Pretty Good Barnyard English

I thought I would have my book, Spreading Wing, out by now. The publishing process just seems to drag on and on, though. But Amazon is doing a great job. A goodly bit of the delays were in my court, I'll have to admit.

      I could have hired a professional to proof read and edit, and, as it turned out, I would have been time ahead. But the thought of an editor scares me. Bad.

      The first publisher, from another company that I considered, called and talked to me several times. After I had told her about my blog, she called me again a few days later, and we talked a long time that day. “You're not a trained writer, are you? Your work is a bit raw.” I had to admit, she had me pegged. “Nobody else writes like that. Others spend a lot of time slicking up their work.” We talked a long time after she said that, about my blog posts, and how I had made Barbara into my star, on and on. I began to realize, she had read them all, one hundred or so.

     I do not want a slick book. I'm not a slick person, forever a hillbilly and all that. And, I don't want anybody else editing and slicking my thoughts up until I totally lose my identity. I'm who I am, for better or worse. I want to tell my memories, preserved just like they came out of my mind, just like I talk. For good or bad. At the end of the day, I want to die knowing it is my book. My thoughts. My memories. Told just like I talk. Pure me. And, I love short sentences, and long paragraphs.

      My eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Apple, told me once I had pretty good barnyard English. That's about the closest I've ever come to a grammar award. She might not have been so complimentary, though, if I had not been so sweet on her daughter, Virginia, at the time.

      Barbara Knows what I'm trying to do with this book. I trust her to not start changing my thoughts all around. And, she's a word guru. She helped me a lot. But her back will just not hold up to endless hours of proof reading at the computer. So, most of the proof reading fell to me. And that's hard. What sounded good when it came out of my mind sounded perfectly good the next ten times I read it also. And, I tend to start re-living my stories, and forget my purpose. I tend to think, If it's very large or very important, it just must be capitalized. To try to keep my attention on my task, I read it through backwards once, word by word. Then backwards paragraph by paragraph. The paragraph thing didn't work. Since much of my book consists of one paragraph stories, hundreds of them that stand alone, I still started re-living my stories. 

      My dear friend Jane Quick, a retired English prof. At OBU, has read much of it. One thing she told me was to set a trash can beside my computer, and just dump most of those commas into the trash. But I like to herd those words around, with lots of commas, like I herded those cattle at Wing around with a stick. A world without commas is a bland, boring world, to my way of thinking. How could I ever write, just like I talk, without commas to guide the way?

     Jane's husband was a very funny guy. I wish I had known him. He was a teacher. He was famous for doing pratfalls in his classes, just to get a laugh. At his funeral, not long ago, two of his grand kids walked up to speak of him. They both fell flat on their faces! Barbara threw Jane a party on her 80^th birthday. Most all of her friends were over 80, so I worried that they might need help walking up our steep hill. So I stayed down at the bottom of the hill, in case anybody needed me. As it turned out, they all work out hard every day at the gym, just like Jane, regular gym rats. Any one of them could have thrown me over their shoulder and carried me up! At 80, Jane could lie down, grasp one of those huge workout balls between her feet, reach back, and lay it on the floor above her head. Barbara just loves visiting every Wednesday with Jane! Anybody would.

      Amazon first said, Barbara could not send my book to them, in the only form they would accept, without Word, which we don't have on our computer. But Barbara kept quizzing her until she googled it, then said, “Yes, it is possible, but-” That's all Barbara needed to know. She got it there. Like I've said, Barbara just will not let any task she starts defeat her. And, she's totally self taught on the computer. She sent my second batch of corrections of the two proofs in today, and it now looks like a pre-Christmas book is out of the question, time wise. But now, the hay is in the barn. The crop is laid by. I'll let you know here when it's available on amazon.com in America and Europe. I specified Europe also, because in talking to many of our European friends when we were there, (As you know, if you've been reading this blog, Barbara has thousands of European friends) I learned many, many Europeans have ancestors who just sold it all and moved to America when free homestead land became available in the 1800's, and Spreading Wing will tell my European readers much about how they lived when they got here. And, it's all true. I love all my foreign readers of this blog, currently from fifty one countries around the world. Who woulda' guessed!.

     I hope you read it, and like it. I did, every one of those four hundred fifty or so pages, the twenty or so times I've read it. Thanks for reading!

You responded so well to my five best stories of 2011, that I have decided to run the five most read stories of 2012, starting next post. Since The Summer of My Broken Heart still got the most reads, I may have to go fiction, and write a romance book next. It will have to be fiction, because my true love life is already pretty much an open book.:)

The Summer of My Broken Heart

I met Barbara at the Delta Dip in Dumas, Arkansas, home of the Ding Dong Daddy. I didn't make that last part up, it's just what they say down there in the Delta. I was finishing up my student teaching in Dumas, and I had just gotten my hamburger, and was heading back to my car. A guy I knew from Arkansas A&M called me over. He was talking to a carload of girls. When I walked over, looked in the car, I saw a couple of nice looking girls. But in the back seat, far side, I saw her. I almost dropped my hamburger. There, before my eyes, sat the most beautiful one eyed girl I had ever seen. Her hair style covered one eye up, but a little later I saw the other one too, and it was every bit as beautiful as the first one. This was it. This was the girl I wanted to marry.

     But I had this problem. Every time I met a girl I really liked, I just froze up. Couldn't think of a single sensible thing to say. In college, when I found a girl I really liked, I called her up and said something like, "You wouldn't want to go out with me, would you?" Then if she hesitated, even for a second, I threw in the clincher. "I don't blame you, I wouldn't either if I were you. Bye."

Well, you can see my situation here, looking at this girl I wanted to marry. But this girl was so bubbly, outgoing, and friendly, she would just not allow me to freeze up. Before long, I had a date with her for Saturday night.

      Following her directions, I headed for Watson Saturday night. I had misgivings. It was a well known fact at A&M, 25 miles away, that a young man just did not venture into Watson, alone, after dark. Watson had 3 or 4 really bad young dudes, they loved to fight, and they were good at it. Stories were told of one average looking guy who had mastered the art of getting in three running steps and throwing the first punch in a one – punch fight, usually against much larger guys.

     I slunk down in the seat as I drove down Main street. Well, actually, THE street. It was dark, but not nearly dark enough. Watson was like an old western town. In fact, at least one old western movie was made there. I couldn't help but remember all the men I had seen die in the dust of just such a street, in the movies. Well, I made it through town, breathing easier now, and headed for her house, out a winding gravel road three miles out through the cotton fields.

When I arrived, Barbara invited me in. I thought the whole family must be there, but no. I just barely scratched the surface of the Dunnahoe clan that night. Her little sisters, two squirmy little girls, whispered and laughed to each other about how tall I was, how big my hands were, and would you just look at those feet! Her brother, about my age, was there with his wife and baby. The brother, JD, shook my hand and all, but the look in his eye was anything but friendly. It wasn't until years later, I began to piece it all together from his stories about his "three running steps" technique, that I began to realize. JD was actually the one I had heard stories about at A&M. Little did I know, the real danger was not on the streets of Watson, but here, in this house, looking at me hard. But his Mama and Daddy were there, and things went well that night.

We got to date a few times, then student teaching was over and I was off to my new teaching job at St. Paul, Arkansas.

      I went to see Barbara every weekend I could, which meant when I was invited. But she was busy finishing up her senior year, St. Paul was a long way off, and I didn't get to see her as much as I wanted to that semester.

      At the end of the school year, Barbara was headed off to A&M to start college. I knew Barbara would be making a big splash there that summer, pretty girls like her always do. I decided to go to Oklahoma, work on a pipeline, make a little money. I knew Barbara still had ties to some guy in the Air force, and was not ready to put all her eggs in one basket yet. But we parted on good terms, each having no hold on the other.

      About mid summer, I stuck my gloved hand into a block and tackle on the pipeline job, and the last inch of my thumb just stayed with the glove. I went over and told the foreman, who had caused my accident in the first place, that I had lost a thumb. He cussed me out really good, for messing up his safety record. My Oklahoma adventure was over, and I was headed back to Arkansas. Driving home, I had no idea how losing that thumb was about to affect the remainder of my life.

      I drove down to see Barbara, in summer school at A&M. As I expected, she was making a big splash. Pretty, personable new girls tend to do that. Well, she was dating a football star, the son of a football coach, who was making his own splash, and she still had ties to the Air Force dude, but she seemed, in talking with me, to be leaving the door open for us just a little bit, and I suddenly decided I had best go back to school the second summer term, pick up some chemistry. I signed up and went back to Wing a few days to collect my stuff. I wrote Barbara. Told her I met her football jock, and he seemed to me to think he was pretty wonderful. Well, she wrote back and turned my words right against me. She told me she had become convinced he was wonderful too, and another thing or two along that same line of thought.

      That hit me, and hit me hard. Here I was, already paid my tuition money, and I was getting the royal shaft.

      After thinking it over a couple of days, a couple of my hardest days ever, I decided to go to school anyway, as hard as that would be. I never liked to just throw away money.

My old pals tried to cheer me up. Didn't work. My buddy Sam, a one legged guy, offered to fight him for me since I was thumb incapacitated. I was kinda hard to cheer up, seeing her all cozied up with him every day.

      Barbara and I both worked in the cafeteria. One day while we were working, Barbara asked me if I would take her to church that night. I thought awhile, maybe a second, and told her I didn't see why not. I saved my celebrating until I got back to the dorm. Things were looking up! I was in a really good mood, right up until I saw them, right out in front of my dorm, hugging and such. I think he brought her over there to put on a show for me.

      Well, that didn't help my mood much, and I was pretty cool to her at church. When I pulled up in front of her dorm, the jock was waiting. He came storming up. I knew I wasn't in good fighting trim, thumb cut off and all. Actually, I have never been a good fighter, thumb or no thumb. Well, I shouldn't have worried. He did all the fighting, with his words, all aimed right at her, right there in front of me. Barbara very nicely listened to everything he had to say, just ranted himself out, ending up with, “You either leave with me, right now, or it's over!” She just looked at him, and very nicely said, “It's already over.” "Well, then, I want my picture back," he said. It was a nice, framed 8x10 and, bad as she hated to, I'm sure, she agreed to give it up.

      They say the meek shall inherit the earth. Well, that night I began inheriting the part of it I most wanted, Barbara. I was a little uneasy, as she very nicely went through the process of cutting off the other hopefuls, one at a time. By the time I had learned a little chemistry, and I was ready to head to St. Paul and my new coaching job, we were engaged. I always made sure, when I saw the jock coming through the lunch line, that I had her hugged up as she spooned food on his plate. He always got mad, red as a beet, but he never said anything.

We got married on December 26 of that year, and we headed off to New Orleans. Well, I couldn't understand those Cajun's directions, and we never found New Orleans. But somehow, it just didn't seem to matter at the time.

Best Stories of 2011 - Fourche Valley School

     I have never had any regrets that I went to a small school like Fourche Valley School, small in terms of students, but one of the larger districts in the state. There were lots of mountains and few people. Two icons of Fourche Valley that quickly come to mind were the Lowes. Mr. Lowe was the superintendent and principal. Normally, dealing with the principal was a negative, and I had lots of dealings. However, in the long run, I realize, he had a way of turning my associations with him into a positive thing. Winnie Lowe, I well remember, had a deep voice that could sound like rolling thunder coming across the room when one messed up, and it could make one shrink down in ones desk, becoming as invisible as possible. But she had a way of teaching us to be the best person we could be. Neither taught me in a classroom very often, except possibly short term. But I remember them so well, it seems like they did. They had three daughters who each became doctors in one form or another, and each is leaving a very large footprint on our country. I am sure genetics were involved, but as I said, just being around Winnie Lowe brought out the very best. One great thing about small schools, we dealt with the entire faculty on a daily basis, and I am a better person for it.My class, the Class of 1962, was made up of twelve students. Nine lived in Fourche Valley, three lived across South Fourche Mountain near Aly and Chula.
     There was no quick and easy route from Aly to Fourche Valley School. Mr. Mabry drove the Aly bus, many miles on rough dirt roads through the mountains. Few from the south side of Fourche Mountain participated in school sports, in those days. Just too far. Too complicated.
     Shelton Dishongh spotted it early. Although my class had a pretty good crop of boys for a basketball team, It was the girls who were awesome. He was our class sponsor in the seventh grade, and he was also the coach. He took us to the gym, one day, and we played, girls vs. boys. The girls beat us like a rented mule. Just wore us out. We boys never quite recovered from that, and it never got better.
     We five boys were the starting team, as seniors, early on, then we began to get a lot of help from the likes of Dobbie Wilson and Lanny Ashlock. We were 16-9, but it was the girls who won the District Tournament, and played in the State Tournament at Parkin. I asked our teacher, Rubye Singleton, single but courting heavily at that time, if she was going to Parkin. She said, "You never know!" I said, " I meant, are you going TO Parkin. Not going Parking."  She flushed bright red. We loved to make her do that.
     Jack Larry Gillum and Monty Dishongh were the ladie's men. Larry started chasing the girl's early, before I even knew "for why."  and, they chased him back. Monty never needed to chase, they chased him. Jackie Aikman didn't seem to think about the ladies much in high school.  Butch Garner was committed to the love of his life early, and never varied. I, myself, I had tons of romantic entanglements in high school. But only in my head. Nobody else ever knew about them.
     Jackie Aikman didn't rag the teachers much. He was very well behaved, compared to the rest of us. But one day in typing, he messed up. Miss Gussie Lofland, already sick of the whole lot of us for the day, set in on Jack. "Jackie Aikman, you're just as bad as the others! You're just sneaky! You're a snake in the grass!" Well, the name "snake" stuck, and he could not shed it. "Snake" Aikman."
    About the time I was ready to go off to college, I began to realize that was a very large crop of "easy to look at" girls coming up, 3 or 4 years back. That was about where my maturity level wound up, anyway. (I spent 25 years teaching ninth and tenth grade students.) Anyway, getting back to the crop. Jackie and Monty later picked a plumb from that crop, as did Butch, early. By the time that fully hit me, (I have always been slow to catch on) I was gone, off to college. If I had stayed in Fourche Valley two more years, I probably would have never left. The love of my life, when I finally found her, was in that age group. Four years younger.

Best Stories of 2011 - Fourche Valley School

Best Stories of 2011 - Number Three

The King Of Fayetteville

The year was 1968 and I had just turned 24. I was flipping through the paper one day when I stopped on a picture of an old man with what looked to me like, at the time, an unbelievable large string of catfish. The caption under the picture was, "Dick Dyer Does It Again!" Seems Dick Dyer was about the best cat fisherman around Fayetteville, Arkansas. I wished I could do that, but it seemed out of my reach.

When I was a kid, growing up in Wing, Arkansas I caught lots of catfish, and we needed them. They sure tasted good, after a diet of salt pork. But they weren't real big. In the early days of Fayetteville, I had access to larger rivers, and I thought more and more about cat fishing.

Well, as it happened, shortly after seeing that newspaper article, my wife Barbara and I moved over to Anderson Place. Would you care to guess who my neighbor, right across the street was? You guessed it. Dick Dyer. I befriended him, I cultivated him, I quizzed him. After a while, Dick's MO began to emerge. I studied his techniques. He even let me go fishing with him, once. Well, he began to see that I could be a competitor somewhere down the line, and Dick dearly relished being the best river catfish catcher around. Maintaining that status consumed his whole life. He pretty well cut me off from any more information.

But I knew enough. I began to catch more and more fish, emulating his methods. Dick was OK with that, he was catching more, and bigger fish. We went along there, him doing a bit better, for several years. Then I slowly began to catch as many fish as he did, and probably about the same in total weight. He still had the largest fish, 16 pounds. Every time he saw me, he told me about that 16 pound catfish.. He never let me forget about that 16 pound catfish..

Barb and I were coming into our last months at Fayetteville. One really deep hole I fished a time or two that spring, with my limb lines probably tied to limbs I know now were too solid, with very little give, just kept breaking. The lines were 120 pound test or so, and I couldn't understand it at the time.

Barbara and I were walking along the river bank, one day in June, on a picnic. I saw two old watermelon rinds lying on the bank, and they were just covered with hundreds of June bugs. I had never heard of anyone using June bugs to catch catfish, but I knew that in the late summer, they often fed by just skimming along the surface, picking up floating bugs and whatever they could find. I had seen them doing that at night. After Barbara had walked on toward the car, I went back, pitched the rinds in the river, and the June bugs all floated up. I just scooped them all up, put them in a paper bag, and stuck them in the car. When we got home, I wrapped them up real tight in a freezer bag, and stuck them way back in the back of the freezer, out of sight. Barbara put no stock in mixing fish bait and food in the freezer. Late in the summer, I was watching TV one day, and I heard Barbara scream. I ran to the kitchen. There she was, the bag in one hand, a handful of June bugs in the other. Seems she had been going through freezer bags to find something to cook, stuck her hand in, and pulled out the June bugs. I caught it pretty good over that. As Barbara settled down some, a little later, I said, “ I've just got time for one more fishin' trip before we move, and no telling when I'll get to fish again. I'll get every one of those June bugs outta' here then.” She agreed. Catch Barbara when she's not screaming with a handful of June bugs, and she's a great gal.

Next week rolled around. I asked John Philpott if he wanted to go with me. Said he guess so, nothing better to do. We went back to that hole, where the White River and the West fork of the White River join, where my lines had been broken last spring. This time, I had a new idea. We were fishing with cane poles, very limber, and we stuck them way, way back in that mud bank. I floated each hook right on top of the water, with a June bug on it. We ran the lines at midnight, and had a couple of ten pounders and a whole passel of smaller catfish. But, right where the two rivers join, that pole was going absolutely crazy! Ever tried to get a lively 25 pound catfish into a small landing net? We finally did. The next morning, we had a couple more ten pounders and another bunch of smaller catfish.. Then, we approached that last pole, right where the two rivers join. The pole was completely pulled out of the bank, but it was still laying there, mostly out of the water. Lying in the water, either just too worn out for one more flip of the tail, or having learned from his struggles that was as far as he could go, was the brother to the last big one. He was also 25 pounds. Well, when I got home, the first thing I did was take them over to Dick Dyer. Dick came out, I held them up as well as I could. Didn't say a thing, I didn't have to. He never said a word to me. Just turned sorta sick looking, turned around, dropped his head, and walked back into the house. We moved to Hannibal, Missouri a couple of days later. I never saw Dick again.

About two weeks after we got to Hannibal, a letter chock-full of pictures arrived. A 40 pound catfish, and a whole bunch in the 20 pound range. The letter just verified the weights, And in the picture an old man was smiling. Smiling right straight out at me. Thats all. Not another word. The return name on the envelope was Dick Dyer.

I knew Dick didn't have my address. But he managed to find it. And I knew he had found my Glory Hole. All I could figure out was, he must have ragged John Philpott into telling him. I was pretty put out by this whole thing for awhile, then after I settled down some, I began to think about it a little differently. I had used Dick's methods, developed through his many years of experience. He used me to locate the Glory hole. Fair's fair.

I've never been back to that Glory Hole, but someday I will. Over the years, I think I've figured it out. There's a dam on the White River, a quarter mile upstream. Catfish naturally swim upstream. Until they're stopped by a dam. The small fish stay there, in that shallow hole at the dam. The big fish must have deep water, and they go back downriver, only as far as they need to, the first very deep hole. Right where the two rivers join. In the Glory Hole. And there they still lie. Year after year, just getting bigger and bigger. Just waiting for me to come back and challenge them again. But Dick Dyer passed away many years ago, and when he died, he was still the King of the Catfish Catchers in Fayetteville---and it just wouldn't be the same. Who else in the world could care as much about the size of the catfish I might catch there as Dick Dyer did? Nobody, thats who.

For all you fishermen out there, I know you can find my Glory hole from what I've told you here. But where will you be able to find a whole bag full of June Bugs?