Your Weekly Hoodoo Thread: Mississippi State edition

Whew…now THAT was a football game, y’all.

I knew going into this yearly dust-up with the corndog-eatin’ swamp people of the boot-shaped state that we were in for a tussle. One just doesn’t stroll into Death Valley and walk out with a victory, unmolested. No, generally speaking, if you go into Tiger Stadium expecting to just dominate all up in their Tiger faces, piss on the couch cushions, drink all the beer, and leave…well, you, my friend, are in for a rude awakening.

After three quarters of clinched teeth, balled fists, and hollered curses, our beloved Crimson Tide broke the stalemate and asserted its will. In the meantime, the Bama defense…Good Lord, I just don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it, my faithful friends. I know, an offensive juggernaut LSU is not. But what Alabama’s D did to them for four quarters would constitute war crimes in some societies. There was no room for Fournette, and Etling was treated as flank steak with the Bama front seven the Mjolnir-like tenderizer.

It wasn’t pretty to some, but it was a thing of beauty to a defensive purist like your humble narrator. And regardless of the relative aesthetics of the approach, it was effective. Our boys are still undefeated and unblemished, despite the best efforts of those teed-off Cajun folk. Hallelujah!

But now, the Tide has the task of avoiding the hangover against an MSU team that is trying to locate its misplaced mojo (I think Dak Prescott took it with him when he left for Dallas…Tony Romo wishes he would have left ‘at shit in Starkvegas). For the most part, State has been a dumpster fire: an offense that has been largely ineffective coupled with a defense that couldn’t stop South Alabama. It seems like the prime setting for an interdivisional ass-whuppin’ (and Vegas concurs, setting the spread at 29 points). But…not so fast. If past history tells us anything, it’s that coming off of a physical cage match with LSU, Bama tends to struggle with a feisty bunch of Bulldogs the following week. It’s not so much what Mississippi State can do, but rather how Alabama responds to a meat-grinder of a game the week before.

Now, that said, we as the faithful must do our part to ensure that our men in crimson avoid this traditional momentum pitfall in the Tide schedule. Not only do we need the Tide to emerge undefeated heading into Cupcake Week, but we need the Tide to remain healthy (and getting Jalen Hurts a little polish in the passing game against the nation’s 102^nd ranked pass defense for the long road ahead wouldn’t hurt, either.) 

Therefore, though you may have cashed your Hoodoo checks in big games of the previous weeks, we must, MUST, appease Loki and keep him satiated, even against a meager opponent such as the Bullpuppies. Loki is nothing if not ravenous, and his appetite for shame is neverending. Therefore, it is your solemn duty as a Hoodoo-ite to come with it now, don’t hold back for the Iron Bowl or beyond. After all, those games are weeks away…plenty of time to create shameful memories anew, if need be.

So this week, I will cast my net back into the Hoodoo history of yours truly, to a shameful near-death experience in my youth that shied me far from the much-desired chariot of freedom most teenage boys of proper age covet: the family car. Such a source of shame for me this tale is that I have forgotten it, lo these many years I’ve been keeping this Hoodoo ledger alive. Buried it deep within me ole consciousness, I did…a scar far too painful to reveal. But a Hoodoo accounting I must make to keep yon championship season alive, and this one most assuredly fits the bill. So alas, on to this dirty business we call the Hoodoo…

Now, let’s step into this here Hoodoo time mo-sheen and set the dial back for the early 1990s, a time of grunge, of flannel, of inordinately long skater-bangs. I was a child of the times: a misfit, albeit one that was in keeping with the trends and tastes of the day.

Ever an anti-authoritarian, I gravitated at an early age into the more alternative lens of viewing life. I fancied myself an artist, a musician, a bastion of the avant garde at my high school. I was a jazz saxophonist, a concert clarinetist (not my Hoodoo), a metal bassist. I journaled daily and wrote poetry. I learned how to make the perfect hollandaise, how to perfectly brown a gumbo roux. I made bread from scratch, but could put a .30-’06 round through a quarter at 200 yards. I could match a shirt and tie combo, or a flannel and concert tee pairing, with equal aplomb. Add into the equation that I was an amateur boxer and part-time collector for the local dope man, and you get an idea of the whole “Renaissance man” vibe I was cultivating to the fullest degree.

That said, I was also a weird kid, and a dumbass. But then again, aren’t we all at that age? In a time before mandated school uniforms, I was constantly draped in a flannel shirt, unbuttoned and a’gape save for the top button (cholo-style), usually with a Jane’s Addiction, Metallica, or Suicidal Tendencies shirt showing through from underneath. When it was cold enough, there was that whole trench coat thing I was doing for a while. Chucks, combat boots, studded belt, chrome lug nut ring…the whole nine yards.

Given my chosen “profession” at the time, I was perceived among my immediate circle of friends as a bit of a badass. I was a big kid, and I kept a couple pairs of sparring gloves at the house for whenever my friends were feeling froggy. I’d let them box me in the backyard, and that rarely ended well for them. Once, I took on three of them at a time, and wiped the floor with the three amigos. Never got that challenge again.

For all this posturing, however, I didn’t usually try to leverage it into any sort of play with the ladies. Of course, like any 16-year-old male, I was feenin’ for that drug that only a sweet young woman of curvaceous form can provide (Tittays…I’m talmbout the tittays.) But there was an awkwardness about the whole dating/ courting thing for me. I’d never had a dad to school me in the finer points of the woo. Of course, I’d heard my friends talk, seen plenty of movies. But I had a certain psychological roadblock going on something fierce. The girls who wanted me, who would have sold their souls to Ole Scratch himself just for a date with ya boy…they didn’t interest me. Like, at all. Wouldn’t give those darlin’s the time of day, threw them over in the friend-bin. In retrospect (‘round about my college years) I realized the previous error of my ways, and fortunately, I was able to correct course before entering the whole mainstream “adulting” thing. However, in high school, I had a habit of chasing the unattainable rather than that which was before me. If a girl ig’ed me, my loins burst into flame for her. If she acted like I didn’t exist, I resolved to do the impossible. I was a fk’d up young’un, y’all.

But alas, such is not my Hoodoo, though it is indeed peripherally related.

Now, as any 15-year-old can tell you, there is nothing more exciting as that 16th birthday approaches than the prospect of a driver’s license. It is the heroin that kids of that age crave after getting a mere taste of the feeling of liberty with a learner’s permit. Freedom is intoxicating in that regard, no? The car, for a teenager, represents more than the simple means of transportation it represents for their more jaded elders. For a teenager, a car IS freedom, a way out, a new identity, the first step toward that nebulous enigma known as adulthood. For a 16-year-old, the first car is the trusty steed one rides out onto the prairie of adulthood to explore and learn. Even if the car is only borrowed for Friday night burger joint romps or weekend trips to the movies with friends, access to a vehicle is probably the most important thing in a rising 16-year-old’s life, something which creates great anticipation for the coming of the sweet 16.

If the car is the chariot to freedom, then surely the driver’s license is the coachman’s whip. Without it, even the most responsible teen driver is going nowhere. The driver’s license test, as you all well remember, is the cause of great consternation and wringing of hands for people of proper age. If you don’t remember how nerve-wracking it truly was, imagine taking the test now, on the spot, as an adult. Scary prospect, no? I could do it, but I’d need my BP meds and a half a Xanax bar to not have an aneurysm.

Such was the case as I ascended to the age of 15-and-a-half. Though I was a master test taker, I was nervous about taking this particular test. This wasn’t something I could study for, per se, but rather combined course work with an executable action. I had already mastered the little ALDOT book that was required to ace the learner’s permit test. That was the easy part. But the next part required something more than that…not only simple mastery of the material, but the ability to put it to use on the road under the glare of a uniformed reviewer.

To stave off the heart-attack-inducing thought of taking a driving test, I did what I’d do for any exam. I studied. In this case, studying meant something completely different, however. To prepare for this test, I’d have to do the unthinkable: I’d have to drive while my mom critiqued my performance. In her car.

A little backstory…by the time I reached the proper age, I had a pretty firm command on the basics of driving, at least to an extent. As my most ardent followers may remember, I was taught to drive in the pastures of Vance, AL in an old one-ton Ford automatic at the age of around 13. Now that kinda drivin’, that there was easy. No curbs to hit, no cars to dodge, no manic fellow drivers to evade…no police. No, that was driving at its most simple, didn’t even have to worry about a clutch or anything…just put it in drive, push the gas, and steer. It was glorified go-kart operation.

But herein lies the rub: my mama’s car, the only car to which I had (or would have) access, was not an automatic. It was a standard shift Chevy Nova.

Of course, as a plebe driver, I had no idea what that actually meant. “Clutch” in-and-of-itself is not a particularly menacing word. I mean, it was just another pedal I had to push, right? I was a musician for cryin’ out loud, I could execute multiple tasks at the same time…no problem.

I remember the first time I sauntered my way into the driver’s seat of that car. Momz and I had gone up to the grocery store a couple blocks from the house. As we walked out to the car and loaded the groceries, Momz held up the twinkling set of keys.

“You wanna drive us home?”

“Well, hellz yes I want to drive us home!” I thought. I gripped the keys, scurried around to the driver’s seat, plopped down, adjusted the seat and checked the angle of the rear view mirror like a responsible driver would. I was all set.

It was literally less than a mile as the crow flies to the house, but the journey involved leaving the parking lot, getting on Moffatt Road (which is known in these parts by the whimsical alias “Bloody 98”), driving three-quarters of a mile, then turning onto our residential street. No big deal, right?

It would have been no big deal, had I any idea how to manipulate a manual transmission. I asked Momz what I should do first, and she plaintively gave me instructions.

“First, you push the clutch down with your left foot, and hold your right foot on the brake. Turn the key and the car will start. Put the car in reverse with the stick. You can take your foot off the brake and put it on the gas. As you slowly press the gas with your right, slowly lift your foot off the clutch with your left. You’ll feel it, the car will start to pull backward gently. It’s really easy, just a matter of timing.”

Sounded easy enough. I was game. I did as instructed, pushed the clutch in, foot on the brake, turned the key and fired the engine. The car growled to life.

“I got this,” I thought. So far, so good.

I made the transition to the gas pedal, and eased it down while easing up off the clutch. At least, I thought I was easing. Suddenly, the car lurched forward a foot and stalled, dead as a hammer but for the dash lights and the air conditioning blower motor.

“It’s okay, takes a little while to get it right. Turn the ignition off, put your foot on the clutch, and try again.”

She was surprisingly patient. You see, my mother was patient by trade: as an elementary school teacher, she kinda had to be. But when it came to us, I guess she just figured since we were smart, we should already know stuff, so her patience burned with a much quicker fuse.

I followed the instructions, and this time, I moved in minute motions so as not to kill the car. This time, I was successful, the car simply rolled back. I was even able to depress the clutch and shift it into first gear and move forward.

“This isn’t so hard after all,” I thought. Promising stuff indeed.

I managed to make it across the parking lot without tearing the transmission of the car of frying the clutch, which was a positive development to say the least. I’d heard horror stories from the more worldly older brothers of my friends, who talked about family cars decimated by poor clutch work, transmissions ripped asunder at 65 mph on the interstate because of a faulty shift. They may have been tall tales, but regardless, I carried with me a healthy fear of the 5-speed I was driving, as I felt if nothing else, that fear would keep me sharp.

As I approached the outlet of the parking lot, where it dumped onto Bloody 98, I rolled to a stop, foot on the clutch just like I was told to do.

“Now, don’t get antsy, just wait on a good break in the traffic, and do the same thing you did in the parking lot.”

I surveyed the flowing current of four-lane traffic. It was afternoon, and the pace was harried, hectic. Cars were dipping and dodging this way and that. Road-ragers were tail-gating, speed demons were speeding. Being new to the whole highway driving thing, I took a moment to try to gauge speeds. In fact, I took several moments…so many moments that the ever-growing line of drivers behind me were becoming impatient with me. Horns began to honk. I could hear shouted cusswords. One car swung out from the line behind me, slipped into the entrance lane next to me, and went around our car, flipping me off in the process.

“Don’t get flustered, just take your time…but you do need to go soon.”

I sensed that Momz’ impatience was growing as well, so I decided to take the plunge into the next available gap in traffic. I could see the top of a tank truck cresting the hill a couple hundred yards away, and figured there was no time like the present.

I eased off the clutch, pressed down the gas. The car began to roll forward. I looked up to notice the truck was much closer than I had anticipated, was moving faster than I had hoped, and I elected to hurry up my process.

Bad idea. The Nova lurched forward…dead as a hammer. I was straddling two lanes of traffic, car dead, not sure what to do.

“GOTDAMMIT OWB, CRANK THE CAR!” Momz was no longer exhibiting the patience of a saint. What her face conveyed to me now was something more akin to the fire of Mephistopheles.

I switched the car back off, and turned the ignition again…only I forgot to press the clutch. I switched the ignition off and tried again. The car cranked. Again, rushed, I mistimed the clutch-gas cadence and the car jumped and cut out again.

The tank truck, and some other cars, were bearing down on me. The bleating horn of the big truck blared out, as if I didn’t know what was happening and had just stumbled unaware out into traffic like a lost puppy. Didn’t he know I was experiencing my very first clutch crisis?

I panicked, plain and simple. Right there in traffic, with tons of 50-mile-per-hour steel bearing down on me, I folded like a metal chair.

“YOU DO IT!” I unbuckled the seatbelt and slithered between the seats to the back. Momz just stared for a moment, shocked. She then resigned herself to the fact that I was done, broken. Of course, the truck and accompanying cars had come to a stop by this time, abruptly as it may have been. Horns were honking, and there were torrents of cuss words. Momz had to endure the indignity of getting out of the passenger side, walking around to the driver’s side, getting in and starting the car. I stayed huddled down in the fetal position in the back seat in hopes that none of my peers had witnessed this unfortunate event.

That incident, that one solitary traffic mishap on a short journey home in the grocery-getter, had ruined me. From that point on, I didn’t give a shit about driving. My dreams were shattered. Didn’t care one lick about ever learning how to drive that devil-chariot of a mechanical contraption my mama had sittin’ under her carport. My 16^th birthday came and went without the fanfare that surrounded such days of demarcation in the lives of my fellow classmates.

For her part, Momz tried to convince me to give it another go.

“Don’t you want to try it again? We can just go to a parking lot where you can practice your timing.”

“Nope. Thanks. Do you think you may be buying an automatic car sometime soon?”

I was flat out “ruint” on the whole manual transmission thing. Wanted nothing to do with it. My friends would take their tests and get access to their cars. They knew I was of age, and would ask why I wasn’t driving. My answers would vary, but it was usually something akin to “well, we only have one car, so there’s no point,” or, “my Momz’ car is too small for me to drive, I don’t fit.”

But these were all excuses to cover up the fear I had of ever having to count on that medieval torture device known as a standard transmission ever again. It was surely conceived as a death trap, some exercise in eugenics designed to weed out the uncoordinated from the population in unsavory fashion. I would be no part to this horrendous crime against humanity, no sir’ee! My stand was a philosophical one…yeah, yeah, a philosophical one. Had nothing to do with me being a pussy about the manual tranny…no, of course not.

So as my friends earned cars and drove themselves to band practice, I endured the shame of being one of the few 16-year-olds who was still dropped off by his mama. My classmates were stylin’ and profilin’ into the school parking lot every morning, while I rode the cotdang cheese wagon with the baby freshmen and sophomores. I didn’t go on a date that wasn’t a double-date, which can make for uncomfortable situations for all parties (to say the least).

I soldiered on in my stubbornness (as I am likely to do) until pert near my 17^th birthday. In that time, I discovered that life wasn’t life without access to a car. It just wasn’t any fun having to be the tag-along, the third wheel. When other kids would break from band practice to hit the “swimmin’ hole,” I either had to beg a ride or ride out the lunch break on campus with my brown bag. It was some fkd up repugnant shit, and eventually, being a man of action, I decided to do something about it.

It also helped that a particularly fetching young woman had caught my eye, though admittedly, she was of a younger class and had not yet gotten her driver’s license, either. Not because of some previous disposition against the art of driving, but simply because she had not reached her 16^th birthday. I began to chat her up, despite her Auburnic inclinations, and soon we were a thing. Well, as much of a thing as two people who have never been on a real date could be.

I resolved that it was the time in my development as a man to put aside the cowering I concealed in my consciousness regarding mastery of that god-forsaken machine. I would not be held in place by the whim of a manually-manipulated metal casing full of gears and cogs, that much was certain. No, I would rage against the restraints imposed by mechanical engineering, I would lash out at the Draconian grip of auto manufacturers who would see me poon-less because I had still not learned to drive a stick. PEOPLE OF THE SUN, RISE UP!

With the prospect of poontang on the line, I found a way to muster myself up and throw down the gauntlet.

“Momz, I think I would like to try to get my license. Can we go practice in the parking lot of the high school?”

She was glad to comply. I honestly think it was worth it to her just to keep from ferrying my lummox ass all over the countryside in pursuit of my extracurriculars. Not to mention, if I was using her car, I’d become the chauffer for B-Rad as well, as he had his own set of extracurriculars he was pursuing (wink-wink.)

After hours and hours of stops and starts, of clutch-timing gone awry and the ensuing stalls, I finally gained confidence in my ability to manipulate the machine. I thought I had it down, got a little cocky with it even, started turning the radio up and dancing as we drove around the parking lot smooth as silk.

Finally, the time came to put my newfound skill to the test…on an actual road. I can honestly say I was terrified at the prospect. Though I had been able to run up to third gear in the long parking lot in front of my high school to test out my clutch-work while actually moving, it wasn’t the same as the pressure-filled crucible of driving in real-time with hazards and enraged drivers and all that typa shit. I was nervous indeed, but I knew that the next step in my evolution as a driver (and the next step towards getting into the pants of the girl I was covetin’) was to get out on the open road and do tha damn thang.

I remember easing up to the end of the school parking lot and taking the right onto the neighborhood street that led out to Howell’s Ferry Road. It was only a two-lane, but it was one upon which a group of friends had been involved in a terrible accident months before. One died, one was paralyzed, two had severe head injuries that rendered them different people. The road was a straight one, but full of trees and blind intersections. Because it was straight, folks flat-out hauled ass. Very dangerous indeed.

I eased to the edge of Howell’s Ferry the way a first-time skydiver approaches the edge before his first leap. I let the engine idle up, clutch depressed, foot on the brake. I looked left then right, then left again. The time to go was upon me. I worked the clutch like a pro, and the car leapt out into the stream of traffic flawlessly. I ran it up quickly through first and second, and on into third. Finally, I reached that Valhalla I’d never before attained…fourth gear. It was smooth sailing, I was travelling a solid 45 mph and it felt marvelous.

With my bolstered confidence, I told Momz I was ready to take the test.

“Great, we’ll go Monday, after I get off work,” she said.

Awesome. I could use the weekend to practice, and be sharp as a tack on Monday afternoon.

The day came. I was convinced I had this thing in the bag, so much so that I had gone ahead and set up a date for that Monday night (who goes on a date on Monday night?) It wasn’t a huge deal, but it was our first real date, just the two of us, under our own power. After band camp, we were heading up to the Burger Master in Eight Mile to get a burger and a shake…with a potential for a little parking possibly in mind as well.

When I told the girlie that I’d be able to drive us that night, she was giddy, ecstatic. Now we could really be boyfriend and girlfriend, a couple, an item…we didn’t call it “goin’ steady” like you old-timers. But that’s kinda what it was.

Not to mention, after such a long tenure in the non-driving wilderness amongst my peers, I talked a blue streak to my buddies about what I was gonna do when I had my license, how I was gonna save up and buy a cherry red ’65 Mustang and fix it up, how I was a damn manual-transmission ace who would finally be toting them around instead of vice versa. It had been such a long time in coming, and I wanted everyone to know I’d finally be mobile. Like a damn man (albeit a man borrowing his mother’s 4-cylinder).

Monday afternoon arrived and I was all set. We walked into the driver’s license office on Demetropolis Road, the steely resolve of a 17-year-old driver gleaming in mine eye. I filled out the paperwork, paid my fee, and sat in a plastic-bottomed chair for what seemed like an eternity. The place was teeming with slate-gray polyester-clad ALDOT employees, state trooper lookin’ types, only more doughy and desk-jockeyish. Whomever designed the unis for these poor folks didn’t have much of an eye for the feminine form for certain, as gray service trousers and uniform shirts simply don’t do much to complement anyone but barrel-bellied, crew-cut middle-aged men. These were about the most unappealing looking office fraus I had ever laid my eyes upon.

After a few moments, my number was called. I reported to the back door, where an older, bigger-framed cat stood waiting for me, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose, her coif a tightly-curled weave of brownish-gold timbre.

“You OWB?” she asked, reading from a clipboard as I approached. She was a smoker…one could tell by the lizard-growl deep-throated grit that poured out of her vocal hole.

“Yes ma’am, I am.”

“What in hell kinda name is OWB anyway?” she inquired, not jokingly. (While OWB is of course my pseudonym, she said this about my given name, which at the time was unusual, granted, but com’on…)

“I ain’t never heard that name before…yo parents foreign or somethin’?”

Hmmm, was I being profiled? Unsure of how to answer, I decided to go with honesty.

“No ma’am, they’re both ‘Merican, born and raised,” I answered in as perky a manner as I could muster.

“It don’t matter, you probably gonna fail anyway.”

Well, that was certainly a ray of sunshine, no? I could already see that this lady was meaner than a hungry rattlesnake comin’ out of hibernation. This was a revolting development, indeed.

We walked to my chariot, the ’85 Chevy Nova.

“This yours?” she pointed with the eraser of her pencil at my car.

“Yes ma’am…I mean, it’s actually my mama’s, but it’s the car I’m drivin’ for the test.”

“Well, which is it, boy? Yours or your mama’s? Don’t pay to lie to a state official, I’ll tell you ‘at right now!”

This was going nowhere fast.

“It’s my mama’s car, I’m just driving it today.”

“There…was that so hard? Wasn’t a difficult question. Good Lord, help us when you people are runnin’ this country…hope I’m dead by then.”

This woman was a breath of fresh air…a breath of fresh, sulphur dioxide-laden, homicidal air. Someone had most certainly pissed in her Corn Flakes that morning…or on every morning since she was a child. I really couldn’t imagine that this was going to end positively, and where previously I was fearless and confident, I now began to feel the fingers of doubt creeping around my throat.

“Get in there and turn your lights on…pump the brakes…” I could see in the rear view that she was writing something on her clipboard.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Aside from me havin’ to put up with pissant teenagers every dang day of my life, and puttin’ my ever-lovin’ life in jeopardy lettin’ you knuckle-heads drive me around, yes, there is somethin’ wrong. You got a reverse light out.”

She revealed to me that despite that burnt bulb, she could still give me the test. Yippee.

We got into the car, and she immediately filled the cab with the stagnant smell of stale cigarette smoke that had so permeated the polyester of her uniform that it was impossible to cleanse. It was kinda nauseating, especially combined with the smell of old lady herself.

“Turn the car on…you think you can do that?” she said with sarcasm.

“Yes ma’am.” I fired up the Nova, and let it idle while I awaited further commands.

“Aight, go ‘head and pull forward to that yella line up there,” she said. I did as told, smooth like a hot knife through butter, easy like Sunday morning. I could do this, she-curmudgeon be damned.

“Now, you goan pull out on the service road there, and head north.” I could handle that, little traffic on the service road, no problem. I did as commanded, and all was well.

“When you get to the stop sign up there, you goan’ take a right onto Demetropolis.”

Didn’t sound too hard. The rub, however, was that the access to Demetropolis was a bit of a little hill. If you drive a stick, you know that hills can present a bit of an obstacle to a smooth transition. My palms started sweating. I had not practiced a lot of hill-starting. I glanced over towards the old woman, who was side-eyeing me impatiently. I knew I needed to take action, but I sure as hell didn’t want to jump-stall my ass out into four-lane traffic. I said a little prayer, and offered myself encouragement…”you got this, playa.”

However, cool as Cool Hand Luke, I nailed it, worked that leverage between the clutch and gas and rolled that Nova up out into traffic, purty as you please.

I was proud of myself, the worm had turned.  Old lady seemed impressed that I had pulled it off seamlessly.

“Turn left up here, into that neighborhood.” I did, followed her instructions, kept my speed steady and my turns smooth. We came to the true test of the course, an obstacle that stumped generations of prospective drivers in this neck of the woods. You see, on one of the neighborhood streets, there’s a water oak tree rising right up out of the middle of the road. One lane goes left around it, the other goes right around it. For a seasoned driver, it’s probably no biggie. But for a newb, it creates an unfamiliar situation, it creates doubt, it creates hesitation. Wrong decision and your toast, the test ends there.

But it was nothing to me, I chose wisely and sailed past without a second thought. I had this test nailed. It would be worth the extra wait to turn in a perfect score, would give me bragging rights over my buddies who scraped through by the skin of their teeth.

I made my way out of the ‘hood as instructed.

“Okay, turn left across the traffic onto Demetropolis, and head back to the office.”

IT WAS OVER! I was thrilled, I had done it, and had even had to brave this Gorgon of an ALDOT evaluator in the process. Certainly, I was Jason of Argonaut fame, and would regale my compadres with tales of bravery and excellence later while leaning against the hood of my (Momz) car, collar popped.

As I say daydreaming about the stories I would tell, I lost track of the traffic. More importantly, I lost track of the amount of time I was sitting at the stop sign, waiting to pull into traffic. That daydream was shattered by the coarse, gravelly nagging of one gray-clad harpy in the seat next to me.

“WELL WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? DID YOU DOZE OFF?...GO!” She was displeased, to say the least.

“But I was waiting for…”

“YOU WAITED TOO LONG, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? YOU HIGH? DID YOU DO A MARIJUANA BEFORE THE TEST? S’WAT’S WRONG WITH ALL YOU PEOPLE, YOU ALL HIGH!”

Why was this woman yelling at me? After all, my performance had been flawless to date, she had no reason for this sudden explosive barrage of unfounded accusations. I had been, truthfully, lost for the moment in reverie, though I proclaimed that I was just being extra careful. Why was she so angry?

“YOU’RE STILL SITTING HERE…WELL GO…GO…GOOOO!!!”

Her shouting flustered me. I lost my composure. Under the passel of harsh words from this wicked witch of the DOT, I was unable to focus. I tried to heed her commands and execute the task, but my timing…it was all off. She was comin’ at me all wrong, you see, using the wrong tone. It wasn’t good…not good at all. With a break in the traffic coming, I tried to execute the clutch timing that had given me so much confidence before.

But…I failed. The Nova lurched out into Demetropolis Road, stalled and died.

I couldn’t believe it. Was this really happening? I can’t even tell you what the witch said after that, but it was loud, and unpleasant. I got the car to crank, finished crossing the four-lane, and made my way back to the office.

Always the optimist, as I pulled the car into a space and turned it off, I felt compelled to ask Maleficent my score.

“Your score? YOUR SCORE? God, you are dumb as a stump. Your score is F…AS IN FAIL!”

I guess I knew that was coming, but had hoped that one small error…okay, one big error…would not overrule my previously stellar performance. However, it did, and I was charged with the shame of being a first-time driver’s license test flunkee.

Momz came to the car, expecting to see me jubilant. Instead, I just shook my head.

Of course, the whole ordeal was embarrassing, but the most embarrassing thing was the aftermath. Not only did I have to explain to my buddies why I was not yet among the driving members of our circle, but I had to cancel my long-awaited date. It was one of the most miserable days of my life up until that point, and my heavy bag felt my pain for the next week until I took the test again and passed with flying colors.

So there you have it Loki, you ravenous sumbitch. Please take my sacrifice and swallow it down. If it wins your favor and buoys our boys to victory, then it will certainly be worth it. Roll Tide.

Your Weekly Hoodoo Thread - LSU Week

Do y’all smell something? Maybe I’m wrong…no, wait, I definitely smell something. Something akin to the unmistakable odor of swamp gas, oil refineries and corn dogs…ah yes, it’s an aroma I know all too well. Must be LSU Week, friends.

So here we stand a-straddle what may be the pivotal point of the Alabama campaign for number 17, the traditional bare-knuckled brawl between our beloved Crimson Tide and the mush-mouthed heathens from yonder bayou to the west. Sure, those people know good-eatin’, those folk can render a silk purse out of a saw’s ear, culinarily-speaking. Being a denizen of Alabama’s own lower Delta, I have always felt a certain kinship to the displaced Acadians from the Louisiana low country, even if it only extends to our respective palates and dependence on the bays and bayous for our recreation and diet. 

However, despite the cultural similarities, the football fortunes of our two peoples couldn’t be more different. Alabama has a history of excellence rooted in a real-world record of championships won and foes conquered. For the LSU faithful, they exist in a fairy-tale land in which the men in purple and gold will always prevail (until they don’t), and when they do fall, it is due to some nefariousness on account of the officials…or the SEC home offices…or “NICK-SABAN-IZ-THUH-DEBIL.” 

No, these poor Cajun folks from the bayou backwaters of that boot-shaped state are perpetual victims of mediocrity, the jilted former lovers of Our Dark Lord, perennially pining for what once was and never will be again. Saban turned LSU into an Alpha dog, whereas before they were barely a blip on Bama’s radar. They took their beatings quietly before slinking off back to their swamp, a more colorful, slightly more prolific version of Ole Miss’ previous win-once-a-decade rendition. Saban turned them into a machine, and even though Les Miles eventually ran that machine with no oil for days on end at 9500 RPMs before totally burning it up, ODL’s legacy in Baton Rouge has been one that has unrealistically buoyed the expectations of the Tiger faithful for a decade.

But alas, with a championship perfect season on the line, our beloved Crimson Tide must find a way to battle through the fisticuffs that LSU will offer, especially on that godless parcel of ground known as Tiger Stadium (at night, no less…and as we all know, DEAF VALLUH AT NAUGHT IS MAGICOLE!) While LSU may be a shell of its former self, the team (like much of its fanbase) represents a dangerous wounded critter, and cannot be underestimated. Their defense is loaded and ferocious, and their offense, though still one-dimensional, is extremely sound in that solitary dimension. 

Not to mention, those bayou-bred sumbitches have the powerful forces of Hoodoo’s illegitimate cousin Voodoo lurking around beneath that blackwater, powering them to the improbable when duly summoned. But our Loki has not forsaken us low these early months of the football season. He has apparently been satisfied by our grievous offerings of unrepentant debauchery. Therefore, I implore you, make your Hoodoo offerings to Loki this week, as a failure to do so could have disastrous consequences for the Alabama Crimson Tide American Collegiate Tackle Football Team. The gauntlet our boys must run is a dangerous one, and without the favor of our Pigskin Patron, all of their work to date could go for naught. 

Without further ado, I will present for your enjoyment a tale of embarrassment complete with the dark undertones of the recently-passed Hoodoo High Holiday, specifically the Halloween spook season. This is a vignette that has it all: shame, lost love, a fallen hero (literally), treachery and betrayal, maybe even a little comic relief if you’re the particularly loathsome sort who makes light of the suffering of others. Without further adieu, I give you this offering, Loki please have mercy upon my soul…

Now, I’m not afraid to admit to you people my love for All Hallow’s Eve. Some a’ you folks may get your dandies in a bunch for the joy of the Christmas season, with its family get-togethers, gift-giving, and lush pageantry. Some may favor the trappings and trimmings of the traditional Thanksgiving ritual, with its bounty of savorys (I’m talkin’ to you, heavy-lunch), times spent with loved ones, and rivalry football games. 

But as for your narrator, I am all about “the ‘Ween.” Ever since childhood, I’ve been crazy about the holiday because of the dark undercurrents contained therein. Because of my status as a practicing Sith lord, I tend to gravitate towards the evil in the world. It’s just my nature. And Halloween is the pinnacle of the evil season, when the veil between the living and dead is at its thinnest, and normally-reserved women wear the sluttiest costumes imaginable beneath the brilliant guise of celebration.

When we were kids, B-Rad and I were allowed to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood without our mother, who was probably far too trusting despite the fact that I grew up in a kinder, gentler, less-psycho-clown-crazy epoch. Sure, there were the Adam Walsh-type situations of the day, but there was no ISIS, no child kidnapping rings, no drive-by shootings to speak of. All we had to do was make sure no one gave us razor-blade-loaded apples, and we were good to go.

I always enjoyed the aspect of dressing up in costume, partially because of my infatuation with pulp fiction superheroes. And because of my comparatively rough childhood, becoming someone else was a form of immature escapism (if only for a night). I spent weeks prior to the holiday perfecting my outfits: one year I was Snake Eyes from the GI Joe cartoons, another year I was Batman (my mom even made me a cowl complete with ears.)  Some years I’d render a spook costume of a more generic persuasion just for the sake of variety. 

By the time I reached middle school, which incidentally is probably the most reviled era in any boy’s young life, some of my friends were beginning to fall away from the ritual of trick-or-treating, fancying it childish and immature. I’ve never really gotten a solid explanation as to why that is the case, as conning someone into giving you something free is solid practice, no matter how many years one has beneath his belt. Hell, these days it forms my very livelihood as a non-profit communications director…I ask for free stuff all the time (though admittedly, the only costume I am required to wear is a suit and tie.)

Though most of my classmates had stopped trick-or-treating by the time I reached seventh grade, that didn’t mean there weren’t still celebrations of the holiday. Some still had Halloween parties that evolved into closet-bound make-out sessions or marathon spin-the-bottle stand-offs. Those were always fun, but in keeping with the theme of the season, also terrifying. I mean, what is a seventh grader supposed to do when shoved into a closet with the infamous loose-woman of Scarbubba Junior High, ole Hot Britches O’Herlihy…in the darkness…with countless pubescent ears pressed against the door to detect each and every smooching sound? Scary stuff, to say the least.

But while peer mockery and neighborhood coots (the kind who call you out and tell you you’re too old to trick-or-treat when you knock on the door) had shied me away from the childish trappings of Halloween junkets by the time I reached seventh grade, I still celebrated the season. In this particular year, I had decided that it was my duty, as a senior member of the neighborhood posse of heathens and roughnecks, to initiate terror in the hearts of my younger, still trick-or-treat-living juniors. 

To this effect, I became the Wes Craven of Lurkwood Drive, crafting the landscape of nightmares for my fellow classmates and neighbors. I erected tombstones, drove knives through old masks to pin them to trees, draped all types a’ haints and bats and spiders and such in the low-limbs of the water oak trees that barricaded our front yard. I’d gathered a right band of hooligans from amongst my circle of friends to tape a solid 30 minutes of the lot of us making spook noises into a microphone, the kind of silly shit kids that age love to do anyway. That would become the soundtrack for Halloween night, as I’d pop that homemade cassette into the boom box and let the scary sounds spill out over the yard, beckoning in the brave of heart (or numb of mind).

Of course, as is the case with most young men of middle school age, I was a bit of a braggart. While walking track in Coach Teel-hard’s PE class seventh period, I had struck up a conversation with a fetching young chestnut-haired childhood friend who seemed to have something more than a passing interest with me all of the sudden. I’d known her for years, but she seemed unusually interested in the recounting of my Halloween plans and all I had in store for the neighborhood. She laughed at my jokes, provided encouraging smiles…either she was REALLY into Halloween shenanigans, or she was diggin’ on ya boy pretty damn hard.  

At this point, I was lucky to have any young lady trip over me, so awkward was I in social settings and unsure of myself in most imaginable ways. Being a pubescent middle school dude is rough, to be sure…so much insecurity, so much to learn about the ways of the world. I was a big ole strappin’ kid, but I had a one feature which to this day I look back upon with horror: I had a decided fetish for hairspray. White Rain, to be exact. (Not huffing it, you monsters, using it in the proper, traditional application.) 

Not to make light of a serious situation, but do you know how psychiatrists say that when an anorexic or bulimic person looks in the mirror, he or she actually sees a distorted body image? Same was true for me, only that distortion was limited to my hair-parts. The slightest out-of-place hair rendered my coif a clown ‘do in my eyes. I simply couldn’t stand it, even though to most observers, such would have been unnoticeable. Like a network television anchor, I was totally preoccupied with making sure every fletch of hair stayed in its enumerated space upon my head from sun up to sun down. I couldn’t stand for a strand to part ways with its predetermined location, even for a second. In pursuit of this lofty standard, I am pretty sure I single-handed artificially buoyed stock prices for White Rain during my middle school years, using multiple cans of it per week. No telling the chemicals that soaked through my scalp and into my brain-parts (though, such a dynamic would explain a great deal o my decision-making in future years.)

Unfortunately, whether by some twist of cosmic karma or the cruel whim of Fate, your follicularly-retentive narrator had several forces working against him in this regard. 

1.) I was born in Mobile, AL, which by all accounts, may well be the most humid city on the North American Continent. It is well known that Mobile is the Humidity Capital of the Known World. The air down here…well, it’s thick, like syrup. Walk outside in the summer time, and one feels as though he’s been wrapped in a wet woolen blanket and thrown into a pre-heated toaster oven. It is awful. And as you may know, humidity and hair are not close confidants. 

2.) I was born with a thick, coarse knot of hair upon my head, not as stiff as a Brillo pad, but definitely akin to some other softened steel-wool amalgam rendered of my Irish and Indian genetics to be sure. It is as curly as Shirley Temple’s when of length, and as thick and dense as a mid-summer briar patch. One would be better off attempting to style said briar patch than the wiry nap of hair I was cursed with wielding. 

3.) I was born in an age when “product” for men simply wasn’t a thing. This was the late 80’s: the dawning of the age of aerosol mousse, but well before the days of leave-in gel, let alone any of this “bed-head” business the kids today use. There weren’t convenient man-ready relaxers or straightening products that didn’t require one to undergo the emasculating process of entering the beauty salon. When attempting to tame my nap, I was left with only three tools at my disposal: a stiff boar hair brush, my mama’s can of hair mousse, and that damn White Rain.

Now I’d go through my morning ritual of prepping my ‘do for school each day. My prep work was complicated and extensive, like rendering structural concrete (and coincidentally, the finished product was also hard and motionless, much like the aforementioned). I spent an hour in the bathroom every day putting on my helmet hair. I’d get it wet and stroke it down flat with the boar hair brush, then apply a generous coat of that high-tech hair spackle (mousse) my mama lent me. After my hair began to set into a crispy brown Lego-minifigure-styled hairhat, I’d apply the finishing touch by soaking it down with hair spray as if I was spraying down a wasp’s nest with aerosol pesticide. There’d be so much hair spray on my dome that it’d drip off like Soul Glow. The end result was a monstrosity of middle-school mental illness, as I looked absolutely ridiculous but had no clue as to my true appearance, so distorted was my self-view. (I had, however, often wondered why my mom looked at me in the rearview some mornings, mouthing “Oh…honey…” sympathetically. I was in high school before I figured out the error of my coifing ways.)

Regardless of how ridiculous I looked, I had managed to get the attention of this girl, let’s just call her Calla because of the lovely calla lilies her mother had growing in the flower box in their front yard down at the foot of my street. When we were younger, being of similar age, we had played together a bit. Our parents would trade off baby sitting at times to allow for date nights in a two-way street arrangement. Her pops had even taken me along with her to see the Robin William’s rendition of Popeye in the theaters, and we were a bit of an item (as much as six-year-olds can be an item). We had gone to different elementary schools, but were reunited in middle school when her dad was laid off from the local Scott Paper mill, and she had to enroll in public school after six years in a private Christian school.

I had started waiting for her at the corner as she walked to school on fair days, and we’d walk and talk over the course of the mile to our neighborhood middle school. When you’re young and of the age that hormones begin to become major players in your decision-making process, you really have no idea what love is, even though its confusing tug on the heart (and other parts) becomes increasing difficult to render mute. Girls go from being gross, uncool, cooty-carrying vectors who frequent tea parties and doll houses, to beautiful beings with warm, welcoming eyes, glorious curves, and all of the other things that a young man can’t get from his interactions with his buddies. I didn’t know why I had begun to hurry to get dressed each morning, why I double-checked my hair spackle to make sure I didn’t look like Alfalfa, why I always grabbed an extra Capri Sun before slinking out the back door, to wait for Calla down by the corner concrete sign post. But I did it nonetheless, without fail, as loyal as a retriever. 

I had no idea, until a friend told me, that my usual scowl became a smile whenever I talked about Calla. I didn’t even know that I was looking at her across the cafeteria until one of my observant friends noticed…and subsequently made fun of me to the point that I had to deploy a knuckle-based “frogging” on the meaty part of his shoulder. I’d never have admitted it, but my hormones and circumstance were conspiring against me…you see, for the first time ever, I had fallen into that deep, inescapable well we call love.

She was the perfect woman…at least so far as I knew at this tender age. She liked the things I liked, knew about the things I knew about. Sometimes, when we’d walk, she’d talk about music…she, like me, was a huge fan of Whitesnake. In fact, I bought my first Whitesnake cassette just so I could loan it to her, saved my grass-cutting money for two weeks to be able to by the tape from Sound Shop in Bel air Mall. I paid extra for the “special edition” that came with a sweet pin-on button like the Van Halen and Ratt ones I wore on my jeans jacket. I had a plan for the Whitesnake one, though….it wasn’t for me, but rather, was intended as a gift for you-know-who.

One October morning, as we were walking and talking, the topic of the ‘ween came up.

“So what are you gonna be, OWB?”

I started to answer, but she cut me off.

“OH WAIT, I KNOW!” She was grinning a mile wide. “You can be David Coverdale. It’s. So. PERFECT!” 

For those of you too old, or too young, to know who Coverdale was, he was the lead singer of Whitesnake. He had the voice of Robert Plant, a model wife who starred in his videos (you see kids, “videos” were these things we watched in decades past, short stories on film that accompanied the songs thematically and theatrically). He had long rock-star hair, but not the theatrical, femme make-up of other hair metal bands of the day. I liked the idea, but figured I couldn’t pull it off.

“Hahaha, nah, I don’t think I look like Coverdale. Wish I did though.” 

“Bull! You can totally pull it off. You just need a wig…I mean, you’re cute and all, like he is. You should totally do it.”

I could feel my face flush hot with redness.

“Well, um, I don’t know…maybe.”

She clapped a cute close-clap, hands held high in front of her chest. She seemed far more excited about it than I was…after all, I had my eye on a sweet Freddy Krueger mask up at the local K&B.

“Oooooo, I can help? I can tease your hair out…I mean, your wig. I probably even have one you can use. We can rock-star you up. It’ll be great, you can come to my house…pleasepleaseplease?”

Well, that certainly changed things. A trip to her house? YASS. Coverdale it was.

With my costume decided, I moved on to my personal house of horrors that I erected annually in our front yard. The problem with running this type of game in a neighborhood where the population is largely static is that one constantly has to reinvent the horror year to year. The gags that worked the previous year are old and stale the following year…memories are long, after all. So I had to up my game. I focused on a new centerpiece, a reinvented coup-de-grace that would be the buzz of the neighborhood for anyone unfortunate enough to come seeking candy at OWB’s laboratory.

Finally, I settled on my new gag…a hanging corpse. But this wouldn’t just be a static fright…no, that would be far too ordinary. I had bigger plans, plans for a vicious, diabolical sort of scare that would scar young’uns for ages and cause a distinct uptick in the gross revenues at local therapists’ offices.

I’ll take a moment to admit that I am a sick person in some regards. No, really, laugh if you will, but I have problems. They manifested themselves in a variety of ways as a child, but at no point were these derangements more obvious than during the Halloween season, when I’d let the wriggling percolations of my evil mind creep into the public eye. Now for me, terror is a very sensory experience. As such, it is not limited simply to a visual or audio incident. 

You see, I was well familiar with terror. When I was about seven, I chased a ball into the street and was almost plowed by a speeding car barreling into the curve in front of our home. Only the Hand of God kept me safe, as I remembered looking up in time to see the car’s headlights mere meters from me. I remembered the smell of unburnt leaded gas, of the hot rubber skidding into smoke on the pavement when the wheels locked, of the heat-vapors rising in ribbons from the asphalt road. I remember which way the breeze was blowing, the sound of the car’s screeching brakes as it attempted to stop. I could see the startled eyes of the driver’s through the windshield. I was terrified from 0-60 in a mere second, and my mind captured those multi-sensory details in shockingly detailed clarity.

So in my mind, to create true terror in those brave enough to approach my door, I had to hit all the senses. I had the spooky sounds on lock. I had numerous set props in the yard to create a scary setting, to raise the prickles on the backs of necks. But when it came to my main event, I wanted to shock and awe...

I created a dead body by sewing clothes together and stuffing them with wadded newspapers. Nothing too original there, but this is where I got creative. I used Playdough and some Halloween make-up to create a gory, scarred face for my unfortunate inanimate victim…it looked real, like the visage of a water-bloated corpse gnawed by crabs. I dressed the head with frayed corn husks I had harvested previously from the corn field next to my aunt’s house, creating make-shift hair. But this was to be no regular hair, no. It was flammable, as I had planned on terrifying participants in a particularly horrifying way. 

You see, our chimney sat alongside our front porch and door, where trick-or-treaters would pass en route to the candy dish. My plan was to sit an enormous bowl of candy in the rocking chair on the front porch, with a sign that read in red block letters “TAKE ALL YOU LIKE.” It was a ruse in and of itself to draw their attention, move their focus to the candy rather than my diabolical machinations just above the eave line.

I planned to hide behind the chimney with my “victim,” who had been lashed to a really professional-looking noose I had created. When the kids were about to step onto the porch, eyes on the sugary prize, I would light the corn-husk hair on fire, and shove the dangling body off the roof line, where it would hang right in front of them, a startling site, complete with flaming hair.

The finishing touch…I had B-Rad stationed around the edge of the carport with an old chainsaw our backyard neighbor Jack Cannon had given us to tinker with. We had managed to get it running with the help of some ether and a fresh sparkplug, and though it was worthless as a saw without a chain, it was so loud and noisy that it would certainly, when combined with the swinging body, send prospective trick-or-treaters scurrying like roaches with the lights flipped on.

It was a solid plan, even if unapproved by my mother. Surely, she would not have let me shove smoldering bodies off her porch roof…but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

Was it Robert Burns who said “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry?” Wise feller…for a Scotsman. (“That there is some of that foreshadowin’ OWB is always doin’…”)

The day of infamy arrived, and I was fully prepared to deploy my pants-shit-inducing devices to my own delight and the terror of countless neighborhood young’uns on Halloween night. But first, I had a date with destiny…or rather Calla.

I waited for her at the corner that morning, and she immediately began talking about dressing me up. I honestly think she was looking forward to it, an assumption I later found to be true through her actions. Aside from feeling a little like an overgrown Ken doll, I was more than a little flattered by all of the attention she was dishing my way.

“So, why don’t you just come over right after school so I can dress you before it gets dark.” 

I didn’t know exactly why, but the thought of her “dressing me” made me feel funny in my nether regions. And I like-ted it.

“Yeah, okay, what should I bring?”

“Just yourself, silly,” she said with a wink. “I’ll handle the rest.” I was too young to know that she was probably overtly flirting with me. After all, I was still a big dumb lummox when it came to womenfolk.

I told her about what I had planned at the house later on, let her in on my secret so that she could prepare her little sister when she came around to knock on my door. Of course, wouldn’t be a very good look if I terrified the apple of my eye and her little sis…no sir’ee. 

“Oh you are SO MEAN!” She swatted my shoulder. “That is bad, you’re going to terrify those kids!” I could tell by her giggle that she wasn’t overly serious about my evil nature, at least not to the point of being thoroughly put off. This chick got me. 

“You should come by and see the show, I promise not to scare you. It’s all harmless fun, ya know.”

She agreed, and we parted ways at school, with her being a year ahead of me and on a different hall. I was as excited as I’d ever been about the prospect of having a girl visit me at my house, and I had no idea why. What the hell was happening to me? 

As promised, I followed Calla home after school, and she did as we had discussed. Upon arriving in the holy inner sanctum of her bedroom, she popped in the Whitesnake tape I had loaned her, just to set the mood. As “Here I go Again,” blared, she sang into the handle of her hairbrush as if it was a microphone. She had already found an appropriate wig from her personal play stock, and as she crossed the room with it, she teased it up, Coverdale style. 

She positioned it on my head and primped it, pulling swatches of the synthetic hair down over my forehead, her hands grazing my cheeks. In retrospect, it was one of those sweet, sensual experiences that sticks in the mind and shapes future desires, as it was really my first intimate encounter with someone of the opposite sex. I wasn’t sure what was happening, or what I wanted to happen, but I did know that it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. 

That’s when it happened. As she played with the fake hair, our eyes connected, locked in on one another. We were focused, laser-beam intense. I felt the quiver in my diaphragm I’ve come to relate to sheer joy and excitement and a little bit of terror. Without asking, she turned her head slightly and planted a kiss…right on my lips. My first one of any consequence. Then, just as quickly as it happened, it was over. She pulled back a little and smiled sweetly.

“Did that really just happen?” I wondered to myself. But I knew the answer. It HAD happened. And it was awesome.

Then, something else completely unexpected happened…and not in a good way. She broke out what appeared to be a make-up compact.

“I’m just gonna put a little blush here on your cheeks to soften your lines…”

“Uhhh, wut?”

“Just a little, don’t be silly, it’s just for effect…”

Talk about killin’ the mood. I thought things were flowing in a positive direction, and then she pulled out the damn guyliner. I was down with the overtly masculine Coverdale thing, but there was no way I was crossing over into Poison or Crue territory in my physical appearance. My circle of friends constantly questioned the gender preference of those cats, even though we listened to their music, and I wasn’t about to step off into the alligator pit of explaining to a bunch of teenage boys why I was wearing more foundation that a school marm. I wasn’t sure how to gracefully bow out of the situation without offending my sweet hostess, but I damn sure wasn’t going to walk back home looking like Boy George.

“Umm, I gotta go, gotta go get set-up, be dark soon.” I was totally flustered, partially from the after effects of the smooch, and partially because of the whole make-up thing. I scrambled up, stunned, and made for the door.

“But, I was just gonna…” She didn’t want me to go.

I had to change the subject.

“Yeah, I know, it’s just that…gettin’ late…need to…you know, my corpse and all…”

As I was heading out the back door, the Whitesnake wig still on my head, I hollered back. 

“You are coming up to my house tonight, right?”

“Yeah, see you after while.”

I rushed home, anxious to escape the emasculation of receiving the Max Factor treatment from the girl I was crushing on. What did she think I was, some kind of boy toy? Was I the Sean Penn to her Madonna? I couldn’t stand for that, the world was full of enough sexual ambiguity in the mid-80s without my adding to the pot.

I tried to shake it off, occupied my mind by getting my scare factory fired up. I added a few torches to the front yard to cast spooky, fear-inducing flickers that crept like fingers through the mossy boughs of the oak trees. I had everything ready…the final step was to place my corpse and fire-making tools on the roof before the unsuspecting trick-or-treaters arrived for their respective dates with terror.

The sun slipped below the horizon, a golden ladle dipping darkness from deep on the other side of the landscape. The crescent moon crept into the sky, barely breaking the dark with its sliver of silver-white light. I could already hear the faint footfalls on the asphalt up the street, the echo of elementary school students knocking on neighborhood doors followed by choruses of “trick-or-treat.”

I knew the time was at hand, and made sure my supplies were ready. Corpse?...check. Rope?...check. Gasoline? (GASOLINE?!!?)…check. Zippo lighter?...check. 

It. Was. On.

The first group was made up of a couple of the scuzzy kids from over on Eastview, the most underprivileged of streets in our rather underprivileged neighborhood. Among this group were members of a family that I always figured was constructed from the worst of their inbred gene pool. These folks, bless their hearts, appeared to be cobbled together from left-overs, from trimmed ends, from the scraps left when the beautiful people were rendered. I mean, not to be overly critical, but these kids were so fugly, they didn’t need masks to make candy demands. People were willing to dish them sweets just to get them the hell off their lawns.

There was Margerine (I shit you not, the child was literally named Margerine…pronounced Mar-jur-een), a poor girl who B-Rad had given the dubious nickname of “Plainface” due to her largely featureless visage. She looked like the backside of a baseball mitt, no humanoid bumps or ridges to speak of, almost like an almond-eyed gray alien. What her features lacked in terms of distinction were more than compensated by the girl’s raspy voice, however. She sounded like she had been smoking Lucky Strike non-filters for the better part of three decades, even though she wasn’t but 12 years old at the time. You could hear that heathen over a dirt bike engine. She was loud and her gravel-laden voice was something akin to dragging a salad fork over a blackboard, complete with a MOWA Choctaw twang characteristic of the tribe as constituted in northern Mobile County. This girl was as ugly as a mud fence with a gate made of peckers, but you didn’t dare tell ‘er that…’at girl would cut yoooooou. Quick to pull a blade, that Margerine was.

Then there was her older brother Maxster (these are actual names, folks, not falsies), who bore an uncannily strong resemblance to Beaker from the Muppet Show. Sumbitch’s mouth opened the wrong way or something, he was pale as a cave toad save for a scattering of ginger-red freckled on his cheekbones beneath his bug eyes. He didn’t talk too much, that is unless you wanted to talk about wrasslin’. Then, you couldn’t get the feller to shut his hole. Made that mistake once, and after two-and-a-half hours of a word-for-word recounting of the exploits of the Arn Anderson and the Four Horsemen, I had to fake pissin’ myself to break free and get home. 

Finally, there was King Ugly himself, a boar of a human being who had been bestowed with the name Fankley (seriously, folks), by his overly creative parents. Maybe “Fankley” was a family name or something, one of those remnants of the 19^th century plague of Southern illiteracy that just threw random letters together into something that vaguely sounded like it could be a name. I always thought the name fitting, as in “quite fankley, he was the ugliest mffkr I ever did see.” He had high-pink skin and was as hairless as a salamander…if he had any eye brows, they were pert near invisible. Old dude could have easily secured a role in American Horror Story, so bizarre and off-putting was his look. Watching him eat would have been enough to extract secrets from jihadists at Gitmo, a less humane form of waterboarding if you will, and the sight could certainly be considered proof in some circles that God had indeed abandoned humanity. He was just a mess visually (and keep in mind this assessment is coming from a chubby dude with Lego hair.) I swear, if I had owned a dog as ugly as this Fankley sumbitch, I’d have sooner shaved his ass and made him walk backwards than be seen in public with the likes of him.

(This is all very shallow, I know, and truthfully, is peripheral to the tale I’m unravelling. Pardon my long-windedness, as these images are still so vivid in my mind that I can’t help to dump them out on this here Hoodoo ledger.)

So this trio, much too old for trick-or-treating by my neighborhood’s self-imposed standards, approached my front door. They represented the perfect mark. I could test out my mechanism, and wouldn’t have to feel bad that I was scaring a bunch of kindergartners shitless. 

They were almost on my porch when I lit the corn-husk hair on the head of my “stuffed shirt” and kicked ole Malcom (as I was calling my corpse) off the edge of the roof. It worked like a charm. He fell right in front of their faces, a smoking, scarred monstrosity that jolted them with a sudden shock. They screamed, and right on cue, a Jason-masked B-Rad flared around the corner of the house, chainsaw growling wide-ass-open. 

Those poor ugly folk sprinted in terror like the Jamaican 400-meter team. They were greased lightning, they were nitrous-injected human funny (or more appropriately, fugly) cars. Jokers may as well have left cartoonish smoking footprints as they tore out of our yard, dropping their ditty-bags on the way out, so terrified they were of what had transpired. Mission accomplished.

It wasn’t long before I saw Calla, her sister, along her dad winding up around the curve to our house. I waved from my rooftop perch, and they saw me and came over. 

“How is it going?” Calla asked.

“Oh mah gawd, I just got Margerine and them real good…I mean REAL GOOD…they even dropped their candy they were so scared.”

Calla giggled, and her dad even appeared to get a kick out of it. I was midway through explaining the theatrics when I saw another neighborhood party making their way to the door. It was the Laurel and Hardy of our burg, the rotund J-Gun and his slender brother J-Ramy. I knew they’d get a kick out of it, as J-Ramy was scared of a shadow, wouldn’t even play football in the street after dark for fear of having to walk home past Mr. Gardner’s haint house (an abandoned house whose proprietor had long since died, leaving high grass and closed shutters behind).

“Hurry, y’all run around behind the carport with B-Rad and watch this.” I was going to get to put my masterwork on display for the woman of my dreams.

I crouched low with my corpse just above the roofline. I had reloaded with fresh corn husks, and I watched the duo ease towards the porch. As I lit the husks a-fire and was about to toss ole Malcom over the edge, the unthinkable happened.

I guess I had not been paying attention to the location of the Whitesnake wig I was wearing on my head and its rather close proximity to the flaming body only inches away. I first noticed a small flash, then the smell of burning synthetic, followed by the feeling of an unnatural heat on the side of my head. 

Now I ain’t no genius for damn sure, y’all. Don’t have to read many of these here Hoodoo tales to have picked up on that little tidbit of trivia. But my mind was not properly processing the course of this unfamiliar sensation. That said, the heat and light led me to one conclusion.

I…was…on…fire…

I WAS ON FIRE!!!

That damn wig went up like napalm, partially because of its synthetic make-up, and partially because it had probably soaked up the roughly half-gallon of hair spray I had loaded up on my head piece earlier that morning in an effort to impress my woman. 

But now, back to the important detail…I WAS ON FIRE!

Ever the Boy Scout, I had made all kinds of preparations for the night’s events. I had my tinder, I had my accelerant, I had my stage props. What I didn’t have, surprisingly, was a BUCKET OF DAMN WATER. Which, at the moment, would have really come in handy, because…I WAS ON FIRE.

I did the only thing I knew to do…I started screaming and flailing my arms, swatting at my head as if lit up by a hornets’ nest worth of stingers. Keep in mind I had been straddlin’ the uneven gable of the house, a locale which I thought gave me extra stability while deploying ole Malcom over the roof edge. Now, however, that peak worked against me, as I instinctively stood up and began to dart around while patting at the coif of fire stuck to my head like a fully-involved raccoon.

All eyes were on me as I danced like a cat on a hot tin roof…only far less Broadway-ish, and far more flaming lummox-ish. I didn’t know what to do…there was no water, no blanket to smother the flames, so way out. Doing the stop, drop, and roll would have rendered negative consequences on an angled rooftop of asphalt shingles. All forms of help were on the ground, while I was on the roof. I didn’t want to go out like a shish kabob that had fallen through the grill grates, but I knew I didn’t have time to climb down the ladder calmly. 

While I tried to decide what to do, gravity intervened. Well, maybe gravity, maybe my stumblin’ clumsiness. Either way, as I danced the jig of eternal flame while tryin’ to snatch the fiery wig-critter off my dome, I stepped crooked on the uneven gable, rolled my ankle, and took a tumble. All the way off the roof. All the way to the ground. In front of my brother, the neighborhood thugs, and most importantly, my dream girl and her family.

When I first fell, I landed on the roof, on my side, a few feet from the edge. But my momentum prevented me from stopping, even though I tried to dig my claws into the soft shingles. It wasn’t to be. I slid all the way to the edge, knowing full well the fate that awaited me, unable to stop. It was like something you’d see in a Vacation movie. It was agonizing, but I just prayed that what my grandma-ma always told me was true, that God has special mercy for the stupid.

When I got to the edge, I tried for all I was worth to hang on in hopes of slowing my descent. It was an admittedly James Bond, ninja-type option at best, but being such, it was well beyond my grasp at the moment. I ended up making myself look even dumber…I must have looked like a cat trying to stop itself from sliding down the hood of a moving car. 

My fate decided, I took it like a man. A big, screaming, hysterical man. I fell hard on my tailbone and back, thudding like a 50-pound sack of potatoes, right in front of mi amore and her family. It hurt, and I let out a crystal-shattering scream that echoed between the houses, down the street, for all to hear.

B-Rad, always the supportive sibling, had begun to point and laugh before I even ever made it over the edge. After landing, I let loose with a Vesuvian geyser of curse words that would make ole El Diablo himself blush like a school maiden. If F-bombs were weapons of war, then my yard would have been rendered Dresden. Such was the creativity and variety that I implemented in this explosive cuss-nado that I’m sure I made history with many of the utterances that passed over my lips and into the innocent ears of those unfortunate enough to be a party to my verbal eruption. 

As the pain wore off, I became aware of my surroundings. Calla stood about 10 feet away, horrified. Her father was next to her, his hands over his younger daughter’s ears. The look on his face was what one would expect from someone who just watched an 18-wheeler run over a baby stroller. 

J-Gun and J-Ramy were nowhere to be found, they had bolted at the first sign of trouble, not out of fear for my theatrics, but for fear of being tied up in some death or another. I mean, certainly, such would put a damper on Halloween in addition to being difficult to explain to their own mother. 

I again felt my face flushing red, but not from feelings of love or infatuation. No, this was just good old fashioned shame and embarrassment. By that time, my mother had emerged from the house.

“What…in the hell…was that?” She didn’t wait for an answer, considering I was laid out spread eagle in the front yard with a scorched carcass on my head and a still-flaming corpse smoldering away on her lawn. It didn’t really matter what had happened…there really wasn’t a way to slice the story that would make for appealing explanation.

“GET YOUR ASS UP!” She was not happy. Mr. Calla ushered his daughters on up the street, double-time. B-Rad melted into the back yard like a sniper to escape detection from my mother implicating eye.

“WHAT IN THE HELL WERE YOU DOING?”

I didn’t even bother explaining. I just told her I was grounded. No use in swimming against the current.

I waited for Calla the next morning at the corner in hopes of having an opportunity to explain myself. She didn’t show.

I saw her after school that day, but she said she was no longer allowed to walk with me. Her dad had put the kee-bosh on that one for good. 

After that, what could have been never was, sadly. We’d speak to one another, but those dreamy-eyed looked she had previously glued upon me were replaced by the sympathetic, half-hearted fleeting glances of someone who wants to escape the conversation. A lot like the way I looked at Maxster when he’d start in talking about wrasslin’. It was a lost opportunity, a conspiracy of the elements: fire, gravity, and time. It was merely a preparation for lost opportunities to come…certainly not my finest hour. 

But alas, que sera. If I had a dime for every time I set myself on fire, rolled off the roof, and lost a potential love interest…well, Hoodoo for another time, I reckon.

Loki, slake your thirst on my shame. Place your eternal all-powerful favor on my beloved Crimson Tide, and let them roll to victory over those god-forsaken swamp people. Roll Tide.