Desperado Days ...

A hideout, now there was a childhood treasure. They usually weren’t too far down in the woods, just far enough for a juvenile outlaw gang to gather out of sight from overly-inquisitive adults. They didn’t require a lot of preparation, at least ours didn’t. A few downed Sweetgum saplings and a space free of weeds and stickers. Over time, an industrious outlaw gang could pilfer some crude furniture and storage bins for the necessities of a life of adventure. The hideout was our little “postage stamp of native soil,” as William Faulkner would have phrased it.

Necessities were few. First, we needed a good supply of Genuine Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco. Too bad for us, my daddy possessed a suspicious nature. I was certain that he was keeping a careful count of all smoking material in his store. We didn’t dare risk it, filching a bag from him, that is. I did dare relieve him of some penny matches, though. There was nothing suspicious about that. A good hideout needed a good fire at times.

It needed smoking material too, and we needed to solve that problem. Robbing banks and trains required thought and thought required smokes. That’s all there was to it. Lucky for us, Boogie Shannon’s daddy came home drunk once too often. Everyone knows that drunk men tend to lose things. Boogie’s daddy, for example, lost a brand-new bag of Bull Durham. As we understood later, he had to go for a whole week without a smoke. They say that he cut down on his drinking after that, so some good came out of his bad luck.

We were set to be the baddest outlaw gang in or around Pine Bluff, Arkansas now. I guess we were the only one, and we really weren’t that bad. We mostly just worked on our hideout and sat around. Oh, we talked about how much fun it would be to rustle cattle, but none of us even owned a horse. We mostly just smoked and talked.

Then something happened that foretold an end to our outlaw days. It started when Mrs. Harkins had a baby. Of course none of us had a clue it was coming. Who could foretell something like that? Were we in for a surprise or two. Boogie said his mamma had mentioned it to him before it happened but he paid little attention. How had she known?

Some older boys let us in on it, to our everlasting confoundment. It was Jim Fletcher and Sonny Boy Nathaniel who enlightened us. They were two “colored boys” who joined our gang when they weren’t sent off chopping or picking cotton. They were a year or so older in age and maybe a decade older in maturity. When the discussion turned to babies one sultry summer afternoon, they proceeded to tell us the most disgusting things.

We listened in utter amazement. Our response was, “Ya’ll may do things like that but we sure don’t.”

They assured us that white folks did it too.

Boogie Shannon just shook his head back and forth.

The Hester twins, Robert and Bobby Joe looked at one another and almost started crying.

The rest of us just gaped in wonderment. Sure, the news made us nauseated, but there was some other sensation trying to work its way loose, one we had never felt before. It would ultimately lead us far away from our outlaw ways.

They’ve never developed that patch of woods where our hideout lay, where so much innocent thought took place. I sometimes wonder if some vestige of it might remain.

How we viewed ourselves.

Growing Up Southern: March 9. 2018

It was going to be a good day for Jim Fletcher and me. We were going to be real cowboys at last. I would be Gene Larue. He hadn’t decided on a name yet. But we were ready.

We had a hideout in a forested area a mile or so from where we lived, the perfect spot. It was a cedar tree that had grown so large that its drooping limbs formed a tent-like structure that was protected from all but the strongest rain. Over time, we had hacked out a small opening, undetectable by a stranger. It was our little “Hole In The Wall.”

From nearby dumping spot, we had collect odds and ends for crude furniture and storage containers for secret hordes, like a “naughty” magazine that I had found under an entry-porch at school and sneaked home. We weren’t sure if cowboys looked at such things, but we were certain of other habits.

They smoked “roll your owns,” so we had save our pennies and Jim at purchased a sack of Bull Durham at my daddy’s store, “for an uncle.”

Now we had the ultimate possession to make us real cowboys, a bottle with enough “Old Yellowstone” for two strong shots like the cowboys always enjoyed after coming to town. We had found a bottle in the dump with a smidgeon of the yellow liquid in it. Then I had gently pilfered small amounts from the stash my daddy stored in his barn. He kept a bottle there to ease his mind when he closed the store and fed his cows. My mother allowed it unless he got too jolly during his little “happy hour.”

The amount in our bottle had grown slowly over the months, but on this soft early-spring day, it was time to be real cowboys at last. The bottle with its inch and a half or so of inviting liquid was stored in a place of honor in our hideout, along with the Bull Durham, papers, and a rusted BB gun capable of dropping an “Indian” at a hundred yards.

We had explored along Bayou Bartholomew all morning, looking for “Aarheads” and, having found some nice specimens, carried them back to our spot on our stick horses named “Paint” and “Ranger.” We would use the artifacts to make real arrows later.

Jim had still not decided on a cowboy name. Try as we could, we couldn’t think of a single “colored cowboy” in all of movie history. He had about decided on “Whoozit” when we arrive home from the range on that fateful day.

We tied our horses outside and it was time for good shot of whiskey. We had some Garrett Snuff bottles for shot glasses and Jim watched as I carefully poured equal halves into two of them. We toasted our comrades, whom we had not included in this adventure because of the limited amount of product, and downed our drinks just like we had seen the cowboys do hundreds of times, or so we thought.

Oh, my god!

It was like someone had pointed blowtorches into our mouths and down our throats. We went into coughing spasms that seemed to shake the roots of our mighty cedar. Neither could speak.

When we could catch our breath, we both charged through the opening and out into what we thought might be a reviving atmosphere. Gagging gave way to a retching that gave way to a gasping that gave way to tears that gave way to eyes wide as the bottom of coke bottles.

Jim gained speech first. “That must not be the same kind they drink,” he said in a still raspy voice.

“Can’t be,” I said. “They enjoy it when they do it.”

“I ain’t takin’ no chances anyway,” he said.

“Me neither.”

He took a breath and made one of those decisions that can alter history. “I ain’t gonna be no goddam cowboy.”

“Me neither.” I took several deep breaths. “What you gonna be?”

“Maybe a baseball player.”

“A baseball player?”

“Yeah, they got colored baseball players now.”

That sounded reasonable. Jim had a revelation and said, “I got a cousin who’ll trade us a baseball for that magazine we got.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We can play in Daddy’s pasture. What else we gonna need?”

“Just some chewin’ tobacco, I reckon.”

“We can swap our smoking tobacco for some chewing tobacco,” I said. “It’s gotta taste better than whiskey.”

“Sure,” Jim said. “We’ll just be baseball players.”

The nice thing about stories about kids growing up in the South is that, no manner how good the story is, there’s always another one for another day.

Mammas, don't let your babies
grow up to be cowboys. Trust us.

Reconciliation: 21

“School’s out,” I thought. “Three months of cowboy hideouts, baseball, and fighting pirates along Bayou Bartholomew.” It is the longest one in the world and passed within a half-mile of our little rural world. It was a magic world of fishes, snakes, turtles, abandoned treasures, and assorted dangers—paradise for a group of boys with no responsibilities for three whole months.

Then my mother told me I had to accompany my sister to Vacation Bible School.

Aaargh!

After fruitless arguments, I loaded into the family car as my pals all filed down a little dirt road called “King’s Road” after its lone inhabitant, an elderly black man with a sour disposition and a bad dog. Once safely past that, though, we followed it to a vast forest where we had once discovered a whiskey still. They were headed for our favorite hideout with a partial bag of Bull Durham tobacco, a book of papers, and some matches that Bobby Joe Hester had filched from his mother. In short, the promise of a fine day.

They were headed to have fun in the glorious splendifery of youthful boyhood. I was headed for the worst ten years of my life: two weeks locked in an unheated church suffering the indignity of having the chance of a righteous life pounded into my head, one so hard that it has been a wonderment of efficacy for eons.

It was a cousin’s Baptist church, moreover, so no one, save the cousin, knew us. The Tyrant, our name for the one who signed us up, got my sister’s name down correctly. Though we made it abundantly clear that we were brother and sister, she insisted upon listing me as “Jimmie Valentine.”  I am positive she effected the mistake on purpose, based on the several times she called my mother to report my lack of cooperation with “the salvation thing.” Not many years ago, while sorting through a box of family memorabilia, I came across a document verifying that Jimmie Valentine had, indeed, fulfilled his complete sentence, and had been let out on parole from the nightmare known as Vacation Bible Shool. I burned it with great ceremony.

The days consisted of things like drawing pictures of places where the Dark One would find you and claim your soul, i.e. hotbeds of ruination. We were fairly limited in our experience with sin, so we stuck to the normal ones with which we were constantly indoctrinated: swimming pools, movie theaters, skating rinks, anywhere people danced, and that sure-fire center of iniquity, the Methodist Church. I didn’t include smoke-infested hideouts, a sin of omission for which, on the darkest nights, I still fear retribution.

That all wore out quickly, so we practiced our coloring of saintly figures for a couple of days. The girls loved that part, especially when they got to cut out the finished products with which to decorate the sanctuary so the adults would know that The Tyrant was keeping us righteously occupied.

The boys did not fail to notice that none of their colorings made the, no pun intended, final cut. Some things never change, do they?

Then came blessed news.

The Tyrant was bringing a friend to teach us woodworking. Oh joyous day! That night, I began a list of projects that I wished instruction upon:

- A bunker with gun port for our hideout,

- A sawhorse for my saddle, in case I ever got a horse,

- A cage for keeping captured snakes,

- A go-cart with which to fly down the hill at O.D. Walker’s house,

- A box for housing stolen contraband, and

- A boat for crossing the bayou.

Then we learned the truth. We would spend two days making crosses.

What? Why?

The Tyrant answered, “To donate to the poor people at the “nigra” churches in our city.

Didn’t, we wondered, those people suffer enough indignations without religious fervor causing the piling on of more? Some things never change, do they?

The ordeal finally ended. We endured “Boo Hoo” day during which the church pastor gave us a sermon. That’s when, each year, we learned, the girls all “got saved,” some for the fifth or sixth time, and the boys all made mental plans for resuming a productive life.

I found out, upon release, that the tobacco was gone and the smoking of it had been one of life’s most glorious moments, although Nicky Austin did tell me once that the experience had been less than great, not as awful as our experience with chewing tobacco, but not great.

Perry Don Poteet’s daddy had taken everyone to the zoo in Memphis one day. It was an epic catastrophe that would require a Homer or a Tolstoy to do justice in the telling.

Milton Shilling’s cousin, Sally Mae Durant from Hot Springs, had come for a visit and had snuck off to the hideout one day with Benjamin Shannon, the oldest of our little band. We couldn’t imagine why. Girls didn’t smoke, chew, throw baseballs, or use slingshots worth a darn in those days. They wouldn’t even ride stick horses most times, for they said it wrinkled their skirts. What possible thing could they offer a real cowboy?

Let’s just say I missed a lot and may have missed more than I knew. Some things never change, do they?

Ah, Cowboys and Indians on a summer's day

Fame

            Early morning thoughts with Ludwig Van. (David Oistrakh’s version of the Violin Concerto—the late and beloved Joe McSpadden always said it was one of the finest).

It is my pleasure to know the great-grandson of William (Will, Bill) Pickett, a legendary Texas cowboy and wild-west show performer of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Pickett was a combination of African-American and Native American, son of former slaves. At an early age he had developed greats skills as a cowboy and went on to a career as a performer. His skills at bulldogging (he contributed to the creation of the term) included biting the lower lip of the steer for greater control.

            He died in 1932 from being kicked in the head by a horse. Will Rogers, the famous radio and screen personality announced the death of his friend on his radio show. Pickett’s fascinating life is summed up on the Famous Texans website.

            For several years, his great-grandson, Richard Bell, lived in our condominium building. On a Sunday afternoon entertainment get-together, Richard presented the life of his famous kinsman. It was a most wonderful experience. Richard married not long after that and moved away. We still miss him.

            One never knows what delightful bit of history may be waiting nearby, does one?

 

“It is easier to get an actor to be a cowboy than to get a cowboy to be an actor”. -  John Ford

 

Richard Smith's great-grandfather