Laying here jaybird naked after having finally arrived back
home from a night out with the girls—as Patsy calls my monthly trip to dinner
with my high school classmates—and having moved the leftover Popeye’s Chicken
box outta the way for room, I’ve stuffed the purple hulls that I had retrieved
from the Farm Patch in Bryan into the fridge to be bagged up first thing in the
morning. I bet ya haven’t been able to get that jaybird reference out of your
mind yet, have you? Well, the excitement of getting home and taking the pups
out back one last time before ascending the stairs to end an eventful evening
had caused the heart rate to elevate just a bit—I needed to cool down prior to
stacking some zzzzs.
Purple Hulls from the Farm Patch
I couldn’t start the zzzzs until I had reviewed the evening:
Foremost in my mind was the trip home. While listening (read
struggling to stay interested) to Jimmy’s fifth time through the guys in his
unit procuring an replacement night
scope so they could turn in a tank somewhere in Germany, Jersey or maybe Ft
Hood or maybe it was the daughter in California requirements; I had been hemmed
into the center lane approaching some night road work between Bastrop and
Austin. As I slowed down to fall in behind him, he slowed also. As I speeded
up, he again did also. Finally punching it and charging ahead in an attempt to
gain the advantage, my truck hit 90 quickly. Hoping that I didn’t cut him off
too sharply—his horn indicating that I might have—I commented to Jimmy: “I
never knew those highway cones could fly so high! Well at least the road crew
has the rest of the night to get them back in place.”
Thinking back to the dinner with the girls; I had ordered
(again the last in line to do so; last to be served the previous month) a
chicken fried steak as it seemed to be the safest only to have it wake me up
during the night—I think the last chunk of chicken fried trying to exit back
the way it have entered. Hagar the Horrible never had a case of indigestion
this bad! Tossing and turning, I hoped I had dozed for three or four hours and
hoped that it hadn’t been just an hour or so. I definitely didn’t want to spend
the next seven hours suffering like this.
Everything kept running through my brain.
I know Thomas and I discussed the entire past season of
“Duck Dynasty” and all the characters highs and lows. Then we moved on to the
coming season and each of our hopes for that.
Tonight, I got my entrée just about the time everybody else
did. I gazed down at a chicken fry that roughly looked the size of a
miss-sharpened home plate and thought I hit the jackpot. Little did I know that
it would return to haunt me later. Then there was that stack of mashed potatoes
leveling off about chest-hair high and a good little bowl of corn. I had
entered redneck heaven.
At some point, I made sure I had everybody’s attention in
order to make some witty comment in response to an utterance from across the
table about how thoughtful the restaurant was to have put Thomas’ snow peas in
a separate bowl so the juice didn’t mix with his chicken fry—by the way: snow
peas! How does that come about? I had just dumped my corn (and its juices) into
that stack of taters and said: “Vicky! Wasn’t it nice that the restaurant did
the same for me?”
Well Vicky took exception to the comment. First by insuring
that her name was Kay and not Vicky and then affirming my comment to be right
on target. There I was; right back in high school and embarrassed by something
I had done that was outta line; stripped completely of all my dignity. Me face
should have turned red but couldn’t. All the blood had just flushed completely
like Universal Rundle had taken over all bodily fluids. I looked to see if I
could crawl under the table but our positioning was so tight I stood not a
chance. I had to sit there and take it as if nothing had changed in forty plus
years. I apologized to Kay—I have no idea why I called her Vicky, she wasn’t
even there.
Eventually the conversation passed on to another subject and
I began to feel better about my situation.
Sam took us off on a tangent and assigned us all homework to
watch some TV movie coming up over the next couple of weeks having to do with
four guys (2 black and 2 white) that had been chained to the floor by Barry
Gordy and made to suffer awful punishment somewhere in Detroit
for year after year. I’ll look for it, but don’t think it can compare to the Cleveland
stuff currently playing out.
We got into a rousing conversation about ancestral searches
and who had made what discoveries and who had had problems getting to
information. Some of the cemetery searching that some of the girls had been up
to sounded sorta creepy—had enough of that kind of play growing and don’t want
to go there again.
Still not able to shake the chicken fry attack, I turned to
thinking about gathering a crew somewhat earlier the coming afternoon and
hitting one of the Austin eateries, say around 4:30 PM (My son sings to me
about eating at 4:40 PM to the tune of the Village People’s YMCA all the while
thinking he’s getting over on me. I’ll take the harassment over the indigestion
at any time.) With the Legislature not due back until Monday, I don’t know
where I’ll be able to come up with a class of clowns. Don’t worry, I’ll scrape
together some from somewhere. Still thinking about that jaybird?
Once again, I’m sorry Vicky. DAMN, I mean Kay! Good friends,
good food, good night!
