Many people have asked me, "Why do you call the blog Reflections in Muddy Water?" There are two explanations, one literal and one metaphorical. The literal explanation arises from Two Run Creek, which runs right behind our old property in Cassville. I used to play in this creek every day, trying to catch bream and filling Mason Jars with periwinkles to show my grandmother. She always worried about snakes. "Y'all watch out! Them water moccasins will chase you!" she would shout from her back porch. Luckily, we were spared from their death venom and warp speed for all those years. We knew what their nests looked like and we always had a rifle close by, just in case. Thanks to Mom and Dad for buying the rifle and showing us how to shoot it. Two inch fangs are no match for a Marlin .22 sighted in so perfectly that I could shoot the pollen off a bee's rearend from 200 yards out.
The metaphorical explanation comes from life itself, as a Southern boy with a 1940's mentality, living in the modern world. The world is "muddy water," so to speak. It is full of possibilities because you really don't know what is underneath the surface. It could be a nice bream (happiness, good health, wealth, etc.) or it could be the snakes that Neen warned us about (evil, greed, ill will, whatever makes us sad or angry). The rifle is your mind and body, molded by your decisions and upbringing, always loaded and ready for action. Use it wisely because you only have one and when you run out of ammunition, the snakes will come in full force. My Cassville roots taught me so many valuable lessons about the world, not just in our little dusty corner of the universe, but everywhere I go. I still love to play in the muddy creek water, I still get joy pulling a nice, fat bream up on the bank....but I'm always on the lookout for snakes and when they come along, the rifle is there and "hesitation" is not in our vocabulary in Cassville.
So, this past weekend, I was pulling weeds and cleaning up pine tree limbs with Dad. It was 4:00 PM and he remarked, "I'm afraid I've waited too long to plant those begonias, Daddy Kim always said don't plant in any months that don't have an "r" in them." Daddy Kim was my great-grandfather. A loveable, wonderful man who missed only one scheduled day of work in 32 years. The same man who married my great-grandmother at the age of 15. The same man who built their house with his own two hands. I love that old school wisdom. In this generation, where everybody "googles" and "wikipedias" everything from hair care to screwing in a light bulb, it's nice to hear something that was actually passed down by word of mouth. My generation just seems to know very little in the way of practical information. Seriously, there are people from my law school class that can pontificate about the Roe v. Wade decision until you want to sacrifice them like an Aztec virgin, yet if you hand them a ratchet and a new car battery, you would hear crickets for miles. I'm not saying they are stupid, but if I had my choice to know the intricacies of supplemental jurisdiction in federal court or how to replace a radiator in a 1989 Dodge Ram....hand me the toolbox, please. It's hard to convince a federal judge of anything if your car is smoking in the driveway and you don't know how to fix it and get to Court.
There were several more sayings that ran through my head as we pulled weeds. The South is always known for its colloquial nature and Cassville is no exception. I compiled a list of my favorites, mostly gleaned from the store and my family members. This list is brought to you by Husky tools (because I replaced a car battery last week...Take that, civil procedure!), calamine lotion (because I got poison oak pulling weeds), and my Aunt Brenda's creamed corn, the single greatest carb explosion since Rosie O'Donnell got off the Atkins Diet and invaded Baskin Robbins with a soup ladle.
1) "You are better off rubbing sand in a lion's ass as to mess with me..."
This was a Billy special. This essentially meant that if you chose to mess with him, you would likely be physically injured in the near future. You would rather be mauled and eaten by a lion than, for example, hide his Taylor's Pride chewing tobacco from him. You normally would not take somebody seriously like this, but when they are packing heat, the lion's ass looks tempting.
2) "I hope they don't get in that cloud on the way over here..."
No, they don't mean that someone physically gets into a cloud. It means they hope the traveler, who is on their way to Cassville, is not intercepted by the storm that is currently coming out of Gadsden, Alabama and on its way toward us. Many unfortunate travelers have been hindered by roadblocks of the cumulonimbus nature over the years. I remember when it came up a cloud on many occasions at the beach and we would lament, "now we can't play putt-putt!" Mom and Dad would smile, knowing the cloud has averted another dreaded round of putt putt where Matt and I argued over who gets the red ball.
See also...."It's coming up a cloud" or "I bet they got in that cloud." (to explain the previously mentioned traveler's lateness) "I got in that cloud" is also an explanation for tardiness that is universally accepted throughout the South.
3) "He's got one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel..."
Somebody is on the brink of death, or looks like crap because they are a drug abuser. I remember hearing this when one certain man would come to the store and blow his disability check on lottery tickets every week, geeking on meth and scratching furiously. When he finally mowed down his income to about $15.00 (courtesy of Lucky 7's, $2 Jumbo Bucks and Fantasy 5) , he would buy a 12 pack of Natty Light and a pack of Marlboros instead of food. I guess the he ate the banana that he was eventually going to slip on, because he ended up in prison. Priorities and bananas....alive and well in the 30123.
4) "He could #$@# up an anvil with a banana peel...."
Here we go with banana peels again. This statement means that said person can find a way to screw up anything and everything they touch. It often applies to people on mobile phones, in their cellular funk, somehow find a way to block off the entire parking lot of the store with one car because they are not paying attention. Seriously, I had one woman in a Tahoe, yapping on her Nextel (aaaaah! I hated those things!) back out of the store's parking lot and hit a stop sign. The sign shattered her back glass and fell across the street, thereby blocking all south and northboud traffic. The shattered glass covered about 2,000 square feet, of course, so nobody could get to the gas pumps. The county sent about seven deputies and three DOT workers to the scene, she cried uncontrollably as her insurance guy showed up and said they weren't covering it. The DOT guys smoked about 76 cigarettes, the cops had to give about three "following too closely" tickets from rubberneckers rearending each other, while Dad and I just stood there swatting flies....watching the anvil breaking before out eyes.
5) "Our power goes off every time a damn truck backfires in Chattanooga!"
In the 1990's, our power went off every other day. Seriously, Bartow County residents will back me up on this. We had more blinking digital clocks and lukewarm milk than anywhere in the state! I remember the time that my neighbor got drunk and chainsawed an oak tree onto the power lines, car wrecks that seemed to always find a power pole, blown transformers, high wind, train whistle blew too loudly, "Rugged" Ronnie Garvin wins the TV title from Arn Anderson.....almost any event would trigger a power outage. I swear, our power bill was $6.53 one month in 1994. Neen would drive up to the store to get the latest news on the power outage to spread amongst the populace, we would scramble around and store all the ice cream, meat and milk into coolers and wait for the Georgia Power trucks to fly by. One of them would stop and tell us, "well, it come up a damn cloud down in Rockmart and....." See? Universal explanations....they are right above you at all times. I'm sure Johnnie Cochran would have found a way to use it if he were still alive.
These sayings are not copyrighted, so y'all may use them at your leisure. I plan on using them for the rest of my life. I just have one question though, I wonder if people will understand them in New York City? That's right, folks. Yours truly and Laura are moving to the Big Apple in June. This blog will continue and being in NYC will create a plethora of new stories and ideas for blog material. We are beyond excited about this opportunity. I promise to represent the South and more importantly, Cassville, to the best of my ability. As I said before, you never know what the muddy water will bring you. I guess I saw the reflection of the city skyline in the water and knew this periwinkle-gathering, bream fishing boy could make it anywhere. Although I will be navigating those asphalt streets in the city that never sleeps, I know the creek bank is just a step away.
The metaphorical explanation comes from life itself, as a Southern boy with a 1940's mentality, living in the modern world. The world is "muddy water," so to speak. It is full of possibilities because you really don't know what is underneath the surface. It could be a nice bream (happiness, good health, wealth, etc.) or it could be the snakes that Neen warned us about (evil, greed, ill will, whatever makes us sad or angry). The rifle is your mind and body, molded by your decisions and upbringing, always loaded and ready for action. Use it wisely because you only have one and when you run out of ammunition, the snakes will come in full force. My Cassville roots taught me so many valuable lessons about the world, not just in our little dusty corner of the universe, but everywhere I go. I still love to play in the muddy creek water, I still get joy pulling a nice, fat bream up on the bank....but I'm always on the lookout for snakes and when they come along, the rifle is there and "hesitation" is not in our vocabulary in Cassville.
So, this past weekend, I was pulling weeds and cleaning up pine tree limbs with Dad. It was 4:00 PM and he remarked, "I'm afraid I've waited too long to plant those begonias, Daddy Kim always said don't plant in any months that don't have an "r" in them." Daddy Kim was my great-grandfather. A loveable, wonderful man who missed only one scheduled day of work in 32 years. The same man who married my great-grandmother at the age of 15. The same man who built their house with his own two hands. I love that old school wisdom. In this generation, where everybody "googles" and "wikipedias" everything from hair care to screwing in a light bulb, it's nice to hear something that was actually passed down by word of mouth. My generation just seems to know very little in the way of practical information. Seriously, there are people from my law school class that can pontificate about the Roe v. Wade decision until you want to sacrifice them like an Aztec virgin, yet if you hand them a ratchet and a new car battery, you would hear crickets for miles. I'm not saying they are stupid, but if I had my choice to know the intricacies of supplemental jurisdiction in federal court or how to replace a radiator in a 1989 Dodge Ram....hand me the toolbox, please. It's hard to convince a federal judge of anything if your car is smoking in the driveway and you don't know how to fix it and get to Court.
There were several more sayings that ran through my head as we pulled weeds. The South is always known for its colloquial nature and Cassville is no exception. I compiled a list of my favorites, mostly gleaned from the store and my family members. This list is brought to you by Husky tools (because I replaced a car battery last week...Take that, civil procedure!), calamine lotion (because I got poison oak pulling weeds), and my Aunt Brenda's creamed corn, the single greatest carb explosion since Rosie O'Donnell got off the Atkins Diet and invaded Baskin Robbins with a soup ladle.
1) "You are better off rubbing sand in a lion's ass as to mess with me..."
This was a Billy special. This essentially meant that if you chose to mess with him, you would likely be physically injured in the near future. You would rather be mauled and eaten by a lion than, for example, hide his Taylor's Pride chewing tobacco from him. You normally would not take somebody seriously like this, but when they are packing heat, the lion's ass looks tempting.
2) "I hope they don't get in that cloud on the way over here..."
No, they don't mean that someone physically gets into a cloud. It means they hope the traveler, who is on their way to Cassville, is not intercepted by the storm that is currently coming out of Gadsden, Alabama and on its way toward us. Many unfortunate travelers have been hindered by roadblocks of the cumulonimbus nature over the years. I remember when it came up a cloud on many occasions at the beach and we would lament, "now we can't play putt-putt!" Mom and Dad would smile, knowing the cloud has averted another dreaded round of putt putt where Matt and I argued over who gets the red ball.
See also...."It's coming up a cloud" or "I bet they got in that cloud." (to explain the previously mentioned traveler's lateness) "I got in that cloud" is also an explanation for tardiness that is universally accepted throughout the South.
3) "He's got one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel..."
Somebody is on the brink of death, or looks like crap because they are a drug abuser. I remember hearing this when one certain man would come to the store and blow his disability check on lottery tickets every week, geeking on meth and scratching furiously. When he finally mowed down his income to about $15.00 (courtesy of Lucky 7's, $2 Jumbo Bucks and Fantasy 5) , he would buy a 12 pack of Natty Light and a pack of Marlboros instead of food. I guess the he ate the banana that he was eventually going to slip on, because he ended up in prison. Priorities and bananas....alive and well in the 30123.
4) "He could #$@# up an anvil with a banana peel...."
Here we go with banana peels again. This statement means that said person can find a way to screw up anything and everything they touch. It often applies to people on mobile phones, in their cellular funk, somehow find a way to block off the entire parking lot of the store with one car because they are not paying attention. Seriously, I had one woman in a Tahoe, yapping on her Nextel (aaaaah! I hated those things!) back out of the store's parking lot and hit a stop sign. The sign shattered her back glass and fell across the street, thereby blocking all south and northboud traffic. The shattered glass covered about 2,000 square feet, of course, so nobody could get to the gas pumps. The county sent about seven deputies and three DOT workers to the scene, she cried uncontrollably as her insurance guy showed up and said they weren't covering it. The DOT guys smoked about 76 cigarettes, the cops had to give about three "following too closely" tickets from rubberneckers rearending each other, while Dad and I just stood there swatting flies....watching the anvil breaking before out eyes.
5) "Our power goes off every time a damn truck backfires in Chattanooga!"
In the 1990's, our power went off every other day. Seriously, Bartow County residents will back me up on this. We had more blinking digital clocks and lukewarm milk than anywhere in the state! I remember the time that my neighbor got drunk and chainsawed an oak tree onto the power lines, car wrecks that seemed to always find a power pole, blown transformers, high wind, train whistle blew too loudly, "Rugged" Ronnie Garvin wins the TV title from Arn Anderson.....almost any event would trigger a power outage. I swear, our power bill was $6.53 one month in 1994. Neen would drive up to the store to get the latest news on the power outage to spread amongst the populace, we would scramble around and store all the ice cream, meat and milk into coolers and wait for the Georgia Power trucks to fly by. One of them would stop and tell us, "well, it come up a damn cloud down in Rockmart and....." See? Universal explanations....they are right above you at all times. I'm sure Johnnie Cochran would have found a way to use it if he were still alive.
These sayings are not copyrighted, so y'all may use them at your leisure. I plan on using them for the rest of my life. I just have one question though, I wonder if people will understand them in New York City? That's right, folks. Yours truly and Laura are moving to the Big Apple in June. This blog will continue and being in NYC will create a plethora of new stories and ideas for blog material. We are beyond excited about this opportunity. I promise to represent the South and more importantly, Cassville, to the best of my ability. As I said before, you never know what the muddy water will bring you. I guess I saw the reflection of the city skyline in the water and knew this periwinkle-gathering, bream fishing boy could make it anywhere. Although I will be navigating those asphalt streets in the city that never sleeps, I know the creek bank is just a step away.