Cholly had had a most unusual upbringing. He had been raised by his great uncle, a former slave, on a river bottom farm not far from our place, a farm that is still in his family. His great uncle had been a manservant to a Confederate officer in Terry’s Texas Rangers during the Civil War, or, as local die-hards termed it, the War of Northern Aggression. The officer had given the river bottom farm to his uncle in recognition of his service and also in gratitude for the rest of the family who continued in loyal service on the home front during the war. Over the years a kind of settlement had grown up with several dilapidated shotgun houses from various members of the extended family clustered around an assortment of sheds and run-down outbuildings. Several generations lived here communally and the women would prepare breakfast and supper in a kitchen shack that was separate from the other buildings.
Cholly used to tell how his old uncle had continued to wear his confederate jacket and kepi until the day he died, and every morning had required the large passel of children who inhabited the compound to line up out front in parade formation for inspection. He would then march them to the communal kitchen for their breakfast. If anyone got out of step, he would crack the ten-foot bullwhip he carried for that purpose. The whole image is so absurd and improbable that I sometimes I think I must have dreamed it, but no, that is just as Cholly told it. And how entertainingly he had mastered the art of storytelling! He had an extraordinarily rich voice that he could modulate with perfect control to emphasize the narrative at just the right points. The underlying rhythm of his presentation became part of the story, which sucked you in and carried you along, and it always culminated in some absurdity that left you chuckling in disbelief and wonder.
Like the story of another uncle who cooked whiskey on the side during prohibition, not unlike a lot of people in the county at the time, black and white, who found creative ways to make ends meet during the depression era. It must have been on a pretty grand scale because Cholly related how milk trucks would come down from as far away as Chicago with false compartments to transport the white lightning. The local sheriff and law enforcement were on the take, of course, but that’s another story. The real story was about his brother, Ned Boy, who always endeavored to walk the straight and narrow and avoid those distractions that would divert one from the path of righteousness. Yes, he was deeply religious and had taken to heart the threat of eternal damnation. Alone among the men who would gather from time to time around the still to sample the fiery sap of their labors, he had foresworn all strong drink and refused to partake, choosing instead to concentrate dutifully on the many tasks of the farm. The river bottom offered an abundance of rich black dirt that was perfect for the cultivation of corn and cotton. Every year, sizeable fields of both were planted and, as luck would have it, one of the fields spread out directly below the hill where the still was located.
One day Cholly had accompanied his uncle to the barrelhouse where the finished product was stored when the two noticed quite an astonishing sight unfolding below them. Ned Boy was attempting to break the field below with a team of mules hooked up to a turning plow. But instead of going about the business of laying out the furrows neat and regular, he was whipping the mules to a frenzy, plowing loops and curves to a steady stream of unholy expletives. The poor mules didn’t know whether to hee or haw. Yep, you guessed it. Ned Boy had succumbed to temptation and partaken of the forbidden juice. Cholly’s hilarious description of his brother’s antics and his reproduction of the calls of his inebriated brother as he tried in vain to get the mules to plow a straight furrow, resonate in my memory to this day.
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