Growing Up Southern: July 22, 2017

It was simpler being a kid back when I was one. Your choices were clear. You were a Roy Rogers man or a Gene Autry man. Me, I always chose Roy. Don’t ask me why. They both dressed a little over the top, and had a habit of breaking into song when they should have been beating the living tar out of a bad guy or two. They were our heroes nontheless.

Toys were simpler too. You just found a sweet gum sapling about five or six feet long and a piece of leather for the reins and off you went. A good sturdy stick-horse would carry you through many an adventure and gallop you away from any danger. They weren’t as smart as Trigger or Champion, but then we weren’t either.

Of course, you needed a good hideout in the woods to rest during heroic episodes. They were ideal for hiding such precious loot as partial bags of Bull Durham tobacco, Bugler rolling paper, matches, and pilfered bullets in the off-chance that one of us ever got a twenty-two. Franklin R. Alread, who was the oldest of our gang, snuck a magazine full of pictures of naked women into our hideout once, but we “eeewed” him away with it.

We really didn’t care too much for the smoking either. We talked about it more than we engaged in it. Besides, only the bad guys smoked, as a rule. You never saw Gene or Roy doing it.

I’ll tell you one thing we didn’t like for sure. Robert Hester’s brother, Bobby Joe, found a half-full bottle of whiskey on the side of the road once, and I don’t care how much they seemed to enjoy it in the picture shows, we took one sip and threw that bottle of stuff into Bayou Bartholomew. I imagine it is still there.

Of course, girls weren’t allowed in the hideouts. My sister used to sneak up and try to catch us in some mischief, but we could usually hear her coming. We looked and looked for a snake to throw at her when she tried it again, but the little critters must have heard about our plans and, as they say, “lit out for the territories.”

After a hard day of such cowboy heroics, we would head back to our homes, victors all. We would count the number of women we had saved, the number outlaws we had chased from the county, and the bands of Indian renegades we had defeated. We weren’t altogether sure why we wanted to save the women, but if Gene and Roy did it, that was good enough for us. Besides, tomorrow we were going to be pirates and they didn’t give a hoot in hell about nothing. You never saw one of them singing to no woman.

Life blessed us free and easy, in those days. Had someone told us about the future, I’m sure our spokesperson, Benjamin “Boogey” Shannon would have said something along the lines of, “You mean they make those poor little kids sit around and stare at little black things in their hand all day? Where the hell is the fun in that?”

(Have a memory from growing up in the rural South you’d like to share? Send it to me. I’ll bet we would all like to hear it).

Well … there was this
one girl we might have
let into our hideout. But
she was special.