Save Me a Place in Heaven

By Jerry Deriso

His fathers death prompted him to preserve his family memories for his descendents, but the writing quickly grew into a life essay on farm life, Southern cooking, dogs, small-town life in the 1950s, and the demise of our current culture.
The book is written in the authors voice and evokes feelings of Sams, Grizzard, and Rooney. He believes our culture is being slowly destroyed from within by small dogs, cats, bad barbecue, kudzu, fat-free ice cream, cell phones, e-mail, the Internet, childproof lids, hard plastic security packaging, iPods, video players in automobiles, kids not being raised right, rudeness, fast food, moms who dont cook, high school graduates who cant read, long-winded preachers, the disappearance of real Southern cooking, and the popularity of instant grits, Diet Pepsi, and unsweetened tea.
His familys history is a goldmine of great food, quirky characters, outlandish actions, and bodacious behavior; he has mined it shamelessly and offers no apologies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 17, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469119458

Jerry Deriso

Jerry Deriso was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but moved to the South as quick as he could. He was raised in Americus, Georgia, in the 1950s; he graduated from Americus High School, attended Georgia Southwestern College, and is a graduate of Georgia Tech.

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Copyright © 2008 by Jerry Deriso.

Library of Congress Control Number:           2008906205

ISBN:                         Hardcover                       978-1-4363-5664-0

ISBN:                         Softcover                         978-1-4363-5663-3

ISBN:                         Ebook                              978-1-4691-1945-8

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Contents

Save Me A Place

Author’s Note

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Remembering

Prologue

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

PART TWO

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

PART THREE

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

PART FOUR

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

PART FIVE

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Epilogue

For

Bonnie, Tad, and Micah

and

Our beloved Tbone,

Friend, Companion, Protector,

Never far from our thoughts.

He resides forever in our hearts.

We sure miss that dog.

No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit.

—Luke 6:43-44(a)

Save Me A Place

It is a hot midsummer day in 1953, a little after three o’clock in the afternoon, on the edge of the Shady Road woods. I am standing atop a strand of very sharp barbed wire that is strung atop a four-foot high hog-wire fence put there by the owner to keep us out of these very woods. Four of my neighborhood cronies and I have labored long and hard for most of the day, clearing kudzu, limbs, brush, and briars to create a four-foot square clearing located across the entire expanse of the woods. We have also managed to tie a fifty-foot piece of rope to a limb high up in a large pine tree in the middle of the woods.

I am holding the loose end of that rope. For years our gang has watched Tarzan on Saturday afternoons at the picture show travel effortlessly through the jungle by swinging from muscadine vine to muscadine vine. We have decided that if Tarzan can do it, then we can do it too, although not on quite as grand a scale. There are no lions or tigers waiting to tear us to shreds if we fall, but the possibility of getting bit by a disgruntled copperhead or butted by one of the billy goats that hang out in the woods is real enough.

I have been picked to make the inaugural swing through the woods, hopefully landing just past the blackberry thicket that is located close to the clearing where the swing should end. (I’m not sure if my selection to make this epic flight is a function of my courage or my total lack of common sense.) Tarzan swings through the jungle half-nekkid, wearing nothing but a lion-skin bathing suit with a flap in the front and back; I am not that brave, although I may very well be that stupid. I am attired in black high-top Keds tennis shoes, Levi’s blue jeans with the copper-riveted pockets and reinforced knees, one of my father’s long sleeve khaki shirts, and a nylon-billed cap with tie-down fleece-lined ear flaps. I am taking no chances on this day, no matter how hot it is.

I anticipate the feeling of the wind rushing past my face as I swing all the way across the woods, going sixty miles an hour, letting go of the rope at just the right time, and coming to a spectacular two-point landing just on the other side of the blackberry thicket, demonstrating my total disdain for danger or injury. I can already hear the cheers and acclamations for my bravery and derring-do ringing in my ears. My fame and reputation for feckless and dangerous behavior will become a thing of legend, talked about around campfires for years.

Just before I launch myself into space, I look at my best friend, wink, and say, Look out, Tarzan, here I come.

He replies laconically, Yeah, right. Just make sure you save me a place in heaven.

I am stunned to hear him say such a thing. It means that he thinks I am about to do something that is so stupid that it could only be described by using that rare phrase. He may have wished me well, but he also was sure that I would not live through the experience and the next time he saw me would be in heaven. In other words, my best friend really thinks I am stupid. It occurs to me he is more than likely right.

I now find myself caught on the horns of a giant dilemma. I can’t very well back down at this point, although my confidence had gone from tempered steel to lukewarm Jell-O. Well, hell, I think. I ain’t gonna chicken out now. I let out a loud rebel yell, bend my knees, and spring into the air, hoping to come back down on the strand of barbed wire on my feet and use it as a catapult to throw me high into the air and on my way, sort of like using a trampoline. Oh, I come back down on the barbed wire all right; the only problem is my left foot slips and I land astride the barbed wire, making a direct hit on one of the razor-sharp barbs with a very sensitive part of my anatomy. This is definitely not in the plan. I black out for a couple of seconds and when I come to, I am still straddling the fence and holding on to the top strand of barbed wire with both hands, much like the posture for riding on the back of a very skinny mule. I think for an instant that I have indeed been killed, and since there is no pain and suffering in heaven, and I am damned sure feeling a lot of pain and suffering, I must have ended up in hell. I sadly think that I will never see my best friend again, especially not in heaven; I wonder if he will be sad or disappointed. I also wonder if anybody will come to my funeral.

I somehow manage to keep from screaming or crying and make just a small whoof sound. I gradually lean to one side and slide off the barbed wire, with my knees never coming apart. The gang silently helps me to my feet, exhibiting great reverence for the sacrifice I had just made, although it is apparent that they are all right on the verge of breaking into huge guffaws of laughter. I manage to hobble home with their help, deciding along the way that Tarzan can kiss my foot. I eventually healed and, screwing up my courage, returned to the scene of the crime to swing across those woods, which I did with great style and a complete disregard for danger. You can also bet your ass that I never again tried to use that sorry, no-good, privates-gouging barbed-wire fence as a launching pad for my Tarzan-like swing.

There was a time later when the same best friend gave me the same dire prediction when I informed him I was going to break up with my current girlfriend (who was, unfortunately, very hot-tempered) a week before Christmas so I wouldn’t have to buy her a present. He looked at me like I had taken leave of all of my senses and said, You dumb-ass. Well, good luck with that, but remember to save me a place in heaven when you get there, because she is fixing to kill your sorry butt. I didn’t think all that profanity was necessary, but he actually had no idea how close he was to prophesying what actually came to pass.

I managed to survive her deluge of tears, hysterical screaming and foot stamping, threats of violence, and R-rated cussing. Actually, I thought she took the news quite well, though I could see no good reason for her to throw what was to have been my Christmas present, a beautiful wool sweater, out into her backyard, where her father’s German shepherd immediately ripped it to shreds. I didn’t even get to keep the box it was wrapped in. Also, the act of her throwing an unopened bottle of cold Coca-Cola at me, barely missing my head, bordered on being right tacky. Ah, the price youth pays for its selfish parsimony. I decided right then and there that the next time I decided to do something so churlish, I would substitute good sense for chivalry and just send the girl a note rather than telling her in person, avoiding the risk of losing life, limb, and the pursuit of happiness.

Author’s Note

I did not set out to write a historically correct adventure novel, complete with a seamless plot, wonderfully drawn characters, a climactic, surprising finish, and a lot of useless dates to remember. Nor was it my intent to present a flawlessly accurate representation of Americus and Sumter County, Georgia, set in the decade of the 1950s. This book was also not designed to be a collection of nostalgic trivia from that decade. Much to my surprise, however, this book turned out to be a combination of these things, and a lot more.

The original driving force behind this missive was the desire to record, for the edification and benefit of my two male offsprings, a clear explanation of just who their daddy is and what makes the extended family they are part of so unique and singular. The recollections I have of my formative years are fairly accurate and reflect the life and times of the 1950s in the rural Deep South.

I developed most of the outline for this book on cocktail napkins (cheerfully supplied by Michelle Kelley and Tabitha, LongHorn’s very best) at a LongHorn Steakhouse in our area. Once I put ballpoint pen to cocktail napkin, my memory went to work. I could not only remember what I had ordered for lunch but also began to recall long-forgotten details of old family anecdotal heirlooms; memories provoked more memories, enabling me to sew the patchwork quilt of my childhood, school years, and family history slowly but surely into a recognizable form. Recollections of humorous family chestnuts caused occasional stifled outbursts of laughter from me (especially the one about Kingfish the dog going nuts), bringing strange looks from my better half, as well as the people seated nearby. The real-life characters described in this book go way beyond any characters I could make up or lie about. My family’s history is a gold mine of great food, quirky characters, outlandish actions, and bodacious behavior. I have mined it shamelessly and offer no apologies.

Marietta, Georgia, 2008

Credit Where Credit Is Due

One of the difficulties that arise when you try to thank a large number of people who have aided and abetted you in some personal endeavor is that you will invariably omit someone, or unintentionally downplay someone’s contribution. So, I apologize in advance to anyone who feels that he or she should have been counted in this section but was not. I ain’t perfect and surely meant no harm.

First, thanks to Michelle and Tabitha, the best servers in the entire LongHorn Steakhouse chain.

Thanks also go to Ed Feldman, a fellow bibliophile and a man who taught me what public speaking is all about.

Anne Fisher was a tremendous help in sorting out the garbled mess of a book I started with, getting things on the right track, and offering her unconditional encouragement to go forward.

I thank my father and all five uncles for those wonderful family stories and legends, true or not. My uncle Eugene Talmadge Deriso provided much of the background for the stories about life down on the farm; he also provided several sections of the chapter The Stuff of Legends.

Thanks also to my South Georgia cousin Charles Deriso for being able to remember so much of the technical information that was important in setting the stage for some of the stories. Actually, one of the best Deriso stories ever is about an adventure Charles and I experienced on a double date coming home late one Saturday night from Gargano’s restaurant in Albany. He asked me to leave that particular tale out of the book, so I did as he asked, proving my sensitivity and wonderful humanity. I don’t know why the story bothered him so much; after all, it was my date who never spoke to me again, whereas he ended up marrying his date. Unfortunately, God called Charlie home early in 2006. We all miss him.

My Colorado cousin Kenny Crockett provided much of the information about Grandpa Jones’s young life in North Carolina and Colorado.

My special thanks go to one of my Colorado aunts, Dora Jones Berry, Auntie D. She has been more like a big sister to me than an aunt. She has a wonderful sense of humor and the patience of Job. She used to let my brother and me get away with a lot of things we should have been punished for when she looked after us during the 1950s summers in Americus. My aunt Ruby also supplied some valuable books that helped me understand the state of Wyoming, where I was born.

My sister Margie Deriso Everett provided wonderful ideas about the general format and content of this book. She is, in her own right, an excellent wordsmith and creative writer. Her help and encouragement were indispensable. Thanks, sis. My brother, Tom Deriso, helped keep me in check when the storytelling got a little far-fetched and out of the box. He also let me use him as the fall guy in many of the stories. Thanks, bro.

I have a special place in my heart for the teachers I had while attending grades 1-12 in the Americus public school system. They were a big part of the high quality of my primary education. I thank all of these teachers and especially thank a couple of my very dear high school teachers, Rebecca McNeill (Miz Toughboots) and Gladys Crabb, who after forty-five years, finally gave me an A+ on something I wrote. It was worth the wait, Mrs. Crabb.

Dessert is served at the end of the meal because the sweetest part is always saved for last. I thank my wonderful wife and helpmate for the last 38+ years, Bonnie Linda Pratt Deriso. She, without flinching, agreed to accompany me on a 3,200-mile lark, driving from our home in Marietta to Fort Collins and back on a memorial trip to honor my father’s memory during the formative stages of what eventually morphed into this book. She drove when I couldn’t, she maintained a positive attitude when I wouldn’t, and she never fussed when I did things I shouldn’t.

She has read every word in this book dozens of times, never offering anything other than an encouraging note, although she has occasionally said to me, This part here is interesting. That’s like being told the barbecue you just spent two days and one night cooking is too salty. When she said those words, I went ahead and revised the offending passage without whining or getting angry (if I agreed with her). She has also shivered my timbers a number of times with excellent suggestions for improving the ebb and flow of words and thoughts. She also insisted I remove or modify stories that she knew were blatant lies or that had too many cusswords. For the most part, I complied with her wishes, although I slyly snuck back in one or two of those stories. I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, have been able to begin or finish this book without her help and encouragement. She is truly one of a kind. Thanks, angel.

Remembering

This is in remembrance of my beautiful niece Virginia Rose Ann Everett. She was taken from us in October of 2004 and is now the prettiest rose in God’s heavenly garden.

Ro-Ro, we sure do miss you, sweetie.

In honor of my parents

Grover Cleveland Deriso, Jr.

and

Rosella Dorothy Jones Deriso

To the descendants of Grover Cleveland Deriso, Sr.,

and Lula Belle Jones Deriso

and

To the descendants of Arthur William Jones and

Flossie Lula Magnolia Rice Jones.

May you live long and prosper.

Prologue

It is July 2, 2002, a little after twelve o’clock noon. A blazing sun hangs in the brilliant blue South Georgia sky. The air feels like a hot wet blanket; the temperature and the relative humidity are both in the high nineties. We are on the wrong side (south) of the Gnat Line and gnats are everywhere. This day, the gnats attack as if they are on a suicide mission, with no regard for their own life, but with the singular purpose of making every person in the immediate area absolutely miserable. They are succeeding. Some blow at the gnats, some try to fan them away with their funeral-home fans or with their hands or handkerchiefs. None of this helps. Many finally give up and decide to bear with dignity and grace whatever the gnats can dish out. These are the real old-time Southerners in the crowd.

The sharp cracking sounds from the firing of M16s by the Fort Benning Fourth Ranger Battalion Honor Guard detail echo in the oppressive South Georgia air. The clear, plaintive notes from a single bugler playing the heart-wrenching melody of Taps come from behind a stand of pecan trees in this small South Georgia cemetery. I will not be able to listen to Taps with a dry eye after today.

Several of us stand rigidly at attention and offer hand salutes to honor the man in the casket draped with an American flag. Other family members stare straight ahead, numbed from grief and incapable of any movement. We are burying my father.

A brilliant-red cardinal sits in the oak tree close to my dad’s gravesite and sings so loudly we can hardly hear the words of the preacher. (You know that’s a loud-assed bird when it can drown out a Baptist preacher.) The bird keeps up its raucous praising, welcoming, and farewell chirping until the service is over, and then it flies away as if its assignment is complete.

It is very difficult for me to accept the fact that my father is gone from our family’s earthly presence forever. I know I will see him again in a different place and in a different time, but that knowledge does little to temper the deep grief I feel. I also know he is in heaven, where there is no sadness, sickness, or suffering, and plenty of catfish. We will all miss him terribly.

I can’t help but remember the burials of his parents, Mr. Cleve and Miz Lula Belle, in this same cemetery; and not so long ago, the burial of two of my uncles and one of my aunts. Little did I know my dad’s funeral was to be the beginning of a long string of family funerals, some here and some in other places, but all heartbreaking.

While Taps is playing, with sweat mingled with the tears running down my face, I decide to honor the memory of my father by writing about the huge shadow he cast, and how that shadow affected my coming-of-age in a small South Georgia town in the 1950s and throughout my life. As I stand there with half a billion gnats trying to fly up my nose, I decide that any writings about my coming-of-age south of the Gnat Line must include not only a description of my own evolution, but also a description of the people, times, and events that shaped my life: childhood and beyond. I made myself a promise that the lore and legends of the Cleve Deriso family would not perish with the passing of my father’s generation, but would be given new life and would be preserved through the writing of this book. And so, I set about that task.

I come from a large family of storytellers. My father and his five brothers were absolute masters at using their South Georgia dialect to describe events and happenings in a most entertaining manner. Many were the times when, after a huge meal, be it a fish fry or family reunion, my brother and several cousins and I would gather close to the dining room table where my father and several uncles would sit and lapse into their storytelling zone. As the yarn-spinning progressed, the tales would become funnier, more outrageous and highly improbable, and would eventually move into the realm of blatant bullstuff; God, what great entertainment that was.

In more recent years, my own sons and other young nieces, nephews, and cousins have sat absolutely still and quietly for hours, listening to me and my kinfolks from my generation continue the storytelling tradition, scared to be the kid who broke the magic spell of the storytelling by moving or making any noise. These family offspring still talk about those sessions of mixed metaphors and extreme hyperbole, and how they felt they were privileged to have been exposed to such valuable family lore. (Does lore have to be 100 percent accurate to be called lore?)

Naturally, this treatise is filled with many of those precious family stories and anecdotes, which, for the most part, are true. Well, at least each tale contains a modicum of truth, cobbled together with a draught of imagination and a bit of humor. And that’s the gospel truth, if it has ever been told. What good is a story if it doesn’t make the reader laugh, or at least grin, and once in a while evoke a sniffle or two? If the reader doesn’t laugh out loud at least once while reading this book, then I have failed, or more likely, the reader has absolutely no sense of humor. Above all, I hope these stories, woven together with the threads of time and family, are entertaining for those who read this effort.

PART ONE

DEEP ROOTS

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.

—George Santayana, The Life of Reason

Chapter 1

WHERE THE DEER AND THE BUFFALO ROAM

My two siblings and I are very fortunate to come from good stock, once you get past the French part. Our lineage is rooted in the flat, dusty red clay farming country of South Georgia, the windswept high plains grasslands of Colorado and Wyoming, and the foggy mountains and hollers of North Carolina. My brother and I were born in Cheyenne, and our sister was born in Americus, a small South Georgia town located south of the Gnat Line, where we all came of age.

FOGGY MOUNTAIN BREAKDOWN

My maternal grandfather and grandmother both had their roots in the Weaverville, North Carolina area. My mother was one of thirteen brothers and sisters. Theirs was not an unusually large family for that time, but today, a family that size would drive the population control and family-planning weasels into hysteria with indignation, and would probably earn an injunction against any further reproductive activities, unless of course the family was from India, Asia, or Mexico; then, it would be just fine.

Family legend has it that my grandmother was slightly hard of hearing in one ear. When they would go to bed at night my grandfather would ask, Well, Nola, do you want to go to sleep or what? She usually answered, What? Voila, cheaper by the dozen.

My maternal grandfather, Arthur William Jones, also one of a dozen children, was born in the family farmhouse in Little Flat Creek, North Carolina. He evidently inherited his large family tendencies from his father. His family was really poor (he got his first pair of real shoes when he was four years old and quit going to school because he had no decent clothes to wear). Desperate to break the chain of poverty, his father moved the family to Colorado to outsource his children to work in the sugar beet fields in 1902. The child-labor-for-hire business was so good that my great-grandfather soon earned enough money to buy a farm for his family.

My grandfather grew up on that farm and spent every waking hour working to help support the family. His first real job was laying track for the railroad for around fifteen cents an hour. He got paid once a month with a Gold Eagle twenty-dollar piece and two silver dollars and turned all his wages over to his father. He had a tremendous work ethic and respect for his father.

He killed his first deer at the age of twenty. His brother-in-law who was with him didn’t kill a deer but stole one someone else had killed and sold it for five dollars and a quart of liquor. Grandpa would kill many more deer, antelope, and elk in his lifetime. He was still hunting for elk in the Rocky Mountains when he was over eighty years old. Even at that age, he thought nothing of riding a horse up into the wilderness area to camp and hunt the elusive elk or stalking the wild antelopes on the Wyoming prairie.

My grandfather, when he was young, had a fairly checkered reputation as a bounder and adventurer, qualities that most parents of young women at that time took great exception to. His reputation was so bad that he was forced to elope with my grandmother, Flossie Lula Magnolia Rice (her family also migrated to Fort Collins from the Asheville area), because his soon-to-be mother-in-law had threatened to shoot him on sight if he came around their house again.

After the wedding, he went to work hauling coal for two dollars and fifty cents a day, finally getting to keep the money he made for himself. He was eventually hired on as a section foreman with the Union Pacific Railroad, where he worked until he retired. After retiring, he built a home in Fort Collins, on about two acres, with a great view from the back pasture of the Colorado foothills and the Horsetooth Mountain range.

FLOSSIE LULA MAGNOLIA

My grandmother had a remarkable green thumb. People came from all over the world to see her flower garden and rock collection. It featured dozens of varieties of gladiolas of every size, specie, and color. Her vegetable garden was no slouch either, with ten-foot tall stalks of corn, copious stands of Aunt Dory pole beans, onions as big as softballs, and tomatoes that weighed over a pound. She had a favorite saying that she used to let my grandfather know he had stepped over her threshold of tolerance for his profanity. When she uttered Shoot and four’s ten, Art, he knew it was time to shut up, go to another room, or step outside and have a Camel. She died of circulatory problems in 1977.

JUST THE FACTS MA’AM

My grandmother’s family had an older, wizened relative known as Sis. She was very small, skinny, and all wrinkled up. Her face was beet-red from the sunburn she got working in the beet fields and at other outdoor jobs all of her life. She had to run around in the rain to get wet, but she could outwork and out-cuss any woman and most men. She had three kids out of wedlock, but she wasn’t a particularly bad or immoral woman; she just didn’t give a rat’s posterior about what people thought about her or her behavior. She enjoyed hanging out at one of the downtown pool halls, hustling beer and cigarette money from the younger, cocky male pool shooters by beating them at games of nine-ball.

When Sis was ninety-two years old, she was in the pool hall late one evening doing what she did best, beating naïve and unsuspecting males at pool. At one o’clock in the morning, she sidled up to the bar after winning twenty dollars from a completely obnoxious thirty-five-year-old dipstick from Nebraska who had the personality of Beavis and Butt-head. She lit a Lucky Strike, leaned over the bar, and shouted at the bartender to bring her a shot of Old Crow bourbon with a beer-chaser back. The dipstick from Nebraska, already discombobulated by having been hustled at pool by this ninety-two-year-old red-faced, dried-up looking woman with snow-white hair, tried to salvage his pride by getting in the last word.

He shouted to the bartender, Whiskey, hell. Bring this gnarled-up, pool-hustling old crone some warm milk before she dries up and blows away.

Most of the regulars hanging at the bar could have warned this smart aleck not to fool with Sis, but he had been acting like a horse’s butt all night, so they decided he deserved to experience what was to come next.

Sis jumped down off the bar stool, grabbed a pool cue from an unsuspecting shooter and, holding the pool cue like a baseball bat, began advancing toward the fool from Nebraska, leaving no doubt by the invectives flowing from her mouth what she intended to do with the pool cue. Most of her imprecations had something to do with taking batting practice on certain sensitive parts of his anatomy. There was very little doubt what she meant.

When the police arrived to restore the disturbed peace, she had the smart aleck from Nebraska cowering in a back corner of the pool hall and was about to visit considerable pain and suffering on him with her pool cue. The police officer let the man escape with his hide intact. That slacker from Nebraska was never seen in that pool hall, or for that matter, in Fort Collins, again. Sis got off with a stern warning from the police officer and a round of applause, accompanied by several rounds of free drinks from her admirers at the bar.

Sis accompanied my aunt, my brother, and me on a train trip from Americus to Colorado one summer. She brought along a half-gallon glass jar filled with strips of dried beef. She chewed on those awful-smelling beef strips nonstop for the three days it took the train to reach Colorado. The smell alone was enough to knock a buzzard off a meat wagon, although she seemed impervious to it. Those mephitic beef strips had such a negative effect on me I developed a deep, lifelong repugnance for corned beef, pastrami, and Slim Jim beef jerky.

DOWN FOR THE TEN COUNT

Sis was not the only family member who had an occasional brush with the local county Mounties. My grandfather took no guff from man, woman, nor child, and this hard-assed attitude got him in hot water occasionally. One of his most memorable confrontations occurred when he was eighty-eight years old.

He was having a problem with his neighbor’s dog digging in his garden and chasing his livestock in the back pasture. Grandpa asked the much younger neighbor to please keep his dog at home, but to no avail. He made several more entreaties, but he was ignored by the neighbor, and the dog continued to be a nuisance. Grandpa finally told the neighbor he would shoot the dog if it came into his pasture again. Well, the dog did and Grandpa did.

The irate neighbor came over and began berating Grandpa Jones for shooting his dog. Grandpa Jones reminded him that he had been warned several times, and if he wasn’t man enough to control a dog, then he wasn’t really fit to be called a man. The neighbor became more incensed and finally called Grandpa a senile old goat who should have his ass kicked. That was a bad mistake on the neighbor’s part. He shouldn’t have called my grandfather old. Grandpa’s hands were the size of HoneyBaked hams, and when he made a fist it was the size of a volleyball. With one lick, Grandpa knocked the man unconscious under his old faded-red pickup truck. When the neighbor came to, he crawled from under the truck, called the sheriff, and demanded the old man be locked up for assault and battery.

A deputy came out and got both sides of the story. The neighbor stayed in the officer’s face, pressing his demand that Grandpa be arrested. The exasperated deputy told the neighbor if he didn’t shut up he would turn Grandpa loose on him again. The neighbor went ballistic at this news.

The deputy finally reached his threshold of suffering fools gladly and turned to him and said, "I’ll tell you what I will do. I will arrest this old man, take him to jail, book him, and file a report. Then, I will call a TV news reporter I fish with and tell him the entire story. I suppose you wouldn’t mind seeing the television story about how this old man who is fifty-three years your senior kicked your younger butt with just one punch. Just think, you might end up on Sixty Minutes. It’s your decision."

The neighbor decided to retire from the field of battle, Grandpa avoided incarceration, and that particular dog never came back into his pasture. The deputy told Grandpa to keep his rifle in his pants from now on and quit reducing the pet population. Grandpa told the deputy that the dogs and cats that would enjoy the longest lives in the immediate area were those that kept their asses out of his yard and off his property. The deputy had no reply for that.

THE WINGS OF MAN

After my grandmother died, Grandpa started spending a large part of each winter in South Georgia with my parents. The South Georgia winters were much milder than the Colorado winters. I talked him into flying from Denver to Atlanta with me the first time he spent the winter in the South. He had never flown, and he was very apprehensive about the whole air travel process. He considered flying to be an unnatural, unsafe act. I flew out to Fort Collins to pick him up and accompany him back to Atlanta on his first flight. The night before we were to leave, he told me he had changed his mind and that there was no force on earth that could get him on an airplane.

There was no way I was going to return to Georgia without him in tow. I for sure was not going to take a train or rent a car and drive back. I hated to play the good-looking-women-and-free-liquor card but I was desperate. I told him, Grandpa, we’re flying first class, and those fine, good-looking Eastern Airlines stewardesses will serve you all the Jack Daniels and anything else you want, free. We took off from Denver at 9:30 the next morning.

He was white-knuckled for the first few minutes, but when we got above the weather and hit our cruising altitude, he calmed right down. He put a serious dent in Eastern Airlines’ Tennessee sour mash whiskey inventory on that flight to Atlanta. The stewardesses, who were definitely fine and good-looking, loved him and carried on and flirted with him the entire flight. I, on the other hand, received no such special attention. As we taxied to our gate in Atlanta, he told me how he believed he just might be able to fly back to Denver when it was time. I thought he sure got over his fear of flying mighty quick.

THE HITCHHIKER

I once drove him up to the Asheville area for a visit with his siblings. We were about halfway there when we passed a young good-looking woman, probably a University of Georgia coed, who was wearing cutoff short shorts, showing off long gorgeous tanned legs that went all the way up to her armpits, standing on the side of the road, hitchhiking. He insisted I go back and offer the fetching lass a ride before some dirty old man came by and made her get in his car. I was sure tempted because I thought we would be saving that young woman and her spectacular legs from a lot of trouble, but what little common sense I had kicked in, and I told him I didn’t think that would be a good idea and continued driving toward Asheville. He sulled up for a while, and then grumbled and complained the rest of the entire trip because I didn’t go back for that girl. He was almost ninety years old, but there was nothing wrong with his libido. I still wonder if I made a mistake by not stopping.

THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT

Grandpa Jones died when he was ninety-five years old. I am not an ordained minister but the family asked me to come to Fort Collins to conduct his funeral, and I couldn’t very well refuse. I was an ordained Southern Baptist deacon and a pretty good Sunday school teacher and that was good enough for them. The funeral was held in the funeral home’s chapel. As I stood up and started to orate about Grandpa’s life and times, the Holy Spirit took over and provided the correct words for me to say. I got into the swing of things and I really let it roll, delivering, with no small amount of panache and fervor, a genuine Southern Baptist funeral sermon, starting with God’s grace, mentioning the mansions awaiting us all in heaven, and ending with how to escape the eternal sea of fire and brimstone, just in case there were any unsaved sinners or Episcopalians in the crowd.

My foxy, good-looking cousin Juanita