J.D. Moye and Mule-Speak
Did I ever mention
that J.D. was bi-lingual? He spoke mule, and I was impressed from the
first time I ever heard him as he plowed a field with “Ol’ Buck”, his
all-time favorite mule.
“Saaa, Buck. Saa back”, he said
with a kind of in-charge authority, as he backed ole Buck into
position. When the plow lines were attached to the harness and trace
lines to the collar, J.D. would holler, “Come up”, adding a clicking
sound from his cheek that took years to master – and with a shake of
the trace lines, Buck would move forward. J.D. would grab the
plowshare, planting it deeply into the ground, and with expert skill he
and Buck would plow a straight furrow through the Georgia red clay.
Only an occasional, “Gee” or “Haw” command to Buck to keep him straight
was all that was necessary.
But there was a whole lot more to
it than that. The communication between man and mule has many
subtleties. Tone and volume of voice communicate how FAR to Gee or Haw.
(Buck himself also became quite fluent in understanding cuss words,
especially those that mention God or even Buck’s mother.)
At the end of a furrow, timing
between man, mule and response time became critical. The mule would
have to continue forward until the plow reached the end. Then there was
a rapid series of “Gee”s or “Haw”s (depending on which way the field
was being worked), while J.D. completed his turn with the plow and
lifted it out of the ground— turning it, re-planting it in the other
direction, while simultaneously trying to keep Buck from walking
through the just finished furrow.
As a kid, I was in awe of this
man-mule bond of communication that I was witnessing. It was poetry in
motion —man and beast working in harmony against the reluctant soil and
the ever-present rocks that would jolt the plow out of a man’s hands.
This was usually followed by a series of “Whoa’s”, intersperced with
the aforementioned cuss words. You see, the man has to hold the plow
with both hands, while trying to maintain control of the trace lines
that helped guide the mule. After a while, when the mule seemed to have
gotten the idea of the pattern being worked, the man (J.D. in this
case) would place the tracelines around his neck. If the mule continues
in a forward direction after the man has been stopped by an
obstruction, it can get very uncomfortable very quickly.
Some of the terms I still remember…
Gee – Right turn
Haw – Left turn
Saa – Back up in a straight line
Haw back – back up to the left
Gee back – back up to the right
Come up – move forward
Come up, chk chk – move forward faster
Whoa – stop
WHOA – stop NOW!
WHOA, you %#^@%ing sonova bitch – I really, really insist that you stop all forward motion this instant.
Good thing ole Buck had a sense of humor!
TRUCK STOP
(Autobiographical Fiction)
PHONE-FOOD-GAS-LODGING,
the sign read as Brew thankfully exited onto the off-ramp. He had been
driving for almost eight hours straight, and the gas gauge was bouncing
on empty. Good thing, too, because he almost fell asleep about
twenty miles back, when a semi passed him on the left, airhorns
blaring. He had swerved into the emergency lane, then pulled cautiously
back onto the highway—adrenalined back into full heart-pounding
wakefulness.
A heavy fog was setting in as he
pulled into the Little America Truck Stop—Diner—Rooms for the Night.
After filling his tank and swiping his VISA card through the slot, he
went into the diner.
The lone waitress, who looked an
awful lot like the big-haired lady from the Longhorn Steakhouse
commercial, waved him over to a table.
"Whatcha having, cowboy?" she asked in a whiskey-toughened voice.
"Steak and eggs with a pitcher of
draft, Ma’am" Brew answered, still not quite over his near-death
experience on the highway.
"Fresh outta eggs, partner. How about some grits instead?"
"Sure, that'll be fine," Brew
said, looking over her shoulder at the picture on the wall behind the
counter. It was a night scene of a section of highway that looked very
familiar.
Too familiar, thought Brew, but from where?
On the right side of the road
were skid marks going off the shoulder, and just the tail section of a
semi leaving the top left-hand side of the picture.
Odd, because when he first
noticed the picture, he could have sworn that the cab of the truck was
in the frame.
Sitting there smoking a
cigarette, he reflected over the many times he had almost "bought the
farm" by driving too long, too drunk, or too distracted to not be a
danger to himself or others on the road. It seemed that each time there
was the feeling afterwards of having come through it, not by his
superior driving skills, but by some other "Force" that had done the
right thing at the right moment to save his hide.
When the waitress sloshed his
pitcher of beer down in front of him, it snapped him back to the
present.
"Law says I got leave two mugs
for the brew. Tell `em your friend's in the john if anybody asks, okay?"
"Sure," said Brew as he filled
both mugs. Looking up at the picture again he almost spilled the rest
of the pitcher. There was no truck rear end in it. The road was now
empty and there was a cloud of dust over the skid marks that left the
paved surface. He wanted to ask someone else about it, but he was the
only customer in the diner.
I must be more tired than I thought, he mused. Or it’s those 60's flashbacks kicking in, he almost said aloud.
The fog was getting worse
outside. He could see it out the window, past his own reflection in the
glass. Then he noticed that he could also see the picture on the wall
behind him reflected there as well. Now a car seemed to be in the
center of the frame just where the skid marks had been.
That looks like MY car, he almost vocalized again.
Turning around and looking at the
picture again, he was interrupted by the waitress bringing his food.
"Is that one of those trick photography pictures there, Miss?"
"What, that old thing? she
laughed. "It's just an old thing I picked up at a yard sale. I liked it
because it was so plain. Just a section of road with half a truck
a’showin'. It's just like the highway out front—for twenty miles in
either direction."
When he looked back at the table
in front of him, it was empty. No beer, no food… nothing! He turned
again to stop the waitress.
She must be crazy! I haven't even finished the first mug—and the steak… it smelled so good...
When he stood to try to find her, he was suddenly back outside in his car. That quick.
"How in the hell did I get out
here?" he asked the empty parking lot, his voice sounding hollow and
spooky—like something you would hear in a nightmare.
He closed his eyes and rubbed them. When he opened them again, the truck stop was gone.
Even through this fog I should be able to see the lights…
He opened the door and got out. A
truck passed by going at least seventy, its headlights briefly
illuminating the area around him. His car was off the shoulder of the road,
and at least twenty feet from the road itself. Skid marks connected his
rear wheels back to the emergency lane.
"God, what a dream," he said, not quite sure of THAT reality either. I don’t even remember pulling off the road.
He could still smell that steak, and he really did want a beer.
Getting back into his car, he was
almost surprised when it cranked immediately. He pulled out onto the freeway and continued on towards the next exit.
"Gotta get gas and food and beer,
doo-dah, doo-dah," he sang out the open window to the tune of "Camptown
Races".
"Well, THAT looks familiar," he said when he saw the sign up ahead.
PHONE-FOOD-GAS-LODGING
After filling his tank and
swiping his VISA card through the slot, he went into the diner. The
waitress, who looked an awful lot like the big-haired lady from the
Longhorn Steakhouse commercial, waved him over to a table.
"Whatcha having, cowboy?" she asked in a whiskey-toughened voice.
With a feeling of dread,
Brew, holding his breath, looked up slowly at the picture behind the
counter...
By Phil Whitley - © 2003
LARGE-LEAF IVY
(A true story)
"There's a new guy
moving in at the old Sikes place," my friend Bobby Lee told me as we
free-wheeled down Cabbage Patch Hill on our mostly homemade bikes.
"He's got one o' those new trailer homes. Wanna go watch `im?"
"Sure," I said as we rounded the
curve that led to the main crossroads and heart of Pine Mountain
Valley, Georgia, home of both our families for at least three
generations of very southern folk. "Are there any kids with `im?" New
kids were always objects of interest to us.
"Nah, didn't see any kids. Not
even a wife, I don't think," Bobby Lee said as we neared the scene of
an elderly bald-headed man working on the awning of a really neat
Airstream travel trailer. He was putting the wrought-iron looking
supports up that would hold up the eight foot awning.
"Need any help, mister?' I asked
him, really just wanting to find out more about him so we could tell
our parents about "the new guy". Parents used their kids as spies in
all circumstances like this, so they wouldn't be considered nosey. It
was okay for kids to ask the really good questions like, "Where ya
from? What's yer name? How long are you plannin' on stayin’?"—things
like that.
"Well, my name is Howard, and I
have recently retired. I am from New Jersey and I plan to live here a
long, long time." Only he said, "New Joisey," and he talked really
fast. Our "YANKEE" flags went up! Now our job was to get him talking so
we could hear more of this strange new language.
We helped him for the rest of the
afternoon, said goodbye at sundown and went home to submit our reports.
The following weekend I was
headin' over to Bobby Lee's house and saw Mr. Howard working around his
porch again. This time he was down on his knees planting something at
the base of the porch supports.
"Whatcha doin' Mr. Howard?" I asked as I leaned my bike against his mailbox.
"Planting Large Leaf Ivy." He said as he wiped the sweat from his face.
"Where'd you get it?" I inquired
as I helped him push the dirt around the bulb of an all-too-familiar
vine.
"Back there at the edge of the
forest," he replied. "There’s lots of it back there. Want some to take
home?" The word "forest" was another clue to his yankeeness. We would
have said "woods".
I carefully suppressed my grin
and replied, "No thanks. We've already got lots of it." I watched him
as he watered, then fertilized both plants at the two corners of his
porch. I couldn't wait to tell my parents what I had seen and I had to
leave before he asked me what the heck I was grinnin' about.
I felt kinda bad about two months
later for not tellin' him what it was he had planted, because by then
you could barely make out the outline of his trailer beneath the canopy
of Kudzu, the Large Leaf Ivy of the South!
Phil Whitley
© 2003
THE HEADLESS TURTLE HORROR
(A true story)
Water dripping from our oars was
the only sound on the night-blackened waters of Phantom Lake as my
uncle and I worked our trotline we had set up earlier that afternoon.
The yellow circle of light from the kerosene lantern made it feel like
we were in a balloon drifting through black space.
I rode in the bow of the little
jonboat and lifted the line from the water as my uncle in the stern
removed the catfish and re-baited the hooks. I was a little leery of
what we would find because we had seen the head of a huge catfish
someone had caught and left on the bank near our campsite. It was
larger than my 12-year-old head, and Uncle Bob said it must have been
at least a seventy-five pounder.
Suddenly the line started jerking
and I was a'hollerin’ "HELP", and Uncle Bob was a'hollerin’, “DON'T LET
GO!” and rocking the boat violently as he tried to make his way up
front with me.
Together we lifted this huge
turtle out of the water and got it into the boat. It probably
weighed ten or fifteen pounds and was being very ornery. “He’s
swallowed the hook,” Uncle Bob said. “Good thing we’re almost done so
we can take him back to camp.”
I was feeling sorry for the
turtle because we couldn’t get the hook out, so Uncle Bob had me pull
real hard on the line, pulling the turtle’s head way out of his shell.
Then my uncle chopped his head off. Gross as that was, it was kind of a
relief knowing the turtle wasn’t suffering any longer.
We soon had all the catfish
dressed and iced down, except for the two we fried and ate right there
on the bank of the lake. We soon got into the tent and zipped ourselves
into our sleeping bags for the night.
All night long I kept hearing
something moving around in the dark outside, but my uncle didn’t seem
worried so I went back to sleep.
When we got up the next morning,
I was horrified to see that headless turtle still slowly stumbling
around, bumping into things, turning the coffee pot over, walking
through the hot coals of the fire and becoming the object of nightmares
for many years to come.
“He’s just looking for his head,” my uncle said with a grin.
That didn’t help a bit.
Phil Whitley
© 2002
THE OLD ROCK
(Pure fiction - or is it?)
The old rock had stood since the
beginning of time. Its surface smoothed by wind, rain and ice, it had
survived flood, fire and the ravages of time. It lay on the convergence
of ley lines of the ancient plan, but had no plan of its own. It just
was—a rock—and it was perfect in its existence.
A man had died lying against it
once. The rock absorbed the blood and fear and pain, but the man was
unaware. He had felt the warmth of the rock and had appreciated
its shelter, but still had died feeling alone.
The rock too was unaware of the
change, for its purpose was to be a rock. The subtle change in its
power was still too insignificant.
Many years passed with no human
ever seeing the rock, or passing within its realm. But it still
remained. It was a rock. It was doing its job. A tree took root
near its base, grew to a hundred feet tall and died, falling across it.
The tree returned to dust and the rock remained. The vital force of the
tree joined that of the man who had died there, but still the change
went unnoticed.
Once, some men cleared the trees
from its surroundings and made it the center of their holy ground. It
was still a rock. Then the men began to use it as their altar. Blood
was spilled upon it. Men, women and children gave up their lives lying
upon it, their blood and life forces drained into it, but it still
remained a rock.
Then men began to worship it and
offered sacrifices to it. They carved its surface into an evil face,
and offered even more blood to it. But it was still a rock, but now the
changes were beginning to take effect. It slowly became aware of its
existence, but it was not really the rock that became aware, it was the
collective awareness of the events surrounding it.
The blood and the spirits of
those who had died upon it began to cry out from the other realm. The
rock felt the change and began feeling. It was no longer unaware, but
the awareness it felt was not that of a rock.
And then it began to crumble. It
returned to dust and unawareness, for that was the only chance in its
existence to do anything—and it chose the path of rightness.
Phil Whitley
© 2003