Your Weekly Hoodoo Thread: Mocs edition

Well folks, it’s Cupcake Week…and our boys in crimson are still undefeated. So dominant have they been that nary a team has come within a coonus-hair’s breadth of tasting triumph over the mighty Crimson Tide. 

This week, we may assume that a Hoodoo sacrifice is unnecessary, given the incredibly low chances of this game being anything but a blowout that empties the benches. Many of you are figuring, “May as well save my good Hoodoo for next week.” Such a train of thought is duly noted, but I must implore you to leave some morsel, ever how small, at Loki’s door step this week, as the Tide can ill-afford injuries at this point, and the team must emerge from this particular game finely-tuned and injury-free. 

In keeping with the importance of this week in the grand scheme, I offer what may seem a meager Hoodoo tale for the consumption of our pigskin patron. It is my hope that it is adequate in his sight, and that all appetites are satiated. Now, 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 tried, 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. 

I’ve talked in these parts before about a full-bird Army colonel, name of Fox, who taught me a good bit of the dealings of manhood. Taught me negotiation skills, the value of kindness, and the importance of enjoying the time you have while you have it. There was my Uncle Ichabod, who taught me how to use a tiller and plant a garden, something which has helped to feed me and bring me joy through all of my days. There was my paternal grandfather Burnudd, who taught me how to change the brakes on a car and fix just about anything with a motor on it (or at least figure out what was wrong with it if I couldn’t fix it.) There was my Uncle Bartimus, who taught me how to use a shootin’ iron and molded me into a dead-eye shot with a rifle, pistol and shotgun. 

Then there was my Uncle Rushell. The youngest sibling of my moms, and the only boy with two older sisters, Rushell had a tough life growing up. My mom’s father, my grandfather, passed before I was born due to complications from MS. He had previously been the captain of a cargo ship that sailed to the Orient, and his illness transformed him (to hear my mother tell it) from a jovial, intelligent father and husband into a brooding man who was angry at the world (and deservedly so). Unfortunately for my Uncle Rushell, a lot of that ended up vented in his direction, and to compensate, my grandma-ma doted on her only son. Once his father was gone, he was the only man in the house, and to hear tell of it, he had a hard time adapting to that stature. 

As Uncle Rushell grew into a teen, he was a bit of a hell-raiser (still is). He rode motorcycles and drag-raced a candy-green Roadrunner. He didn’t play organized sports, preferring instead to street-fight for physical fitness. He drank, he smoked, he did whatever the hell he wanted to do with consequences and the law chasing him all the while.

He was a smart cat, got a scholarship to attend the University of South Alabama. However, he didn’t even buy books once classes started, as he simply didn’t want to be in school. Distraught, Grandma-ma had Mr. Fox talk with him. Shortly thereafter, a plan was struck: Rushell was going into the Army.

He entered the Army Med Corps and was a changed man, squared away and grown up. He did tours in the Panama Canal Zone, where his son B-Ri was born. After the Army, he went to work selling medical equipment (sumbitch can sell a snowcone to a polar bear) and made an obscene amount of money before deciding to pursue his education once again. Before we knew it, he was a PhD, a professor of business at Florida State.

While he was selling medical equipment, he called New Orleans home base. But, since the Big Easy is a mere two hours drive down I-10 from Mobile, he made routine trips back home to visit and do whatever needed to be done. He’d help my mother buy our Christmas presents, he’d make sure his mama’s yard stayed cut ad trimmed, and he’d make sure we had school clothes. On one such trip, he had a proposition for my mother.

“Hey, I was thinkin’ ‘bout goin’ to the Senior Bowl this year…you think the boys would like to go?”

I heard his statement though my bedroom wall, and I hoped Moms would answer in the affirmative. I had always wanted to go to Mobile’s premier football game, but had never been because A) my father sucked and B) my mom could never free up the money to do it herself. I waited on bated breath in hopes that she’d let us go, despite my uncle’s reputation as something of a ne’er-do-well when it came to public events like football games.

I heard Moms opening my bedroom door, and before she could even get the words out, I answered “YES, I WANT TO GO!” 

I was so stoked, I’d finally be able to go to my very first Senior Bowl. I’d heard the other kids at school talk about it, the fun they had. The little bastards had been regaling me with stories of gridiron paradise for years, and I was always an outsider looking in. Now, however, I’d be initiated into Mobile’s sacred society of Senior Bowlers.

The day of the game arrived, and Rushell picked me and B-Rad up at the house in his Blazer. I could hardly contain my excitement as we got underway, heading for Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Midtown Mobile, just off of Houston Street. Rushell spoke up over the Led Zeppelin blaring from his tape deck (for you youngsters, that was a device that played music from a cassette that contained a magnetic tape upon which the sounds were imprinted. If you’re under 25, may you never know the misery that is waiting for a song you love that is halfway through the A side of a tape.)

“Now, when we get down here, we’re gonna hook up with some friends of mine from work…they have a tent and a TON of food, so we can make ourselves at home.”

“Awesome!” I thought. If there was anything I loved more than football as a hefty young lummox, it was food. We found a parking place in the front yard of someone who lives in a neighborhood off Houston Street, and Rushell flicked them a $10. I was in awe of the ease with which he parted ways with his money. My mom had always been a scrimper and a saver, but Uncle Rushell, hell he’d throw down a couple hundred dollars on dinner, buy $50 bottles of wine. Money was no object…after all, he could always make more.

We walked the few blocks from the car to the tent Rushell’s friend Herb had erected in yet another grassy yard sold plot-by-car-sized-plot by the owner to Senior Bowl tailgaters for the day. Man, did he have a spread. He had side after side of foil-wrapped ribs still hot from the smoker. There was an abundance of boiled shrimp chilling in double-bowls lined with ice. There were tin trays of beans warming over lit Sterno cans. Cole slaw, potato salad, chips…all the damn chips your imagination can conjure. Coolers overflowing with cold canned sodas (moms NEVER bought Cokes in cans, as such was pure frivolity when they sold then in two-liters for 50 cents a piece).

I was a kid in a candy shop…or rather, a chubby kid at a tailgate party. I must have eaten a dozen ribs. As the adults were shotgunning beers and getting blasted, I drank enough cold Co-colas to float the cotdang USS Alabama. 

After running off some of those calories tossing the pigskin with anybody who’d take a break from drinkin’ long enough to entertain me, time came to walk the last block to the stadium. As we got the gate of Ladd-Peebles, we passed a tent beneath which was a man selling t-shirts and hats, something that was rather typical in the immediate vicinity of the stadium on game day. 

There, amidst the rivers of people all flowing into the sea of Ladd-Peebles, I spotted something, something I had wanted for some time but had always been denied because of restrictive finances. There, on this vendor’s humble table, shone a golden ray of light which fell upon the most beautiful Alabama hat I had ever seen. It was red with a white mesh back, with an embroidered, old-school elephant-A Alabama logo sewn to the front. I stopped dead in my tracks to behold the beauty, and when Rushell had noticed I wasn’t at his hip, he doubled back to see what was holding me up.

“What you see, man?” he asked.

“THAT!” All I could do was point. I wanted it somethin’ horrible, and though I knew my uncle wouldn’t mind getting it for me, I also knew that if I asked for something that I’d be breaking the laws of Southern childship and thus casting my immortal soul into the damning pits of Hell. At least that’s what I’d been told. One simply does not ask for anything, and even if one wants it, when first offered, the polite thing to do is refuse. One may relent on a second or third asking, depending on the severity of the want (individual judgment call).

“Well, hell, you need a hat, dont’cha? Man can’t be walkin’ around a football game with his head uncovered.” Uncle Rushell was the best. He leaned over the table and put a bill in the vendor’s hand and picked up the hat before lighting it on my head.

I was big pimpin’, to be sure. I thought everyone who looked my direction was only doing so to behold the beauty that was my prestigious lid. (Footnote: kids are stupid.)

We made our way into the stadium and found our seats. Uncle Rushell’s wild bunch of compadres began to filter in and up to the surrounding seats. Their company had purchased two rows, the rearmost of which was where we were sitting. I anxiously awaited the start of the game, leafed through the program, watched the Azalea Trail Maids in all their pastel-hued antebellum finery start massing up in the end zone for the player introductions. Just as I had been told, it was indeed awesome: the pageantry, the sounds, the food…it was all too much. I was in heaven.

The Blue Angels did their fly-over, the band began to play the Star-Spangled Banner. I had noticed a rather loud and obnoxious band of rednecks staggering up the walkway of our section. At least one had on an Auburn hat, and they were drunk as Cooter Brown’s cousin.

Sure enough, this bunch sat down on the row behind us, with ole Aubiecat sitting right behind me. Now one must expect, to some extent, the presence of drunkenness at such public gatherings. And as we all now, not everyone abides by the rules of common decency that were instituted into many of us by our parents, grandparents and teachers. 

 

But these guys behind us were just plain raunchy. Every time the North team got a call, they’d let loose with a flow of curses and froth from their cake holes that would injure the sensitivities of a buncha stevadores. 

 

“GOTDAMN YOU &**% ARE %$^#*#* RIDICULOUS, ARE YOU %$^&*^ BLIND OR SOME $%#^”  

It was persistent, and every time they yelled, they seemd to lose jurisdiction and control of their lips, with spittle slangin’ everywhere like a motorized bubble blowin’ mo-sheen. 

I could tell they were irritating my uncle and his party, but these men were professionals. Drunk professionals, but professionals nonetheless. They couldn’t be engaging in verbal (nor physical) altercations with low-born crackers in a public arena. Such would be foolish, as the Mobile PD deals with altercations in the stands the way fireants deal with sugar cubes tossed onto their mounds.

I’d give my uncle a look at every barrage of profanity and slobber, and he’d just pinch the corner of his mouth back and roll his eyes. I knew what he wanted to do, but he took his father-figurin’ seriously, and sure as hell didn’t want his nephews learnin’ that violence was the right answer (even though sometimes, in some circumstances, there’s nothing wrong with being wrong.)

But as rednecks on the sauce are wont to do, these sunsabitches had to escalate things. As if the profanity and spit weren’t bad enough, the duo directly behind me (one who was wearing the Auburn hat) had purchased a couple beers in cups from the hawker patrolling the stands, bleating out “Col’beer, getcha col’beer righchea!” While the drunk line-up behind me passed the beers down from the end of the row to Aubiecat, he was fumin’ about this and that, about how they charged “too %$^&*## much for those damn beers” and how he ought to “whup that boy’s ass for chargin’ him that much for a damn Miller Lite.”

As he double-fisted his foamy col’beers, I began to feel a cool dribble down the back of my shirt collar. I turned around to find a tilted beer in my face, as the drunk a-hole was so wasted, he didn’t even notice he wasn’t holdin’ his drink steady (party foul), thus spilling a steady current of it through my collar and down the back of my shirt. I elbowed my uncle so that he could see what had happened, and it was at that point that he couldn’t keep quiet any long.

“Hey, asshole (this was his favorite word), you mind not dumpin’ your damn beer on my nephew? Pay attention…”

The drunk noticed what he was doing, and righted the cup, if only to keep from spillin’ more of the alcohol that he most assuredly did not need anyway.

“Well fk you, cowboy, I don’t cur who I spill it on. Was an assident anyways.” Dude was six sheets to the wind and belligerent as a scalded wampus-cat. Everybody turned to look at us, it was embarrassing. My uncle turned back around, his point made.

The drunk’s buddies were gigglin’ and mumblin’, pokin’ and proddin’ him along like a brain-dead steer, so much so that he got fired up again.

“I don’t care what that ugly mffkr says, he don’t run me, I do what I want. I’ll pour this whole damn b’er on that boy f’n I want to! Damn bammer anyways.”

I looked at my uncle. His face was turnin’ red. Not from embarrassment, but from boiled blood.

Ole Aubiecat kept on runnin’ that mouth awful reckless-like.

“I’ll slap that damn mustache clean off that mffkr’s face, yawl, I don’t even cur!”

He was emboldened by Rushell’s silence, I reckon. Old dude probably thought it was just a father-son outing, thought he had the numbers advantage, didn’t realize Rushell had a pretty large group of medical equipment salesmen holding him down.

After a minute, in an attempt to lighten the mood for us kids, Rushell said he was going to find us some hot dogs. Ladd Stadium hot dogs of that era were something of a delicacy, not the blue-green-tinted, steamed franks on a bun that you get there today. No, back then, they were great: they mixed ketchup and mustard together with thin-shredded kraut to make a thick sauce that they slathered on each dog before wrapping them, bun and all, in foil. They were so good. I gave up eating hot dogs long ago (thanks to Youtube inquiries regarding how hot dogs are made) but if someone could reproduce the old Ladd dogs, I’d eat one (nay, a dozen) right now.

So Rushell left us in the stands watching the game under the eye of his friends while he went down to get us a few dogs (and undoubtedly, a few more beers for himself). 

Behind me, the show continued. The asshole in the Aubie hat had piped down a little bit since his previous outburst. But upon seeing Rushell leave us in the stands, I heard his gravelly, beer-soaked voice say that phrase which usually precedes some act of tomfoolery. “Watch ‘is.”

The South team picked up a critical first down, and the crowd cheered. The drunk asshole took this opportunity to dump the better part of a half of one of his beers right over my head, soiling my new Bama hat with his spittle-infused swill-water. 

It ran through the mesh of the cap, into my hair, across my eyes, burning. My face burned red, from anger and embarrassment, as I knew people were looking at me, doused in this vile liquid. I turned and looked at my assailant, who was laughing hysterically with his friends. When I looked at him in the eyes, he put his hand over his mouth and said “Ooops!” while cackling like a damn hyena.

I was ashamed. I wasn’t an overly emotional kid, but for whatever reason, my anger mechanism was tied directly to my tear ducts. When I’d get angry, my tears would well up. I could be beatin’ the piss out of some neighborhood sumbitch, and all the while, you’d think someone had done shot my dog, so big were the tears creepin’ down my cheeks. It was strange, and though I’ve learned to control it, sometimes when I get pissed enough my eyes will still water up. 

Such was the case here. I was covered with beer, red-faced, and now, to make matters worse, it looked like I was bawlin’ like a damn baby. I just knew people were looking at me, and the group behind me couldn’t get enough, as they guffawed on like a gaggle of geese. It was possibly the most embarrassed I’ve ever been in public, and there was no way to escape it. 

Moments later, Uncle Rushell came back up the aisle, four cups of beer pinched between his fingers, foil-wrapped hot dogs tucked between his arms and ribs. He saw my face, and after handing a couple beers off, scooted down the aisle to see what was wrong.

“That dude behind me just poured a beer on my head.”

“WHAT?” I could tell Uncle Rushell was mad. It was go time. But I didn’t want him to get in any trouble, so I tried to play it off.

“He dumped a beer on my head, on purpose I think. But it’s okay, Uncle Rushell, don’t worry about it.”

“The hell it is…” He was steamed. He just stared at the guy, who responded by making googly-eye faces at him and sticking out his tongue. Class act.

“Just wait…” Uncle Rushell mumbled under his breath. “…until the South scores another touchdown.”

I had no idea what he was going to do, but I knew I liked the sound of it. My mama had always taught me to turn the other cheek. I was being bullied by a couple of neighborhood kids when I was a kindergartner, fresh after my parents’ divorce. She counselled me to find another route home, told me she would talk to the crossing guard. (When word got out to a family friend, a former boxer, he gave me, um…additional counseling that involved uppercuts and body shots. Needless to say, I ultimately took the low-road he proposed, and packed a chunk of asphalt in my satchel-bag that was eventually applied to the head of one of my tormentors. Such ended that instance of bullying for good.)

I eagerly watched as the South team mounted a drive late in the third quarter. They moved the ball with ease against a tired North defense. I noticed clutched in my uncle’s hands were two full cups of beer. 

The South drew nearer still to a score, with a first-and-goal at the seven. I didn’t know what he had planned, but it looked like it wouldn’t be long before I found out. On first down, the South quarterback threw a fade to the corner of the end zone for a touchdown.

At that moment, in a Vesuvius-like eruption of malted hops and Rocky Mountain spring water, my uncle stood up in a rousing cheer, throwing both of his hands up (along with the cups), absolutely dousing the Aubiecat and his friends with 32 ounces of straw-yellow liquid. 

I cracked up. I turned around and pointed at the drunk perpetrator of the original sin as the beer rolled down the bill of his (F)AU cap and dribbled off the end of his sunburnt nose. He was frozen for a moment, either stupefied by his overconsumption or shocked at the turn of events which had made him the butt of the joke. We all pointed and laughed, while the two primary offenders stood up in challenge.

“YOU SUMBITCH, WHAT’D YOU DO THAT FER? I’MA GONNA…”

“You’re gonna what? You’re gonna sit back down and shut up? Cops all over this place man, put a hand on me and you’re gonna ruin your day. Not to mention, boy…I’ll fk you up.”

The words were true, the yellin’ had drawn the attention of Mobile’s Finest. They swarmed our area, asked what was going on. Everybody had their say, and the cops made us all leave.

I was a little sad about leaving the game early, but what I had witnessed made a mark on me. While violence may not always be the answer, backing down and letting a bully be a bully rarely is, either. Instead of hurting the dude with his fists, my uncle had assaulted his fragile ego with two cups of Coors and a little badassery. Lesson learned, indeed.

As we walked back to the tent area, Uncle Rushell saw something that interested him: a man sellin’ rib sammitches over a chain link fence around his front yard. 

“Hey boy, you ever eat a rib sammitch?” I was puzzled, what in the hell is a rib sammitch? Rib sammitch?...how could that even be a thing? I mean, ribs have bones in them…was I missing something? I just didn’t understand.

He didn’t wait on me to answer, handing me one of the cellophane-wrapped delicacies after buying a few for us kids. (For those who don’t know, it is exactly as it sounds: three ribs thrown on some white bread with a healthy scoop of potato salad and barbecue sauce thrown in the mix. It’s messy, y’all, but so worth it…kinda like the Senior Bowl itself.)

Thankfully, when the game was over and the rest of Uncle Rushell’s party returned to the tent, there were plenty of ribs, plenty of shrimp, plenty of cold Co-colas left for the taking. And despite the embarrassment of being drowned in beer, and showing my emotions afterwards, it had been a pretty damn good day.

Football Loki, though I know the foe is meager, please accept this humble offering and guide the Crimson Tide to an injury-free affair. Roll Tide.