By Mike Graves
Publisher
Back in the good old days, before the author of this column got to be so dang serious and smart, we used to enjoy corny stuff about gardening and how and when to prepare a good steak. The author would go on about how he loved speckled beans and cornbread – maybe throw some whippoorwill peas in with home made chow chow.
Yeah, fried green tomatoes in the fall at deer camp – subjects we enjoyed, bringing us reprieve from the world.
But, alas, Jim Carlton told the writer he was smart, and maybe he should write about more serious subjects such as politics and religion – maybe include a scripture toward the end to show how pious he is.
The mentioned “writer” should have paid more attention to the derivative laughter in the lobby of the tire store, but, no. He was too enamored with the thought that maybe he should get serious and quit harping on Ms. Ware’s turnip greens.
Yes, he should have suspected something when Roy Conrad’s roofing crew howled as he drove by.
Despite all the warnings, the puffed up igmo went to preachin’ in his column, and as human nature would have it, “took to meddlin’,” as Chester Woodruff used to say.
The problem was, the town without pity knew too much about the so-called writer’s past and how, underneath it all, he was a poster child for the phrases “ne’er do well” and “illusions of grandeur.”
As fate would have it, one night at a basketball tournament, the town crier, Larry White, wrestled the microphone away from Coach Frank Puryear and told the standing room only crowd he was starting a petition “to run the Barnyard writer out of town.”
Stern Assistant Principal Terry Young and bossy rancher Fay Stone then led the crowd in the chant, “Sissy in the band, he’s a sissy in the band!”
‘Wake-up honey, you’re having a nightmare,” said the devoted wife of the writer.
Whew, this calls for some of Larry Smith’s world famous sweet tea and a medium rib-eye!
Thanks for reading, may the good lord bless and keep ye.
“No, it isn’t very pretty, what a town without pity can do.”
-Gene Pitney
