Thoughts From the Front Porch

I pushed aside my pens and post-it notes last week and made a new space on the table beside my chair, right on top of my fourth grade history book, Know Alabama. That’s where I now have a fascinating a little metal box. Well, I don’t “have it” exactly. It is on loan for a while from a lady who lives in our hometown. (I understand that the word “lady” isn’t exactly de rigueur anymore. It went out of fashion about the same time the burning brassieres went out in the 1970s. But it’s a word that suits this lady perfectly.) The lady (I will call her Mrs. Holmes) has sometimes been urged to remember that she isn’t really “from” our town, having been born in another Alabama county. But she did marry a duly-certified scion of one of our founding families, and she bore him some descendants to carry on his name. And furthermore, she has lived in our town for more than fifty years.

I remember when Mrs. Holmes arrived, an unmarried woman then. Or at least I remember when we elementary school girls were first aware that there was a fresh new Assistant County Home Demonstration Agent in town. It was exciting news. The old one, bless her soul, was a nice woman, probably only forty, but it seemed to us girls that she was old indeed. Unfortunately, there was nothing about the former home agent that hinted in the least of even traces of youthful beauty. Although she was plain, she certainly could cook and do needlework, and she kept faultlessly accurate records of every pinch, dash and smidgen and each knit and purl. And this lady, our new home agent and 4-H Club leader, fresh from college graduation, was pretty and fashionable and young. To us rural fourth-graders, she was just glamorously wonderful.

The little metal box is the drab green color of a World War II Army Jeep. Except for that color, it looks like the sort of box in which an organized, apron-clad, mid-century modern housewife would’ve kept her recipes in alphabetical order. But instead of recipes, this box contains cards with names and dates and amounts of money, from fifty cents up to two or three hundred dollars. Thank goodness Mrs. Holmes takes an interest in local history and values such artifacts as this little metal box. Because if the box had been left in almost any other hands, it’s likely it would have been tossed in the trash a long time ago. Instead it has been carefully kept just as the owner left it.  And now it’s here to help us tell our story and document the donors to the reward fund my grandparents initiated in late May of 1948, for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderers.

Mrs. Holmes preserves all kinds of old and quaint treasures. In fact, when it came up in conversation amongst us ladies a week or two ago, Mrs. Holmes was sure she could go home, dig around in a trunk and find an example of old-fashioned ladies’ underpants with elastic at the waist only, just to show the rest of us what they look like. Don’t imagine them as anything like those skimpy, bare, modern “tap pants.” You might as well compare a flimsy paper regatta boat to the Titanic. There was much more fabric in ladies’ drawers back in the day. And ladies had, as I recall, much more ample figures than is fashionable today.

According to various reports of now grown-up little boys of back then, there was apparently, at one time in our town, a rash of incidents in which dignified old school marms in all sorts of public situations (such as standing at the front of a classroom and lecturing sixth graders on their deportment or bustling around in the kitchen of the Baptist Church Fellowship Hall and slicing pound cake for the Board of Elders) had the elastic in their underpants to suddenly fail. Perhaps their ample waistlines had exhausted all reasonable tensile limits of elastic. Or, could be, the supply of good dependable elastic had been depleted by the war effort. However it came to be, of course, when the elastic snapped, the underpants, in every case, dropped to the floor. And, in each case, the indomitable lady demonstrated an uncanny faculty of grace, in spirit as well as in physical dexterity (especially for women of such generous proportions), as she stooped down, picked up the offending undergarment, and without blushing, tucked it away in some discreet place. (No one could say quite where. That’s the meaning and the spirit of discretion.) The consensus of opinion seems to be that the new-fangled fashion of elastic in the leg openings might have prevented most of these trying experiences. But we townspeople are just very proud that these respectable and formidable ladies were able to acquit themselves with so much dignity and self-possession.

The underpants stories illustrate a phenomenon of memory. Often the details of what we remember may differ from the details of what actually happened. Every single human being will deal with a traumatic event by searching for ways to make sensible patterns out of the chaos. We just naturally want to achieve some level of reason and understanding. We want the pieces to fit. And sometimes our brains will look for piece to put in a place that needs one, whether it’s the right piece or not. As one person discusses the event with other people, their memories merge and some of the mistaken details merge too. And so, we unconsciously allow errata, which tends to order the chaos, to come into our memories from friends that we trust. Then we can rest somewhat easier with what we remember.

The mistaken details will jingle in the pockets of the townsfolk and circulate among them like a handful of bad pennies. As conversations flow and commerce takes place the mistaken details are passed around from person to person in the bank, the grocery store, the hardware, the church, the gas station. Some will ride in pockets to other towns and be left there. From month to month and mouth to mouth and mind to mind amidst all the other similar coins of memory the bad pennies circulate in the town’s collective store of memories.

As it is told and retold and becomes a part of the local folklore, each mistaken detail becomes a part of the story. After a flawed memory has rattled around in a person’s mind for a few days and in a town’s memory for a few decades, that person will have recalled the memory over and over to himself and the town will never have stopped remembering. So the memory, including the mistaken details, will have become cemented into what the town accepts as a part of its incontrovertible history.

There’s something else that affects our memory of events. And that is the pre-conceived notions or opinions that we had before the event occurred. There were few characters in our town that stirred more fear and respect in the hearts of little boys than those stern school teachers with their ramrod straight spines. Now, I have no doubt at all that those underpants fell off of at least one of our schoolteachers. That is the basic memory. The boys who remember those incidents were excellent honest young boys back then and are now most trustworthy men. But their identical memories of the character of such women and their poise in the face of enormous embarrassment might be a bit exaggerated. The way the men remember the incidents was perhaps affected by their expectations of the stern and regal stuff these ladies were made of. The details of the teachers’ dignity and deportment are so much the same. It could be some of that recalled decorum was affected by the respect the boys felt for those teachers before, and even after, their panties fell off.

Kathleen at 36

Kathleen did herself and her reputation no favors by marrying and divorcing young and often in the 1930s. She was headstrong and difficult and her Mama couldn’t do much with her. She was beautiful and talented, and men were charmed and fascinated by her. She was way too attractive for her own good. And she didn’t care what anybody thought. So early on in her life folks had established some unfortunate pre-conceived notions about Kathleen. Maybe some of them were true. She certainly seemed flighty and unreliable.

Often, though, what seems isn’t what is. After years of being married to Doc, Kathleen proved to be a good, industrious homemaker and a loving wife. Her character wasn’t in question anymore—she was trusted enough so that she was in a run-off election for the school board when she died.

But after the murders, when sleazy stories about her behavior that Friday night began to circulate, the town fell back on on their pre-conceived notions. Even though no one could trace the tales back tho their point of origin, few questioned their authenticity. Prejudices held sway. Some folks were willing to believe the worst about Kathleen. They believed that she stood on a poker table and danced with nothing on but a full length mink coat. Later, Mrs. Holmes’ mother-in-law sincerely believed that she remembered Kathleen coming into their drugstore in town on that particular Friday afternoon wearing that full-length fur coat.

Mrs. Holmes in-laws were among the most trustworthy folks in our hometown. They felt so much love and sympathy for our family that they urged my grandparents to accept donations from friends to the reward fund. They donated a large sum themselves and they volunteered to administer the fund, which was no small task. This is their little green box. But even they were human like the rest of us and subject to the vagaries and illusions of human recollection. It is just possible that, good honest woman though the senior Mrs. Holmes was, her impression of another day had become confused and tangled up with her memory of that particular Friday in May. Because the image of Kathleen in a fur coat fit the pattern of the story people were telling.

So the problem becomes how to distinguish and preserve the truth and tease out the mistaken details. And the fact is that we are almost never be going to be able to do that. The key component of a memory is that it is about the past. The original event is gone. It’s over and it comes back only through the tricky fog of our mental processes. But sometimes an opportunity to seek out a truth about the past does arise.

There are two individuals who have lived away from our hometown for most of their lives. They were asked separately to recall, not a hazy subjective opinion on such as a nebulous thing as a character trait, but a single tangible fact. Each of these witnesses had an opportunity to see Kathleen that Friday afternoon in separate circumstances. Both remember her clothing in exactly the same way. And there is a reason each of them has such a vivid memory.

Kathleen loved to do all kinds of needlework. Her hands were almost never idle and, like ‘most everything else she took a notion to try, she did it well. She knitted beautifully. During the winter of 1948, Kathleen had knitted a two-piece dress in a pale aqua color to wear that spring. Most of us can’t imagine finding the energy and time and confidence it would take to knit an entire dress. And most of us women can’t imagine having the figure to wear a hand-knitted dress. Kathleen could knit that well. And she could wear a knitted dress well, too.

The top of the dress closed in the front, jacket-fashion, and so Kathleen was very particular about the kind of buttons she wanted for it. She looked high and low in shops of nearby cities for just the right buttons. And she couldn’t find buttons that suited her pale aqua dress.

Then, it occurred to her that Doc kept some old mother-of-pearl studs that he never used in the big oak dresser in their bedroom. And so Kathleen asked Doc if she might use the old studs on her knitted dress. The studs were, in Doc’s mind, hand-me-downs from his father, old-fashioned, stuffy and Edwardian. Even though they were fourteen-carat gold, he’d never liked them. They reminded him too much of what he felt were his father’s worse traits. But he knew that on Kathleen the mother-of-pearl studs would be beautiful. On her, he would love them. And he was more than happy for her to have them. So she used the studs as buttons on her pale aqua knitted dress. And she wore that dress for the first time, on the last day she lived, Friday, May 7, 1948.

The Right Southern Corner is a series by Sara Rast
Copyright: 2009 Sara Love Rast. All rights reserved.

The Right Southern Corner

One by one, in our hometown, each stifling summer day of 1948 crept along, drew a last breath and expired anonymously sometime after dark, leaving only a pall of general uneasiness. Doors that had never been locked before were fastened tight, double-bolted, and checked more than once before bedtime. Sleep was hard to come by, when wide open windows were a subject of debate between a chance of cooling breezes and a threat of cold death. And nightmares stalked even those who lay awake. When morning came, mothers watched with more diligence, and formerly free-range children struggled and fussed against the strange new limits on their former freedoms. The simple summer sound of screen door slams was rarely heard without a watchful eye from behind some nearby window. Folks were always aware that somewhere out in the world a murderer was free. And he was most likely not a stranger, but a native of the immediate neighborhood. Fall followed summer without much change in the weather nor in the anxious atmosphere. Hot as the days were, the case became colder. And the chances that the killer would be imprisoned died and fell away, just as October leaves fell to dead ground beneath the chinaberry tree. Efforts to serve justice ended finally in a hollow list of dead-end leads and futile, worthless evidence.

Some parents may have found a foolish comfort in the hope that their children were unaware of the murders. Adults may have whispered speculations among themselves about the name of the killer or the likelihood that justice would be done. But children knew as much as parents knew. They talked with each other. On playgrounds and in school rooms, little cliques would mummer childish theories or suspicions, all of which would soon become a part of the informal, non-academic curriculum. The burned-down house was a walk or bike ride away from the center of town. Some children had seen that house before the fire was out. At least one had seen the bodies being carried out on what he thought was a wheelbarrow. Like their parents, little boys and girls told what they’d heard or seen, out of the hearing of those they wanted to protect, and probably in more vivid and gruesome detail. And everyone waited in dread that the killer might kill again.

Six decades ago, Oak Ridge was a tiny town unto itself with a population close to 500 people, a neighbor, nestled up close to our bigger town on its east side. It had its own little post office inside Mr. Dobbins’ store. Mr. Dobbins was the postmaster, as well as the mayor of Oak Ridge. Mr. and Mrs. Dobbins and their little daughter, Julia, were the focus, the target, of this fresh threat.

On a Wednesday, three days before Christmas around noon, ten-year-old Julia found a squarish envelope—one in which anyone might expect to find a Christmas card—under a rocking chair on the porch of Dobbins’ store. On the front of the envelope, in crude, thick-pencilled block lettering, was her daddy’s name, looking something like this:

MR,JoHN.DoBBINS

Julia picked up the envelope and studied it as she walked toward home. Since it seemed to be a holiday greeting from one the neighborhood children, she opened it. Inside she found a many-times-folded sheet of ruled paper, something like the paper she often used at school. When she unfolded it, she could see that it was pre-punched paper made for a four-ring binder, and that, oddly, the words were written on the wrong side, the back side, so that the four evenly spaced holes were on the right.

Those words were in the same strange hand which had written her father’s name on the envelope, letters all in dark thick strokes, as if the writer had been trying too concentrate and bearing down extra hard. There were periods between almost all the words, but sometimes, where there should have been periods, the marks looked like commas. Or, defying all logic, there was nothing at all. The writing wasn’t cursive script, as she’d been taught to use in back in third grade. It was in the block letters used by first graders, but almost all capitals. Only the Os were all small or lower case. And the Gs, every one of them, looked like figure eights. Worst of all, the writer never followed the pale blue baselines that are put there to keep the writing neat. The curious black sentences jerked above and below the guidelines, and sometimes were written right over the them, as if the person who wrote them didn’t see the blue ruled lines. Or he  broke the rules on purpose.

As Julia deciphered the strangely spelled words with their peculiar punctuation, she stopped walking to take their meaning in. It became clear to her, and she felt a rising fear inside her chest. She breathed deeply and gritted her teeth to keep the fear down and the tears back, and said aloud to the letter writer, “NO! NO! No you won’t. I hate you.” Then Julia did something which, later, even she could not explain. It was as if an unseen force took over and caused her to do its will. In seconds the letter was torn into pieces and lay on the ground at Julia’s feet. She grabbed the pieces up and stuffed them inside the envelope and held it tightly in one fist. Then she ran home and up the porch steps, through the front door and into her room. She looked around for a safe place to hide the envelope full of paper shreds. So they’d go away. So she could pretend the letter never existed.

As the afternoon passed, Mrs. Dobbins grew increasingly alarmed about Julia. She’d noticed that something was amiss when her little daughter had come in. She’d had no appetite and she’d kept to her room. That wasn’t like Julia, to go to bed while the Christmas baking was going on. She didn’t seem to have a fever, but Mrs. Dobbins was determined to keep a close watch on her little girl. So many sick people lately and that poor little Thomas boy in the hospital with leukemia. Whooping cough, diphtheria, pneumonia. Car wrecks. Children dying around here all over. Mrs. Dobbins poked her head in and looked at Julia every few minutes. Julia pretended to be asleep when her mother peeked in. All afternoon she tried to imagine it was still morning, when she’d never seen the letter, or still yesterday, and then that there’d been no letter after all. But she could only pretend for so long. Her conscience got the better of her. Or maybe it was a case of pre-mature good judgment. Anyway, as darkness began to fall, Julia broke down and told her Mama about the finding the letter and tearing it up. And shortly after he came home from the store, she told her daddy and offered him the bits of wadded paper from her damp little hand.

Mr. and Mrs. Dobbins sat down with Julia at the kitchen table, and together they matched the  pieces up like a jigsaw puzzle and fastened them back together with some of the cellophane tape they’d been using to wrap Christmas presents. Then they read it.

Mr.JoHN.DoB.BINS.
WEE.ARE.THE.21.FIRE.BUGS.
DoNT.BE.SURRPRISIED To.HERE.FRoM
US. WE.ARE.DEMANDIN8.YoU.To. PAY
US.oNE.THoUSAND.DoLLARS.
FoR.PERTECTION.IF.YoU.Do.NoT. CooPRATE
WITH.US, YoU.WILL.BE.BURNED.oUT
ALL.HAVE.CooPRATED.BUT.oNE. DR.MCNToSH
HE,REFUSED,So.YoU.SEE.WHAT.HAPENED.To.HIM
THE. SAME WILL HAPEN. To YoU EF YoU Do NoT
So BRING, MoNEY, IN, 20 DoLLAR BILLS
WEDESDAY NIGHT.AT.11.oCLoCK. DRIVE
DoWN HIGHWAY,25. IN DRICToN. oF HARPERSVILLE.
WATCH. FoR. WHITE FLAG oN.RIGHT.SIDE.
oF RoAD. THRoW MonEY oUT AT FLAG
AND KEEP DRIYIN8 AND YoU, WILL NoT HERE
FRoM US ANY. MoRE.EF YoU FAIL.To.BAD.
Do. NoT. TRY. ANY. FUNIE.STUFE. YoU.ARE
BEIN8 WATCHED ALL. THE.TIME NoW.
AN.YoU WoULD NoT WANT To.8o UP.IN SMoKE
Do NoT. FAIL
THE 21 FIRE-BUGS.
THERE.IS TWENTY.oNE .oF. US To WATCH
YoU.

Mrs. Dobbins pulled Julia into her lap and said, “Well. I have never seen such spellin’ in all my life.”

Mr. Dobbins took up the telephone receiver and spoke into it. “Nola, connect me with Red Truitt, please, Oak Ridge Police Department.” Julia was paying attention. She knew Mr. Truitt was it. The whole department.

When Red picked up, he listened and said, “I’ll be right there in a minute. Why don’t you call ol’ Chief Cook from over there at Gearin to come too, and we’ll see what he thinks while we’re at it.”

Mrs. Dobbins went back to baking cookies. She wasn’t going to let any of this mess get in the way of what all she had to do before Friday. She gave Julia some flour to sift. Being busy siftin’, she hoped, ought to keep her daughter’s mind off this threat on their lives and property,

Red and the Chief sat down at the table with Mr. Dobbins and took a look at the letter.

Red said, “Well, seems to me whoever left it, either lived close enough to walk over to the store and put it under the rockin’ chair, or had a car and drove. Sounds like a kid to me. Somebody that lives close. He didn’t want to be seen. I believe a grown man would a-mailed it.”

Chief Cook said, “Or it could be he was a clever enough fella to realize that putting the letter in the U.S. mail would take a little local extortion and make a federal case out of it. We’d a-had the FBI all over the place then. And look at that spellin’.”  Mrs. Dobbins stopped rolling cookie dough long enough to turn around and nod and listen. “Whoever wrote it didn’t have any trouble spellin’ “watched” or Harpersville, but couldn’t spell “if” or “We.” And what about “surprised.” A body’d have to try real hard to spell it that way. How do the boys at school misspell “surprised” Julia? They go to all that much trouble?”

Julia didn’t expect to be included in this conversation. But she’d been thinking about the letter all afternoon, and she’d made some observations. She put down the sifter and said, “Well, no. They wouldn’t. They always misspell it S-U-P-R-I-S-E-D. They leave the R out. They don’t ever put extra ones in. Oh. And you now what? And they leave the D out of Wednesday, not the N. And look down near the end. He forgot and spelled ‘if’ with an ‘I’ down there.”

“Well, I’ll be dogged.” Red scratched his head. Mr. and Mrs. Dobbins didn’t look a bit surprised.

Chief Cook looked back down at the letter and said, “Look here at this word “pertection.” That looks like something more sophisticated than a teenager would understand.”

Red replied, “Not if they’ve been to movies lately. Or heard any mob crime programs on the radio. Besides, what this feller’s talking about ain’t ‘pertection.’  Unless some dang Sicilians have come in here and  organized a crime ring just for the purpose of getting Mr. Dobbins’ money. A protection racket is gonna have a lot more targets in one neighborhood, like in a city. A organized crime ring’s not gonna waste their time on one country store in Oak Ridge, Alabama. No offense to you, Mayor.”

“None taken, Red.”

The Chief nodded. “You got me there. And they wouldn’t ‘ve written a note like Emily Post. They’d just come in here with their goons and explained the situation. In person.”

Red nodded. “Yeah. There wouldn’t a-been any of this meet me out on Highway 25 for a ron-dee-vu and you won’t hear from us again either. They’d come to see ya regular, ever two weeks or so, and want you pay ‘em ever time. Or they’d just shoot you right there in your own store.”

Mrs.Dobbins had turned around and wiped her hands on her apron. Then she planted her still floury fists firmly on her hips and gave both policeman a look that said, plain as day, “Out. Or quite this talk about shootin’s. Trouble enough raisin’ up a little girl in this day and age what with murders goin’ on and attempted murders and mean folks’s letters, without havin’ to worry about more nightmares.”

Chief Cook changed the subject and asked, “Mr. Dobbins, you keep that much money in cash at the store. Or here?”

“Naw. Never keep more than fifty dollars at the store. Most of that in the safe. Just keep enough in the register to make change with. Don’t keep any here, except what’s there in the sugar bowl. What’s that, Mama? Less than five dollars? Keep a little in my pocket. Course, that’s not much.” He pulled his pockets inside out and put thirty-six cents on the table. Then emptied his billfold of three one-dollar bills.

Red wondered out loud, “How’d this fella expect you to git a thousand in twenties without goin’ to the bank? Bank closed at noon today. Ever-body knows that. You couldn’t git the money up from any other place, I reckon?”

Mr. Dobbins shook his head.

Chief Cook asked, “Julia, you say you found the letter about what time?

“Just before dinner. I took dinner to Daddy over at the store and I noticed it when I came out. It was there under the rocking chair.”

“And that woulda been? Noon? Or sumpin like that?”

“Mmhm. Right at noon.”

“Mr. Dobbins, you notice it when you went in this morning?”

“No, but I don’t go in that way. I always go in through the back and then unlock the front from the inside, around, oh, 7:00 in the morning.”

“It could a-been out there a long time? How long since you looked?”

Julia was waving her hand, as if she knew the answer in school and Chief Cook was her teacher. He nodded at her and she said, “It wasn’t out there Tuesday. I swept the porch Tuesday afternoon, just ‘fore Daddy closed up.”

“Julia, what day did school get out for the holidays?”

“Last Friday.” Julia looked at him and shook her head just a little. “Everybody knows that.”

“Okay, so all the schools were out this week. That means lots of young’uns with too much time on their hands.”

Red said, “Yeah, but all kinds of folks is home for Christmas. Home to see relatives. People that work other places and have family here. Service men maybe. Then a course they’s some people go and come all the time, just as they please.”

Julia felt a little timid. She didn’t know how to ask a question and be sure she wouldn’t look foolish. But she had to ask anyhow. “What about the handwriting. It’s not . . . . well, it’s just not normal.”

Chief Cook picked up the taped together letter and looked at it again. “You sho’ right about that, honey. Problem is, I can’t tell if this is the writin’ of not too smart fourteen year old, or if it’s a real clever forty year old tryin’ to make his writin’ look like a kid’s But I tell you what, I think it’s best for us to keep this to ourselves till we can do a little lookin’ around on it. Julia, can you keep a secret?”

“Yes, sir. I sure can.”

“You think your mama and daddy can?”

Juiia squnted up at her mama and then her daddy, trying to decide. She said, “Yes sir. I think so.”

“Okay then. Don’t y’all worry about this now. We’ll help Red keep an eye on the place. Call us if y’all notice anything suspicious goin’ on. And be sure and don’t talk about it.”

Red Truitt promised he’d always have somebody keeping an eye on the house.

Both men told the family good night and to rest easy, then they stepped outside and had a few words.

“Well, Red, whadda you think? Is this fella serious?”

“Hadn’t got any idear. But I don’t feel too good about it. You know this ain’t the one that killed them McIntoshes. That’s just ridiculous.”

“Oh I don’t know. Sho  seems like a good way to get folks to start talkin’ about other suspects. Make ‘em think there was some gang of thugs that killed ‘em. Reckon that un’s home for Christmas like ever-body else.”

“Yeah. That’s true. What a lowlife. He does what he pleases, that’s for sure.  Well, can you git somebody to come out here and look after this house?” Red sighed. “I’ll take a little drive on down Highway 25 and see there’s a “white flag” or any such thing as that. See if anybody’s out there waitin’ on their big payoff. ”

Red got into his car and watched Chief Cook drive slowly away talking into his radio mike. Then he waited another little while for the Gearing squad car to pull up across the street. He waved at the man in the parked car and got a wave back, then Red pulled his car into the street and slowly drove out Highway 25 towards Cropwell and Harpersville beyond.

Julia kept the secret safe and so did her parents. The letter writer may have waited out on Highway 25 for the money, but he must have waited for a flock of rumors too. And they never did take flight. Nothing was said. For a few days in my hometown almost nobody knew about the shocking case of the extortion note or the investigation that went along with it. Christmas came and went, and as far as the community could tell, the span of eventless time increased, along with a hope of peace and goodwill to quiet peoples’ nerves. Settling down for a clean new year brought the heartening prospect that the past might be past and wouldn’t repeat itself. Families kept themselves snug and close indoors and children naturally didn’t wander too much, except to go to school. Then on Thursday, January 13, the town newspaper broke the story, complete with a photostatic copy of the threatening letter. But there were, again, no arrests to report. And so the seeds of serenity had begun to stir and send up shoots, but  fearsome frigid evil reared its ugly head and mowed them down again.

The Right Southern Corner is a series by Sara Rast
Copyright: 2009 Sara Love Rast. All rights reserved.

The Right Southern Corner

The road to pain and embarrassment is often traveled by guys trying to impress a new girlfriend.  It’s what young men throughout time have always done in pursuit of self-validation and the ultimate prize.  There is no more common life-thread in nature; the selective weeding out of all but the strongest, the boldest.

In the early 60’s I had begun dating a really cute little redheaded Brookie  who just happened to love horses.  What an opportunity!  Take her for a few rides in some secluded, idyllic wilderness, and let her find out for herself what a fine specimen she had chosen.  That I’d never ridden a horse or even sat on one was not a factor; I mean, girls do it so how hard could it be?   Young men full of testosterone are invincible!

Arriving early on a bright summer afternoon at Campbell’s Dude Ranch near Clay,  my initiation into equestination got off to a deceptively quiet start.  I saw a couple of ranch hands winking at one another, but figured they must be gay or something; after all, there was nothing in my clothing or demeanor that could have possibly given them pause about my  riding skills. I mean, doesn’t everybody wear an alligator shirt, skeets, penny loafers, no hat or gloves, and a stupid grin to ride horses?

When they led my charger out, I used expertise gathered from countless western movies to walk up to him, pat him on the side of the snout, and say something stupid, like “Good boy..good boy..”  At first contact, the animal jerked hard on his reins and snorted, then tried to go back to his stall, but the stable boy held on gamely.  I somehow managed to get on facing forward, without falling off the other side or getting my foot hung in a stirrup.  The horse never took his eye off me.

Meanwhile, my new lady had already mounted her horse and was out in the corral doing figure-eights while she wondered what was taking me so long.  The stable boy handed me the reins, jumped quickly away, smacked that horse on the rump, and here we went!  I waved to Nan in passing as my steed left the corral at full speed ahead.

My butt was hitting his back about every third clop.   One hand gripped the saddle horn like a vise while the other experimented with the controls, none of which had any effect whatsoever.   Nan soon caught up to me and, between snickers, asked what was my hurry.   I started to stammer out some wise-acre reply, but could not because my constant bouncing off the saddle made coherent speech impossible.

Then Nan said something like, “Okay, let’s run then…”,  and gave some silent psychic command that put her horse into overdrive.  As she pulled out ahead of me, I continued in vain trying to make sense of how a horse operates.  But the animal had correctly sensed an idiot on its back, and assumed full control of the afternoon.

Campbell’s had a fine little lake about a half mile from the stables. As we approached its banks, I knew my horse would have to stop, or at least turn. Meanwhile, Nan had reached the top of a hill and turned to wait for me.  She suddenly hollered, “Hey, we’re not supposed to take them into the water!”

My nag apparently had not heard this rule, and trotted about 100′ out into the lake, in spite of my every  jerk on either or both reins along with half my extensive vocabulary of bad words.  My penny loafers were soon full of water, and my skeets  soaked plumb up to the knees, but I knew it could get far worse; like, what if this beast decided to lay down in that nice, cool water?

Nan watched this spectacle for a couple of minutes, then shook her head slowly as she rode off to finish her ride alone.  A cold fear began to set in as I realized I was at the total mercy of a ponderous, irritated beast that weighed at least half a ton, compared to my own athletic 130#.  After he’d cooled off for a few minutes and drank half the lake, the horse slowly ambled back up the lake’s steep bank, with me holding on for dear life lest I slip off his rear end and get stomped in the crotch or dragged by the stirrups.

Once on dry land, he gave a mighty shudder like a wet dog, and I came very close to hitting the ground.   Then he set off at some kind of trot that had me hitting the saddle half as often and twice as hard as before.  On that day,  I learned why jockeys invented straps.

As we neared the stables he stepped up the pace even more.  I finally just gave up, dropped the reins, and held on with both hands.  How I managed to keep my billfold & car keys in my pockets is beyond me.   That damned animal charged into the corral, past the stable boys, and into his own stall with no regard whatsoever for ranch rules.   Had I not ducked, my head would have surely been busted like a melon on an overhead beam.

As soon as he stopped, I kicked my feet from the stirrups and threw myself off his side into a pile of hay which was anything but pristine, then scrambled to safety before he could stomp the life out of me.  Everyone was laughing their tails off, except of course Nan, whose facial color now matched her beautiful titian hair.

She didn’t say much on the long ride back to her home in Mountain Brook.  By the time we arrived, I was so unmentionably  sore I could barely walk her to the door.  We dated a few times in the weeks that followed, but neither of us mentioned horses again.  Since that day, I’ve never ridden anything that didn’t have a kill-switch.

Actually, I had gotten a pretty good deal on that miserable summer afternoon at Campbell’s:  Two horse rides for one–my first and my last.

Views From Benny Hill is a series by Jerry Smith

Views From Benny Hill