There's a Horse on My Porch

 When the DD's rolled into town, it was an experience to say the least.  Like I've said before, they were not looked at by the community as the model citizens or the kind of folks you would want to sit at your supper table and visit.  But for me it was different!  I never saw them like society saw them.  They were rough looking customers and I'm sure they were really scary to some.  Not to me!  The rough and tough exterior didn't show as much as the actions they showed to my family and myself.  The president of the Club was one of my favorites because he was so good to me.  If he didn't strangle me when I turned my dog loose on him, he must have had a soft spot for me.  I had never seen a man with a gold tooth, turquoise jewelry, leather jacket, (and my personal favorite) a naked lady tattoo on the inside of his arm.  Those things didn't matter to me!  When he would come to see my grandparents, I would stand close to his side and look up at his 6'4 frame and feel like I had a friend who would do anything for me.  I know without a shadow of a doubt if I had been hurt by someone, all I would have to do is go to him and tell him what had happened.  I don't know what the group would've done to the person, but I am sure I would never have to fear them hurting me again.  

Looking back now I realize how Dan had the heart to look out for my Daddy.  Daddy loved to ride his motorcycle and dreamed of the day when he could wear the "cut" and ride with the club.  Dan knew my Daddy wasn't a mean man, nor could he fight and do the things needed to be done to be part of the club.  It was never a possibility of him being a member of the club because Dan wouldn't have it.  One day when Daddy came back from the clubhouse, our car was missing its radio.  Mama threw a fit and asked him why our car was missing the radio.  Daddy said, "Well one of the boys at the clubhouse needed it because he didn't have one in his car".  When Mama heard his explanation, she loaded me up in the "radio-less" Zephyr and headed to the clubhouse with smoke rolling and lifters knocking.  She honked the horn and one of the guys came to the door.  He automatically yelled for Dan because this guy had no interest in dealing with this crazy woman with a little girl hanging out the window!  Dan came to the door to see who was outside, and then walked to our car. Mama proceeded to bless him out and demanded our radio back.  After a few minutes and a phone call later, our radio was installed where it came from.  After the installation and another good chewing out, Mama and me headed back for home with smoke still rolling and lifters knocking more than normal.   

The club would have some doozies of parties and as you would expect there was heavy drinking and loud music.  Fortunately, my parents were smart enough to not allow me anywhere near that kind of atmosphere.  The club loved to get fresh vegetables from my grandparent's garden, but if you get down to the truth of the matter, their favorite thing to do was drink my Paw's homemade wine.  This wine was pretty much alcoholic Kool-Aid, but it got the job done.  The dad of one of the "Old Ladies" had a farm on a couple of roads down from my grandparents.  Daddy R's farm had horses and cows and a big pond that Granny and me would visit quite often.  One hot summer day, my Granny was taking a break from her chores and was sitting on the front porch.  One of our past times was sitting on the porch watching cars go by, and Granny throwing up the occasional bird finger at cars she thought were going too fast.   This day in particular wasn't much different than any other.  The cars were extra fast, so Granny was already worked up and the bird finger had been working overtime.  During a break in the action, Granny heard something strange.  She couldn't figure out what the noise was, but it was getting louder as every second passed.  When the "clopping" sound got really close she looked to her left.  Granny realized the noise was from a white horse trotting up the road.  On that horse was Dan!  He had gone to Daddy R's house and found a horse in the pasture.  After he saddled the horse, he made his way to Turkey Hop Hill.  Held the reigns in one hand and a bottle in the other.  Dan was singing and laughing as he turned the horse into the driveway where he stopped at the bottom of the steps.  There were steps on the north side of the porch, and also a set leading out of the front door facing the road.  Granny was sitting near the north side steps where had Dan stopped.  My Granny was a spit fire and was ready for a fight anytime and anywhere.  Dan was tanked up on homemade wine and beer and he started giving Granny a hard time about what he was going to do.  He told her he was going to sit on the porch with her, but he was going to ride the big white horse up the steps to do this. After several exchanges back and forth, Dan back the horse and proceeded to ride up the steps.  Granny yelled and said she was going to get the shot gun and run him off, but that threat didn't faze Dan.  He was determined to ride that horse up on the porch.  He had made it halfway up the steps when Granny came out of the house carrying a shot gun.  She pointed that shot gun right at the horse's nose and told Dan if he didn't want his horse and himself to bite the dust, he better back it down the steps and be on his way.  Dan thought he may need to take this little woman serious because she would probably honor her word.  He carefully backed the horse back down the steps and hit the road with the horses' shoes clopping at a faster pace than when he was on his way.  After he was out of sight, Granny put the shot gun under her arm and went back inside.  She put the gun back in the rack and went back out on the porch to continue her relaxing and bird flipping.  A few days later Dan came back to visit.  After he had sobered up, he realized what he had done.  He had scared the lady who fed him when he was hungry, showed he and his friends love, had just been all around good to him.  Those thoughts were more than he could stand.  He told Granny how sorry he was, and how that kind of thing would never happen again.  Dan kept that promise and he never came back to see my grandparents in that condition again.  Many years later, I was able to visit Dan on his death bed.  He had been told I was coming the next day to see him, and he was happy.  He started telling stories of "that little black headed fiddle playing girl who had a mean streak a mile wide".  When I got to the clubhouse where he was staying, he had already gone into a coma.  I talked to him in the hope he could hear me.  I thanked him for being good to me when I was a little girl and leaving me with an endless number of good memories.  The next day I was contacted by his club brothers to tell me he had passed away.  I was invited to the funeral and of course I went.  It was unlike any funeral I had ever been too!  I'm not sure if it was the Hank Jr. and AC/DC music playing, or the people passing around the Old Crow whiskey bottle.  Either way, I was able to say goodbye to an old friend who may have been scary to others, but to me he was just my friend.... Dan....

Home Sweet Home Brew

 

The memories I have of living in "the old trailer" have flooded my mind and lifted my spirits here lately.  I have said before, I'm no different than anybody else and I have some not so fun memories.  Like the old Flatt and Scruggs song says, "I know all the good things outweigh the bad".  I lived down the hill from my grandparents for the first 10 years of my life.  I like to refer to those years as DDY and ADY.  Of course, that means During Drinking Years, and After Drinking Years!  In 1985, Daddy put the beer down and didn't drink again.  Because of that we bought a house, and had it moved to the backside of my Grandparent's property and made a nice home where I lived until I married.  Mama wasn't much of a drinker, and the only time I ever saw her with a cigarette in her mouth, was when she was mad at Daddy.  Now, he wasn't much of a smoker either, but he had a tendency to want to look tough.  Oh yeah, he was a real tough looking guy coming in at 5'6 and 130lbs (soaking wet)! During the DYs we would make 2 (sometimes 3 if it was an emergency) trips to the beer store.  We lived in a dry county and couldn't buy alcohol.  We mostly would drive to Etowah County, but on rare occasions we would go to Morgan County.  I will never forget trips to the beer store. I have always struggled with ear problems since I was a small child.  I would have ear infections on a regular basis.  Daddy would usually get home from work around 3:30 pm, and on beer run days, we would leave not long after he got home.  There were days when I had an earache so bad, I would get in the backseat of the car and lay my head down on the seat and sleep the entire way.  Those were the not so fun days.  There were other days when I wasn't sick, I was happy to take a drive.  I wasn't allowed to go in with Daddy, but he would always get me a treat.  My favorite surprise was when he would bring me a Yoo Hoo, Slim Jim, and a pickled egg.  That one makes me laugh every time.  To this day I can put a hurtin' on a jar of picked eggs.  These days I shy away from the Yoo Hoos and Slim Jims with them, but I like to enjoy them all separately.  One time we went to a different store.  I was just learning to read, and I asked Mama, "what are cold bevers?".  She said, "WHAT?"  I asked her again what cold bevers were.  Confused, she said she didn't know what a cold bever was and asked me where I saw it.  It told her it right there on the side of the building.  She read the sign, and it said, "Cold Beverages!".  Still to this day when we pass that old building, I think about the cold bevers the sold.

  

My uncle, who was my Mama's Sister's husband, loved his beer too.  I can still smell him right now.  He ALWAYS had a smell of beer on him and I'm not sure it didn't ooze from his skin acting like cologne due to the amount he drank.  The difference between Daddy and my uncle was my uncle made his own beer.  He was a pro at this process, and never seemed to make a mistake.  I Daddy would have admitted it, he was quite envious of Uncle D for being able to create such a product.  Daddy and Uncle D worked at the same place, but Uncle D was "fancy" because he worked where the air conditioning was!  Daddy worked in the nastiest unhealthy places in the plant.  He had watched Uncle D come home from a hard day's work and have beer on hand with never having to take the Oregon Trail to buy what he drank.  One day Uncle D talked Daddy into making his own home brew!  He walked him through the process and gave him all of the pointers he could give.  Daddy went to the store and bought all of the supplies and came home to get started.  He used a SMALL bedroom we used for a closet as his laboratory.  After he got everything set up, the room resembled a high school biology lab.  Just to be honest, there was probably more success produced from that school lab than came from that closet.  Daddy needed one more item he had forgotten at the store, so of course, we loaded up in the Zephyr and headed out.  After we got home, he began putting the ingredients together and just all around making sure everything was secured and processing nicely.  A couple of days later I was dancing around the house in my favorite clogging shoes when I heard a boom.  I dropped to the floor because I knew our gas stove had blown up from my dancing showcase!  When everything was deemed ok, I went back to clogging down our hallway again.  The smell hit me first, then I noticed my taps stopped tapping.  Before my eyes could look to the floor, my feet flew out from under me, and I found myself in a pool of soured water.  I looked to my right and saw the laboratory had exploded!  There was soured liquid shooting straight up in the air and foam rolling out of the plastic tubs.  Mama had realized what was going on and she started her war chant like our ancestors did before going to battle with the neighboring tribes.  She started a frenzied fit of throwing towels and yelling for Daddy using words that had nothing to do with "I love you".  Before Mama's frantic clean up attempt started, she grabbed me by the arm and started to drag me from the battlefield just like a proud soldier would by not leaving his war brothers behind.  I was screaming and crying because I was soaking wet in this rotten smelling liquid, but mostly I was upset because my tap shoes had gotten wet and wouldn't tap with the rattle like I liked.  Daddy walked in and got a glimpse of his lab.  He splashed through the carnage like a road runner running from a coyote!  He had the big tub in one hand, a bucket under his arm, with another bucket in his other hand.  Just like when Mama had thrown out his favorite ceramic horse, Daddy was throwing buckets out the front door with all his strength.  After the mess was cleaned, and Mama had prayed for forgiveness for calling Daddy names that hadn't been created yet, they were able to gather their thoughts.  It took Daddy about 30 seconds to realize what he had done wrong.  He had decided he did NOTHING wrong, and he was the victim of a set up by Uncle D because he didn't want Daddy to succeed with anything because after all, Uncle D worked in the "fancy" part of the plant.  The more Daddy thought about it the madder he got.  Just when he couldn't take the thought of being set up by his brother-in-law anymore, he flew out of his favorite green Naugahyde chair, and stormed out the front door like a junkyard dog and headed down the hill to Uncle D's house chomping and snarling his lip.  Mama was yelling at him from our yard, but Daddy ignored her.  He was dead set to drag Uncle D out of his house and teach him a good lesson.  Uncle D had heard the commotion from our house and saw Daddy stomping toward his house.  Uncle D decided it was in his best interest to run inside and lock the doors.  Just as the front door slammed shut, Daddy started in.  He called Uncle D every ugly name he could come up with, but it had no effect on the locked door. He told Uncle D to come outside and take his medicine.  Uncle D and my aunt were standing behind the door laughing, which made Daddy even madder.  Keep in mind, Daddy was nowhere near the tough guy he thought he was, and Uncle D was less of a fighter than Daddy.  In reality Uncle D would run from Daddy, but if Daddy had caught him, it would have been nothing more than two first graders fighting on the playground.  With defeat in his eyes, Daddy marched up the hill toward home.  He told Mama to get in the car because we were not living in a place where he was going to be treated like that.  My tap shoes had dried by then, and Mama was settled down.  I grabbed my General Lee car (with my tap shoes still on) and loaded up in the Zephyr with the two bags Mama had packed for us.  Daddy cranked the car and revved the engine.  I guess he thought the rattle from the engine and the cloud of smoke from the muffler would teach Uncle D a lesson and show him he couldn't show his face again without the chance of getting his comeuppance.  We left the driveway with lifters knocking and smoke billowing.  While we were passing Uncle D's house, he and my aunt were standing on the porch waving.  Daddy gave them the finger and stomped the gas a little harder.  He was set and our bags were packed!  We were leaving the state, and nothing could stop us!  We made it over the road and circled the cemetery two or three times.  We eventually ended up at "Pecker head's" house.  This was Daddy's favorite bootlegger that actually had a drive through window on the side of his single wide trailer.  If you could drive through the graveyard of rusted cars, you had made it to the window, where he would hand your "package" down to you from the window.  After making his purchase, we drove back to Turkey Hop and went back inside our house.  I was so upset because I just knew we were going to a new place, and I was going to tap my happy self over every inch of the town.   The house still smelled of sour mash, and the supplies from Daddy's home brew laboratory were laying scattered in the front yard like a tomb raider had just raided a pharaoh's treasure chamber.  After his visit with Pecker head, he felt MUCH better, and decided to forgive Uncle D.  After the eruption of Mount Saint Home Brew, Daddy never attempted to make his own drink again.  This was a plus for me, because I knew I would get my pickled eggs, Slim Jims and Yoo Hoo's again.  What more could a kid ask for?