Best Bud or "Is It Really You, J.T."

“Best Buds”

“Is It Really You, J.T."
2955 words


 
“Best Bud” or “Is It Really You, J.T. ?”
8/22/2008
         “Life is so fragile and taken for granted by so many that at times we tend to forget that all we really have left in this world is each other and the love of family and friends . Cherished memories of wonderful people, places where we met them, how the days looked and felt,  love was young and true”.
         
         Growing up in the South in the mid 1950`s was such an awesome experience and I have this intense desire to share small pieces of life as it appeared to me at certain times. The smell of a dusty red clay gravel road, picking blackberries with my brother Al, playing baseball all summer long, having to hunt for a pair of shoes to wear on Sunday, Mighty Mouse cartoons on Saturday mornings, paying one thin dime and getting a Coke [bottle] from a ice-cold water-filled drink box, bicycles with no fenders or chain-guard, playing Red-Light after dark [ in the middle of our dirt road], eating a Stagecoach Plank Bar, movies at the Woods picture show, swimming at Comers Pool where there was a wooden dance floor with a Jukebox, frozen Snicker bars on a stick, pin-ball machines and you could rent a real inner tube for swimming.
         I could go on for hours about what life was all about in rural Georgia  or at least what it appeared to be about to myself and all the other characters in this little part of what some would call backwoods meets redneck.
         Being absolutely honest, my brother Al`s nickname is Redneck, he is to proud!  Anyway I am gonna tell you about one of my best friends and how he became one of the most famous people from our neck of the woods. We looked and acted so much alike that even my Great-Uncle Gibbs called us “them two little white-headed sonsabitches”. I guess it was because we both had real blonde hair. We thought for the longest time that sonsabitches was part of our names. He died before I was old enough to play Little League so I don`t remember him much. When my Momma and Daddy got married they had their best friends , Harry Moore and Dot Jackson help them get married, then a few years later my Momma and Daddy helped them get married so they was the best of friends all around.
         Well, Harry and Dot Moore had a son and they named him James Travis, then Momma and Daddy had me and named me John Henry after my Granddaddy John.  Momma and Daddy had four boys, Mickey Ray, Tony, Al and me. They had one more but he died. Well, me and J.T. was raised up together and we fought with my two brothers Tony and Al seems like all the time, it was always me and him against them, funny thing is, we never fought each other, never.  You know I really love my brothers and it seems like most of the time all of them cared a lot about me, yet in those days we never thought much about sharing our emotions with anybody, I was the baby in the family and got a lot of crap because of it. Sometimes I used it to my advantage when needed.  Anyway, me and J.T. was “best buds” and felt closer to each other than family.
         We was always up to something no matter what, one of us trying to outsmart each other with the most, off the wall, outlandish propositions that we could conceive or create, and trust me, some were real doozies ! Like the time we [ J.T. `s brainstorm] decided that it was so hot and we were so thirsty that it would be simple enough to ride our bikes up to Mr. Bobby`s Service Station and get something to drink. Sounds simple to the average ten year old, it was only about two blocks away and it was really hot and Momma wouldn`t care [we never told her anyway]. So here we go, racing our hand me down bikes with our clothespin cardboard motors rat-tat-tatting as fast as the wind, heading just as straight as an arrow down Seventh Street looking for something ice cold and delicious to drink. Only fate had plans for us that hot August day and we learned early on that all things in life have a price.
         Seems like, best I can remember now, Mr. Bobby had closed up his Cities Service Station to run some errand or something and when the both of us wheeled up to the shade of the drive-thru gas pumps it was obvious that nobody was there. Between the two of us we had thirty one cents, a quarter, one nickel and a penny. We were screwed! Oh but, somewhere deep in my good friend`s  handlebar Cordele Dispatch paper route bag, he found the solution to our agonizing thirst problem. You see Mr. Bobby had one of them little long flat drink boxes that looked kind of like the freezer in my Grandma`s kitchen, if you remember then you know that when you lift up the lid, there was  several metal bars that ran long ways and the drink bottles slid down between the bars by their skinny necks and they was sitting in that ice cold water just waiting for somebody to drop a dime in the slot, pull one of them ice-cold Upper Tens over to the gate contraption and pick it straight up and then crack the metal top off  with the top popper thing on the side of the drink box  and you was in business with the best cold drink in the world.  Looking back years later it looms as one of our worst experiences in the hard knock life of growing up. But yet on that hot, sticky, ninety-eight degree blue sky, life is good, not a care in the world day, well, that day was not exactly what we expected.
We didn`t have a dime, the station was closed, it was terribly hot, I was really pissed that I had let J.T. talk me into racing like a bat outta hell all the way to a closed up Service Station to sit across my trusty Schwin bike and stare at the rows of frosty cold Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, Upper Ten, and R.C. drinks, all lined up like little ducks in a row, just setting down in that ice water and me and J.T. with tons of sweat pouring down off us both like we was being rained on !
So, meanwhile,  J.T. was digging around, looking for I don`t know what when all of a sudden his skinny little ole arms came outta that canvas paper route bag and held up for me and all the world to see, [ seems like I had this urge to reach over and plant a big ole slobbering kiss right on his cheek],  my “Best Bud” had apparently saved the day, In one hand he had one of those long red and white Dairy Queen milkshake straws and in the other hand he had one of his Daddy`s  Mable Black Label Beer, church keys ! Well it don`t take a rocket scientist to figure out what two  ten year old sweaty-hot boys with access to some ice-cold soda waters will be doing shortly. Make this long story easier to tell I`m gonna skip the fact that we popped the tops off just about all them drinks and took that Dairy Queen straw and sucked up as much as we possibly could hold of every kind of drink  in that icebox. Needless to say we looked like some of them starving kids overseas with our bellies looking to bust.  Despite knowing that we had broken the law , in the back of our minds we figured we was pretty smart, if we got caught [ and we didn`t think we would ] we would just cry and say we was sorry.  Wrong plan !
Seems like in every small town, especially in the South, there is at best, at least one or two people who  for whatever reason, gathers in as much of the gossip in town as they possibly can and then rations it out in the most flagrant way imaginable. So for those of you who like it plain and simple, Lester Johnson`s Momma ratted us out ! She just happened to be headed down to Stripling Grocery Store and for some reason decided to cut through Preacher Ellis`s back yard to see if maybe his wife was working in the garden and they could converse. [ probably about some sorta  gossip.]
Missus Johnson spotted us from way down down the Third Avenue alley and across Seventh Street , boy she could see really good. It took about forty-five minutes for the crap to really hit the fan. Missus Johnson and the Preachers wife decided that something looked mighty suspicious so they got on the telephone and asked the Operator to find out where Mister Bobby was at. In those days when you picked up the telephone Miss Louise would say " Number Please" and you could tell her the number. [ or in me and my brother Al`s case, we`d just ask her to let us speak to whoever we was trying to call and she`d put us on through ]. Anyway, Miss Louise called Mr. Bobby`s house and talked to his wife, then she called the City Barber Shop where Mr. Bobby was getting his hair cut, then she called the Cordele Police Department and Chief of Police McMurray sent one of Cordele`s finest to corral us  two desperate Juvenile  Delinquents !  Me and J.T. was real surprised to see our good buddy, Officer Pop Coleman , coming down Sixth Street on his old three-wheeled police motorcycle, raising all kinds of dust off that hard gravel road.
At that particular era in our lives, in Cordele there was a North side of town where us poor, raggedy people lived and the South side where it seemed as if the better off families lived. What divided us from the colored section on the West side was Seventh Street and just east of Seventh Street was a huge ditch that caught a lot of rainwater and carried it south through town, and we all assumed, I supposed, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Anyway we called it the Big Ditch. Next to the Big Ditch and not far from my house was where we played most of our everyday baseball games, in the ball field in back of Northern Heights School. After our little icebox escapade me and J.T. had cruised over to the ball field to see who was there and to choose up sides for the Game of the Day.  I had just started the usual bat grip thing with Rufus Dowell to determine who would get first pick when Jimmy Peavy  hollered out “ Look at old Pop  Coleman, he must be doing about a hunnerd!” Well my Upper Ten felt like another hunnerd when he turned in and stopped right next to where our bikes were parked !
         J.T. broke and ran, but there was nowhere to go, so he pretended he was running the bases to cover up almost peeing his pants. Later J.T. told me he didn`t know whether to crap or go blind.  Me, I was cool. I just farted and closed one eye.  Officer Pop Colman took us down to the  Police Station, well in those days it was a little different, he told us to come down to the Police Station. There was never a doubt that we would not go, back then you paid attention to grownups, especially Police grownups. So there we were, pedaling our lives away, headed to who knows what, trying to come up with a good plan to help get us out of a bad situation , things looked  real scary for us two amigos.  First thought was to lie about the whole thing and bluff our way out of it.
The two of us had never been in any official trouble so we sure thought we had it worked out and we had us a plan.not a great plan but a plan. We both knew Chief McMurray and we had heard what happened in the big war, how he single-handed killed a bunch of slant eyed Japs, worst of all. so they say, he was so cross eyed that when he cried, the tears rolled down his back, and nobody ever knew exactly where he was looking, and you never saw him smile. He was one mean  looking dude. We had to be careful.
         When me and J.T. got to the corner and turned  there by Pridgen Brothers Warehouse,  J.T.slammed on brakes so hard it made the rubber smoke on that old Red Ryder bike, I near run over him from the back!  Our semi-great plan was all of a sudden looking like dead meat ! Standing out front of the Cordele Police Department leaning back on the fender of my Grandpa`s fire engine red `39 Ford Pick-up truck, smoking one of them unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes was my oldest brother Mickey who was way older than me and worked at Uncle Joe`s garage over on the Truckers Route.  He turned toward us when he heard the commotion and hollered “ Come on down, aint nobody here but us chickens” and started laughing so hard he got choked on all that smoke from his old cigarette. We eased on by while he was trying to breathe and made it almost to the door when we heard him say,” You boys go on in and have yourselves a nice little chat with ole Wild Bill McMurray, and when you get finished, mosey on back here and I`ll put them bikes in the bed of this here truck and taxi both of you to your respective houses, as per  Momma`s instructions”, he was talking like John Wayne with a terrible bad twang.
         Everything was real  quiet in that Police Office when we shut the door behind us, all we could hear was the whup-whup of the ceiling fan whirling around and a womans voice talking to somebody on the telephone. It soon became quite clear that she was in conversation with someone mighty important when I heard her say “we`ll take good care of both of `em  Mr. John Henry” and she hung up, got up from her desk and came up to the counter that we was standing at and gave both of us a stern look.
         “The Chief`s on his way so you boys just take a seat on that bench and think hard about what a life of crime will get you !” was all she said. The silence was so thick you had to fan just to get some air.
The meeting we finally had with the Chief went about as expected, he scared the holy crap out of both of us and we learned that Mr. Bobby had not pressed any charges. We was gonna have to pay for the twenty two or so cold drinks we messed up and clean up for Mr. Bobby every day for a month. Then old Wild Bill McMurray got this far away look on his face and stared at us both real tough like [ at the same time!] and said real soft “ Now you boys run along and Mickey Ray will give you both a lift home, I`m sure you`ll want to discuss all of today`s activities with  Mr. and Mrs. Moore and I feel positive that John Henry will be having a few private moments with his Momma, if I see you in this office again you better be trying to sell me some cookies or looking for a bathroom or something, you boys are paying attention, right ?” needless to say we could have been choirboys by then. We made a beeline for the door, knowing in our hearts  that  freedom lay on the other side. Nope, only thing  free we saw was Mickey giving us the fisheye and grinning like a jackass eating briars. Our bikes looked sad laying piled up on top of one another like they was dead in the back of Grandpa`s  pick-up truck . That ride home from the Cordele Police Department  on that hot August day stands out in my mind even today  as the longest , saddest, scariest ten minutes, of my entire life, bar none ! I don`t even remember dropping J.T. by his house at all. I do remember my brother  Mickey Ray whistling and singing parts of “Hound Dog” as we made our way slowly towards my just rewards.
         My Momma was short, dark hair and real pretty and all my friends wished their Moms would be like her, that day I wished she was their Mom !  That day was a Friday, it was the the day that my Momma got back into town from her job as a union organizer for the AFL-CIO. She traveled a lot and my Grandma looked out for us along with my Aunt Roma and sometimes we had to mind Mickey Ray, which sucked. Years later I realized how ahead of her time my Momma really was. Anyway, when we got home, me looking like a zombie, Mickey just doing his weird stuff and asking lots of dumb questions  like this one which I didn`t understand  “ Can I have all your marbles before Momma gets here ?” or the statement after, “ She is gonna kill you” all the time he was cutting up and laughing his butt off.
         I was sitting at the kitchen table studying really hard when I heard Momma pull up, get out, and when she slammed the door and stomped up the back steps, I knew that Mickey Ray was right ! She was really gonna kill me and nobody in this world would lift a finger in my defense, I was totally doomed. She came through the door and I gave it my best shot,
“ Momma, have I told you lately that  I love you !”. Well, all I got was a finger held up meaning shut up and not another word ! This was standard procedure for any offense and I knew it. What shocked me was her staring me dead in the face and calling out “ Mickey Ray, get in here and escort your little brother down the alley to the Plum bushes, let him pick out a good one about four feet long, make absolutely sure that he gets a good one cause if it breaks, we start all over and you`ll get a whipping right along with him, do I make myself perfectly clear ?”
Well the only thing  I can say about that is, at least it took the grin off of Mickey Ray`s face.

         We I got off the track and plum forgot to tell you all about my “Best Bud” J.T. Moore.
Hang around, I`ll be back with more