Well, it wasn’t a Moccasin Bend reunion. It was a family reunion. If you are familiar with those occasions down here in Mississippi, you’ll know that after everybody got fed, the men snuck around behind the tool shed from time to time for a  libation while the women pretended not to notice.

Don’t think for a minute that those wives and mothers don’t know what’s going on. They’ll turn their heads and look the other way until the situation gets out of hand, which seldom happens cause the men know better than to act (or even be caught with) a fool.

After the aforementioned qualifications are met, the fun begins, in the form of the outrageous behavior of your ancestors. (You can tell the truth about deceased relatives and not get sued or shot about honest comments or misinterpreted observations.)

I’d made a trip or two or three to the tool shed myself that day.

So I didn’t get to hear everything  about anything, but some interesting and confusing bits and pieces floated up, liked peeled bananas in a punch bowl.

Things like: “Do you remember when Uncle Taylor got caught by game wardens with a dead jackass and 43 rabbits in a jeep and had to go to court?

“He told the judge that he was sick and tired of reckless drivers killing things and leaving them on the road to stink up the countryside unattended, while his coon dogs needed meat.”

He was acquitted because the judge appreciated the value of a good pack of coon hounds and had a taste for rabbit gravy down at Moccasin Bend occasionally.

He dismissed all charges against Uncle Taylor and publicly chastised the arresting officer in open court for interfering with the feeding rights of a buzzard, which is a protected species.

He also said, “This court cannot hold anyone responsible for killing and consuming a domestic animal, even if it is a jackass.”

And whopped that legal hammer down and chunked everybody out of the courthouse except for Uncle Taylor.

We never figured out what they talked about because Uncle Taylor wouldn’t say and we knew better than to ask the judge.

After all, even though he released Uncle Taylor, he’d compared him to a vulture and an eater of carrion. Fortunately nothing was mentioned about a whiskey still.

Stuck in the good old days,
Ricky Harpole.