Gnarly Tales

I believe it was in March that we drove over there in the rain, my grandfather and I on that Sunday. It was the sort of rain that just pours down for hours and then suddenly stops and the sun pops out. As I remember, it was roughly thirty-five or forty miles to the little town of Hazlehurst, Georgia from the farm where we lived. In 1952, none of the roads were paved They were just sand - and Georgia red clay, which usually was found only near the tops of gentle hills. The car was a1950 Dodge 4-door sedan, big, boxy and black, and as heavy as a tank.  In those days the saying went, ‘You can order a car in any color you want so long as it’s black.’  It was rare then to see a car in any color other than black or dark grey. You could say it was mostly a monochrome world back then when it came to automobiles. The car was one of those solid feeling ones which only acknowledged bumps by remembering to bounce and sway after you passed over the bump by twenty-five yards or s...

Sometimes I tell my grandchildren stories about my childhood. They can’t quite get their heads around how different things were back when I was their ages. It sounds so strange to them when I talk about farm kids driving around cars and trucks at the age of ten or twelve - and the (lack of) technology of those days. There were so many routine things we did back then that are no longer done at all today unless you live far, far off the grid. And, many things which were routine for farm kids to do in the ‘fifties would get modern kids in very serious trouble today. To my grandchildren, my stories are fantastic and somewhat unbelievable. I get that. My lovely 14-year-old granddaughter even wrote a school paper saying how my tales seemed like science fiction to her. Since they do listen and ask reasonable and serious questions I know they really are interested. I always try to be as factual as possible and explain thing which aren’t clear to them, even when they give me those skeptical l...