No Excuses. J. Larry Simpson I
I get fur ya?” The voice came from behind the counter with the cash machine hiding her face. “I’m Mrs. Hughes,” a voice came forth as the dear lady emerged from behind the counter. Short, fleshed out, with gray hair under a red handkerchief do-rag, and a large smile.
Looking at her, I was amazed at the wart just below her nose with a couple of pretty long hairs and curly ones! That occupied my vision, along with the smell of it all.
“We need a place to park our trailer for a few months.”
The gracious, inviting soul said, “Let me call my husband. Homer, Homer…,” she cried from the small back porch, with twenty-five or so steps down to the ground.
I was terrified. “A store built out into the air!”
Dad just grinned at me as the wife of Homer held to the wooden rails tight enough for her short, fat fingers to turn white.
Here came Homer. I thought he was a hundred years old, yet he climbed the steps like a billy goat. Dad and I looked at each other in grinning shock. He wore faded blue overalls, with a starched, well-worn white shirt, starched stiff, cracked, with brown brogans on both feet, all with a well-used black country dress hat, all dusty and bent.
“Welcome to Buford.”
We talked, laughed and listened to Mr. Homer tell us about Buford and World War I.
“I was with our Army in ’17 as we crushed the Germans into ‘bits’ like red Georgia gravel.”
With wide opened mouth, I pulled Dads sleeve, “Dad, I just read that story last week.”
“You did? Good.”
In spite of all that, we got the deal done, and Dad set on to get us parked and hooked up. I helped, but I couldn’t get my eyes off the front of the store. On the left was a faded “Confederate” flag, and on the right, an almost new “Old Glory.” Over the door was a saying I’ll never forget, “In God we trust. All others must pay cash.”
“Would you like to go to our Fourth of July gathering at our sons? He just built a new home, and we want to celebrate with him…,” Mrs. Hughes said.
We did go.
The Hughes’s hearts were big. We found out they didn’t live by their sign, but they also gave lots of people credit, and some never to see again. But they were happy.
Dad backed the “home on wheels” into the narrow spot by the water, sewer, and electricity. The deal was done, and the first month’s rent paid, and we set about living, but with the southside of the Liberty only five and a half feet from the ragged blacktop street.
Buford was an old town, quaint, and happy with the Hughes’s store two blocks off main street. Next to the store was a muscadine patch that grew from the street over to the two or three hickory trees. How did they grow twenty feet across? I wondered.
I asked Dad, “How strong are these grapevines?”
Not thinking about the question, he half interestedly said, “Son, Georgia muscadines are strong enough to hold a bear.”
Wow, a bear! my gleeful mind declared with the wheels turning.
I had never seen such a thing. Here was a “muscadine highway” stretched out over the high “gully” to the trees. “We had those in Walls, Mississippi, and I climbed, um, a whole bunch.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I responded. Being quite sure, I had not revealed my secret plan.
From day one, I began to study the situation, figuring out my travel route across my vine highway to those big trees. There I could climb to the sky. Not being impetuous, of course, for several weeks, I figured, calculated, and planned.
Having made several friends those last few weeks of school, I began to work on their poor little minds about the “vined highway.” On Saturday, we’d hike around, walk downtown, or just sit and tell stories. With two nickels, we could buy an RC Cola and moon pie at Hughes’s grocery. Mrs. Hughes was so kind to us, but I could not keep my eyes off those stiff long hairs, black as coal and curling up tight.
So upon one of those heavenly sun-filled days, I said, “Boys, let’s go cross the ‘muscadine highway.’”
“But nobody has ever done that before,” said my good, plump friend, whose name I unfortunately do not remember.
He had just finished the fourth grade while the rest of us the third. His argument only challenged me and pushed me on. Nobody could discourage that enflamed and tickled mind…of a little trailer boy.
One cute girl hung out with us, redheaded, freckle-faced, and pretty. Jenny was a tomboy of the highest order.
“Let’s go,” she said with flames in her words as red as her hair.
Strangely, my first real girlfriend—that is as much as a fourth grader—in conservative times could have been was a look alike to Jenny.
Walking down the street like Wyatt Earp to face the gunfighters at the O.K. Corral, we headed for the universally first-time challenge. We walked deliberately, silently seeing ourselves as world shakin’ conquerors. The competitive juices flowed.
There we were at the muscadine bridge strung out like a mountain gravel road with holes in it, daylight down below and open all the way to the earth.
I had to face up to my well laid out plan.
“I’ll go first,” I stutteringly squeezed out of my mouth. “I’ll tell y’all what it’s like.”
Slowly inching up to the sight, I saw daylight below even though the green bridge looked solid. “A long way to the bottom,” I whispered to myself.
“Hey, any of y’all want to go first? I don’t want to hurt any feelings,” I said, hoping to find a first-time victim, instead of sacrificing myself.
No one spoke. They just shook their heads side to side.
Off I went, placing my feet on the best clump of vines I could find. But the vines were swinging with me both directions as I bobbed up and down!
“Ohwee” came out of my mouth when my foot slipped off the vines with a great jar to my private area. Worst of all, I could see the ground twenty feet below, but I couldn’t let my fear be known. After all, this was my gang and my “game”!
At least there was some bushes down on the ground below me, so I took some comfort that if I fell, at least I could land on them. Swinging as I crept along, it seemed as if I were on the Empire State Building with it swinging back and forth.
I looked back to my buddies. Their eyes were swelled up as big as coffee saucers, and even though they were gripped with fear, they yelled encouraging words, “Go, Larry, go!”
Lo and behold, when I got to the middle of the muscadine passage, the vines began to violently swing like a rockin’ chair. Too far to go back, couldn’t turn around, and “way” down…to certain death. Besides, once I got to the trees, I’d have to eventually come back, but my pride said, “Go on! You can’t quit…”
On I went. Swinging, slipping, and grabbing vines, suddenly, violently, I swung under the vines! Hanging on for dear life, I swung under the “highway” but got my right leg over the top of the vines, grabbed a bundle of the green strands, and wiggled back up on top as I swung side to side. I was winning over this adventure but wet with sweat!
Making it to the trees, I climbed out on a big limb, blew out air with a big, “Sheeewww,” as the four safe buddies clapped and yelled. I tried to act as if it were nothing.
I clung to the sweet, comforting big tree. I felt good while shaking from top to bottom, front to back.
“Who’s next? There’s room over here for all of us,” I breathlessly said, still excited, as if I was the victorious gladiator. I was proud I had shown the way.
The other two boys followed, leaving Jenny and “Plumpy”