The Barefooted, Streaking, Birthday Boy

I was just sitting here today thinking about things from my past. I began listing some moments that stick out in my mind and thought I would write about a few of them.

Can’t Keep Shoes On that Boy
I don’t remember how old I was when this happened. I can barely remember the whole incident. I must have been around 4 or 5-years old. My parents had bought me a brand new pair of black Sunday shoes. Back in those days, it was a pretty big deal to receive a brand new pair of shoes. Normally shoes were only bought right before school started or at Easter time. Anyways, I guess I wasn’t much into wearing those shoes. For some reason my family decided to go fishing over at Little Flat Creek. Why I was wearing my Sunday shoes, I’ll never know. So, I’m sitting on the side of the creek bank holding a little cane pole waiting for a Red-Eye or a Bull Head fish to bite. I reckon I got bored and thought it would be a good time to get rid of those Sunday shoes. From what my parent’s tell me, I yanked those shoes off, held the shoestrings in my hand, lassoed them around my head and slung those things out in the middle of the creek. We watched as my little black Sunday shoes were carried away with the current and eventually sank underneath, never to be seen again. Don’t ask me what I wore to church the next Sunday because I can’t remember.

The Streak
The year was 1975 so I was 9-years old. The biggest hit on radio during that time was a song by Ray Stevens, called, The Streak. I bought the 75-RPM record of it and played it all of the time. I thought that was just about the funniest song I had ever heard in my entire life. If you were ever anywhere around me, rest assured you would be forced to listen to me sing the entire song. “Oh yes they call him the streak, fastest thang on two feet!” Well, I remember one hot summer day; I was walking up the road toward my papaw Chesney’s house. Across from his house was a large cow pasture that was full of cows. For some strange reason I decided that those cows needed to hear my sing The Streak. So, I climbed up the barbed wire fence and straddled the top of a large fence post that was made from an old telephone pole. I sat there on top of that pole and sang The Streak to the top of my lungs, over, and over, and over, and…well, you get the picture. Those cows just stood there in that field chewing on grass and staring at me. Up the road a bit, I saw my uncle Jimmy Barnes come out of his garage to see what all the racket was. He probably thought I was nuts. He just shook his head and walked back into the garage. My papaw was out in his front yard but he never even looked toward me that I know of. He was like that. Probably if I had been singing “Just a Little Talk with Jesus,” he would have run over and joined me. Well, I sang for what seems like hours. It finally started getting dark and the lightning bugs came out so I ended my concert and climbed off of the fence post. Sometime after that my mother said that a lady that she worked with wanted to borrow my record of The Streak. Reluctantly I agreed and handed my prized possession over. I never saw it again…

A Birthday to remember forget
It was August 3rd, 1977; I turned 10-years old that day. My mom had fixed me a delicious cake with pineapples on top. My present was a whirly jig. It consisted of a spiraled metal rod that you would slide brightly colored round disc onto. You would hold the rod in one hand and slide some type of forked piece up the rod with the other hand, sending the round discs up into the air. I received numerous hours of enjoyment from the whirly jig.

My sisters and I were out in the front yard, zooming the flying disc up in the air. My dad was mowing the yard. The next thing we knew, the lawnmower stopped running and we could hear yelling. Turns out that dad had run over something while mowing and it had flown out from under the mower and into his side. He was rushed to the hospital where they did an emergency surgery on him and removed a 2-inch piece of coat hanger wire along with his spleen. He brought the wire home in a little plastic bottle. I think he still has it to this day. I believe after that is when I began mowing our yard full-time.