Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born south of the Ohio River in a border state that declared itself neither North, nor South in that most uncivil of civil wars. In doing so, it proceeded to wander between both beliefs and has been sorely confused ever since. I grew up on a tobacco farm tucked into the southern corner of the County. The farm straddled along a ridge running off into an old creek named on maps for its distance from the mouth of another creek. The First People who lived there and left their flint arrowheads behind had another name for it, but I don’t think anyone ever asked them what it was. I saw neither running water, nor heard the ring of a telephone until the age of 15 when we moved to town. I learned the skills necessary for living and farming such as, how to plant, cut and strip tobacco, skin squirrels, drive a tractor, hunt frogs, snap beans, bale hay, castrate bulls, call cattle, play baseball with ghost runners and bounce a basketball on a dirt court. To this day I still feel that the most wonderful warmth in the world comes from a drum stove in winter.
Since those days I have been a soldier, a civil servant and now live as a developing writer and artist, sharing a wonderfully confused space with my wife, Michelle, who makes beautiful jewelry.
The Dog Fell Out of the Truck
The dog fell out of the truck.
We were coming back from picking up the mail at the end of the road.
We didn’t live where the mail truck drove up to our house, like it did at my Grandmother’s. The postman dropped her mail right off in a little box affixed next to her front door. She lived in town. We lived on the ridge. So we drove to get our mail.
The dog (a Boxer in the second summer of his life) stood in the back of the pickup truck up on the wheel well. He leaned out into the wind and rode the bumps and dips with no trace of fear nor worry. He looked like pure joy let loose on the world, taking his chances hanging out there riding the winds of fate.
Until we made the turn at the bottom of the hill. That’s when he shot out of the truck like a skipping stone slung low and fast across a picture pond.
I shouted for Daddy to stop.
We came to a stuttering halt up in a big cloud of white dust that splintered the sunlight and spread it all about in a raspy dry fog.
I never saw a cloud like that again until the long years passed and I stood in a distant desert watching artillery fire into the remnants of an early morning sky scraping dust storm. The light startled into a hazy bit of brightness, unfocused and fear full.
But that’s a thing to come. Let’s leave that there for now.
I jumped out of the truck and hit the road hard and fast. Nothing in this world sounds like shoes taking chunks out of a summer gravel dust road as you run down it. It sounds like a pale wind whispering in the locust trees about all the years to come that stretch out before you free and easy.
It sounds like all the good things in this world. It sounds like Life itself.
The dust settled and the dog stumbled up towards me out of a ditch. He shook the dust out of his coat and tried to regain some of his natural dignity, Boxers having that look about them.
In this case, it didn’t help him at all. He still looked like a dumbass dog that had just fallen out of the back of a pickup truck.
Daddy called out.
Get that damned dog in the truck!
I dropped the tailgate and jumped in. The dog hesitated, then jumped in behind me and landed up against the cab of the truck. I grabbed him as we both tumbled down together in a heap. Daddy rattled the gears. We lurched back out onto the road and headed home.
The dog curled up next to me and I gave him a bit of a hug and rough brush on his thick dumbass noggin. He seemed happy to just sit and watch as the world rushed by. I think he’d learned a lesson.
Sometimes there’s a price to be paid for hanging out in the wind.
Sometimes.
