Thoughts From the Front Porch

Something urged me to rise out of bed at 0500, rather than the usual 0630-0800 I’ve enjoyed since retiring more than ten years ago.  It’s like I was going to miss out on something special if I waited a minute longer.   My usual leisurely routine was put on hold as I stepped out on the back porch to check out the day’s weather.

The chilly, pre-dawn air was rich with musky dewiness.  Whitish-orange light reflected upon the sky from somewhere barely over the horizon, causing a pale, ground-hugging fog to slightly glow as it lay in smoky layers in the hollers and valleys behind my home.  Turning to my hummingbird feeders, I saw that one had been completely drained despite bring filled late the previous afternoon.  It was my largest feeder, with one-litre capacity and six stations.

I went back inside and got a gallon jug of fresh nectar from the refrigerator. They’re currently consuming about three gallons a week.  As I removed the feeder’s jar and started to fill it,  the air around me began to thicken with hummingbirds, at least fifteen or twenty of them.  But this morning instead of re-hanging the feeder, I simply stood there holding it in my outstretched hand, as I occasionally do.

Almost immediately I was swarmed with hungry, grateful hummers, one at each feed station with others lined up awaiting their turn.  As they became more accustomed to my presence and their obvious hunger emboldened them even more than usual, I gradually drew the feeder closer until it was mere inches from my face.    What a wondrous sight it was!

About a dozen of these little emerald-colored marvels of evolution were all around me, the wind from their wings sweeping across my face, hair, and bare arms as they jostled each other for a turn at the nozzles.  At least as  many more were in a holding pattern only a few feet away, while others darted in & out among the trees. It reminded me of the five oclock rush hour at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport.

Their usual territorialism had been put on hold, probably because my own presence overshadowed any threat they may have felt from each other.  Unlike hummers’ usual pattern of fighting over rights to every feeder in sight, these birds were in a total feeding frenzy.  Several  alpha males hovered a few inches away at eye level, staring at me with fearless, tiny black eyes and flashing iridescent red and orange throats while twittering defiantly as if I were merely a larger version of themselves, the biggest alpha bird in the neighborhood.

It was truly an enjoyable experience that probably would never have occurred had I lingered in bed until full daylight.   Hummingbirds are some of the most remarkable, exquisite creatures on Earth, in any kind of light.  Their colors and the way they flash them changes with every new hour of the day, every week, and with every instinctive posture.  To see buzzing, humming, twittering clouds of them boldly swarming around one’s head against a pre-dawn backdrop of morning fog is about as good as it gets in this life.  No picture can do it justice; you just have to be there, and be the one holding the feeder.

But this spectacle also brought a touch of regret.  The fact they are no longer battling over feeders means they have no more nests to build in St Clair this year, and are all preparing to head south as soon as they fatten up a bit.  And, I have to wonder how many of these little jewels will survive their six hundred mile, non-stop journey over the Gulf of Mexico from Dauphin Island to Yucatan.  Because of the rigors of their lifestyles, few hummers live for more than two or three years.

Everyone’s heard of swan songs; it saddens me to realize that a few of them are probably singing the hummingbird version this morning.

Views From Benny Hill is a series by Jerry Smith

Views From Benny Hill

Nathaniel Hicks was born in eastern Virginia in the year 1803. He was the youngest of only two Hicks sons; they were a strong, intelligent, and God-fearing family. At his mother’s knee he was taught how to thread a needle and use it, to read history, poetry, and the Bible. Ethics, astronomy, mathematics, carpentry, horse-shoeing, hunting, fishing, animal husbandry, and all the other practical skills of survival, he learned by trailing around behind his father from the time he was able to walk. By these methods he acquired an admirable education. By the time he turned nineteen, Nate had left his family and made his way to a well protected bend of an Alabama river. He came alone and on foot, leading a sturdy pack mule named Jenny. It was a journey of four months duration.

From Surrey in Virginia, he came, bearing due west and vowing to make twenty miles a day. He found soon that in mountain and river territory, his goal would need to be adjusted. He encountered little trouble in this first leg of the journey, except that the River Staunton ran wider, deeper and faster than he had expected, spring snows in the mountains having poured their melt into the feeder streams. But he’d been told of a ford near Rockymounte, where he was able to cross. He approached the Blue Mountains where the altitudes were not so great, and crossed over them near Mountgomery.

And then Nate made for the pass through the Allegany Mountains at Aspinville and left Virginia for the first time in his young life. At Abington, Kentucky he took the western most road headed south, because it was south and west he was headed. Soon enough he discovered he’d taken the long way ’round. He trudged through the town of Furnace, just inside the northern edge of Tennessee. Aptly named, Nate thought Furnace, as it wasn’t much better than Hell.

Escaping Furnace, Nate went overland back east to Jonesboro, Tennessee, and from there followed what he believed was DeSoto’s final route south into the Cherokee country of Alabama, through Crowtown and across the river Tennessee at Creeks Crossing. All of it was an exciting spectacle to Nate, but Jenny balked at the unfamiliar and, of course, everything was. Nate encouraged or pulled the mule along, saying there was “nought to be a-skeered of.” And he believed it too, for Nate had too little experience to be afraid. Jenny was more difficult to convince.

After crossing the Tennessee River, Nate found he had to make a choice from among three roads, an uncommon luxury and dilemma. Determined to be more careful this time, he consulted his well-worn map, a gift it had been from his mother, when he’d turned ten. He’d dreamed many times since of this journey. His map showed only one road. And Nate figured it made little difference, so took out down the road headed, again, most southwesterly, and pulled Jenny through Turkey Town and Old Coosa village. Luckily, it was a good choice. He found his way to a path on the western side of the Coosa River, and headed south beside it.

A few days later, on a crisp October afternoon in 1822, Nate looked across the river towards the east, at the thick evergreen forests of “Talladegee” and the Creek Indian territory, just as he imagined DeSoto had done hundreds of years before him. Hardwood groves made patches of yellow, red and orange in amongst the dark evergreens. A breeze flickered through, showing the nearer leaves’ pale undersides and then, as the wind died down, the upper, stronger colors flamed up again. It was so much the way the trees had behaved at home in Virginia. As a hearth fire does, the turning trees warmed him, and he knew he’d found the right place. Before he’d bedded down for the night, Nate prepared to be open for trade.

Like DeSoto, Nate too had come for gold, in a way. But, unlike his predecessor, Nate knew he’d have to earn it. He’d had a well-made plan before he set out. He’d had a good idea where he was going, to just such a place as he’d found, in the new State of Alabama. And he’d known exactly what he’d do when he arrived there. He’d had no intention of stumbling up and down the territory as DeSoto had done. And, Nate was stocked with a much more worthwhile set of values and virtues than DeSoto had ever had. Nate would not abuse his welcome.

Instead of wandering creation and browbeating Indians for the gold that might lie ’round about for the taking, Nate found a spot he liked and made it his home. The irony of the history lesson always made Nate smile to himself. DeSoto had come with a highly inflated idea of his own worth and importance in the New World, where no one had ever heard of him. The Creeks and Cherokees welcomed him civilly, with original southern hospitality, if you will. DeSoto responded by behaving savagely, taking a chief prisoner and attacking whole tribes. Nate wondered at the pride in men and the folly it causes them to undertake.

The exalted early explorer had not understood, apparently, the simplest rules of diplomacy or economics. The very fact that gold was DeSoto’s single-minded obsession made it instantly more valuable to the perceptive native folks to whom he’d inquired about it, whether they’d cared for it before or not. DeSoto had thought the Indians would bow and scrape and give him anything for which he asked. But if the Indians ever had the gold, they certainly wouldn’t have parted with it cheaply after seeing DeSoto’s desire for it. The explorer had given the Alabama Creeks entirely too little credit.

Nate chose his house plot carefully, near enough to the the rough river landing to serve flatboat pilgrims in need of provisions, but on high enough ground to escape occasional high water. And directly adjacent to the old road. There he staked out a homestead and survived a cold, wet winter with only a pine-branch lean-to for shelter at night. In the daytime he kept busy, exploring the area, fishing for his dinner, or setting traps for small game and coming back to take his kill, then cleaning and roasting it over his small fire. All the while he was choosing trees for uniform size, marking them for the ax, taking them down to stack, and getting the word out that he had goods for trade.

His trading post had been established from the start, stocked with the small supply of goods he’d brought in his mule pack from Virginia. But he’d paid in advance and arranged for more of the same to be sent, in small increments, before he’d left home. Fort Strother was near enough to walk to and back in one day, if he got an early start, put a good leg to it, and left Jenny tethered at the homestead site.  Nate had gone to back to the fort (where he’d spent the last night of the long journey) a day or two after settling, There he was able to post a letter to his mother and father. It was just a word to let them know he was well and where he could be contacted. They would see to it his shipments were made and sent to Fort Strother. Nate gained friends living in the confines of the fort. once they knew him well enough they gladly spread the word that Nate was a trustworthy trader.

Nat’s first offerings were simple: a small quantity of tobacco, molasses, smoked meat, colored beads, sewing needles and twine, and of course, lead and powder. His first customers were his Creek neighbors and the occasional Cherokee from a little ways up the river. They would sometimes wander in with a handful of herbs and a hankering to taste molasses. Nate found their herbal medicines surprisingly effective. Once in a while, a native trudged in packing a pack of cured deerskins. Just the sort of thing Nate had hoped to supply to the outland travelers passing by along the ancient road or river. Skins took time to clean and cure. And a skin coat kept the weather off. Leather had many uses. And fur made a warm bed. Many a man passing by and looking to settle in the western frontier east of the Mississippi River, would be glad of a chance to trade for skins. Nate bargained and traded wisely, but he was always honest. And his business thrived.

Any strangers he ever ran across, Nate always treated with the same circumspect civility, whether they be English, German, French or native.  Foreign cartographers, he learned in time, would frequent his establishment at the rate of one or two a year. He willingly shared his ration of salt-cured meat and cornmeal johnny-cake with guests. The friendly Creeks and Cherokees showed him how to choose wisely among the wild-growing native greens to supplement his diet. The French paid handsomely in small gold bits just for a dry place to sleep. The Germans always traded in lead and preferred to sleep in the open. There arose amongst them all a mutual trust. Each helped the other, during the course of business, in learning their respective languages.

As soon as weather allowed it, Nate planted a small kitchen garden. He’d brought just corn and bean seeds, carefully kept in a pocket, all the way from his mother’s garden. A Creek friend surprised Nate with sweet potato sets to plant. Nate surprised the Creek by recognizing the plant. And they laughed together because neither had suspected that the other had ever seen such a wondrous thing as a sweet potato.

It took Nate more than year to start his building, and he’d made do well enough in his lean-to. Trees were best downed in cool weather, so they wouldn’t dry out too fast and split. Long-dried logs lasted best when built, so his cabin logs needed time to dry. One year was hurrying the process, Nate knew. But a two-year delay for a cabin was more than the eager young settler wanted to wait. In the meantime he planned the cabin’s setting, squared it up north and south and marked where the corners should be. He gathered flat river rocks and hauled them up to the site and laid a stone foot for his log walls to come. The floor would be smooth packed earth. But a stone foundation, chinked with red clay, would make the logs a bed out of the wet.

Once he started in the late fall of 1824, building took him only three weeks. He split a flat plane on one side of the first logs laid with a broad ax. This flat side went down on the stones. The pieces chopped away, he saved to use where his finished walls would need large chinks. All the other logs were left round and long enough to extend past the corners on the outside. They were were saddle-notched where each crossed another at the corners and each notch fit snugly over the log below. When he had it completed, his rudimentary cabin’s interior was only about eight feet on an side. But it was tight and dry, with a small loft space for sleeping and storage overhead. It was home and a more respectable and permanent place of business for Nate.

A few families, those looking for a little land and a better life, found Nate’s area to their liking. They built snug cabins and settled in on homesteads of their own. Within a five years they had a little settlement. And Nate had improved his trade to the level of mercantile store. Women are the key, Nate often said, to civilization. They keep us in order. Keep us clean and close to God. Give us something to hope for in a new generation. And, they demand a wider stock of goods than bachelor farmers and simple silent trappers. Women wanted bolts of fabric and tins of tea.

After ten years of thrift and hard work, along with a good dose of business sense, Nate was supplying an up-and-coming community of yeoman farmers with a good deal of its needs and wants. He built a bigger house of squared up logs on stone pilings, with a planed floor and windows, one each facing east and west. By ‘33, the settlers fairly poured into Alabama. Cropwell was an established town by then, with an official United States Post Office. And it lay by the path of the same reliable road that had served the early explorers three or four hundred years before, and Indian travelers for maybe ten thousand years before that. In 1833, though, Nate wrote to his father that the traffic along that road was something to see. Exciting it was indeed for him catch a certain sound that had become familiar to him, to hear as many as three or four mule carts a week come rolling in from some distance, or driving and to and fro from Ashville to Wilsonville.

When he finally felt prosperous enough in his own mind, Nate went in search of a wife. He was twenty-nine years old. He was happy to find that he wouldn’t have to go far afield, women being known to be unreasonable and overwrought when taken far from their mothers. Nate found his woman downriver, at a Shelby County church service. She was a steady and sensible sixteen-year-old, who talked very little. She was strong enough to help him in his business and not bad to look at either. Not much courtin’ was necessary. Maggie Byrd came with a small bundle of clothing and a smaller dowry, but with an established family name in the area.  And a lot of local cousins. That would be good for business. Nate and his hardy bride went right to work and had ten children over the next twenty years. Nate often laughed at his early expressions of the spiritual virtues and dry goods needs of women. Eight of his children turned out to be girls.

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

The Right Southern Corner

Here’s an interesting experiment:  fill a large plastic bag with air from your living room and twist it shut. Then take it outdoors, stick a tube in it, and hook the other end of the tube to the input of an air compressor with a small, removable tank.  Run the compressor until the bag goes flat.  You will notice that the compressor tank has become a bit heated up by the air becoming compressed.

Let it cool off to normal temperature, then take the compressor tank indoors.   Release the valve and let the compressed air escape into the room, noting that it gets very cool as it escapes and also makes water condense around the nozzle.  Now carry the tank back outdoors and wipe off the condensation.

Congratulations! You’ve just performed one complete cycle of room air conditioning.  Repeat this process enough times, and the room air will become cooler and dryer.

Of course this ridiculous example has no practical value, but it does demonstrate exactly what happens when your air conditioner kicks on.  The AC repeats this cycle continuously until your room air has been chilled to the temperature you selected, with a very comfortable drop in humidity as well.

Any fluid, be it air or water or Freon, loses or gains a tremendous amount of heat as it changes state from liquid to vapor and back again. The trick is to make it gain heat indoors and lose it outdoors.

Your air conditioner’s closed plumbing system is a continuous loop, filled with a fluid that changes state easily within its temperature range of operation.  In most cases the fluid is Freon, but other fluids such as ammonia or even ordinary air will work depending on how the mechanism is designed.  Now let’s follow this fluid as it makes it way through the cycle we’ve just demonstrated.

We’ll start with the compression part; Freon vapor has made its way through sealed tubing from inside your home to that big, noisy monolith sitting in your back yard.   Upon entering a very powerful pump, this vapor is squeezed into much smaller volume, getting real hot in the process.  This heat must be removed.

From the pump, the hot vapor passes into a condenser, which is the coils with black metal fins visible behind the grill of the outside unit.  A large fan draws outdoor air through these coils, cooling the vapor inside and causing it to change to a liquid state, giving up a tremendous amount of heat in the process.  That’s why the air blowing out the top is so hot.

This condensed vapor, now a liquid, is pumped back into your home through another tube into a device called an evaporator. It’s the shiny aluminum & copper A-frame you see when you change the air filter on some units.    As the fluid enters the evaporator area under high pressure, it passes through a tiny hole called an orifice.   As it passes through this final restriction, it enters an area of much lower pressure on the other side of the orifice, and that’s where the magic happens.

Whether a fluid is in liquid or gaseous state depends on two things; temperature and pressure.  Upon passing through the orifice into lower pressure, the Freon instantly evaporates.  Remember how our experimental compressed air got colder when we let it expand?  Well, that’s exactly what’s going on here.  The Freon has once again changed state and, in doing so, it must take on heat from somewhere.

It gets this heat of evaporation from those shiny metal coils and makes them very cold, even icy, as a result of heat loss. The low-pressure Freon vapor now makes its way through tubing back outside to the compressor, and our cycle is complete.

A fan blows air from inside your home over the evaporator coil, picking up the coil’s coolness and adding it to your room air (actually, it loses heat, but it’s easier to imagine it picking up cool).  As this room air is circulated over those cold coils its humidity condenses on them, thereby drying the air as a lucky coincidence of operation.

The condensate water drips into a collection area and drains through a pipe to the outdoors, which is why window air conditioners always drip.  (I pipe this free water to my birdbath, keeping it full all summer, but that’s another story)

A few points need to be made.  For one, the huge volume of heat dissipated by that big noisy fan comes mostly from the compression process, not heat picked up the vapor as it passes through the evaporator.  The compression/expansion cycle really doesn’t care where it gets its heat as long as it happens at the right pressure and in the right part of the cycle.

Also, an air conditioner doesn’t even need electricity to operate, other than for the fan that moves your room air through the evaporator and for control operations.   It only has one moving part, the compressor, which can be turned by any mechanical input, be it a steam engine, gasoline motor, or even a windmill.   On early train cars, the compressor was operated by train wheels as they rolled over the rails.

In fact, compression can even be created by the heat of a small gas flame, as in those old Servel gas refrigerators whose only moving part was the door hinge. It’s all just a matter of exchanging one kind of energy for another.

A third point is that the factor of dehumidification is a freebie, an accident of process that makes conditioned air much more comforting.

And finally,  never worry that your AC is struggling in the summer heat. Regardless of temperature, they work pretty much the same all the time.  It’s actually just a side benefit that your home is made comfortable as a result.  April or August, it doesn’t really care where it gets its heat or where it loses it.  Your power bill only goes up because the AC has to run longer to satisfy your thermostat setting.

Pretty cool, huh?

Views From Benny Hill is a series by Jerry Smith

Views From Benny Hill

Occasionally there arises a man who breaks all boundaries of tedium and the ordinary.  The world is his toy, and he spares no effort enjoying it as often and as ingeniously as possible.  Rufus was such a man.   He was exemplary in so many ways.  His passing at a ripe old age closed an era for those who delighted in his scampish lifestyle and warm, friendly demeanor.

A former workmate and I were loafing between service calls on Birmingham’s Southside a couple of decades ago when Steve said, “Hey, you ever seen a mongoose?”    I replied that I had indeed saw several while in Hawaii, but didn’t know there were any nearby.  He explained that a friend, whom I’d never met, kept one in a cage at his place of business and let it out at night to keep down rats and snakes.

Within seconds Steve had reeled me in, and I innocently replied,  “Yeah, let’s go see his mongoose.  Ain’t nothing going on right now anyhow.”  Rufus met us at the door of his optician’s shop in Five Points South, and escorted us into a dingy workshop behind a curtain just beyond the store’s retail space.

In a dark corner stood a wooden cage, partially covered with a small blanket.  Rufus warned me to be real quiet while approaching the cage, and to move slowly as I bent over to peek inside.  No mongoose was in sight anywhere, but Rufus explained that he liked to hide behind the partition when strangers were around.   “See?  There’s the tip of his tail sticking out.  Just keep watching for a minute and you’ll see him start to move around”

Rufus urged me to keep a close eye as he began calling softly to the mongoose: “Here, baby.  C’mon out….Mr. Jerry won’t hurt you…..etc etc”.
Nothing moved, and I was beginning to think I’d never see this mysterious pet, until all of a sudden WHAM !!!!!—–The top of that cage flew open and I was attacked by a huge furry demon that moved like lightning.   I nearly jumped out of my hide as the hellish creature landed on my head, almost making me ruin my pants before it came to rest on the floor in front of me.

What had “attacked” me was nothing but an old raccoon tail tied to a cord.  Rufus had surreptitiously released a big spring on back of the cage, and his “mongoose” had claimed another victim.   Yep; this fellow was definitely my kind of man!

Steve later filled me in on the fellow, who was a next-door neighbor when he was growing up in Huffman.   He related from his earliest recollections that Rufus was always up to something.  Nothing was beyond his grasp or imagination when it came to having fun or showing out, and he included the neighborhood kids in as much foolishness as possible.

To the fine middle class folks of Sunset Lane, Rufus was a Pied Piper, Candyman and Three Stooges all rolled into one.   If something new came on the market, he was first to buy one.  If it didn’t yet exist but might be fun to own anyhow, he invented it.  Rufus was both the fly in the ointment and the spirit in the lamp.

Steve told of an old pickup truck Rufus had cut down to a bare frame, leaving nothing but the engine, dashboard, front seats, and whatever else it took to keep the thing together.  He used this contraption to haul a bunch of kids to the Banks/Woodlawn game at Legion Field,  all the while assaulting the peace and tranquility of numerous neighborhoods with the kids blowing those infernal plastic bugles that were later outlawed as hearing hazards.

I also heard of a party held in Rufus’ basement where, instead of the usual pinata routine, he gave long sticks to all the kids and then turned out the lights.  Steve still laughs about the countless bruises he earned that night.

Rufus’ optical shop was ideally suited for prankery, with a sidewalk across the storefronts to serve the little retail strip, plus another sidewalk on the other side of their narrow parking lot, and yet another just across the street; all three in plain view.  Rufus delighted in super-gluing coins to the pavement, and wore out several piles of plastic puke and doggy-doo.

He got the telephone number of the pay-phone booth across the street, and took fiendish glee in ringing it as innocent people walked by, then engaging them in totally ridiculous conversations when they answered.   Compared to Rufus, Alan Funt was a rank amateur.  Nobody would go further to engineer and execute a prank.

One day Rufus caught a little Geico lizard behind his shop and brought it inside, much to the dismay of his secretary.   Not willing to let such a unique opportunity go to waste, he spotted a pedestrian in front of the shop and waved for him to come inside.  When they came face to face, Rufus opened his mouth and the lizard stuck its head out, causing that poor fellow to beat a hasty retreat out the front door.  I said Rufus would go to any length for a joke—-the lizard had been caught off a dumpster.

One day I bought a brand new trick (I thought) from a joke shop in Homewood.  It was called Raccoon-In-A-Bag, and consisted of a battery-operated goofyball that you turn on then place it in a paper sack with a coontail protruding from the neck.  To everyone who saw it, the thing looked just like someone had cruelly tied a baby coon into a bag and left it to thrash around and slowly suffocate.

I hastened to Rufus’ shop to show him my new prank, but when I suggested we try it out in front of his place he offered to use his own Coon Bag instead because it had a fresh battery and was already broken in.  You didn’t get very far ahead of old Rufus, but I did see someone actually turn the tables on him.  Just once.

It was a hot summer day.  I’d been loafing in the optical shop for most of that afternoon, and even Rufus was bored.  He finally decided to wake up the mongoose.  After loading and cocking the devilish device, he waited for a proper victim to walk by.  He soon spotted four black teenagers who looked fairly safe, and met them on the sidewalk with one of his classic come-on tales.

He told them the Health Department had found out about his mongoose and was going to have it put to sleep, so if the boys wanted it they were welcome to take it home with them.   They bought the story, and the rest was fairly routine, at least until Rufus sprung the trap.

All four boys let out profane screams of sheer terror, and they all tried to go through the workshop door at once.  Sunglasses, Afro combs, pencils, pocket change, shoes, everything flew as these boys crawled all over each other trying to escape the mongoose.  Two of them ran around the secretary’s desk, and the other two took a shortcut right over the top, scattering business items everywhere.  Luckily, she was off that day or she would have surely been trampled.

By the time they’d passed through the front door I was almost paralyzed with laughter, and had to drop to one knee to avoid blacking out.  Rufus was in similar condition; both of us were having the kind of joyful pain that only excruciatingly funny things can bring on.   It came to an abrupt halt, however, when the front door banged open and one of the boys stepped in with a terrified, grim look on his face.

“Mistah, please please call a doctor.  Willy done had a heart attack!”  I’ve never seen Rufus so scared.  His face went pale, and his lower jaw trembled as if he’d heard the Voice of Doom.  This time he’d gone too dang far.  He made his way to the front door, his legs shaking so badly he could hardly walk, and peered outside to see what he had done.   What he found was four black boys laughing themselves silly.  One of them said something like,”Got you too, mutha—-”.    Rufus sat quietly, mopping perspiration with his handkerchief as the boys came back into the shop and retrieved various articles they’d lost while fleeing the mongoose.   They soon left, still laughing.  Rufus was no longer amused,  just relieved.

Besides endless pranks, Rufus was also famous for enforcing common courtesy.   Once, when a car stopped with its wheels over the painted crosswalk lines, Rufus simply crawled over its hood.  When an old pickup truck had been abandoned in the neighborhood way too long, Rufus painted “Sanford & Son” on the side of it.

He was always gentle-mannered and sincere, even while working his infamous mischief, and all the denizens of Five Points South knew and respected the man.    At one time he delivered  Post Herald newspapers, and saved the lives of some apartment dwellers when he smelled gas seeping from under their doorjamb.

He banged on the door until he got their attention, helped them to safety, and possibly averted a disastrous explosion.  Much closer to home, he administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Steve’s father, who had  collapsed in the yard with a fatal heart attack.   Steve tells of how Rufus later became like a step-dad to him while he finished growing up.

Such people do not grow on trees but, like trees they eventually wither and die.  Everyone who knew this man has a different story to tell.  As each mourner passed his casket, they related a few of their own experiences to his widow.  By the time I’d arrived to add my own tales, it was plain the poor lady was almost worn out from listening.  I chatted a while with their daughter Paula, who worked for the same company as Steve and myself, then gave her something to place in his coffin.

She looked at it, broke into tearful laughter, and said she’d put it where it belonged.   It was a brand new Whoopee Cushion.

Views From Benny Hill is a series by Jerry Smith

Views From Benny Hill