Oh, come on Tug, you'll like it!

Famous last words from my cousin Danny. He was 5 years older than me and I thought he was the coolest person in the world. He could out-run, out jump, and out-do anything and anyone that you could think of. He nicknamed me "Tug" when I was about 8 years old. I guess it was supposed to be an insulting name but I was just proud that he wanted anything to do with me. Little did I know back then, that I would just be a handy punching bag for him.

He used to delight in putting me in different wrestling holds. His very favorite was the pile driver. He would come running at me full force, grab me, cram my arms, legs, and head into a ball, scream out "PILE DRIVER," force me to the ground, and roll me down the hill. He would keep me in that hold until I either yelled out, "UNCLE," or I would quit breathing and he thought that he had killed me, which happened pretty often!

Danny introduced me to chewing tobacco. I remember that day so clearly. We were fishing in Roseberry Creek, which runs through the field across from my parents house. Danny pulled out a big pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco, wadded up a ball of it, and stuck it in his jaw. Then he held the pouch out to me and said, "try some." I had often seen my papaw, Lorn Chesney, cut off a piece of Twist chewing tobacco and chew on it, but I had always been warned not to ever try it. "Naw, I better not," was my reply. "Oh, come on Tug, you'll like it!" "Well, I reckon it wouldn't hurt to try a little bit of it." I reached in the pouch, pulled out a good sized wad of tobacco, rolled it into a ball, and stuck it in my mouth. "Hey, that's not too bad," I said. "Well you gotta chew it," said Danny. So not wanting to look like an idiot, I started into chewing that tobacco. I'd say that not hardly a minute went by before I started getting dizzy, my head was spinning, my thoughts were jumbled, and then my stomach started feeling queasy. I looked up at my hero cousin and said "I think I'm gonna be sick." The next thing I knew, Danny picked me up off of the ground, lifted me up above his head, and threw me full force into the middle of the creek! He ended up having to jump in and pull me back to the bank where I laid on my stomach and heaved water and chewing tobacco for the next 5 minutes. I can still hear his laughter echoing off of the nearby hillside, in between yelling at me to "toughen up and act like a man."

I saw my cousin, Danny, a few months back and I noticed that I'm twice as big as he is now. Hmm, I wonder if he'd like to go fishing over at Roseberry creek?