My Saturday, December 7, 2013...a tale of perseverance and the good things that await...

(This was written in the wake of Alabama's painful loss (that never happened by the way, I've successfully blocked the entire incident from my memory...just a little way of putting my devotion to football in perspective. Holds true to this day...despite our current struggles, I love this woman more today than I think I ever have. I thank God for giving me patience and the stick-to-itiveness to work with her to hold our family together, through thick and thin.)

I will honestly say that nothing, not the fact they're from the same state, nor the fact that the SEC can extend its streak by winning another BCSNCG, will ever make me root for the Barn. I hate them, pure and simple, and if that's wrong then this homeboy don't wanna be right. I will be Tomahawk choppin' their Lie-ger asses come BCS time, as I have to admit that in my younger years, I was a Noles fan. Second to Bama, of course, no one ever overrules the team in crimson. But I did have a little garnet and gold in my repertoire, as my uncle taught there during the Bowden heyday and I was able to catch some games during their memorable run.

For the sake of anti-Barn hoodoo, I'll offer this brief aside. I was at the 1989 Sugar Bowl between FSU and the Barn. It was my first bowl game (other than the Senior Bowl), and my uncle really lit up the town for me. The game fell on my birthday, and to this day, it was one of my best birthdays ever. Long story short, closely contested game, Barn fans all around us. FSU led late, but Reggie Slack had Auburn on the move. They drove the field and threatened to score from inside the red zone as the clock wound down. A TD would have given Auburn the win, but Neon Deion Sanders did what Deion does and plucked the would-be TD pass away from the Auburnite, sealing the FSU win. My most fond Florida State memory, and I for one hope to see it replayed in its full glory in Pasadena.

I just can't not spin y'all some kind of yarn, right? I mean, we don't have HooDoo, but that doesn't mean the stories aren't still worth tellin'. However, unlike the usual fare, this is something that is near and dear to OWB's hardened, Sith heart, not the usual zaniness but something from a thoughtful and reflective OWB. My usual readers may not like this story I'm about to tell, but if so, so be it. More zaniness will follow to be certain, but right now, this is something I just feel it appropriate to say. So if you wonderful ladies and gentlemen will indulge me, this tale goes a little something like this...

As for my Saturday, now last Saturday, that day marked the 12th anniversary of the day that this girl and I started a walk together over a rough and rocky path, something akin to scaling the sheer volcanic walls of Thermopylae while quivers of arrows zinged near our flesh. You see, we'd been screwing around (both literally and figuratively) with no plans for the future for over a year. Dating, I guess, but not really. You know, just friends, never called each other boyfriend and girlfriend, we were just good old fashioned F buddies. We'd break up, not talk for a week, then end up hanging out. It was a roller coaster, up and down, round and round. There was no reason for us to be anything more than "physical friends." We didn't have music, or movies, or books, or really anything else in common, but we were both lonely and took comfort in some rather crazy trysts in the most unimaginable places. Did things, crazy things. We were convenient for one another, but there was nothing that even approached the L word floating between the two of us at the time.

Well, the Good Lord, as He is oft to do, decided to give us a little wake-up call, a little shove from the diving board into the deep end of life. It happened on March 17, 2001, as this young drunken Irishman decided to throw caution to the wind, not out of some grand statement of free-spiritedness, but rather a state of total drunkeness. I did not protect myself from the thing of which I was most frightened, but rather just did what I wanted to do, responsible or not. After all, what were the odds that this would be the one time that she'd actually end up pregnant? The night ended as many others had, she in my arms, sharing a twin bed and an embrace that was warm in the superficial sense, but not glowing at that gutteral, deeply emotional level. Another night of drinking and a physical dalliance in the back bedroom at my mama's house, it seemed just like any other St. Patty's Day.

A few weeks later, I learned that I had fired the shot heard 'round the world...at least 'round my little world. "I'm pregnant..." I remember where I was standing, what I thought, how beautiful she looked when she said those words to me and how terrified I was of the prospect of what I had created. I pulled her close, gazed into the muddied pools of her deep brown eyes and told her that we'd figure it out, that everything would work out as it was supposed to.

Then hell broke loose, pregnancy hormones and immature male idiocy send us crashing through the ice and into the frigid depths below. We didn't speak for three months as my son grew in her belly. But the Good Lord softened our souls and led us back to one another. Mind you, it was not a smooth path, to be sure. I was so afraid of her leaving again that I didn't want to commit, figured we'd find the best way to raise the kid without getting married. After all, we were two smart, resourceful people. But it doesn't take smarts to raise a kid, I have since learned. It really just takes love.

On the evening of December 6, 2001, after months of prodding, I finally asked this beautiful woman to be my wife, not even knowing the full scope of what I had done. But I did know the full scope, or rather, the full circumference, of her belly, and I knew if this child, a boy and the only male heir to my family line, was to be born with my last name, then my time of running from the future was at its end. Without telling our family members, the following day, she and I went to the courthouse, where in a quick ceremony that until recently I was sure would have lasted longer than the marriage it bonded, we became husband and wife. In the legal sense, only. Two weeks later, on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, my son was born, pulled from his mama's belly and placed straight into my arms. The tears welled and glazed over as I gazed down at this halfling to whom I would be forever tied. He was, he is, a miracle. The pivotal, life-changing event of this, my rather tumultuous existence. I was ripped asunder emotionally: overjoyed but terrified, excited but with a full understanding that I was not up to the job the Lord had put in my hands. At least not yet.

We came home from the hospital on Christmas Eve, to a home in which we'd never lived. I single-handedly moved everything we had separately owned into a house I'd rented the day before while my new wife recuperated from the Caesarian. That first night, our first Christmas Eve together, we slept on a sleeper sofa (that bar!), my wife cussing me through her pain and disgust, my resentment and anger building with each word. It was a microcosm that proved to be representative of our first year of marriage. To be brief, that first year was tough. Almost insurmountable. But for some reason, God or the Universe or whatever you want to call the power that binds us all, held us fast to one another, through thick and thin, anger and resentment, fear and loathing. We clung tightly to the life preserver through it all, through colic and late power bills, a single $22K per year salary, the special needs of our first-born child, a hard-working but absent father and husband who had to run the roads while plying his trade, a woman still herself trying to learn how to be a mother and a wife on the shortest of learning curves.

Our relationship was one of tumult that first year, and for much of its first decade. It was a roller coaster ride, all strikes and gutters, no middle ground. We either loved one another demonstrably, or we hated each other with a fever too hot to touch. Earlier this year, I sincerely thought it was coming to an end. I had simply had enough. I got the feeling she was in the same place, and that she would easily and heartless walk away from the burning wreckage of the life we'd cobbled together without giving it two thoughts. I sought out legal advice. I talked to divorced friends for tips on dealing with the oncoming and seemingly unavoidable split. I prayed and knew that the answer was right there in front of me, yet, like a man groping in the dark for his glasses, it just always seemed frustratingly out of my reach. For the first time in my life, I had given up, given in, and resolved to myself that this outcome was something that I could no longer control, that everything would be over soon and the pain would go away.

But something strange happened. I was finally ready to have the be-all, end-all, "I want a divorce" talk with her, with all of the drama accorded to such ceremonies all too often in our society. But she beat me to it. Approached me, though we had not spoken of anything substantial in weeks, and told me she wanted to talk. I told her of my resolve. As those words passed my lips, I saw her break. That look on her face, half "seen a ghost," half anger, half sorrow (I know that's three halves, y'all, you know I ain't good at the maffs), told me that she too knew we had gone too far off course. I also saw that she was hurt enough by it to give me reason to believe that I had been wrong all along, that maybe there had been something worth saving, a shared point of emotion upon which we could rebuild the foundation of our home. We began to talk, not yell, but talk, which was something we hadn't done in one another's presence for quite some time. I, for once, felt her pain, understood the things I had done to make her feel marginal, unloved, unappreciated. And I voiced my long list of complaints to her, in many cases receiving the compassionate response, "I didn't even know that hurt you."

From that mere remaining thread of love between us, a single tatter found amongst the cutting room scraps of our failing marriage, we began to weave...slowly at first. But eventually, as our hands became more deft at the interlocking of those threads, our shared experiences, our common love for our children, our true naked and uncorrupted feelings for one another, we found out that we did love one another. That fabric of matrimony began to take on a whole new form, a beautiful form, a dense shawl to shield us from the coldness of the world, a thick armor to protect us from the barbs of those around us who think us strange. We realized that all along, in those moments when we thought there was nothing between us worth saving, that love had been glowing like an ember awaiting the wind of willingness to fan it into flame.

We are different people now, and we are not done with the tapestry that is our lives. After all, the loom is only half full, the spools still laden with rich thread for the weaving. We have many years to intertwine the fine wool of our marriage into something that we will one day look upon in wonder. Of all of the friends we had in our youth, we are the last couple standing. Of all couples, we are the ones who rode the rapids of matrimony and emerged on the other side, wet and bruised but still in the same raft. At the get-go, I wouldn't have put money on us completing the first leg, let alone winning the race. But that's how it has worked out, thank God.

So on this SECCG Day, Dec. 7, 2013, I did not sit in front of a television watching football. I didn't drink and cuss and throw things around the room in a fit of rage at that which unfolded on the television before me. I basked in the afterglow of my youngest daughter's first musical theater production. I enjoyed a wonderful lunch at our usual Saturday spot with my wife and children, together and warm despite the biting chill of the winter front passing us by. I, in passing, saw the score of the Barn game, and I walked away from it with three quarters of the game left to be played. Didn't know the outcome until I overheard a conversation later on in the evening. And I was alright with that.

We bundled up that night, December 7, our 12th anniversary, and set out for Bellingrath's Christmas light show (if you've never been, you must go if ever in Mobile during this particular time of year...it really is something to behold). I soaked in the cold, carried my shillelagh like a gent of ancient ancestry and held my wife's hand as we walked through the trails, our children running ahead, dragging us along the way walked dogs drag their custodians. I took photos of my children which will remind me forever of that night, the best anniversary yet and one of the best days I've ever had the pleasure of living. Before leaving, my wife and I stopped in the smooth concrete path as the kids ran ahead, shared a tender moment, an "I love you," a "Happy Anniversary, baby" and a brief kiss before catching up with the children. I remember thinking, "I've never been happier in my life." And gentlemen, it didn't have a single thing to do with football.

So while I'll never give up my love of the Crimson Tide or this game of football over which we obsess, even ole OWB can introduce some levity into this conversation. I, for one, know the obvious, as do you: there are things far more important than football. I don't think many of us ever really forget that. It's just that sometimes we let our view become obscured by the hustle-and-bustle of the ever-marching cadence of life.

For me, my sanity on this day, and in this year, came in finding something else from which to mine my delight. Whereas in past years, this season has crushed my soul for reasons I won't delve into here, at least for this year, I could give two shits about the Barn and whatever in the hell it is they miracle out of their asses in the BCSNCG.

For this year, I don't need football to make me happy. I am just....happy. And for me, that's enough.

Roll Tide y'all, love you all...(except for you JTad...nobody loves you, dude, tighten up every chance you get. Just kidding, of course, YOU'RE MAH BOY JTAD!). Y'all are all great and I have appreciated the kind words this year, you know how to make a feller feel appreciated. Hope you all have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hannukah, a Joyous Kwanzaa or a Gleeful Flying Spaghetti Monster Extravaganza. No matter what you call it, enjoy it, live in the moment and always keep things in perspective.

The pick-up truck f@#$-up

(This hoodoo originally ran on 11212014)

As if. Who really needs HooDoo when the Tide is playing the dang ole ‘Noog? I mean seriously people, this game is the equivalent of me getting in a member-measuring contest with John Holmes, the X-rated brotha…doesn’t matter how much effort is expended, the two just won’t measure up.

But, as always, the football gods do not evaluate the worthiness of every opponent, but rather pick their time and place on the whim of sacrifices made or neglected. And let’s face it people, Football Loki has developed an affinity for our beloved Crimson Tide. Apparently, the Noles must be praying to Football Jo-Bu, because those sumbitches just seem downright snake-bit when it comes to winning anything of consequence in the last 10 years. “What about the ACC title?” you may ask…I said winning anything of consequence, did y’all miss that part? Reading is fundamental, people, let’s keep it between the ears, shall we?

At any rate, thank the Good Lord that we aren’t Florida State, or any other team for that matter. No, we are the Crimson Tide and are apparently immune to such folly thanks to the wealth of HooDoo deposited year in and year out on these here pages. Regardless of the opponent, a HooDoo submission is demanded, and so shall it be. Let us see, with what tale from my wanton youth shall I choose to regale you fine people this week?

Ah.Yes. I have just the thing for an opponent of the ‘Noog’s apparent temperament. And the timing of the year makes this a bittersweet, nostalgic story for OWB to impart on you fine people (and the rest of you, too). This is another tale from my formative days as a Whistlebritchian, after my induction into the Sith order by Lord Vader but before I myself could claim the title of Darth Whistlebritches. During this time I was mentored by another man of whom you’ve heard me speak in these pages before, my Great Uncle Ellard. He is one of the guiding beacons of my young life, a man with whom I was so enamored growing up that I’d heed his every command, regardless of how pointless or misguided it would seem to be. For in the end, when the situation had played itself out, I’d always undoubtedly discover that his advice was as sage as any offered by Master Yoda, if only Master Yoda had the central Alabama twang and gruffness of a man cracked open on the red clay and raised on hard-scrabble of central Alabama.

Uncle Ellard, as I called him, was my grandmother’s brother. Now that line of the family has a trait that I’m not so sure I hope that I have inherited, namely the ability to live well beyond the average lifespan of one’s generational cohorts. My grandmother, the 3-time Heisman finalist one, will be 93 in February and is just as spry and able as she was when I was a child pitching Wiffle balls at her and marveling at how she could hit from both sides of the plate. Uncle Ellard was cut from the same piece of flour sack, he was John Wayne, Coach Bryant and George Patton rolled into one shining example of blue-steel Alabama humanhood, all grit and Hell and rust and dirt. The man was damn near killed on more occasions than I can count, and he never shied away from recounting these tales to our young ears in that gruff half-holler of his, the same voice with which he likewise hailed cattle from across the far pasture.

Just for shits and giggles, here is a brief recounting of the man’s near death experiences. This shit right here is three shades of unbelievable, but you know OWB wouldn’t perpetrate a lie on you, his faithful audience. Uncle Ellard fought in the European theater during WWII as an infantryman, surviving the worst the Germans had to throw at him and his cohorts as they liberated Western Europe from the grip of fascism. Immediately after the war, still stationed in Germany, he was attacked and stabbed by three men who were after his recently-acquired GI paycheck, and they, thinking him dead, rolled him off of the bridge on which he was attacked and into a frozen river. 

Somehow or another, he survived, pulled himself to shore and collapsed. The last thing he remembered seeing was the light of a distant farmhouse before he succumbed to the shock of cold and lost consciousness. When he awoke, he was in a comfortable bed in that farmhouse, being cared for by a gracious German family who saw the Americans as liberators rather than conquerors. Uncle Ellard appreciated it so much he ended up marrying a German woman himself and brought the best Dusseldorf had to offer back to Vance, AL with him. While still in the military, he had a 5 ton truck slip off the jack and land on him, and by some miraculous turn of fate, the tough ole buzzard survived.

On another occasion, after returning to his life on the ranch, he was skidding logs carelessly on a hillside and rolled the tractor over atop him, breaking his back in several places along with a couple ribs. Doctors told the family he’d likely not survive, but he did. Then doctors told him he’d never walk again. Well, he did that too. He just refused to accept quit as an outcome, and a lot of that poured from his veins into mine. Thank God. He was also shot in the chest at point blank range in a hunting accident in the ‘60s, in the middle of the woods, six miles from the nearest home. A cousin who will always carry my warm regards ran and summoned help, but again, Uncle Ellard was told he would not recover by the docs. You guessed it, that sumbitch pulled through like a champ. Again.

Later in life, in his late 80’s, he again had a mishap with a tractor, this time while bailing hay. The tractor got sideways on him and rolled, and the bailer went over along with it. He was pinned between the grinding steel of machination and the hard-pebbly iron ore-riddled clay soil common in those parts. As he debated his escape, the blade of the bailer cycled ever closer to him with every revolution of the still-working machine, and it would have been the reaper’s scythe if he couldn’t free himself of the predicament. He used his arthritic, gnarled, monkey-paw hands to scrape out a hollow enough to wiggle from beneath the steel beast before the blade could take his life. With a broken neck, he pulled himself across the 40 acre pasture to the old house, where an ambulance whisked him to DCH. He survived, but for the remaining five years of his life, he had a crooked neck.

Needless to say, my Uncle Ellard was one tough sumbitch, hard as the world in which he grew up in Depression era Alabama and as tough as the pine knots in the weathered smokehouse he hewed with his own two hands. He was chapped leather and gunsmoke, and he is the reason I am here to entertain you people here today.

Because of Uncle Ellard’s long history of baddassedness, the ritual for several generations of men in my family was much like the initiation one receives upon entering the armed services. Men in my family had to do hard time with Uncle Ellard, in the summer, doing his bidding regardless of what else may have been going on at the time. My mom’s brother was a hellion in his younger years, a ne’er-do-well who has since reformed himself into a retired colonel in the United States Army Reserve (MedCorps) and a professor of business at a state college in Georgia. He’s an impressive fella in his own right, but he’ll tell you, it was those summers spent working alongside Uncle Ellard that made him a man. 

I am the oldest of my generation on my mom’s side of the family, one of five boys. When I hit the age of 14, it was time for my rite of passage to begin. You see, I’d never really had to strike out on my own, away from my mom and the familiar confines of Mobile, AL. I liked my neck of the woods just fine, but I did always enjoy going “up the country” to spend time with Uncle Ellard. After all, he was someone I idolized more than any other person in my life, and he was the hammer that pounded the raw materials of who I am today into form in the forge of Ellard-initiated adversity. I say that in all seriousness, I’ve never seen a man of any age work the way that man would work. He was like a machine, just never stopped, required no maintenance or fluids. I remember once we were stringing fenceline, an old rusty serpentine coil that he refused to throw away because in the back of his Depression-era mind, he “might need it sometime.” Well, I sure as hell wish he’d have needed it before my time, because unrolling and trying to string brittle, rusty barbed wire is akin to wrasslin’ a barrel full of copperheads, it ain’t a matter of whether or not you’re gonna get bit, it’s just a matter of how many times. I looked like I’d been in a fight with a papershredder by the end of it, I tell you what. After hours of this foolishness, I asked “Can I take a water break?”

He looked at me with those cold eyes, as if I was speaking Swahili to him, backwards at that.

“Water break?” he mumbled before turning back to his work. I mean, it was, after all, like 110 degrees, and that central Alabama heat is different from the heat we have on the coast. It’s more humid here, but up there, you don’t get the benefit of the sea breeze to moderate the temperature. It was like we were stringing barbed wire across the face of a hot cast iron skillet.

That’s just the kind of man he was. So when I arrived for my summer indoctrination at the age of 14, he had made up his mind that I needed to learn how to drive. Problem is, I was a weird kid. I didn’t want to learn how to drive, at least not a car. Drive the tractor? Hell yes. But I didn’t want any part of driving that truck, and old 1980 model Chevy full size, white and beat to hell and back from years of farm-work abuse.

“You goan drive that truck today, boy,” he told me one morning over our daily eggs, grits, home-cured ham and cantaloupe. “You ever drive?”

“No, sir, I don’t know how to drive.”

“Well, you’re goan learn.”

But I didn’t want to learn. Dammit, I hated being forced out of the warm confines of my comfort zone. But there was no way out of it. Once Uncle Ellard decided you were going to do something, by God, the die had been cast. Your ass better just resign youself to it.

He showed me the basic instruments of the truck in as few words as possible. Fortunately, it was an automatic. That gave me a bit of reassurance. Now keep in mind, when he said I was going to learn to drive, it didn’t necessarily mean he was going to teach me to drive. No, his methodology was more akin to letting me sit in the seat, make a bunch of mistakes, then barking at me the correct way to do things. I guess that’s learning, but it felt more like haranguing. Regardless, it was effective, as I was wheelin’ around the pasture in no time, cuttin’ julios in the high grass and throwin’ rooster-tails on the gravely dirt roads around his home.

Uncle Ellard had responsibility over the church cemetery adjacent to our property where many generations of our family had been previously interred. He would take care of the tract, and everyone with family in the plot would contribute money to pay Uncle Ellard for the upkeep. Each summer, part of my hard labor was helping him to clean up the grounds, trim the bushes, cut the grass and collect the weathered artificial flowers and arrangements that had been left on the graves. After completing this task during this particular summer, Uncle Ellard handed me the keys to the truck. “We’re goan to the dump…”

Now the dump was not a formal dump, per se, but rather a bluff on the backside of our property. As illegal as it probably was, Uncle Ellard would cast all of the trash he collected from the cemetery off of said bluff, and that’d be the end of it. Now to this point, I had spent most of my time behind the wheel moving in a forward orientation. In other words, I was all about driving forwards, but I still didn’t have much wheel time traveling in the other direction.

“Aight, back ‘er up to the edge of that cliff, boy.” Cold shock ran through me. I was terrified.

“You mean, like in reverse?”

Again, he looked at me with that blank stare, no comfort offered to the young dumbass with less than 20 hours of time in the cockpit. “Yeah,” was all he said.

“But I don’t…I mean, I’ve never…” I stammered while looking at him, hoping he would see my lack of comfort in the situation and offer some relief. But nope. Nothing. He just looked at me, as if he was waiting for the rest of the story, like “I’ve never backed up and my gas pedal foot just fell off.” Without any convincing follow-up, he continued to stare at me while I hurriedly tried to figure out how to make the requested task happen.

I stared at the indicators on the dash and found the one with all the letters. “Must be the one for shifting,” I thought, “this is the one I pull to put it in drive, so I’ll try R.” I popped the column shift down into the R position, and low and behold, the truck began to lurch backwards. “Ha!,” I was excited, the way R2 feels when he finally locks on to the proper security code to stop the trash compactor from smashing his friends. I backed up slightly, swung the truck around square to the cliff and took pride in a job well done.

But my trial was not over. Now I had to successfully negotiate the 30 feet from the spot where I turned around to the edge of the cliff so that we could rake out the back of the truck. The trash was piled so high in the back that I couldn’t see out of the window and I had to rely on some combination of side mirrors and the living Force to make sure that I didn’t do anything from which I could not recover.

Uncle Ellard got out to wave me in. In the sideview I could see him back there, looking at the ground and waving that monkey paw, motioning me back. I was terrified, y’all, covering about an inch a second as I’d release the brake then re-apply, release the brake then re-apply. The increase in the frequency of his hand wave told me he wanted me to hurry, so I let my foot off the brake and let that old white pick-up glide smooth as dry silk right on up to the edge of the cliff. He gave me the halt and boy did I ever, liked to have stomped that pedal through the rusty floor of that ole bucket. I cut off the ignition, stepped on the e-brake and leapt out of the truck, expecting an “atta boy” and a slap on the back. None was to be had, however, as ever the task-master, Uncle Ellard was already unloading the back of the truck.

“Climb on up in there boy and push that stuff out with the pitchfork.”

I dutifully responded. Now let me take a minute here to tell you people, I hate heights. Hate them. Like the upper deck at BDS scares the hell out of OWB, must have fallen off a mountain in a past life or something. As I pushed the trash out, I noticed Uncle Ellard had waved me up real snug to the edge of the cliff, leaving very little margin for error. I was kind of shocked he’d trusted me enough to let me get that close, but that gave me a little pride. Maybe I really did have this driving thing figured out. Maybe I too could one day be a baddass.

Except for the whole height thing. We were sitting on the edge of that cliff, with about a 40 foot fall beneath. I didn’t even want to get close to the ledge, and walking out on the tailgate would have set me teetering over the physical edge of the cliff, with nothing but my trust of hinge engineering to keep from falling to sure death, or at least injury that would result in prayers for death. I was timid, gingerly pushing the garbage towards the edge of the truck like I was poking at a bear with a broom handle.

“What’s wrong, you scared of heights?” he asked. Wow, finally, a little gentility from Uncle Ellard, I thought. He sees I’m truly scared of heights and won’t make me…

“Get out there and push it out, you ain’t goan fall.” So much for gentility.

Finally, the task was complete. He lumbered around to his side of the truck, and I jumped back in the pilot’s chair, feeling pretty good about myself having overcome two of my fears in the presence of my idol. Once in, he uttered just about the only words that would indicate he was pleased with a day’s work or one’s effort: “Let’s go down to Donnie’s and get us a Mountain Dew.”

I was all for it. I had been through enough that day, and could sure as hell use a Mountain Dew. Excited about the prospect of a break, I put my foot on the break, as instructed, turned the key and fired the engine, grinning at my new-found source of pride. Couldn’t wait to tell my mom and B-Rad I had learned how to drive!

Then it happened. I let my foot off of the break and realized to my horror that the truck lurched backwards, towards the cliff. You see, I had forgotten to put the truck back in park previously, was lucky the sumbitch had not rolled off into the ravine with me in the bed. Probably the only thing that saved my big ass was the fact that I had pushed the e-brake, keeping the truck from careering to its, and surely my, certain death.

Quickly realizing the error of my attempt, I quickly pushed the brake pedal to stop our rearward progress. But I felt it. The back wheels went off the cliff, the cliff began to fall from beneath the weight of the vehicle, and the truck dropped off the edge enough that the differential was sitting stuck on the ground, the only thing preventing us from going over the edge. “Holy shit,” I thought, knowing that the next few words I said would likely be my last, so I should probably choose them wisely. “I’d like to thank all of the little people who made this all possible…”

I expected full volume berating in my right ear at this point, but none came. I looked over at Uncle Ellard, and true to form, he was staring at me again, the way cattle blankly stare at the funny-looking steel cows racing by on highways adjacent to pastureland.  I braced for impact…

But it never came. In a plaintive voice, gravelly as it was, he said…

“Now why’d you go do something like that?”

That was all he said. I’d have felt better if he’d have yelled and cussed at me, called my mama and ordered her to pick my worthless ass up directly. But he didn’t. Just looked at me as if to more accurately gauge the true nature of my major malfunction as he opened his door and got out. He began to walk in the direction of the old farm house, and I followed, in silence, crest-fallen, about 30 yards behind him. He never said an unkind word, simply cranked up the tractor, got a chain and rode down to the dump, where he had me affix it to the front of the truck’s undercarriage to draw the truck out of the gorge. What he did next shocked me.

“Get in, drive it to the house.” Why was this man trusting me to safely ferry the tool of his livelihood just moments after I nearly ran it off a cliff? I still don’t know the answer to that. Such was the nature of Uncle Ellard. Good God I love that man, and every Thanksgiving, I can’t help but remember all the time I was blessed to have in his company.

Moral of the Story: Tractors can be dangerous. Sometimes, old people are cool. And always, always, always use that damn e-brake…God put it there for a reason.

Roll Tide y’all, Happy Thanksgiving. 

The great (topless) escape

Well…here we are, folks. The moment for which we’ve all been waiting, Alabama’s baptism by fire, if you will. After enduring a closer-than-expected battle with the Fightin’ Couch-Burners of West Virginny, and two slaughters of lesser sacrificial lambs on the crimson Capstone altar, we come to Bama’s first real test of the season versus the always-cagey Gators of Florida.

Now let me just say, I ain’t skeert. Rarely been skeert, if I’m being quite honest. There were a couple close scrapes with the law, health scares with the wife and/ or kids, a shoot-out here, car accident there. All of those things definitely sent a shock of trepidation through your ole boy OWB, to be sure. But for the most part, I (along with my trusty cohorts) have managed to hack through the jungle of fight-or-flight with relative aptitude.

But I will say that something about the Florida Gators this year gives me pause. Maybe it’s that Gator Coach Will Muschamp is the Vader to Our Dark Lord’s Sidious (well, in a strictly pedantic sense, as Muschamp has neither the prowess nor cunning of the Sith Lord, but you get the picture…the pedigree is there.) We all know how that one ended up. Maybe it’s that Florida defense, one of the only units in the league that can match talent with the Alabama D. Maybe it’s just that Vernon Hargreaves III is an abso-fkn-lutely freakish athlete who has kangaroo hops and can run through a wide receiving corps like a possum through a sweet potato patch.

I don’t know what it is, people, and I shouldn’t have to explain it in detail to you at this time. Have I, a true Hoodoo Operator in the flesh, ever led you, my faithful readers, astray? I think not. So this week, I will once again call down the Hoodoo from on high, as it is our duty to boost our team to victory and supreme worthiness in the eyes of yon Football Loki, for his will is fickle and his discipline harsh.

I was proud (check that, damn proud) of the Hoodoo you fine folk unleashed on these here pages in the last chapter. The Yella Buzzards didn’t even have a damn chance, you see. You definitely proved you have what it takes to Hoodoo to a standard, that you know what it means to treat every Hoodoo as though it has a life of its own. And God knows, we are going to need it this week, people, if Blake Sims is going to slice and dice that vaunted Florida D with the ole Amari Cooper scalpel. So bring what you have, place it on the table before us, and walk away…slowly. Everybody be cool…we cool? Aight, we cool. (Football Loki tends to startle easy these days…)

Now you people know that your courageous narrator has a damn Hoodoo well that’s purt-near a mile deep…halfway to China, even. I’ve been quite fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on one’s perspective) to have lived quite the collection of tall tales and lullabies in low these 40 years I’ve spent treadin’ ole Terra Firma. My Hoodoo flows wide, dark and deep like the ole Mississip’, and in keeping with the nautical theme, I would offer that it is as salty and polluted as my beloved Gulf of Mexico. So for this story, I will reach back into the wanton days of my yesteryear, before I was corrupted by the vile pollutants of LSD, THC and 86-proof dark liquor. You wouldn’t believe it, but despite my occasional recklessness as a youth, I was a pretty clean-cut character at the age of 17, at least as far as clean-cut characters were considered in my old neighborhood.

Of course, that didn’t mean that I didn’t have my vices. I withstood my ethnic propensity for alcohol until I was 18, and held the Devil’s Weed at arm’s length until at 19, I received a 20-bag in payment for collecting a debt for a “friend” of mine (curiosity ultimately killing the cat, you know). But at the age of 17, my nubile and immature mind was engaged in a quest for the thing that every 17 year old male child yearns to possess in his overzealous grasp…a voluptuous set of pendulous mammary glands, in the biological parlance. In the vernacular of these less rigid times, we would refer to the object of my desire as…bewbs.

You see, I love the feminine figure. Always have, always will. It’s why I love large women, or to use the more Brazzers-centric nomenclature of the current day, BBWs. A few extra pounds tends to fill out and accentuate those beautiful womanly curves that our Maker had the wisdom to bestow on half of our species. It’s a good thing the Big Guy didn’t give them to all of us, elsewise the world would grind to a halt. You folk know I don’t get too preachy, but if that marvelous dichotomy ain’t a case for intelligent design, well, I don’t know what in the hell is.

We menfolk are so enamored with them that if we had sets of our own, we’d never leave the house, never seek the company of others, never look for female companionship. Procreation would cease. Soon, civilization would fall into utter ruin, and our species would follow the long line of previously instinct beasts such as, for example, the fated dodo. This is my personal theory of the origin of civilized society, because it sure as hell wasn’t plentiful food or inventive agricultural advances that brought men in from the wilderness and settled us into the tranquil domesticated beasts we’ve become today. . Wasn’t even any of that Annunaki business the people are so fond of discussing these days. Believe what you will, but it is my firm belief that the creative force behind the organization of all we know had a catalyst, and that catalyst was knockers.

(In the interest of foundational knowledge and the illumination of my fellow man, and woman, as it were, I wanted to take this time to provide a brief thesaurus of terms that may come up during this extended discourse on the finer points of the feminine figure. After all, words misunderstood are words lost, and if you have learned anything about me low these many months, it’s that your narrator is not one to lose words. I also find it quite humorous that while the English language only has one word for concepts like “hero” or life,” we in our wisdom have devised a wealth of terms for describing this seemingly-all-important aspect of the female form. Shows we have our priorities in line, no?

So here, for your personal enrichment and growth, I have provided a brief compilation of synonyms for the mammary glands that may come up in the course of relating this particular story. A virtual “titsaurus,” if you will. Here goes: tittays, titties, boobs, bewbs, knockers, ta-tas, sweater puppets, sweater puppies, bulldogs-fightin-in-a-pillowcase (use your imagination…this one was uttered by a fellow deviant in the general direction of a well-endowed young lady jogging in a t-shirt along Biloxi’s Beach Boulevard), jigglies, jugs, juggies, chesticles, breasticles (why do I want to add “handkerchief, watch” to that one?...that there is Catholic humor I reckon, you kneelers and wine-sippers will catch my drift there), hooters, ha-has, ho-hos, noo-noos, star-gazers, shirt-fillers, cream puffs, baby feeders, milkbags, walleyes, headlights, bressesses, and bobots (alternately bobobots). The diversity of the English language is a beautiful thing, no?)

Now this final term, bobots, probably bears a little further explanation, as I wouldn’t want you folk flingin’ around terminology without fully understanding the delicate meanings that are implied by the former. Bobots is a code word devised by one of the most well-respected connoisseurs of tittays with which I’ve had the pleasure of consulting, a man who goes by the mysterious alias Baby D. A master of description in his own right, Baby D once used the term bobots in my presence, to my utter confusion.

Let me provide you with the context. At a bbq festival in which we were competing, Baby D single-finger-pointed (beer in hand) at a particularly large-chested middle-aged woman in a tank top who was sampling some of my prize-winnin’ ‘cue. “Booooy, looka there at THEM bobots.” Seeing that he’d lost me, he cast the illuminating lantern of knowledge into my life, declaring the following: “Aw man, you don’t know what bobots are? That’s code for ‘big ole big ole titties.’” (Of course, then, bobobots are the term in the superlative, “big ole big ole big ole titties.”)

We men are swine, no? On behalf of manhood, I take the opportunity to offer my sincere apology for our decidedly base, Cro-Magnon, animalistic ways. We do not deserve your love and attention, and it’s a wonder any of us actually trick any of you into ever coupling with us, in either the physical or emotional sense. I am disgusted…but thankful.

Regardless, consider yourself educated and prepared for anything I may later say regarding the subject. Also, consider yourself warned. Now, back to our story…

So, like every 17-year-old hetero man-child, I was infatuated with the jigglies. Loved ‘em. Still do. Every time I get the chance as one of the fortunate fellers with easy access to the aforementioned, I giggle a little. I become Rosie O’Donnell in an éclair factory. Just manic and obsessed in the presence of breasticles. It’s silly, but alas, it is true.

I was so driven by my love for shirt-blimps (guess I forgot to add that one earlier, my apologies) that it was one of my primary considerations when choosing a girl for proper courtship. At that age, my list of priorities regarding desirable traits in a female pretty much looked like this:

1.       Big bresses

2.       Large bresses

3.       Jiggly bresses

4.       Thick

5.       Alive

6.       In possession of a face

7.       Bresses

Talk about The Sevenfold Path of Enlightenment, no? Now I know this sheer lack of emotional depth and maturity evidenced by my superficial criteria is appalling in and of itself, and such is my Hoodoo for you fine people. I have layers of Hoodoo, you see. Some allegorical-type Hoodoo shit, like Moby Cotdang Dick or something. I didn’t come here to lie and impress you with tales of heroism and ribaldry: no, I came to offer up some embarrassment to the football gods, and this is but a sampling of what is to come.

Back to high school. I had the fortune to convince a well-endowed young woman to keep my company from time to time. She was an Aub (and by the way, F AU), but I was able to overlook even that fatal flaw because she was packin’ a double-D battery of flesh-howitzers (missed that one too) beneath her blouse on the regular. I could think of nothing but fondling them, and to use another familiar term of the day, “motor-boating” them, while watching her across the room as my Geometry teacher droned on about “angle-addition-postulates” and “hypotenuses” of various degrees (that’s a little holla for you mathletes out there…didn’t know ya boy OWB had it in him, did ya?)

At any rate, I’m going to call this young lady by the respectful alias Jiggly. And no, that’s not an homage to some ill-conceived Bennifer-vehicle, some trite J-Lo and Affleck D-list movie (and btw, Affleck is NOT Batman…eff that, I’m bitter…sue me.) It is a mere descriptor for that young woman’s feature which was most important to me at the time, and it seems fitting to this day.

So Jiggly was a little younger than me, old enough that I probably would have gotten a stern talking-to for exploiting the pleasures that her inexperienced body had to offer. She was 15, I was 17. Not a violation of any statute (at least not in Alabama), but enough that I may have been asked to explain myself if there was an inkling of impropriety to the outside world.

But boys will be boys (and sometimes, 15 year old girls will be boys, at least when it comes to making out), and as we became more, shall we say, familiar, things began to heat up. Once, on a bench outside the gym, after a sweaty afternoon of band practice, she let me cup those voluptuous bosoms of hers (beneath her shirt of course…she was, after all, a lady.) Once I had that little sampling, it was like I had been stricken with the dreaded malady known only as “tittie fever,” a condition indicated when one’s mind becomes completely consumed with the pursuit of and gratification derived from those beautiful and coveted mammary glands.

Being a bit of a minor genius, I had devised a mechanism by which we could enjoy the respective playgrounds of our bodies without alerting parental (and more importantly, penal) authorities. You see, I didn’t have a car of my own at the age of 17, but I did have access to my mother’s sole source of transportation and the life-blood of her (read our) livelihood, a 1985 Chevy Nova. Now this version was nothing like that workhorse of GM’s 1970s product line-up…no sir, it was a far cry. This was basically a Toyota Corolla with Chevy logos on it, a joint operation between the two motor companies that marked the death (or maybe hibernation) of American muscle (coincidentally, this is also where I believe American industry died…but alas, this is no history lesson. At least not THAT kind of history lesson.)

So I would borrow the car from time to time. As Jiggly and I become more “familiar,” I was scheming ways to borrow the Nova damn near every night. You see, the car was the chariot to my dreams. With the car, I didn’t have to wait for my mama, or Jiggly’s grandmama, to leave long enough for us to accomplish our carnal mission at one home or the other. As small as it was, the car was a rolling boudoir: all one needed was a dark corner of a parking lot in which to ply ones wares (if you know what I mean.)

My destination of choice was my old elementary school, Forest Hill, just across the Bloody 98 from my old neighborhood. This was a special place for me, and marked the location of several seminal points involving females. Had my first kiss at age five (with a girl who went on to graduate from Alabama) beneath a slanted pine tree on the playground, obscured by a thicket of red-berried yaupon. It’s where my wife and I went on our first date: we strolled to the school with a bottle of wine and a blanket, laid beneath the stars getting to know one another for the first time in person. And of course, it was the site of many nights of dalliance in the Nova with one girl or another.

I’d nestle back in between a few buildings where I had a hawk-eye view of everything going and coming. You see, Forest Hill had a long, winding driveway that came down from Highway 98, so if someone turned into the drive, I’d know it well in advance. The one obvious drawback was that there was only one way in…and one way out (“see, here he goes with that foreshadowing business again,” you must be thinking.)

One summer night, Jiggly and I had taken our traditional spot and, to use the terminology of fire fighters, we were “fully involved.” The darkness and isolated nature of my selected locale offered the full range of possibilities for this sort of exploit, as no one could see, say, for example, whether the young lady in the passenger seat had removed her blouse.

It was a particularly warm night, and the windows were fogged as we became more engaged. I cracked the window, but more ventilation was needed, so I rolled it down further (this was in the days when the Nova still had windows that would roll down, for those who read last week’s Hoodoo offering.) Thank God, as that (and some Nicholas Cage-Paul Walker style vehicular shenanigans) proved to be my saving grace.

Now, I know you all have engaged in the reckless passion of youth. You may even remember that carnal tunnel vision one develops when involved in such acts of lustfulness. For example, even in my elder years, I can’t tell you how many times Mrs. OWB and I have engaged in activities of an amorous nature, only to find one child or another standing in the door waiting to tell us about “the spider that ran under the bed” or “the man behind my curtain with a machete” or some other ridiculous shit. One just don’t notice details when all that blood rushes away from one’s brain and into more bulbous and swollen vicinities.

Such was the case in this episode. While I was doing my best Evinrude impersonation betwixt those fine milk-melons (there’s another one I forgot, duly noted), I had failed to see the headlights turning from the highway and onto the long drive leading down the gulch to the schoolhouse. Now, let me push the pause button for a minute and provide yet more important background information. My father, estranged at the time and to this day, is an asshole. Wait, that’s not the point. What I meant to say was that he was, and possibly still is, involved in the policing of the public school system. In less contentious days, he would carry me and B-Rad out on patrols to “check the schools,” an activity which basically meant he would ride from school property to school property, shining a white-hot Brinkman spotlight at the buildings to make sure no ne-er-do-wells were desecrating them there institutions of, err, lower learning (I guess).

On several occasions, he had spotted interlopers either vandalizing or breaking into school facilities, and he would call down the thunder. He had a team of folks working with him as the years went by and the system developed its very own police force of sorts. Needless to say, I was well aware of these patrols.

And yet, I had not taken them into account while in pursuit of those tender bobots, because of the aforementioned causative blood-rushing-to-the-nether-regions issue. Now let me also explain that the driveway to this particular school was horrible, pocked asphalt and red clay filled with islands of crushed limestone that audibly popped as one drove over them. As the young lady and I continued to wrap into one another’s corporeal desires, I heard that familiar popping sound of tires on limestone though the still-rolled-down window.

I startled. Removed my face from between those nipple-hangers and sat up bolt-straight. There were no headlights (well, other than the aforementioned feminine variety), but I could see the dim amber of the running lights as a vehicle made its way down the drive…the one and only way in and out of my honey-hole.

I knew what was coming next, and thrust Jiggly’s head into my lap as I covered over her beneath the horizon of the dash so as not to be seen. I thought maybe he’d see no one was in the car and leave it be. Sure enough, the one-million-candlepower-laser-ray of that spotlight lit up the Nova like a tractor beam from an overhead UFO.

“What the…?” she whispered.

“School security, maybe he will pass, just stay down.”

I gave it a minute, and sure enough, the light diminished. “Damn,” I thought. “That was close.”

We both sat up, only Jiggly was sporting one, maybe two fewer pieces of apparel than she had been wearing at the beginning of the night. She was still topless, no time to suit up. I could make out the silhouette of a truck emblazoned with the reflective logo of the school system about 100 yards away, and I could tell the door was open. Then, about fifty feet in front of the truck, I saw the dimmer beam of a hand-held flashlight held by the hand of what was undoubtedly one of my estranged father’s cohorts.

“SHIT!” I exclaimed. I had to think fast. Stakes were too high. I had a topless girl, who was younger than me, in the front seat of my mama’s Nova, and I was about to be captured by one of my cotdang father’s compadres (most of whom had known me since I was a child).  I cranked the Nova, and the man with the flashlight stopped dead in his tracks. I gunned the engine: I, the Duke boy to this sumbitch’s Roscoe P. Coltrane. Or maybe he was Enos. But I digress.

My mind went into super-computer mode, adeptly calculating the statistical probabilities of escaping and the geometrical opportunities provided by the narrow safe passage and my adversary’s close proximity. I had about a five foot flat ledge between the open door of his truck and the edge of a bluff that fell down about 40 feet to the school’s play yard. No margin for error at all. I knew my only hope was to, like Luke Skywalker, drop that damn X-Wing of a Nova down into that slightest of passages, put up the targeting device and let the Force be my guide through the narrowest of escape routes.

The feller must have assumed I was about to get rowdy, as he double-timed it back towards his truck. But the die had been cast, fate was sealed. At the same moment, I flipped on the brights of the Nova so as to blind the security guard to my identity, and I gunned the engine and sped towards the gap. Jiggly was screaming in my ear, using colorful terms which assailed my delicate sensibilities and fragile ego.

As I sped, wide-ass-open, towards that gap, the guard dove head first into the truck’s bench seat like a two-bit movie stunt man. I sped through that gap and let go my proton torpedo as I passed: a half-full Mountain Dew bottle of stale piss that I used as a make-shift lavatory during these prolonged carnal endeavors. It sailed like a Tomahawk cruise missile towards the truck, landing with a thud in the bed. Jiggly had a death grip on my arm like a dang ole rabid Skunk Ape. I figured if we got out of this alive, surely I’d need a prosthetic something-or-other that was yet to be determined.

I cleared the back of his truck, but was not out of the woods. After all, I had to drive the length of a covered walkway before turning hairpin-style in the opposite direction and pointing my craft back down the escape route. Surely, surely this guard was trained in vehicular maneuvers and would be able to flank me and block my escape if I faltered. I saw the covered walkway, and reckoned the only certain avenue was to quickly power-slide (using the ole parking-brake trick Crazy Jim from the neighborhood had bestowed on me during my first solo flight in the car) and square up to the very-close-together posts that held up the walkway’s cover. Then, I could try to shoot through the narrow gap between without hitting anything. Must have been less than six inches of clearance on either side of the car.

Like dang ole Richard Petty, I executed the turn flawlessly, slangin’ crushed limestone everywhere in a plinking rain of stones that fell against the aluminum posts. I downshifted, slammed through the gap, cleared it and sped off.

Jiggly had been on the point, peeking out the back to detect any possible pursuit. Seeing none, she beat the holy hell out of me as I melted into a surrounding neighborhood where I knew I could cat-and-mouse even the best pursuer. She was not happy, whining some drivel (at a very high volume) about “almost getting her arrested,“ and “what would her grandmama do if she found out what we were doing?”

As-if. What an absolute lack of appreciation for my exploits. She should have been more than impressed by my manly display of driving skills. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she didn’t want to find another dark spot afterwards to continue that which we had started before all of the excitement. Trust me, I suggested it. Unsuccessfully, I may add. Women, amirite?

So though I dodged that bullet, I was ultimately confronted with a far more debilitating issue months later when Jiggly’s overbearing Winston County-bred, puritanical grandmother caught us in her living room after midnight one evening, fully engorged and tingling, as my good friend Dana Carvey would say. That instance was the death knell of this particular relationship, but it was a learning experience to say the least.

What was learned, you may ask? That the tittays are one of the most powerful forces in the universe. They draw you in like a Death Star tractor beam, leaving sighted men blind and smart men dub-struck. To quote my brother and fellow Poet Laureate Rev. Dr. Al Green would tell us (Quoting The Book of Bressesses, Chapter three, verse two), they are definitely “…somethin’ that can make you do wrong, make you do right…..hhhaaaAAAAYYY!”

But alas, such is life. Win some, lose some. She was an Aub anyway, even if she did have that fine, fine pair of blouse-trophies (add that one to the thesaurus) swinging from her ample bosom. DAYUM…gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it today. Hoo-Lawd, I do enjoy some bressesses.

Anyway, CALL DOWN YON HOODOO HELLFIRE on these infidel orange-clad reptilians. Bring your best folks, we’re gonna need it.

Skin the Gators, boys. Roll Tide.

Darth Sharpie-stache

(This hoodoo originally ran on 11152013)

Aight y’all, I’m going to go ahead and say it. Though I respect every opponent at the behest of Our Dark Lord, I honestly don’t really see a way for Mississippi State to do what so many of their superiors have been unable to do before them, namely beat Alabama. Seriously, maybe I’m looking ahead, maybe my mind is not right. Regardless, I must say, I just don’t see it happening. There, I said it.

Now that I have that out in the open, I will reiterate that the football gods do not debate the worthiness of an opponent before casting their lot. No, if Football Loki conspires against thee, then a loss thee will take, whether playing some Tiger or another, or the Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind.

Hence my HooDoo this week. I’m still saving a little sumpin-sumpin back for the Boogs, and of course, the SECCG and potential BCSNCG after that. Therefore I will unleash on you this week a HooDoo tale from the early years of the OWB saga, when our young hero was but a wandering tiny-mite, knee-high to a grasshopper if you will. Without further ado, let us HooDoo…

You all know my utter infatuation with all things Star Wars. I am a student of the canon, a geek in the most primal mode possible. And I really don’t care what anybody thinks about that, I let my geek flag fly for all to see, unabashed. Anyone who doesn’t like it can sit on a lightsaber or arm-wrassel a Wookiee (always wise to let the Wookiee win…jus sayin’)…enough said. This tale with which I am about to regale you is one that recounts my very beginnings as a Sith apprentice…the day I was tapped into the Order by none other than Lord Vader himself.

My fancy of all things galactic is not a mere trend in the wanton adulthood of a man who seeks to stay a child in some way. No, it is deep-rooted, as is my affiliation with the Dark Side. You see, I’ve been a Sith from the word go despite my soft-spoken nature as a child. That rare combination of power, ruthlessness, relentlessness and just boiled-down super-distilled badassery offered by Dark Side followers has always gotten me fired up. Plus I like primary colors, you know the red/ white/ black color palette just speaks to my feminine side or something like that. Add to it that my true surname, which is undoubtedly not Britches, translates in the ancient Celtic as “dark man,” and in the same tongue, my true first name (no, not Whistle, people…you’re educated folks for the most part, please try to keep up) translates to “warrior.” At least that’s what I read in the baby name book in the checkout line once, so I’m going to go with it because it supports my premise that I was destined to become the Sith Lord that I am today. (The surname is documented, we were black-haired, blue-eyed Norman invaders of Ireland, we were…the lion in my family crest has red tongue and claws, if you know what I mean…my clan was not to be fkd with, not to be fkd with…) But as often is the case, I digress…

So imagine my joy as a child, age four, when my mother Secant showed me an ad folded neatly into the interior of the old Mobile Press. Back then, Mobile had two editions, the Mobile Press in the afternoon and the Mobile Register in the morning. Eventually they merged into the Press-Register, which was the paper of repute (sometimes ill) for most of my life before it morphed into the current zombie format of its previous incarnation, a mere shell of a paper that frequently finds more use as a litter box liner than as an actual journalistic periodical.

As Secant placed this ad before my youthful eyes, I lit up. “MEET THE REAL DARTH VADER!!!” the ad screamed. Happy happy, joy joy! Moms was cool, and I didn’t even have to ask if we could go. She simply told me would be heading out to the event the following Saturday, with a young baby B-Rad in tow. For me, meeting Darth Vader was akin to meeting Santa Claus and Jesus all at the same mall kiosk. Come to think of it, what would those cats do if they worked at the mall? I’d assume Claus would be doing the obvious during the holiday season, maybe serving as janitor during the rest of the year. He does have the homeless beard common among many janitors, so that could probably work. And he seems infatuated with kids too, come to think of it…maybe that joker should be on a state list or something. The whole thing is a little bizarre, wearing red velvet and making kids sit on his lap, giving them candy and making promises about what he’ll do if they’re naughty or nice…all he needs is an Econoline and some Twizzlers…Wait, what? What were we talking about?. ..please pardon my meanderings, let us continue…

Now you may ask yourself, how does OWB remember stuff from when he was like, four years old? First of all, cardinal rule, never doubt OWB. The penalty is worse than death. Secondly, this is one of the few memories I have of the time before my parents divorced, when my father still lived in the house before leaving us when I was five. That was a watershed event in the legend of OWB and was likely the propellant to most of the tomfoolery leveled by the same in his younger years. But this one recollection is still crystalline, a pure moment of memory to which I cling the way a man lost at seas clings to the broken hull of his sinking craft.

Now my pops, he wasn’t much for participating in anything that he didn’t explicitly want to do. Not really what we’d call a “team player,” to say the least. But to my surprise, he agreed to make the trip with us. The event was to be held at Mobile’s now somewhat-defunct Springdale Mall, which was the “dirt” mall of Mobile’s cross-street duo of retail powers. They had a few good stores, including the Toys-R-Us, but it just never drew the traffic of Bel Air Mall across Airport Blvd. The Darth Vader visit, thusly, was a huge coup for that mall, and the venue was packed accordingly on the morning that Lord Vader would make his appearance.

A stage had been erected in the mall’s eastern wing, and by the time we arrived, there was quite the crowd. I was about to piss my pants in excitement, seriously. I had consumed a thermos of sippy juice in the metallic urine-colored ’70 Nova on the drive over, and now I felt it weighing heavily upon my bladder. But alas, I couldn’t worry about teetee-fication, I had a Dark Lord to meet. So I soldiered on.

I wondered what I’d do with the rest of my life, having met my hero at such a nubile age. I had packed my pockets with the appropriate totems, action figures representative of the Empire: a Vader, a Stormtrooper, TIE fighter pilot, of course. Just wanted to make sure my Dark Side mojo was properly amped to meet up with The Dark Lord himself (no, not Our Dark Lord, The Dark Lord…stay with me here, people).

The moment of truth arrived…a puff of white fog ruptured forth from a smoke machine, concealing the stage and backdrop briefly. The entry was a replication of the opening Vader scene in A New Hope, when the Troopers blast through the lock of the Republic transport, emerging in a flurry of red laser blasts and spotless white Stormtrooper armor…just so fkn awesome I can hardly stand it. Dammit, now I’m fired up, I’ll be back in a second….need to do a lap around the building to run off this hype, hold on…

Okay, I’m back. Whew. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Stormtroopers through the door, fog machine…and then Vader emerged from the fog in all of his shiny black glory, complete with the sounds of his respirator playing over the intercom. So. Fkn. Awesome. I could hardly stand it, couldn’t believe I was going to meet the real Vader. Now keep in mind, though I was advanced in my knowledge of The ‘Wars at the age of four, I knew a fraction of what I now know about the canon. I didn’t fully understand the hierarchy of Vaders utilized in the films. If I remember correctly, there were three Vaders: James Earl Jones was the voice of course, then there was a stunt man who was involved in many of the fight scenes, don’t remember his name. But the guy who I’d be meeting was David Prowse, the actor who was the man in the Vader suit through most of the movies. You never hear his voice in the original film, but the guy was huge, probably 6’5” or so, bigger than my dad.

Prowse in the Vader suit was intimidating, to say the least. Even to a kid who wanted desperately to meet him, I must admit, there was a flutter in my stomach that was not entirely excitement-based. This summitch was scary. Probably scared some of the adults too. Standing there, pillared on either side by Stormtroopers…I must say it was a little overwhelming. Vader did his spiel, flailed a lightsaber a little for demonstration purposes, and quoted a few lines from the movie. Of course, Prowse was not talking, but there was a James Earl Jones track being piped over the PA. Once he was done with his routine, an emcee announced that anyone who was interested could line up for a chance to get a picture autographed by Vader himself!

In retrospect, it was probably a little hokie, but I was enthralled despite my relative fear. I guess everyone was a little scurd of making the trip on stage, fearing the worst, a Force-choke of some kind. Speaking of Force-chokes, I often wonder… if I could Force-choke someone, could I also Force-choke the groin? Think of that for a moment…that’s real power, people. As a wielder of the Dark Side of the Force, no appendages should be off-limits for any Force-based manipulation, and I’m sure the only thing that would get as much attention as Force-choking a brotha’s throat would be putting the Force on his coinpurse. Ouch. Enough of that, hurts thinking about it.

But alas, seeing that few kids were lining up for the honor of meeting the Dark Lord of the Sith, I darted to the front of the line. I wasn’t the first kid, but I was in the first 10. An attendant came down the line, handing out 8x10 black-and-white glossies of Vader to everyone awaiting His Excellency. I was so stoked, could barely contain myself. The line wasn’t moving fast enough for my liking, but slowly, I made my way to the front. I would be next…so excited!

It was finally my turn. I buried the fear in the pit of my stomach and bravely walked up the resonating hollow steps and onto the stage. I stood face to face with him (well, face to belt buckle), the Scourge of the Jedi, the fallen Chosen One. For a moment he was quiet, I stuck the photo out towards him. I was shocked by the next turn of events.

“Your name?” he asked.

First of all, the voice that emanated from beneath the helmet was not the one to which I was accustomed. It was of a higher pitch…and all…like, British and stuff. WTF? I immediately began to question the validity of this Vader. Was I being punked? Was this some scalawaggery being perpetrated against the fine Star Wars-loving people of Mobile, AL? I had to know…

“Are you the real Darth Vader?” I asked innocently. He nodded without speaking. “Cuz you don’t sound like Darth Vader.”

A laugh burst from beneath the dark helmet. Now I knew this couldn’t be Vader…Vader would never laugh. I was on to this imposter’s ruse, and I was not at all amused.

“You’re not real,” I said to him, dejected. He took the photo from my hand and pulled out a Sharpie to sign it. He shoved it back towards me, staring down at me through amber-black lenses, sizing up my fanhood like a surveillance droid. I began to walk off of the stage.

“Wait,” he said, stopping me, placing a black, gauntleted hand on my shoulder. I turned to him, and he simply said the following…

“You…you look like you need something, young apprentice…” I was getting nervous, as my knowledge of the Force indicated to me there was a disturbance. I was puzzled, what did he think I needed?

“Oh yes, yes, I have it…” and with a flourish of the Sharpie not unlike Vader’s preferred Makashi fighting style, this dark-hearted summitch whipped that marker across the skin above my lip, drawing an old-timey pencil-thin mustache on my four year old face!

I was petrified, couldn’t say a damn thing while Vader stood there laughing like a madman. I turned to look at my mom and dad for comfort, for a life-preserver, for some soothing of my bruised feelings. Much to my dismay, I turned to find both of them laughing, along with the remainder of the large crowd amassed behind me. Even Baby B-Rad, not yet two, was grinning like the proverbial Chezzycat.

I was ashamed and ran off the stage. Tripped and almost fell down the final four stairs in my haste to get away. Apparently, Vader was trying to diffuse the situation for those who thought he was too intense, and I was just a pawn in his elaborate and Sith-like plan. Damn him!

I ran towards my parents…then ran right past them as they laughed along with everyone else. I was still mustachioed with indelible ink. I was really upset, as my hero had defiled me in front of the entire known world!

What happened next added insult to injury. Usually I was a paragon of four year old bladder control…I mean, I could hold my water like a long-haul trucker, rarely had to use the old mayonnaise jar on the four hour Thanksgiving pilgrimage between Mobile and Vance. But as I ran away from my parents, distraught and worried what the world thought of me, I felt that familiar warmth trickling down from my crotch, running down the leg of my corduroys and making my Chuck Taylors squishy in the sole. Knowing the inevitable was going to occur, I surrendered, let my water break, releasing a yellow, fetid tsunami onto the semi-shag carpet adored by the designers of Springdale Mall.

I ran into the bathroom, parents running behind me, still enjoying themselves far too much for my liking. I had already peed myself…that ship had sailed, so my first stop was the mirror to see for myself Vader’s artwork. Sure enough, I looked like the four year old villain from a black-and-white Old West talkie. Like I should be tying some bodiced damsel-in-distress to a dang ole railroad track. Ridiculous. I felt my anger, nay, my hatred, flare. I was ashamed and enflamed all at the same time, unable to control my rage but so determined to stay hidden from public view that I was paralyzed…and that, my friends, is how I came to discover the very nexus of what it is to be a Sith. Revenge, hate, anger, these are the tools of a Sith’s trade, and it is this gift that Vader himself bestowed upon me in the first person.

My mom evidently crow-barred pops into coming in the restroom to check on me, but by that time, I was a new man, fired and hammered in the kiln of public embarrassment by none other than The Dark Lord himself. While at the time I hated him for it, I’ve since come to embrace those emotions, honing them into an efficient weapon of constant malevolence and domination. Quite honestly, my apprenticeship to the Dark Side began on that day, and it grew from that seed of hatred planted by the black thumb of Lord Vader.

I also found out on that day that public restroom pump soap does not remove Sharpie ink. I scrubbed my upper limp red with industrial paper towels and pump soap, but to no avail. I was a marked man, forever tainted, forever corrupted. The soap did take off the pee stank though, so that was a positive. Wet corduroys…not so positive.

Moral of the Story: Never trust the Sith. Learn to parry before becoming engaged in Sharpie combat with a Dark Lord. And above all, always pack an extra set of britches…never know when that will come in handy, know what I mean?

I pray for your eternal souls, Bulldoggies…I pray that the Good Lord has mercy on you, for the Crimson Tide most certainly will not.

RTR, party people!