RRN Online Volume 320

August 10 '02

Volume 320

Three Snakes Shades Of Woody Guthrie

As I went walking that ribbon of asphalt Chicken Snake that defines our circular neighborhood on a relatively cool night during the merry month of May, my wife strode a few paces behind me. She may have a bit of Indian blood in her veins, though I imagine her position relative to mine had more to do with her having shorter legs than a reflection of respect for her “warrior” mate.

We had circled the neighborhood and were returning from the entrance to the Woodland Hills Subdivision, walking in a dimly lit section between Patterson Place and Montgomery Manor. It was there we encountered a walker’s worst fear, a snake. While some may believe a rottweiler deserves top honors in Things Walkers Fear, I’m persuaded otherwise.

I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the snake and peered closely at its markings from a safe distance of eight feet or so. The snake stopped, too, having crossed approximately two-thirds of the roadway. I checked to make sure Barbara was all right and seeing her still on her feet, I resumed peering at the snake. It appeared to be one of the critters my grandfather called a chicken snake, but without him on hand to confirm my identification and not wanting to be wrong, I continued to cautiously observe the snake.

A smaller snake, similarly marked, might not have intimidated me, but this one was about five feet long, and while I considered it non poisonous, I still did not wish to risk a snakebite. The snake remained immobile until I signaled Barbara to follow me as we crossed behind it. When it decided to head in the direction of its own tail, I obliged it. With the snake off the asphalt and our pathway clear, we continued our walk back to our house.

Judy Rutledge had warned my sister Sue in the spring that snakes would be prevalent this year. Sara Sue had shared the information with us. These days, we don’t walk as often after dark as we did in May, what with the weather being so hot and all. Anyway, October has nicer nights and fewer snakes.

As I went driving that ribbon of highway between Winona, MS, and French Camp, MS, in late June, I was enjoying the relatively traffic-free scenery when I spotted a snake slithering quickly across the highway from right to left. I don’t know how many others share my thoughts on snakes, but my first instinct tells me to kill. I continue to work on my respect for all living things, but some living things, snakes included, have had plenty of time to become extinct by now, so I figure they need a little help.

A part of me allows that if a snake is not posing a threat, I should leave it alone. Yet, when I think of all the potential it has to cause another harm or frighten the wits out of someone, I’m inclined to destroy it. Thus as I watched the snake speed its way across the road in front of me, I instinctively aimed for it.

“That little sucker is getting it!” I mused to myself in intelligent, readily understandable, scientific terms that quantify speed.

I was too far away to identify the snake, but if speed were indicative of it’s name, it would have been another of the types of snakes my grandfather talked about. He’d have said it was a blue racer.

The road was straight. There was no car behind me, and I was not meeting an oncoming vehicle, so I decided to go for it. With my skills as a driver, my plan was to cross into the left lane applying the brakes at the point of impact, forcing the weight of the motor to bear more heavily on the front tires and “rubbing out” the slithering little sucker.

Until the next instance, I had never given much thought to the validity of reincarnation, but I may have to reconsider my position. The snake must have realized it didn’t have a prayer if it kept going, so it put a move on me that would have made O.J. Simpson or Jim Brown proud, and it could be the snake is a reincarnation of some former great athlete. It raised its head and did a one eighty right on the spot, making a beeline to the other side, effectively faking me out of my shoes.

Its reversal took me by surprise, so I made a last second adjustment in my direction and attempted to hit the snake. It was too fast, and I’d swear I saw it coiled up with laughter, in my rear view mirror, as I glanced back. That’s not true, because I was too busy trying to regain control of my fishtailing automobile, having swerved trying to kill the snake.

“You dummy,” I remember thinking. “You could have wrecked your car, maybe killed yourself, all while trying to hit a stupid snake.”

Hopefully, I won’t make that mistake again.

As I was mowing that ribbon of grassland, which forms the boot heel of my sister’s backyard, roughly three weeks ago, I spied another snake just as I began to make my first turn near the wooded area.

“Son of a gun!” I mused.

I don’t know where such lofty sounding phrases arise. They just spring up in the heat of battle or panic.

“It’s a chicken snake…smaller than the one Barbara and I saw back in May,” I reasoned. “Should I leave it alone? If I do so, will it later scare the daylights out of my sister or one of her neighbors? I know what, I’ll run the lawn mower over it, and if it keeps low and doesn’t get chopped to pieces, I’ll respect that as its destiny.”

I steered the John Deere lawn tractor directly over the snake and heard nothing but the sound of the engine and whirring blades, until the snake apparently raised its head. When it did so it was promptly discharged from beneath the mower in small sections roughly six inches in length.

“Score one for Adam and Eve,” I thought, guiltlessly.

After all, I didn’t kill the snake. It could remain motionless and survive or it could raise up its head and die. I merely allowed it to make a choice. Granted it was less of a choice than the raccoons Jerry Clower told of when hunters dislodged them from trees to waiting hounds below. They had a sporting chance and could choose or not “to whup the dogs and walk away.”

Snakes may have been the most beautiful creatures that inhabited the Garden of Eden, but after being cursed by God and caused to crawl upon their bellies, some of their glamour was lost. This summer I’ve seen three live snakes, and that was three too many.

Thibodaux & Back It Goes With The Territory

If there’s one thing my company has trouble excusing it is an employee’s absence if that employee is to be involved in a new affiliation. When SUPERVALU gets a new customer, we are expected to do everything in our power to arrange our individual schedules to accommodate the new customer. Sometimes that means working on a weekend. Sometimes that means rescheduling a vacation or time off. Since the customer is part of the lifeblood of the company, such accommodations are understandable.

I had been told that we were on the verge of beginning partial service to a fourteen-store group in south Louisiana, known as Rouses. The competitive nature of the grocery business, one that is now dominated by chain supermarkets, makes it even more important that companies that supply independent retailers be open for opportunities to capture whatever business is available.

One of the hats I wear for SUPERVALU is “Order Machines.” It is my responsibility to distribute the order machines, and when retailer groups are involved, it falls my lot to train the new users how to use our equipment. There’s still enough “teacher” left in me for me to enjoy the training sessions, though I can’t always choose the training dates.

As the date of our recent fish fry neared, I was told to ready all the order equipment for the Rouses group, and to anticipate the training dates on the Wednesday and Thursday immediately before the fish fry. Knowing I planned to be on vacation those dates, I bargained for Monday and Tuesday instead and was successful.

Thibodaux, LA (pronounced tibbo-dough) is about a seven-hour drive from Pontotoc, but since the Tuesday meeting was scheduled to conclude by 1:00 p.m., I figured with a good tailwind, I’d be back in Pontotoc by seven, possibly eight o’clock that evening. Things seldom go as smoothly as planned.

A week earlier than the planned meeting, I loaded up my car with all the order machines and did not plan to return to Indianola until after the Monday after the fish fry. However, when my boss phoned me on the nineteenth of July to explain I needed to flash the order machines with a new program, I had to leave Memphis and drive to Indianola to reprogram the machines. That was a long Friday, as Fridays go.

I was also asked to be in Thibodaux early Monday morning, which meant I would have to travel most of the way on Sunday afternoon. The persons I met at the Rouses main office were cordial and accommodating, and the two training sessions on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning went smoothly enough.

I discovered the Rouses supermarkets were what folks in the food industry describe as “upscale conventional” or epicurean. The décor of the store’s interior looked expensive and tasteful, and the two stores I visited in Thibodaux and Houma, LA, each housed a franchised Quizno’s sandwich shop.

I think what most impressed me with the stores were the meat departments with the variety of offerings not found in supermarkets in north Mississippi. Then, one wouldn’t expect to find boneless stuffed whole fryers in north Mississippi. However, the Cajun influence seemed to dominate the meat department, which contained what looked like hundreds of varieties of smoked sausages, dozens of marinated and stuffed fryers or chicken parts, and something no self-respecting market in south Louisiana would be without, boudin, (pronounced boo-dan) which is a highly seasoned link sausage made of pork, pork liver, rice and Lord only knows what else.

I think the next time I have to go to Thibodaux or Houma I’ll pack an ice chest and bring back a huge supply of the delicious looking and delicious tasting meats. This last trip, I only bothered with a few shelf stable items and a small package of andouille smoked sausage. Now that I know what all is available, I’ll be better prepared on the next trip.

At two o’clock on the afternoon I left Houma, I stopped at a pay phone to participate in a conference call with my boss and other associates who report to him. I have the use of a cell phone but with a limit of 650 minutes each month, it’s difficult to stay within the budgeted time, if I use it for conference calls that last an hour or more each.

After standing in ninety-two degree heat, brushing worrisome ants off the phone and my feet for almost an hour and a half, I was pretty miserable by the time I got back on the road again. Forty minutes later I breezed through Hammond, LA, and while the sweat absorbed by my tee shirt had not completely dried, I was almost cooled down to something near comfortable.

As I roared past an eighteen-wheeler, I noted an unusual sound but dismissed it as exhaust noise coming from the big rig on my right. Yet, as I continued to move ahead of the truck, the Doppler effect was not working, and it dawned on me that I might be running on a flat tire. Moving into the right lane, I signaled my intent to pull onto the shoulder of the road. As I slowed, I could both feel and hear the flat tire.

“At least it’s the right rear tire,” I thought, “so maybe, since I won’t have my butt stuck out in the traffic I won’t get run over as I change it.”

My car is two years old, and I’ve never checked the spare tire, except to see where it was stowed. After removing everything (a lot of stuff) from the trunk and placing it inside my car, I lifted the floor of the trunk and began loosening the mechanism fastening the tire in its compartment. All I had to show for my effort was a scissor jack and a spare tire.

“Where the heck, (yes I really used heck) is the lug wrench?” I thought. “Did this thing get by an inspection without a lug wrench?”

Following a panicky search, I found the lug wrench concealed in a padded holder made of the same material as the padding of the well housing for the spare tire. I glanced at the traffic flowing by and wondered where all the helpful State Troopers were, the ones often seen assisting stranded motorists. For that matter, I wondered where all the helpful motorists were, too.

No one came to my aid, and after lying on my stomach, I managed to place the scissor jack in the correct location under the frame and soon had the flat off and the spare on. Somewhat dirtier and a lot sweatier, I got under way for the third time in as many hours.

Seeing that I was near Amite, LA, I phoned Nick Trabona, who owns three stores in the area to ask his recommendation regarding where to have a flat fixed or replaced. Nick recommended a tire company adjacent to Burger King.

Inside the waiting room of the tire store, I was soon called back to look at my tire. I was shown a large puncture hole where the tread and sidewall meet. I was also shown several knots on the sidewall. The tire had less than ten thousand miles on it, but it was done in by something that punctured it and the subsequent damage caused by running on the rim. I explained that since Nick Trabona recommended them to me, I expected the same special treatment and price afforded him. Though assured that would be the case, I have no way of knowing I wasn’t taken, except that a hundred dollars doesn’t sound too bad for a top of the line Cooper tire rated at 85,000 miles.

It was after four p.m. when I left Amite, and it was way past nine p.m. as I drove into Pontotoc. In less than twelve hours, I would be up and working on some of the last minute things that required my taking off a half week from work to prepare for the gathering of RRN readers and friends, a gathering, I might add, that turned out to be a most enjoyable event for guests as well as hosts.

Bodock Beau Women Who Frustrate Men

Males and females have been at odds with one another since Creation. You'd think with centuries of practice, we'd be more attuned to one another. Consider…

Women Drivers

Driving to the office this morning on the Interstate, I looked over to my left and there was a woman in a brand new Mustang, doing 75 miles per hour with her face up next to her rear view mirror putting on her eyeliner.

I looked away for a couple seconds, and when I looked back she was halfway over in my lane, still working on her makeup!

It scared me (I'm.... a man) so bad that I dropped my electric shaver, which knocked the donut out of my other hand.

In all the confusion of trying to straighten out the car, using my knees against the steering wheel, it knocked my cell phone away from my ear which fell into the coffee between my legs, splashed and burned…(I guess you know what), ruined the phone and DISCONNECTED AN IMPORTANT CALL!! DARN THEM WOMEN DRIVERS!!!

Contributed by Ken Gaillard

Old Folks In Bed

An older couple were lying in bed one night. The husband was falling asleep, but the wife was in a romantic mood and wanted to talk.

"You used to hold my hand when we were courting," she said.

Wearily he reached across, held her hand for a second, and tried to get back to sleep.

A few moments later she said, "Then you used to kiss me."

Mildly irritated, he reached across, gave her a peck on the cheek, and settled down to sleep.

Thirty seconds later she said, "You used to bite me on my neck."

Angrily, he threw back the bedclothes and got out of bed.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To get my teeth!"

Submitted by Kim Goslin

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