Your Weekly Hoodoo Thread: Aggie edition

Ain’t no party like a Vol-ass-whuppin’ party, amirite? Good Lord, even I didn’t fully anticipate the keg-sized can of whup-ass (pronounced “hoop-ice” ‘round these here parts) that the boys in crimson were going to open up on that radioactive-pumpkin-orange horde from north of Fort Payne. I mean, I don’t remember seeing a more brutal and thorough destruction of Alabama’s most hated rival, as there just wasn’t anything good those heathens could muster against the fully-armed and operation power of Alabama’s Death Star. 

No, much to the delight of we the Alabama faithful, our beloved Crimson Tide was relentless, explosive, driven, powerful…all qualities one looks for in an eventual championship team. Sure, there were some things the Tide could have done better, but overall, there couldn’t have been a more satisfying outcome.

This week, the Tide steps right back into the fire against yet another ranked SEC foe in Texas A&M. There are plenty of reasons to harbor some concern, though none of them are particularly compelling to your humble narrator. Yes, Texas A&M beat Alabama at Bryant Denny in Johnny Football’s coming out party. History is history. Sure, the Aggies are ranked 6^th nationally coming into the game. I know, I can read the rankings. Yes, they appear to have developed two facets of the game that doomed them in the past, namely a defense and a running game. Of course, I know who Trevor Knight is and what he did against Alabama in the Sugar Bowl several years ago. Old news.

Maybe the Aggies are the team that will give Alabama fits this year, so to that end, we must take up the ritual baton of Hoodoos past and lay some meaningful sacrifice at the foot of Football Loki’s crimson throne. For we do nothing without the favor of our pigskin patron, and granted the fact that the only way the Aggies will defeat Alabama is by some conjunction of voodoo black magic and divine intervention, I say it’s best we stack our Hoodoo deck with Loki’s blessing.

So as we’ve done for so many eons before, bring your shameful, your embarrassing, your horrifying, your tales of woe and guilt, and place them before the Saint of Football Chaos. For it is his favor we covet, and it is with his favor that our beloved Crimson Tide will once again ride to victory.

But enough prelude, for I have come here to drink hand-hewn bourbons and spin Hoodoo. And I am all out of bourbon (not really, I have a shit-ton of bourbon, y’all).

Let us journey back once again to the days of your narrator’s youth, a more convivial era when voodoo economics reigned, when music was heavily peppered with synth-driven electronica, and our beloved Crimson Tide was in the ditch in regard to the football program. Though we had not yet reached the dubious “Mikes” era of Alabama football, we were floating in the latter stages of the Perkins years while heading squarely into that dark epoch known as the Curry tenure. (Now I’ll say, Bill didn’t do a terrible job overall. But he couldn’t beat Auburn, which led me to believe that he was some long-placed sleeper agent of the latent Alabama-Georgia Tech rivaliry of the Bryant era. Those bastards had certainly sent him in as a mole to destroy the Tide form the inside out, and I’ll be damned if they weren’t half successful.)

But their spy-versus-spy activity ultimately brought about the reign of SEC terror known as the Gene Stallings years, as after tolerating an outsider in Curry (and a Bobby Dodd-coached Tech dandy, at that), Alabama looked within towards Stallings for his ties to the program as a trusted assistant and advisor to Coach Bryant himself. 

But alas, these are merely historical footnotes of the Alabama program with which we are all familiar. 

On to our tale…

I was a young feller growing up in Mobile, AL during the 80’s, the son of a negligent father and a hard-working single mother who did her best for her boys, at least as well as she knew how. Momz did a pretty great job of being both mom and dad to us, as she’d carry us to ball practice, pitch at us in the backyard when we needed her to, and participate in our youthful adventures (even if doing so meant turning a blind eye to some mischievousness or other). 

But let’s face it: as much as she tries, a mother can only go so far down the fatherhood path before she reaches the end of the road. Boys need a father, or in the absence of such, a father figure. Fortunately for me and B-Rad, we had father figures galore, uncles, parental friends, and extended family who would take us in and do man-type stuff with us so that we didn’t grow up as nancies who didn’t know how to spin a football, cast a lure, pump a shotgun or turn a lug-nut. 

One such figure was an old Army colonel who spent most of his adult life living next to my grandmother, a man by the name of Fox. Mr. Fox, as we called him, was a Southern-styled Dean Martin with a Bing Crosby baritone and a military flair. He wasn’t about the bullshit, unless of course, it was the particular kind of bullshit he enjoyed peddling. Whenever I’d be working in my grandma-ma’s yard, he’d drift out, shirtless of course (it was, after all, Mobile), with a bourbon neat on-the-rocks in a crystal hi-ball glass, swaddled in a cocktail napkin. He was a quiet man, but like most gentlemen of military bearing, he knew when and how to make himself heard.

On this day, I had been mowing my grandma-ma’s big back yard in Jackson Heights. Fox sauntered out, glass in hand, leaning on the gate of the chain-link fence.

“Hey son, turn that thing off a moment.” I complied. “I need somebody to come over here and cut my front yard…you need the work?” he said, a grin parting his lips.

“Yes’sir, Mr. Fox, if mama will let me.”

“Oh, she’ll let you. Just come knock on the slidin’ glass door when you’re ready and you can use my high-wheeled self-propelled. That there is the Cadillac of push-mowers.”

He slinked on over to my grandma-ma’s house, where I’m sure he told her about the deal he’d brokered with me. When I was done with the yard, I went on in, and grandma-ma told me what to do.

“He said you can use his mower, but you better be careful with it. I’m going to come watch you to make sure it’s done correctly.”

Done correctly? What? Did Grandma-ma take me for a fool? I knew how to cut grass. She didn’t relent, however, and followed me to Mr. Fox’s yard.

I did as I was told, met his exacting specs on how to cut the glass, which way he wanted the clippings to go, and the way he wanted me to rake over it when I was done. It was no picnic, I tell you what. And to do the whole job beneath the eye of my exacting grandma-ma made the task that much the tougher.

“Your rows aren’t even, you want your rows to be even, mow in a straight line,” she’d order me, like a landscape drill instructor. “You cut that corner too tight and missed a few blades, go back over it.”

Grandma-ma has always been one for details, and though her tactics seemed harsh and tiresome at the time, I realize now that she was teaching me something I’d need throughout my life. The lesson is two-fold: if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and that one should strive for perfection knowing full well that such is impossible, thus settling for excellence. God bless my grandma-ma, who is still teaching me lessons at the age of 95. I love that woman more than anyone but my mama and my kids.

When I was done, Mr. Fox sankowed out, fresh ice cubes soaking in a newly-filled glass of brown liquor. Still shirtless, of course.

“Well now, you done? What a fine job you did, really nice work, son. I’m proud of you.”

I beamed. It wasn’t every day I had a full-bird colonel telling me he was proud of me. 

He then extended to me a wad of green bills. I rolled them out immediately and counted them…one…two…three. Three dollars? Really? I had thought I’d at least get five, and in fact, I had been planning my expenditures the whole time I had been cutting. I figured with that much money, I could get a GI Joe figure, a couple Faygos and enough penny-candy to induce a mild case of the dia-beetuss.

“Um, Mr. Fox, is this all?”

He laughed. Which, when dealing with situations involving one’s payment for work already completed, is never a good thing.

“Well, you didn’t tell me how much you wanted for doing the work, so I figured you’d just take whatever I gave you. You need to always negotiate your pay before you start work. If you’d have said you wanted five dollars, I’d have paid you five dollars. But you didn’t…so I gave you three.”

Well, that was a hell of a lesson to learn, and a hell of a way to learn it. I got taken by someone older and wiser…but that lesson itself ain’t my Hoodoo on this here day. It’s one that has stuck with me forever, though, so I assume of ole Fox knew what he was doing. No, given the gravity of this game we play this weekend against the ever-pesky Aggies, I have an addendum to lay on this introductory yarn that is of far more embarrassing pedigree.

Now before you think Mr. Fox a lout for short-changing a poor young soul down on his luck, I have to tell you, the following week he called my mother and asked if it would be alright for him to take me and B-Rad on a trip to Disney World. You see, his daughter had married grandma-ma’s son Rushell, my mom’s brother, and together they had a son, B-Ri. B-Ri was Mr. Fox’s only grandchild, and he figured it’d be more fun if B-Ri had a couple’a cousins along on the trip as playmates. At least, that was the official story. In reality, I think that he really wanted to do something wonderful for us, and knew on my mother’s single income, we’d never make it to the Magic Kingdom otherwise. He truly did us a solid that I will never forget. Great guy, great man.

The day arrived that we were supposed to leave for Orlando. I was a little nervous, having never ventured far from beneath my mother’s apron strings. I had surely never taken a trip across state lines without a parent, and it was not without some bit of trepidation that I agreed to undertake this childhood journey into the heart of cultural Americana darkness. The Ezekiel’s wheel for this particular trip was Fox’s recently-acquired merlot-colored Camaro, fresh off the lot. It was a beautiful, if not particularly roomy, automobile with tan leather interior and t-tops that made it look even sportier than it was. Always a fan of the Camaro, to my childhood eyes it may as well have been a Mazerati, and I was tickled to death that I’d get to ride all the way to Disneyworld in the front seat (since I was the tallest and needed the most leg room, of course).

That is, until this particular American muscle car was neutered by the over-information provided by the well-meaning associate at Bay Chevrolet, from whence Fox had purchased this fine, gas-guzzlin’ mo-sheen. Always a stickler for the rules, Fox had been told by the saleman at the dealership that for best results, he should keep her under 50 miles per hour for the first 1000 miles (who in the hell buys a brand new Camaro, and keeps it under 50 miles per hour? Surely, this was said in some twisted gest?) And ole Fox, he wasn’t about to violate the rules of the road for the sake of expediency…no sir’ee. The Man said keep it under 50, so he was damn sure gonna keep it under 50. Now bear in mind, the trip from Mobile to Orlando on the Interstate system takes approximately eight hours, give or take an hour depending on traffic. That is travelling the speed limit, or course. 

But at a median speed of 48 miles an hour, that trip grows substantially longer. Unbearably so, in fact. There are only so many Stuckey’s signs and hot springs one can pass by on the journey to the Florida interior without being lulled into a semi-conscious state, unable to sleep fully because of the excitement of the pending arrival at DISNEYWORLD YAY!, but too tired to hold one’s lead-weighted head upright atop an undersized neck.

It was an exhausting exercise, made more exhausting by the gigglin’ foolishness psillin’ out of B-Rad and B-Ri from the back seat. Those boys were live wires to begin with, but stuff them in a car and ply them with snacks and caffeine-laden soft drinks, and the outcome is less than favorable. Spending hours in an enclosed space with an unmedicated B-Rad will test one’s will to live, as I felt like I had run the Iron Man Triathalon of foolishness. 

B-Rad, a childhood diabetic, was on a very strict nutritionist-mandated diet as a youngster, which meant he had to consume a great deal of raw vegetables and fruit. Sounds healthy enough, right? It was healthy for him, but not for those who would in subsequent hours have their relative atmospheres tainted by the rancid percolations of his tailpipe. He’s always been a farter…to this day, he is prone to rack one off in mixed company and chuckle like an 11-year-old. This car trip, this grueling, 12-hour car trip, was a nightmare in regard to gaseousness. Had the designer of this treasured Camaro known of B-Rad’s effluvial talents, certainly he or she would have equipped this sporty vehicle with drop-down oxygen masks not unlike those found on your typical 747. It would have been an appreciated essential option on this make, as being enclosed in a confined space with B-Rad and his B-hole for long periods of time is the gassy equivalent of water-boarding.

At one point just past DeFuniak Springs, Fox asked us if we were hungry. Which, of course, must have just been a courtesy of sorts, or a mere indirect announcement of intentions, as he knew that three growing boys were pretty damn well always hungry. He identified a Burger King at the next exit, and dipped us off the road to get a bite. Because of the newness of the car, and the light color of its interior, we took our meal indoors. 

B-Rad and I were well accustomed to the Burger King menu, as there was one within walking distance of our home, and we frequently rode our bikes up there for a Whopper and shake (in those days, a kid could still ride hither and yon without fear of being dragged into a white cargo van or gunned down in some crossfire or another.) As we were accustomed to the menu, I was also accustomed to which dietary restrictions B-Rad had to abide by, being my brother’s keeper and such. As a frequenter of the Burger King, I also knew good and damn well which of those particular offerings would render the most noxious fumes in B-Rad’s gullet. 

However, I couldn’t dissuade him from one of the primary defenders, specifically the Italian chicken sandwich. I don’t know what type of sulphurous preservation agents or methane-based anti-foaming additives could have rendered the dioxin-laced paper mill scent that would waft from my brother’s posterior upon eating said sandwich, but suffice it to say, his consumption of that particular offering should have been banned by the Geneva Convention. 

Time came to order.

“I’ll have one’a ya Eye-talian chicken sammitches and an order of fries please,” B-Rad piped up. 

“Ummm, do you really think that’s a good idea? I mean….”

B-Rad looked at me and nodded, as if he knew what I was getting at and was fully onboard.

“You’re right, I didn’t think about that. I’ll have two’a ya Eye-talian chicken sammitches…”

This was going to be a disaster. Two of those sammitches would supply him with a week’s worth of butt-fumes, to be sure. But Fox, always open to enjoyment of the finer things in life, was undaunted.

“Ah, we’re on vacation, the boy can have anything he wants,” said Bob Fox. I had no choice but to relent, even though I knew this loosening of B-Rad’s reins would surely lead to a WMD-level stinkfest for at least the remainder of the ride to the Happiest Place on Earth.

As predicted, B-Rad’s gut bubbled and perc’d the whole way, requiring multiple stops at questionable public bathrooms littered along our route. When the gasses within him topped off, he’d let them sizzle out like the guttural hissing of a stank-ass pressure cooker. I must have spent nine of the 12 hours of the trip with the window rolled down slightly, just to vent that stank off that small cab and out into the already-stink-corrupted Florida atmosphere.

Finally, through all of the toil and trouble of B-Rad’s belly bubble, we saw a faint glow in the distance, a neon beacon ever so softly illuminating the sky just over the horizon.

“That’s it…that’s Disneyworld, right over there,” said Fox, pointing to the greenish-gold illumination on the edge of the sky. I was ecstatic. I never thought I’d get a chance to visit Disneyworld, and now, thanks to Mr. Fox, that out-of-reach dream was about to become a reality.

Given our late-evening arrival, Fox elected to get another bite and head straight into the hotel where we could rest up for the next three big days. I walked around wide-eyed, as if I was setting foot on another planet for the first time. In a way, I was, as what I saw was far from the confines of my neighborhood and the sleepy town that was Mobile, AL in the years of my childhood. There were lights everywhere, people smiling, the Monorail…it was a lot for a young’un to take in, but I was loving it.

I could hardly sleep that night. I was excited for the coming day, even though I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I would soon find out. 

You see, I have a confession to make before you, my faithful readers. At the risk of being mocked, I must admit that your narrator has a phobia of sorts, one that has circumscribed my actions lo these many years, prevented me from attempting things I may have enjoyed, limited me to pursuits of a terrestrial nature. You see…I…am terrified of heights.  

Now before you judge me, understand, I am as fearless an individual as you will find. A product of a rough childhood carved from among a rough assemblage of characters, very little actually scares me. I’ve been in street fights against behemoths in which the odds were not in my favor. I’ve been in shootouts in which nothing protected me from searing bullets but the thin stamped sheet metal of a car door. I once stared down a whole passel of drunken hooligans single-handedly at a Mardi Gras parade (Hoodoo for another time). 

In a word, I fear no man or beast. But put more than a few feet of empty space between me and ole terra firma, and I panic. I get the cold sweats. I go to shakin’ like an epileptic Quaker. I can’t, nay, won’t, board that cotdanged winged death trap known as an airliner, not after my run-in with Delta a few years back in which the landing gear failed to deploy after 30 minutes of circling Mobile. I hate open grate walkways at stadiums. The Dolly Parton Bridge on I-10 over the Mobile Delta gives me cold sweats. Once at lowly Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, I was forced to sit on the terminal end of one of the rows, nothing between me and the asphalt 60 feet below but chain-link fence, and I nearly puked my guts out and got vertigo. 

Because of this irrational fear of heights I harbor, there is a litany of activities that I’ve marked off my list for this lifetime. Visiting the top of Stone Mountain via cable car? No thank you. Walking the rope bridge at Rock City? Nuh-uh. Crossing the Mississippi on the Huey Long Bridge in New Orleans? Nope. Taking in the Mobile Delta from the 30^th floor of the RSA Tower? Hell nah, can’t get near the window. Ferris Wheel at the Greater Gulf State Fair, even? Negatory. 

Which brings me to the current situation…I hate amusement park rides, specifically because most of them rely on heights and speed to terrify occupants. I’m okay with the speed, but the heights? Ix-nay on the eights-hay. 

So in light of this, I’m not sure exactly what I thought I was going to do at Disneyworld? Spend three days on the Dizzy Teacups, maybe? Do an awful lot of research in the Hall of Presidents? Not the makings of a memorable vacation by any stretch. 

So we set out for our first day at Disney, and what is the first damn thing my daredevil cousin B-Ri wants to do? You guessed it: Space Mountain. Now not only does Space Mountain involve speed and heights, but a goodly bit of darkness as well, completing the terror trifecta. We got in line, and already, I was trying to think my way out of getting on that god-awful ride without looking like a total chicken-shit.

“Um, Mr. Fox, I think I have a stomach ache, can I go to the bathroom?”

“Well, son, I wish you would have gone before we got in line. But when you gotta go, you gotta go, we’ll get out of line and go with you, then come back to the line.”

“Dangit,” I thought. That’s not what I was hoping for at all. I guess I thought maybe he’d just let me go while they were riding Space Mountain. But no dice. I had to feign a poopster to give myself the maximum amount of time to come up with another ruse to get me out of getting on that Ride of Death. 

I finally responded to the third summons from Fox to “come on,” and we got back in line. My brain was racing, I had to think of something. 

“Uh, Mr. Fox, I feel dizzy, feel like I’m gonna throw up. I don’t think I can go on this ride.” 

He looked at me for a minute, his buzzed-bald head cocked sideways, taking in my cues like a dog does to glean every bit of additional info he could in order to make some sense of my actions. 

“Don’t feel good? Well, I’d hate it if you puked on everybody on the ride, reckon you can just stand here while we go? B-Ri really wants to ride Space Mountain…”

“Of course, you all go ahead, I’ll wait right here by the attendant.” I breathed a sigh of relief as they shuffled forward toward the front of the line. This was the best case scenario. The ruse had worked so well, I figured I’d be able to fall back on it anytime the other wanted to get on a ride that terrified me. I was all set.

So when the rest of my party sankowed up to the now-defunct swings ride, I was all like, “Still feelin’ nauseous, probably ought to sit this one out.” Someone suggested Splash Mountain? “Nah, y’all go ahead, I’m feeling dizzy, y’all have fun.”

It worked perfectly, though I knew my constant feigned discombobulation would at some point result in suspicion amongst members of my party, particularly the old Army colonel who had graciously let us tag along. He was all about us kids having “fun,” but I think he was beginning to fear that this phantom illness of mine was preventing the pursuit of the aforementioned.

Now, I had plenty of fun…eating snowcones, cotton candy, shopping for Disney paraphernalia, etc. The Haunted House was great, and Pirates of the Caribbean was a blast. I even enjoyed the It’s a Small World ride, particularly since it hemmed close to the ground and traveled at a modest speed in doing so. 

On our third and final day, I was pretty proud of the fact that I had gratefully negotiated the minefield of heights that Disney World offered, and had not even had to open myself to the ridicule of my counterparts by admitting my phobia to anyone. Surely, that would be an unsavory prospect because, as the eldest of my cousins, I was a role model of masculinity to my cousins and brother. If the fates were on my side, I’d be able to negotiate this final day, get a good night’s sleep, and begin the trip back to Mobile the following morning, my reputation intact.

We rode the monorail into the Magic Kingdom, and though there were spots in which the monorail bordered on being too high for my liking, I shrugged it off and tried to enjoy the modest view. After all, one doesn’t get to Disney every day…had to soak in the sights. We spent the day working our way across the park, re-riding our favorite rides (my dizziness still in play when necessary) and revisiting our favorite attractions one last time. As the day wore to a close, we stopped for a bite to eat, and B-Rad ate a salad and a bacon cheeseburger, which I knew would be a winning (or rather, losing) combination in his perpetual game of gut-roulette, and we could only hope that his gassiness held off until we were safely back in the confines of the hotel room where we could cloister him in the bathroom for the duration of his bio-chemical attack on humanity.

I, for my part, had a big ole grilled chicken sammitch and drank what must have been the better part of a gallon of fresh-squeezed lemonade. Lemonade is one of those drinks that one never really “buys,” but rather just rents for a short time. Before we left the restaurant, I availed myself of the facilities and made water, but as I learned with col’beer in a later epoch, once that seal is broken the water is going to flow often.

We wandered without aim, letting our eyes be our navigators with no plan or design to our meandering. Or at least I thought. We found ourselves in an area of the park known as Fantasyland, which sounded innocuous enough, to be sure. But as we approached a structure that looked charmingly like a Swiss chalet, a feeling of foreboding began to rise within me, a disturbance in the Force, if you will. Something wasn’t right here, and Fox’s cadence of speech and tone reflected a subtle change.

“I got something over here I want to see…” said Fox. “I’ll be right back.” Fox disappeared into the chalet for a moment.

Hmmm…I was puzzled. I thought we’d pretty much seen everything. Something wasn’t right here.

As I waited outside for Fox to return, I became aware of a rickety, clickety, clanking-creaking sound that sounded as though it was coming from overhead. I looked up, and to my shock and horror, I saw what appeared to be a dangling metal box of death, suspended precariously from a spaghetti thin cable. 

It all made sense now. I felt panic rising in me like the mercury in a candy thermometer dunked in molten chocolate. Fox emerged from the Alpine-styled building, a few snips of paper tucked within his folded hand. This was not good. This was beyond not good, this was some fkd up repugnant shit right here.

“Hey boys, I got us some Skyway tickets,” he said with a grin. “We’re going to ride one of these Skyway cars back over to Tomorrowland to get us back closer to the hotel."

There was nothing about the word “Skyway” that sounded fun or even doable. More like “Deathway.” Had he heard that flimsy galloping toaster-box of death bumpledy-bumpin’ down that ridiculously thin cable? Holy shit, I couldn’t believe this was happening. He had already purchased four tickets. I immediately fell back on my built-in, pre-existing excuse. 

“Um, I don’t know if I can or not, I’m dizzy,” I offered.

“Well, dizzy or not, you’re gonna have to ride, OWB. It’s a one-way trip so you can’t just sit it out.”

“But, I’m…dizzy?”

The power of my previous excuse had wavered. It wasn’t taking. The magic words were no longer magic. I had to think quickly.

“I may puke, pretty sure I’ll puke.”

“I reckon we’ll have to take that chance.” Fox, being the military man of brass that he was, wasn’t budging from the plan.

“I…I can…I can just walk back I guess, meet y’all over there.” I was grasping at straws.

“Oh no you can’t, son. I’ll not face your mama and explain to her how I let you walk all by yourself all the way over to Tomorrowland. Not gonna work. You’re just gonna have to man up and ride this cable car. It’s really short, doesn’t last long at all. Only about five minutes.”

Five minutes? FIVE MINUTES? Clearly, he didn’t grasp the full extent of my “dizziness,” i.e. height-driven terror! Five minutes dangling in the thin air by a literal thread was akin to a lifetime. Five minutes was exactly four minutes and fifty-nine seconds longer than I’d want to be in said position under even the most dire of circumstances. I’d much rather have taken my chances explaining the situation to mom, which says something about my fear of what I was about to have to do.

But Fox wasn’t budging. In his mind, it was a done deal.

“Com’on, now, I already got a ticket. You may get up there and realize you like it. You can see everything from up there.”

Might like it? Was he kidding me? Yeah, I might like getting my leg torn off and eaten tare-tare by a great white, but I ain’t tryin’ it to find out. And the fact that I would be able to “see everything from up there” was not a very good selling point…in fact, that was the very thing I feared the most, seeing everything…including the ground, all the space between me and the ground, the splintery-stabby tops of trees underneath me, the hard ass concrete that would certainly turn me into a pancake if I fell onto it from 100 feet in the air. This was most assuredly not a promising development.

“But…but…I gotta pee.” I was really reaching.

“Well, there’s no bathroom right here, you’re just gonna have to wait until we get off the cars on the other side.” Dammit, foiled again. I wasn’t lying, I really did need to shake the dew off me lily. That lemonade was sittin’ heavy on my bladder button, and after walking damn near all over the park, holding it was creeping up on downright painful. I had been performing he “invisible dick-pinch” (fellas know what I’m talkin’ about) tactic that allowed me to hold my water under dire circumstances until I could find a WC.

I had to literally be dragged into that house of horrors known as the Swiss Chalet from which this cable car to hell embarked. I was absolutely terrified. I would have preferred that Sweet Death has swept me up in its soothing embrace prior to stepping into that swinging gondola of pain, so that way, I’d never have to try to unsee that which was about to forever stain my eye-parts. 

The goofy, grinning attendant opened the door to a black car (appropriate, since black is the COLOR OF DEATH) and accepted our tickets. For those of you who harbor irrational fears, you know the routine. When you suffer from acrophobia, you become super-sensitive, super-observant when in a situation involving heights. Time slows down, you see every detail, hear every sound, searching for the tiniest hazard that could spell certain death. 

As I attempted to step into the car, I saw a small gap between the car and the loading platform. The car was bobbing slightly. I froze. I couldn’t will myself further. I was mortified. 

I felt a nudge from behind as Fox pushed me towards the car a little. “Com’on boy, gotta get in, we’re holdin’ up the show.”

I closed my eyes and stepped in. The car swung under my weight. This was not good. I kept reassuring myself, trying to convince myself at this point it was okay to open my eyes as I sat on the little bench seat. But I couldn’t. I tucked my chin to my chest and kept my peppers pressed closed. 

The car lurched and I heard a humming sound that vibrated through the steel cable, telegraphing itself into the steel enclosure of the cable car. The car lurched forward under some phantom power.

“I don’t feel so good.” I knew that if I opened my eyes, nothing good would come of it.

“It’s alright, you’ll be okay,” said Fox.

The car was moving, and I could tell from the lightening shade (despite my closed eyes) that we were out of the chalet loading area and out in the open air, bobbing like a balloon in the breeze. My brother and cousin chirped like a couple of budgies.

“OOOO look, the Grand Prix Racetrack looks like a bunch of Hot Wheels from up here…”

“Yeah, the people look like ants!...”

I could have done with a lot less description, honestly. The car trolleyed along, every so often sending a shock of pure fear through me when the pulley wheel holding the car to the wire bounded over one of the cable connection points. It was seriously the worst thing ever. Ever.

After a moment, Fox spoke up again. 

“Open your eyes and take a look around, there’s a really great view. I think you’ll like it.”

Was he crazy? Of course I wouldn’t like it. Then again, I was also afraid that everyone would deem me chicken, since it was obvious by this point that I wasn’t overly tickled with the whole situation. Maybe he was right, maybe I would like it. I mean, he had never steered me astray before, I trusted ole Fox like a grandfather.

I don’t know what came over me exactly, but for a brief moment, I concurred. I decided to take his advice. I opened my eyes, and as soon as they adjusted to the light, I was confronted with a visual holocaust of terrifying images. The heights, THE HEIGHTS! Why did they have to be so high? The people DID look like ants! We may as well have been a mile up in the air. I immediately thought of the poorly built car, the floss-thin cable, how long we would fall if the car plummeted, the bumping and swaying of the under-engineered pseudo-vehicle as it made its way along. 

Confronted with this overwhelming tidal wave of sensory overload, I had no choice but to collapse onto the floor of the car, assuming the fetal position with tears welling in my eyes. It was awful, everyone in the car just looked at me, not knowing what action to take, as if I was a freshly run-over dog writhing on the roadside.  

To make matters worse, I could feel the warm groinal embrace of a urine stream creeping through my underbritches.  Remember that burning desire to cut loose with the Yellow River I mentioned earlier? Well, the pressure had grown so great that it would have been intolerable had I not been distracted by the fear of imminent death posed by the Skyway ride. When I opened my eyes, freaked, and went to the floor, I momentarily lost control of my faculties, and without constant concentration, that bladder button I had been suppressing for so long popped open like a shaken Co’cola. 

So I was a wet, cowering mess, sprawled out on the floor of a Disney cable car in a puddle of my own whiz. What’s worse, I was going to have to walk from Tomorrowland back to the monorail station in said wet britches, stinkin’ of fresh piss like a cage-kept baby squirrel. 

My counterparts just looked down upon me (figuratively and literally) from their benches above in amazement. There was utter silence save for the droning hum of the car finishing its course, rumbling over the steel cable to its destination. 

My brother, never much for the whole silence thing, cut one. A wet, methane-tinged one that quickly filled the semi-sealed cab of the cable car with a stench so wretched that I found it very difficult to suppress the urge to vomit. If this particular gaseous emission had been of a color, that color would have most undoubtedly been olive-drab green. 

Now your narrator is no chemist by any means, but based on the observations of that day, I can only conclude that butt-gas is heavier than air, as I could almost see that stank descend upon me from my vantage point on the floor like a putrid curtain of brimstone. And there was no, I mean no, ventilation in that damn cable care, save for the few gaps through which I could see daylight around the joints in the floor. That cab was not made to accommodate pooters the likes of my brother B-Rad, as his hindparts could legally be registered as weapons of mass destruction by the UN. His bee-hind was guilty of war crimes, the current instance being but one of them. Had Saddam Hussein harnessed his flatulent stylings, then certainly the course of history would have been changed for the worse. The cab festered with that awful smell. I think I puked but caught it in my mouth and swallowed it for fear of making an even bigger mess on the floor of Walt Disney’s masochistic airborne torture chamber. The smells were wretched: the cab was the very definition of a literal hot box. The situation couldn’t have possibly been worse.

“Com’on boy, get up off the floor, you’re makin’ a mess of yourself,” admonished Bob Fox. “It’s unbecoming.”

At that point, I didn’t care about becoming. I just wanted to become myself out of that death trap and back on solid ground, piss-pants or not. I wanted some clean clothes. And I wanted to go home. As it’s been said, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…in this case, a single, piss-soaked step. 

I had to undertake a walk of shame to take cross the remaining territory between the Tomorrowland debarkation point of the Skyway and the monorail, followed by a soggy pee-stank ride on the train back to the hotel. It was miserable. My related peers dared not laugh or poke fun at the time, as surely they would have incurred the wrath of the generally just Fox. But once away from parental earshot, I was sure I’d face a firing squad of jabs and jokes. Yay.

That was my sole experience with Disney World. As a parent, I am ashamed that I have not introduced my kids to it, but as you can understand, my lone previous experience has been a source of trauma for some time. Thank the Good Lord they did away with those damn Skyway cars, so I now feel able to return and enjoy what the park has to offer.

But if my first foray was a guide, then to Hell with it. Magic Kingdom my ass. More like Kingdom of Death and Urine. 

There you go, Loki. Have fun with this one, I saved it for the Aggi because I fear that they will be a tough out. Please, slake your thirst for embarrassment on my humble offering, and lend us your favor as we meet these heathens from yon westerly climes.

Roll Tide.

Your Weekly Hoodoo Get-Down: Tennessee Hate Week

Alrightalrightalright, party people! Welcome to this Tennessee Hate Week edition of our little favor-begging practice we call the Hoodoo ledger.

As many of you know, this little piece of weekly writin’ previously resided on rollbamaroll.com. However, due to unforeseen circumstances (read: this ole boy won’t be censored by a bunch of corporate suits who cave to a few triggered complainers from the “words hurt” crowd), I elected to bring this whole party over into the private sector, so to speak. As you, my faithful readers well know, I am loathe to bite my tongue, and just as life is an amalgam of the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, so too is this foolishness I put down here for you people week in and week out. So I welcome you all to the new home of Hoodoo. It may not be much to look at, but you’re welcome to come in, make yourself comfortable, and sit a spell while I continue to unwind the fabric of my 41 years of livin’, one thread at a time. And by all means, what kind of host would I be if I didn’t invite you to leave your own Hoodoo sacrifice on the doorstep of my new abode. We’re going to test it out this week, so feel free to leave your own debaucherous Hoodoo recounting in the comments below.

This week’s Hoodoo is of the utmost importance, friends, as it is in this week that we most need Football Loki’s full attention. We are playing a most heated rival whose name I am reluctant to even speak in this hallowed space.  Suffice to say, they are lowdown, they dirty, they some snitches…we all know who we’re talkin’ about here, right?

So this hated rival that sports the most garish of orange hues leads me to a week full of rituals my daughter referred to as “simply ridiculous” earlier this week. She, in her usual cordial nature, had asked if I wanted a sip of orange juice while she had it out. My reply, of course…

“HELL NAH…TENNESSEE WEEK!”

She was confused.

“Um what?”

“I don’t consume orange during Tennessee Week…to do so is to ingest pure evil.” 

She didn’t get it. So, of course, I elaborated.

“I don’t eat orange this week. I don’t drink orange this week. I don’t wear orange this week. I scowl when I see orange this week. Got it?”

She heard me, but didn’t really get it. She’s turning into her mother, I’m afraid.

But I digress. In addition to this ban on all things orange, I also have a specific game week ritual. I wear a different Star Wars shirt each day of game week. On Friday, I wear my Bama Vader shirt. On Saturday, I wear my Stormtrooper Game Face shirt and my houndstooth ballcap. I make sure that during my daily cardio, I have “Rammer Jammer,” the fight song, and C-Murder loaded into my playlists. I try to avoid using the letter T (unsuccessfully I might add, but it’s the intention that counts). 

Alas, this Hoodoo tale is what caps my ritual for the week, as Alabama is in for a battle this weekend against a team that has itself just recently run out of its own meth-tinged, hillpersonish mojo, as the way the Garbage Truck Workers have won many games this year can only be described as miraculous. Let’s hope that Loki is paying attention this week, and that our meager sacrifices are of merit in his eyes.

Now, without further chastisement, let me, your faithful narrator, initiate this particular Hoodoo tale of woe.

As a young man trying to navigate life sans fatherly influence (my own father having fled the proverbial coop to chase tail, and not his own, mind you), I was at a bit of a disadvantage growing up. My dear old Moms did her best to fill the role as a dual-threat parent to her two sons (me and B-Rad, for the mental slowpokes amongst ye), but as many of you probably know, a woman can only tread so far down the fatherly road before she must break trail, set up camp and wait for reinforcements.

Yes, my mother made it further than most, but in the end, the only way my brother and I would ever have a chance of avoiding the nanciness of fatherless rearing was with the help of the males in her life. Whether it was uncles, cousins, or simply family friends, there was a patch-work bailing line in place to help make sure the small fires of boyhood never fanned into full flame to disastrous consequence where B-Rad and I were concerned. 

There was my mother’s paternal friend Robbie, a jovial cat with a funny last name who lived down off of Dog River in a rough part of town we native Mobilians refer to as “The Parkway.” More specifically, its name is Dauphin Island Parkway, which is ironic for those who know the locale, as the road falls well short of reaching the separated spit of land in the Mississippi Sound mentioned in the byway’s name. (Such is the logic of lower Alabama at times.)

Robbie never hesitated to let us help him grill or give us instruction on the finer points of shooting a jump shot (he was, after all, a friend studying to be a PE teacher who Moms met when she went back to college in pursuit of an early education teaching certificate.) Just those few hours we spent with him were helpful to us as young boys, in ways I don’t even have to spell out.

Then there was ole John Paul, our next door neighbor. He was a crotchety old fella with a good heart, slight of frame, a paper mill worker who toiled long hours if for no other reason to escape the harpy to whom he was married waiting at home. He had the most spectacular wood shop in the neighborhood, and in it, he crafted things of beauty hewn from locally-procured cypress and cedar and oak. Half the furniture in our living room at my Mom’s house was made by his hand, and he was never shy about inviting us into the “barn” as he called it, where the scent of warm sawn wood wafted like incense and the floors puffed plumes of yella-golden sawdust plumes with each step. He must have had $10,000 in wood-working equipment in that barn: band saws, circular saws, table saws, drill presses, lathes of all configurations. There were stacks of uncut wood blanks against one wall, a keyboard arrangement of rich ochre, rust and brown grains of various kinds. 

It was a wonderful place, and in it, he allowed us to make our own cuts, build our own small play things: mock swords and rifles, wooden paddle-boats powered by rubber bands that we could float down the ditch after heavy summer downpours. He was patient and kind, and he enjoyed sharing his love of woodworking with us, since he knew we’d appreciate it and would otherwise never learn those valuable skills.

I had the pleasure of learning some of my favorite lessons alongside a good man, the husband of my mother’s best friend, a feller I’ll call Mikey. He was a trucker out of Purvis, MS, a smaller-framed cat who drove big trucks full of green and black liquor, and had a heart big enough to share with anyone who needed a few beats of compassion. As a single mother, sometimes Moms’ friend Reeny and Mikey would draw the short straw (so to speak) and would be charged with keepin’ me and my hellion brother while my mother stepped out on the town. They had a trailer, a neat little affair sitting out in a lot just off Howell’s Ferry Road in Mobile’s western half. There was always good food, and Mikey would always have things for us to do. Sometimes, he’d need me to hold the light while he pulled the rotors off his Grand Cherokee to have them turned. Other times, he’d put me on a ladder to help paint the eaves of his newly-erected bare-wood storage shed.

Always something to do, even if it was just fishing. He was one of the first people to instill in me a love of the Causeway running across our beloved Mobile Delta, just at the top of the Bay. A narrow belt of land separating the convergence of five different rivers from Mobile Bay proper, it is a veritable playground for fishermen who seek both freshwater and saltwater fare. It was on one of the expeditions that Mikey taught me how to bait a circle hook with a live shrimp; how to hold a cigar minnow so that it didn’t wriggle free; how to two-handed cast with an open-faced reel, slinging the heavy egg-weighted leader out far into the murky, rippled black face of those Delta waters in pursuit of flounder, specks and reds.

It was on one such trip that I learned another lesson I carry with me to this day. We were running late back from our fishin’ trip on the Causeway. We were hot, we were hungry. As we crested the top of the tiny bridge over the Appalachee River, we spied a car broken down on the side of the road. Mikey slowed the car. He stopped behind the stranded motorist, got out, said a few words, and came back to the car. Without saying anything to us, he pulled a 180 and headed back towards Spanish Fort.

“Where we goin?” I asked.

“Folks need an alternator, auto parts store right up the top of the bluff in Spanish Fort. Won’t take me a minute to get one and get it put on for ‘em.”

As a kid, I didn’t understand. I mean, we had places to go, and we were tired of being in the heat. This little junket into Mechanicsville was not what I had in mind. Kids are selfish, sometimes. I whined about it, and this is all he said in response.

“Well, when somebody needs help, and you can help ‘em, you just have to do it. After all, ‘at could be ya mama stranded out here on the Causeway, you’d sure as hell want someone to stop and help her, wouldn’t you?”

To this day, I can’t pass a stranded motorist without stopping to render aid. I just can’t pass them by. Mikey’s words are like a gut-punch as I think about what he said any time I pass someone broken down on the road’s edge. It resonates still, and countless motorists over the years have been saved from, at the very least, inconvenience because of that lesson he imparted on me in the cab of that wood-sided Grand Cherokee.  

Also helping my manhood cause was my Great Uncle Ellard, who I’ve told you, my attentive audience, about is oh-so-many words over the years. Equal parts rust, dirt and grit, he was the John Wayne of Vance, AL, a local legend who neither drank or cussed, but was renowned as one of the strongest men in the countryside with an iron will and the hard-work-hewn muscles to match. From him, I learned a great deal about what it was to be a man, the nature of responsibility, the value of breaking one’s back in pursuit of hard work, the satisfaction of getting the job done and getting it done right. He ‘bout damn near broke me a dozen times over on that 40-acre verdant pasture of his, just east of Tuscaloosa off Hwy. 11, whether it was stringing rusty barbed wire, pitch-forking manure from the corral into the mulch pile, or digging utility line trenches to supply his house with city water. It was always an adventure, and had it not been for some of the lessons he instilled, I’d have withered a long time ago, like a new corn stalk beneath the hot gazing eye of the Alabama sun.

Without these men to offer me a hand, to shine their lanterns of experience across my path, even if only briefly, I would not be where I am today. Now bear in mind, your narrator is not done with this life yet, nor with climbing its many mountains and traversing its deep, deep valleys. That much I know for certain. But what I can tell you is that without those traits instilled in me by these fellows, I would have dried up and failed like a tender bean sprout deprived of the soaking rain low these last 20 years. Through two bouts of unemployment, one extended run-in with homelessness, and the angst of seeing friends and family fall from amongst the living, two things have kept me going: my faith in my Creator, and this light bestowed upon my feet from a great many lamps.

But enough background, as I have a Hoodoo tale to recount here, dear friends.

Another of these Magi from my childhood who thought enough to plant a seed and help it grow was my Uncle Rushell. He was the youngest of my mother’s siblings, and the only boy. He’d had something of a hard childhood, and made up for it by attempting to enjoy every cotdang remaining minute of his life to the fullest extent.

He went into the Army Medical Corps as a young man, and served in South America doing some kind of covert type bullshit that I can’t talk about here (without, of course, having to kill the lot of you.) After he left the military, he landed the ever-so-lavish gig of selling medical equipment to hospitals. Now, if you think a commission-only gig is a losing proposition, do the math on a piece of million-dollar medical equipment and the commission one receives from selling it to a hospital that absolutely has to have it. It’s something akin to shooting fish in a bucket, I tell you what. He made ALL the money doing it, and he let it flow out as quickly as it came in, mostly in pursuit of his true loves, fishing and partying.

He didn’t spend it selfishly, however, but rather used it to create memories for himself and his family. He once carried me and B-Rad to the Senior Bowl (Hoodoo for another time) and taught us what fun was all about. For one of my birthdays, he took me to my very first college football game, the 1989 Sugar Bowl between Florida State and Auburn (he attended FSU and for a time was a professor of business there). He spared no expense as he showed me the finer points of New Orleans: the Jax Brewery, Acme Oyster House, Café Du Monde. (Notice these are all food-related locales?...I was what they called “heavy-lunch” back in the day, a big-boned young feller who’d wolf down a half a side of beef and ask if there was more.) 

Uncle Rushell taught me how to enjoy life. My mother, bless her heart, had to pinch her pennies, float credit card debt, and do whatever else she could to make sure she could afford our cost of living. The end of the month was always rough, as we’d be putting water on cereal, rollin’ pennies for gas money, and eating Showboat pork-and-beans with wieners for dinner from the 25^th through the 30^th. Hell, with a 14-year-old of my own now, I don’t know how she kept me and B-Rad in groceries all that time. Kids, especially boys, are high-maintenance in the grocery department.

When we were hanging with Uncle Rushell, it was nice to see that life didn’t have to be all about scraping and surviving, but rather, it could be about spending and living and making fond memories. That lesson has, to a degree, been lost on me at times in my adulthood, but I’ve made it a point to make sure that my kids don’t see me routinely rule out fun for monetary reasons.

Now, in essence, my Uncle Rushell is a big kid at heart, even to this day. He’s a heavy-set, thick-legged stout fella who has had a push-broom mustache ever since I’ve known him. I have three cousins on that side of the family, and between me, B-Rad and the rest of them, we had some pretty epic athletic engagements in my grandma-ma’s one-acre lot in Jackson Heights. Sometimes it’d be football, where we’d hit each other as if wearing pads. Usually, the second oldest kid in the family behind me, Matt, and I would take on the three younger grandsons in gridiron combat. Sometimes we’d play a game of baseball, and even my grandma-ma would get involved in those contests. Bless her heart, she is a lefty who (though pushing 96 now) could hum a curveball and switch hit at the plate (that’s not even a joke…she grew up in Vance with nothing but older brothers…she had to be tough to survive).

Whenever Rushell would make the trip over from his home in New Orleans to visit, there were always two constants: he’d always bring copious amounts of food, and he’d always want to strike up some kind of game with us. Now on this particular occasion, it was fall, and you all know what fall means for boys in the South…pick-up football. There’s something inherent in the blood of us Southern folk that acts as a biological clock of sorts. When the sweetgum leaves begin to fall, when the nighttime temperatures begin to drop, we get the fever. As adults, many parlay this fever into observance of this religion we call football. However, as boys, we take a more, shall we say, active approach to this game we all so love. We spend cool fall afternoons throwing tight spirals and bashing each other relentlessly between end zones and boundary lines.

So in this instance, we struck up a game of football in Grandma-ma’s back yard, and we five grandsons took our usual sides: me and my cousin Matt on one team, with B-Rad, Dar and Rushell’s son B-Ri on the other. Rushell would act as the “all-time quarterback.” (For those of you who are not familiar with that terminology, it simply means that one player, usually the biggest or most skilled, plays quarterbacks for both teams. Makes for a more dynamic affair when numbers are small, as they were in this case.) Rushell was the all-time quarterback on this day. 

Keep in mind, I was big and oafish as a pre-teen. I come from good strong stock, and was pert near six feet in height before entering middle school, with the girth of a hefty “eater” (my grandfather would say this about me, “That OWB, boy there is an eater”) to go along with my stature. The other boys in my family, while not tiny-mites, were well smaller than me, and of lesser athletic prowess (at least that’s how I perceived it anyway.) 

Therefore, in these pick-up games, my team usually dominated the contest. In essence, the three other fellas on the opposing team had no chance to tackle me, so in effect, Matt could pitch me the ball on a toss sweep and I could just dump truck everyone J-Fowl style all the way to the end zone. Easy seven (no kicks, people, com’on now, keep up.)

On defense, my favored side of the ball, I was a beast. I had the pursuit skills of my idol Derrick Thomas, and the savagery of Biscuit Bennett. I was white-boy Lawrence Taylor in my own eyes, prowling and glaring, tracking down my ball-handlin’ quarry like a lion tracking antelopes on the Serengeti. For the opponent, all hope was lost, and most offensive plays resulted in an Arkansas-ian hook-and ladder effect, not in an effort to score, but in a “hot potato” effort to rid oneself of the ball before I locked in and plowed them over.

I didn’t see anything wrong with this, though the parents of the battered and bruised tended to disagree, often suggesting we avoid football altogether in the interest of something non-contact, like, say, volleyball or badminton.

With Uncle Rushell on the field, I continued my penchant for flattening my kinfolk, bull-dozing Dar on a run up the gut, tracking down B-Rad on an option pitch and slingin’ him into the finely-pruned indica azalea on the border of my grandma-ma’s yard (which incidentally was our out-of-bounds marker.) Rushell had tried some trickeration on the younger lads’ behalf, pitching it to his son B-Ri, who attempted on execute an option pass. However, ya boy sniffed it out (like a true acolyte of DT) and closed on B-Ri like a Hellfire missile obliterates an enemy tank, wrecking the play (and his world, for that matter), leaving him crumpled up on the ground like an old piece of foil.

“RRRRRR, GET SOME!” I stood over him, flexin’ and growlin’ like I’d seen the Ultimate Warrior do on WCW wrasslin’.  All I needed was the bicep bands and face paint.

The next play was a pass to B-Rad on an out route. Once again, knowing B-Rad’s tells, I read it and made a play on the ball through his arms, batting the pigskin to the ground in aggressive fashion, waggin’ my index finger in his face Dikembe-style, shoutin’ “IN YO FACE! NOT TODAY SON, NOT TODAY!”

(I have a little bit of a problem, y’all, when it comes to “friendly” competition. I tend to trash talk a little (okay, a lot…it is a gift). I try to be chill, but often times, I make myself look like an ass. I’ve told y’all about the church basketball game, you feel me.)

Thing is, there was no system of checks and balances on my behavior. The parents weren’t watching us, so they rarely intervened. My cousins feared that I’d kick their asses, so they just took their lumps and moved on. I was a tyrant, and had to be stopped by somebody. Problem was, there wasn’t anybody there who could stop me.

Well, apparently, my uncle had seen just about enough of this boorish behavior. I’d noticed his frown when I waylaid his son on the option pass. I don’t think he appreciated the finer points of my trash talk, either.

“Now OWB, take it easy, a’ight?” I think in retrospect, that was his way of warning me to find my chill. “You don’t want to come off like a bully, do ya?”

Honestly, I didn’t care. I mean, way I saw it, God had gifted me with the ability to unceremoniously and relentlessly pound people while using my size advantage in ruthless fashion. If I wasn’t ‘sposed to use the gifts given to me by my Maker to dominate my fellow man (or cousins), then why did the Good Lord make me so damn badass? I had to dominate…for Jesus. Who was I do question Jesus?

“Naw, I ain’t a bully, I’m just dominatin’” was my ill-advised retort. Uncle Rushell frowned.

“Uh, okay…just watch yourself.”

So blinded by my own athleticism, I was unable to discern the subtle final warning in his words. On their next play, Uncle Rushell fired a quick shot into B-Ri’s gut on a button-hook out, and I closed on him like a freight train bearing down on a VW bug. I dropped my shoulder and hit him square on the hip, shocking the ball out of his hands and knocking him a good three or four feet to the boundary. There was an audible “OOOOOOO” from those watching.

Another frown from my uncle. Another chance to reverse my bullyish ways. Another missed chance, that is.

Uncle Rushell called his young compatriots back away from the line of scrimmage, where they kneeled and mumbled to one another.

“YEAH, YOU BETTER HAVE A PLAN…WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN OWB-MANIA RUNS WILD ON YOU!”

I was out of control. Seriously. I think this was about the time my balls dropped, and the testosterone factory had fired up in earnest. Had to be the only explanation for this behavior, as I’m usually a kinder, gentler type of heathen who’d just as soon silently knock you the fk out without a word of talk. PUBERTY FTW!

They broke their huddle and lined up in what we called a “.38 Special” formation, which amazingly, is a one-back set similar to what we now call the “pistol.” (Clairvoyance, maybe? Probably not, just dumb luck.)  B-Ri lined up behind Rushell who was playing QB (he was self-snapping…it’s not as painful as it sounds, trust me) with B-Rad lined up on the right flank and Dar on the left. Uncle Rushell uttered a prolonged snap count, then picked the ball up took a twisting step back, and put the ball in the gut of my cousin. 

Of course, being the TFL animal that I was, I immediately sought the ball carrier and immediately went for penetration. What I had not anticipated was that the 240 pound quarterback had suddenly morphed into a guard. Uncle Rushell, seeing me coming, dropped his shoulder, set his feet, and dropped the every-lovin’ hammer on my big ass. I didn’t understand things like leverage or low center-of-gravity, and the blow I took was a bit of a lesson in physics. It wasn’t a glancing affair, but rather a full-throttled shot that jarred my teeth and sent me off my feet, in much the same fashion that I’d been wrecking my smaller cousins all afternoon long.

Remember those “OOOOO” sounds that emanated from onlookers following my hits? They were twice as loud as I sailed what must have been eight feet before landing on the lush St. Augustine in Grandma-ma’s back yard. 

I was stunned. I’d gotten used to always being the biggest and the baddest, and now, I was gettin’ thrown around unceremoniously like a danged ole rag doll. There were giggles from my long-oppressed cousins, and that stung worse than the blows I had just taken because that hit landed square on me pre-teen ego.

But I was from the ‘hood, and there are two things living your early years in the ‘hood does to a young man. First, I instantly flared with anger. How could he do this to me, I WAS A WARRIOR COTDAMMIT! Secondly, I wanted my get-back, wanted to show everybody I wouldn’t be held down.

I bounced up, swished the blades of grass from my elbow, which had taken most of the force of my landing. I had green stains from the tender blades of St. Augustine inking my jeans (Moms was gonna kill me). 

“I’m a’ight, I’m a’ight, didn’t hurt, I’m all good, just slipped.” Everyone looked at me pan-faced, couldn’t believe my delusion. “Lez go!” I clapped as if trying to pump myself up.

They once again lined up in  the .38 Special, only this time they gave me an option look, with B-Ri rolling wide for the pitch and Uncle Rushell on the keep. I played the option like a champ, kept my discipline. Uncle Rushell faked the outside pitch and then kept it, and I had no choice but to try to tackle his big ass. I got up a head of steam and charged at him, remembering my fundamentals…except that’s all I did, remember them…failed to execute them. I didn’t do as I had been taught. Against a bigger opponent, I was taught to go low and wait for the cavalry. ‘Cept in this case, there was no cavalry, just Matt, and he was 120 pounds soakin’ ass wet. I then made the inadvisable hair-trigger decision to try to take Rushell high, and launched myself at his right shoulder as he approached me.

This, my friends, was my introduction to something called the “forearm shiver.” He caught me as I was coming in, stiff-arm style, and absolutely stoned me. I don’t mean that in a figurative sense, I was literally out of my head, unconscious for a few seconds, knocked the fk out. Cold. That forearm had caught me alongside my jaw (I led with my head…fundamentally unsound) full-bore, and I crumpled like a worn-out lawn chair. I fell to the ground limp like a sack of damp dirty laundry, wadded up on the grass with one arm pinned back behind my back, face down like a Family Guy death victim. 

The trip was almost psychedelic…I heard my moms’ voice singing Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s seminal hit “I Almost Cut My Hair” (she was actually crying), I saw a huge fuzzy tangerine hovering above me (that would be the sun), and there were animated gingerbread men with Derrick Thomas faces all around me. I wasn’t sure if I was alive, dead, or a passenger on some Yellow Submarine or other.

I heard a loud hissing and saw what appeared to be a large green snake risin’ above me like a hooded cobra, something which was more than a little disturbing. Then, it spit in my face (this was not originally intended to sound phallic, please know that), and I bolted into consciousness. To rouse me from my shiver-induced slumber, the collected assemblage had the bright idea of turning the garden hose on me (was that something my uncle had learned in the Army Med Corps? Bless those soldiers’ hearts, then.) I sputtered and gasped the way a Labrador does when confronted with the same water-wielding device, and raised my hands to block the obnoxiously powerful stream. Forearm shiver…water-boarding…had I been teleported to Abu Graihb? 

After regaining the full faculty of vision, I looked up to see the complete assemblage of my cousins, B-Rad, Uncle Rushell, moms and grandma-ma standing over me, looking down as if to determine whether or not I was worm food.

“I don’t know, didn’t really see what happened,” Rushell explained, “…think he mighta hit my knee tryin’ to tackle me.” He was no fool, he wasn’t about to cop to assaulting his underage nephew in front of the jury of his mama and sister. 

B-Rad spoke up.

 

“Izzy dead mom? Cuz if he’s dead, I want his bike. Can I have his bike? His bb gun, too? He ain’t gonna need it.”

“Hush, dammit,” Moms said. For reference, B-Rad’s name for much of his youth may as just as well been “Dammit,” or the higher, more formal form “Gotdammit.”

“OWB, are you okay? You want an ice pack? Your jaw looks all swollen up…can you even hear me?”

Oh, I could hear her. And I could hear that carpet-baggin’ brother of mine schemin’ on my most prized possessions, too. For that, there would be a reckoning. (More Hoodoo for another time).

Moms followed Grandma-ma in to get me a cold Co’cola and an ice bag from the medicine cabinet to put on my already-blue’ing jawline. My ears were ringin’, my molars felt like someone had hit them with a damn five-pound sledge. I felt like I had done a 15-round bout with George Foreman, thought I’d tangled with a grizzly bear. In reality, I had only tangled with one of my mentors, who taught me an embarrassing lesson about fair-play.

Over the din of my still-ringin’ ears, I could hear my cousins whisperin’ and a-gigglin’ like a buncha school girls in the lunch line. Uncle Rushell appeared over me, and boomed down.

“So…you think you can chill now?” Then he laughed, joined by a chorus of chuckles from the downtrodden. 

Humiliated, I went inside with the women folk while the balance of my cousins (and brother) helped Uncle Rushell with the fish fry under the carport. Fried mullet, a local delicacy you have to eat here in Mobile on-site, where its fresh, to truly appreciate. (Nothin’ worse than day-old mullet, just no way to dress it up. But if you catch it and cook it the same day?...HOOOO-LAWD, that’s good eatin’ right there. Trust me, this heavy-lunch sumbitch known as your narrator knows a thing or two about high-quality groceries.) I had wanted to help, but instead, I was inside “chillin’” alright…chillin’ in the AC with an old lady’s ice pack tied up under my jaw like a turn-of-the-century toothache avatar.

 Make matters worse, by the time the fish was ready, my jaw was so swollen shut I couldn’t have wedged one of those golden-fried strips of delicate white flesh between my lips with a crowbar. Had to eat potato soup out of can instead while I watched the rest of them gorge on that fish.

Insult to injury, indeed.

Oh Loki, hear our cries and allow us this victory over the Meth-Hounds of the East. Let not Butch Jones (the Diet Chek cola of college coaches) and his prison-jumpsuit-clad miscreants unseat us in your eternal favor, for we are true and loyal servants who keep your Hoodoo cupboards well-stocked.

Roll Tide.