“Most of the characters that populated my youth were rooted to the land in one way or another. Many were, wonderfully irreverent, which bolstered my dubiousness. Take for instance “Unc,” as everyone called him. Unc and my father ran cattle together on one of the many pastures that papa either owned, leased, or managed; it was all the same to us at the time. Unc resembled Santa Claus. He had a ruddy complexion and keen blue eyes. He was also a bit portly and always wore suspenders to keep his baggy khaki pants up. He also stuttered. When a heat shower would come up in the summer and the lightning would start popping, he would invariably look up to the sky and, with a twinkle in his eye, say: “Rrroll them bbbarrels, you ssson-of-a-bbbitch!” Joel, his side-kick hired hand, a black man who always wore sunglasses to hide an ugly scar to his right eye, would invariably counter, “Now Mistah Warner, that be blasfommy; lightnin’ sho’ nuff gonna strike you dead one of these days,” at which point he would remove himself a respectful distance just in case his prediction came to pass. Joel, subsequent to a miraculous recovery from a love gone wrong induced injury, had gotten religion and hence his concern. His prediction of divine retribution in the form of a lightning strike, however, never materialized, but the interaction with blasphemous ‘Unc’ was constant and didn’t go unnoticed. For his part, Unc lived to a respectable old age and dropped dead one day from a heart attack without to my knowledge ever having set foot in a church during his adult years. He passed from this earthly existence with no fear whatsoever about roasting in hell for eternity. The outdoors was his church and the natural rhythms of life his only guide and comfort. You pick up on that as a kid.”
jamesckearney.com 