One of my most trusted friends from the good ol’ days turned up like a bad penny last week, with a new wife, a new truck, with the same outlook on life and a hankerin’ to run down as many people still alive from the era we shared as we could find in the 48 hours his tangled schedule would allow.

He showed me his new truck and wife along with the current cost and upkeep statistics of each and I showed him my new pocket knife that Lonnie Aldridge gave me to replace the one I’d carried for years and lost a few weeks ago after I foolishly allowed myself to be pushed out of an airplane.

He showed me his surgery scars he’d accumulated since our last encounter and I showed him my current listed status of delinquent bills and lawsuits. He upstaged me again with a display of notices from the IRS. I thereafter was forced to show him the remains of my whiskey still and gained a few points which he quickly recovered by showing me documents of a denied insurance claim.

While we cruised the backroads of the Devil’s Triangle looking for survivors of the good ol’ days we ran over 2 (two) fine specimens of fox squirrels and one careless rattlesnake as well as an unlucky possum which we salvaged for our supper.

We also discussed and disputed issues of politics on national as well as local levels (after unloading our pistols, of course) while we waited in a “redneck retriever” (large farm tractor) to tear the bumper off the new truck so it would be lighter and easier to extract from one of the two mud holes we’d discovered and named after our ex-wives.

We looked at all the places we could find that were no longer there and then reloaded our pistols (since we were through by then with politics) and wasted our ammunition on the empty containers that had accumulated in the new truck and also on an armadillo that somehow got caught in the crossfire, that we couldn’t remember how to cook.

It didn’t go to waste, however, because we found a tequila bottle and created a most interesting display on Mayor Barlow’s lawn in Crenshaw.

Well, at some point thereafter the new wife, having had enough of good ol’ boy shenanigans, cited and enforced the Cuss and Seizure Law, that all Southern Mothers use, and commandeered the keys and what was left of the new truck and drove us to Moccasin Bend and spanked us all soundly and put us to bed.

Still growin’ up
Ricky