Hardly anything excites me more than a long highway stretched out in front of me. Often, I’ll say to Sandy, “Look at that long highway laying in front of us.”
The highway opens a visionary treat, going out there in my mind, dreaming and seeing things clearer. Being in so many different situations calls for a wandering treat. But you must be willing to fly out there in “your” mind.
The Muscadine Highway
Buford, Georgia, is built on small ridges. Houses up, houses down.
Arriving there on a cool, clear blue spring day in 1953, Dad stopped at a truck stop on the southside of town. Leaving the truck and trailer at the big truck stop, Dad said, “Son, let’s get in the car, and we’ll find a place to stay.”
Seeing a local pickup pulling in to get fuel, Dad drove up next to him and said in his deep voice, “Sir, do you know where there is a place to park our trailer?”
“Sure do,” the old-timer said.
The good gentleman gave us directions, and away we went.
He said, “It’s next to Hughes old grocery store!”
Pulling up to this unusual treat, we beheld the oddest little parking area and spots for only two trailers. Here was an old-timey grocery store with a porch across the front, three or four chairs, a large weathered sign that read, “Hughe’s Grocery—Since 1925” and an RC Cola ice chest with every flavor in the world. Super, super cold blue, white, and red and rusty all over the corners. The porch was covered with rusty tin—some twisted upward in the Georgia air.
The wonderful old store was built out from the edge of the road. The store and porch were four feet off the street, and then six to eight feet away was a twenty-foot drop-off under the marvelous store. The rest of the store was in space, built on large poles of brown cedar…I think.
Think of it, the store was built out beyond the drop-off and set on thick poles all around the bottom of the store. Large rough rocks lined the edge of the porch to the drop-off. I stayed close to Dad.
“What do you think, son? It won’t fall,” but I stayed really close to him for a few more minutes.
Down below was an small faded old white plank house. Moss grew on the roof and two big square rock smokestacks. Both the house and the store were covered with that old brown shingle from bottom to top with green shingle roofing, worn and faded some of the roof curled up heavenward.
Walking into the historical landmark, we were greeted by the comforting smell of bubblegum, popcorn, burnt wood and coal, candy jars filled full, a red and white Coca-Cola machine full of more “coke” on melting ice. It was wonderful.
“Dad, Dad”—as I tugged at his sleeve—“this is like the old store where Uncle Melvin,” (Aunt’ Louise’s husband, Mom’s sister), “took me, and we sat around the fire and got to hear all the men talk.”
“I’m glad you remember that,” Dad softly said as he bent over close to me.
In the center of the floor was the coal stove