Stranger- chapter seven: Mississippi

.Pomade Vendor: I can get the part from Bristol. It’ll take two weeks, Here’s your pomade.

Ulysses Everett McGill: Two weeks? That don’t do me no good.

Pomade Vendor: Nearest Ford auto man’s Bristol.

Ulysses Everett McGill: Hold on. I don’t want this pomade. I want Dapper Dan.

Pomade Vendor: I don’t carry Dapper Dan, I carry Fop.

Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, I don’t want Fop, goddamn it! I’m a Dapper Dan man!

Pomade Vendor: Watch your language, young feller, this is a public market. Now if you want Dapper Dan, I can order it for you, have it in a couple of weeks.

Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, ain’t this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!

-Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?

    

       We as humans are instinctually compelled to seek the significance in our natural born habitat. It’s a place we and others may take for granted often. But we don’t choose where we come from. Jackson, Mississippi is not L.A. or Seattle or Atlanta or New York City by far. It’s a small city trapped in a big town. Surrounding communities fit the stereotypical conventions of mundane, one-dimensional, country-living life as seen on Andy Griffith or The Dukes of Hazard.  Many never leave Mississippi. The dream of the farm and the tractor and the payoff from long hours of physical labor is the dream of many. The simple life becomes just a matter of keeping it simple.

Stranger-chapter one: Waiting For The Sun

My father once said to me: "I'd rather be cold than hot. You can always put more on, but you can't always take more off."

 I have perpetually found his wisdom to be admirable. He seemed to slink through many of life’s troubling situations with a fluid-like adaptability; always denying the end as the final end. Wisdom is found in options. It’s better to have a choice to make than to allow fate to make it for you.

Stranger- chapter two: We Can Be Heroes

We all have heroes. Some of us are more inclined than others to identify who our heroes are. 

           A hero can be someone close and accessible: Mom, Dad, Grandma, an uncle or a schoolteacher; someone with a tangible and absorbent influence. Lessons of nobility, character, integrity, and wisdom transfer seamlessly as we find ourselves silently and subconsciously striving to emulate those we admire.

Stranger- chapter three: That Seventies Kid

Being the music lover I am, I have often boasted of a birthday that falls on the day after Elvis Presley's, the same day as Joan Baez’s, and the day before Rod Stewart‘s. (As if it is some badge of honor to pin on my lapel. We all take pride in something, right?)

Stranger- chapter four: A Disturbance In The Force (part one)

       As one decade faded into another life was business as usual. Mid-South Wrestling was my go-to ritual on Saturday afternoons. Long before it was the flashy, glitzy, money making behemoth it is today, fans appealed to its novelty; an identifiable testosterone-filled, cheap dramatic soap opera for men, scripted and contrived. I didn't mind the phoniness.

Stranger- chapter four: A Disturbance in the Force (part two)

 I've Got a Bad feeling About This

       With summer fast approaching and the world still existing despite some faulty quack prognoses, I looked forward to my self-motivated Saturday morning ritual of cereal, cartoons, and all-day bicycle riding and exploring. The fast track to lazy, hazy days was upon me... so I thought.

Stranger- chapter four: A Disturbance In The Force (part three)

Bullies

With Mamaw around, the bullies in the new neighborhood were of little concern. There were four of them; two sets of half-brothers. As implied, country life also meant that wrestling and brawling were spectator driven recreational sports, much like fighting chickens or dogs. Of the four, the youngest fit my weight class. I proved many times I could best him in all categories whether skill, strength, or endurance. Yet I did not recognize that doing so would only bring more problems.

Stranger- chapter five: Nothin' but a Good Time

Living in The Village Apartments in 1985 may not have the best environment for an impressionable twelve-year-old boy knocking on the door of puberty. It was the perfect fertile habitat for a preteen male to indulge in various cultural curiosities. Long gone were the days of hanging out in the backyard with the squirrels, turtles, rabbits, and deer.  Yet we had simple rules: As long as we stayed within the fence line; we roamed anywhere on the grounds we pleased. That only guaranteed a speeding car barreling down Raymond Road at 50 plus miles an hour wouldn’t smash us. Yet even with that concern as elementary kids, we walked to school every day. 

Stranger- chapter six: Stupid and Contagious

Being a latch-key kid meant that life between the hours of 2 and 5 Monday

through Friday resembled either an episode of The Little Rascals or a chapter straight

out of Lord of the Flies. I now lived in much closer proximity to others who shared

this same circumstance.