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Ramblin' Roses and Flyin' Bricks
A fellow in Mobile wrote that we weren't nothing but a backwoods, uninformed, countrified countryman all on account of we don't take Esquire Magazine. Now, in case you don't know, Esquire is a magazine city folk take to see if they 're acting and dressing citified like. Country people take it to see how the people in the city are dressing, so they won't be shocked if they ever go to town. There's nothing that makes a country fellow madder than to have some city guy say he's countrified. I'm not mad enough, however, to wear Bermuda shorts. When I go to town wearing ordinary, old-style trousers, people don't pay much attention to me. If I should go to Mobile wearing Bermuda shorts, somebody would surely remark, " Look at that ignorant, small-town country bumpkin! His parents still have him in short pants." Well looking around for something to write about that can't possibly make anybody mad, I happen to read a little item in the papers which said that a 71- year-old New York man is leaving soon on a 1,200- mile shoreline journey around Lake Superior in a row-boat. He is making the trip, to show "the cockeyed world that an elderly man of good mind and body shouldn't be thrown to the scrap heap." Down the River For several years now I've been figuring, on a trip kind of like that. What I'm going to do, some of these days, is to get me a little paddling-boat and make a trip down the Tombigbee River. I'm going to take a along a frying pan, coffee pot, a .22 rifle, a portable radio, two blankets, a puptent and some fishing tackle. For food I'll catch fish, kill game and borrow from river boats and hunting lodges. For diversion, I'll make little trips into hundreds of lakes that make off from the river. For company, I'll listen to the frogs and night-birds. There's a big advantage there. You can fool yourself into making wild things say anything you want to hear. You can't mistake what people say. Instead of listening to people say, "Tucker, you're a lazy, countrified hill-billy," I'll have frogs and birds saying, "Tucker, you're a great, brilliant, good and courageous man." They'll talk to me and say the things I want to hear, regardless of whether I'm wearing Bermuda shorts or just plain, abbreviated shorts. When I get down below McIntosh, I'll leave the river and paddle up Hal's Lake, which is about 30 miles long. I'll study the life and habits of the vanishing whooping crane, which Hal's Lake is full of. Maybe they're not the real, genuine whooping crane we read about that is just about extinct, but they are cranes and they do whoop. They can't talk, like birds and frogs, and all they can do is eat fish and whoop, which is about all lots of people can do. The cranes can just do it better. In the middle of the day, I'll put up under the shade of a tall cypress and I'll sleep as long as I like without worrying about the clanging of an alarm clock or the rude ringing of a telephone. At night I'll turn my on my radio and if the news isn't good, I'll throw the thing in the lake and go to sleep. The reason I haven't already gone on the trip is on account of I have a few more payments on my automobile, television set, refrigerator and deep-freeze. On top of that, my banker doesn't think it's the time of year for me to be drifting down a lazy river. He had much rather see me drift in the bank and take up a few of my notes.
Well, the idea is a good one, even if I never make it. I had much rather be called a river-rat than a country bumpkin.
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