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.