Thursday, August 21, 2008

Contributed by Carl Owen



Business Cards and Notes

Junk mail comes in handy. I’ve always had a habit of writing phone numbers and addresses on available envelopes instead of my handy lined pad which is placed in a mysterious spot where I can never find it. I can always find a junk mail envelope.

I thought I was the only one in this universe (excluding perhaps on Pluto) that did this. I viewed it as a form of recycling. I visited my sister Estelle once and she spent 21 minutes looking through a pile of junk mail envelopes looking for a grocery list or a phone number. I felt somewhat better that someone else shared my eccentric behavior. I suggested that we go and buy her an address book and a lined pad. She just looked at me and laughed. We ended up going for a big cup of Royal Blend coffee instead. I loved her and she loved me and we shared this weird trait. I felt such close kinship.

I guess different people have different skills. My sister, Sis has been an artist as long as I remember and I’ve known her a long time. I just have a different skill set. I used to keep a lined pad and a pen by my bed so I could wake up in the middle of the night and write down some of my weird dreams. This went on for some time until the white girl objected strongly to the bedside light coming on at all hours of the night. So, you guessed it, I moved the lined pad to a place where my missing scissors and fingernail clippers reside and haven’t seen it yet. Now my sister Vonda has a different problem, she can’t find her lined pad or a junk mail envelope. I called her once with a handy junk mail envelope available to write down her new address. She said she had it written down somewhere and I stayed on the phone patiently for several minutes while she looked for something with her address on it. All that time I was muttering as the white girl likes to describe my talking to myself. I kept saying, How can this fruitcake not know her own address???? Well if you knew my sister, Vonda Lee you would understand…

Oops, I’m getting off track again. It’s lucky I’m not a freight train.

Anyway, many, many, many years ago or Once upon a time, I was visiting my Daddy and my sister Thelma. At that time, Thelma was an illegal real estate agent selling property, or as some would say, land. She proudly gave me one of her business cards and I put it in my new birthday wallet. I used to get a new wallet on my birthday until I put out the word that I was going to open a store and sell wallets. That stopped those gifts. Ironically, my current wallet is worn almost out. So, I put Thelma’s business card in my wallet with my two dollars and went with Daddy up on Chestnut Mountain to pick moss.

We climbed up and down the same mountain picking moss on the way up and turning it over so the sun would dry it and picking more moss on the way down. We worked Chestnut Mountain so hard there was hardly a speck of moss left. Every once in a while, Daddy would holler at me and say: “Where the hell are you?” I’d say, “You talking to me?” “Hell no, I was talking to that woodpecker on the tree beside me. Git over here.”

I’d go over and he would point at an old Chestnut log down in a holler right through a briar patch. “See that big log down yonder? There’s some good thick moss on it.” You go down there and get it and bring it up here in the sun and I’ll go to the truck and get our lunch.” By this time, I knew not to argue with my Daddy. I can show you some knowledge bumps on my head. The barber has to use curved clippers to cut my hair.

Anyway, I clumb back up the mountain loaded down with wet moss, bleeding profusely from the briar patch and plopped down on the ground breathing like a tired race horse. About that time, Daddy came around the mountain with our lunch. He looked at me and said, we ain’t got time to take no dam naps if we are going to make any money today. If you want any of these Vienna sausages and crackers, here they are. I popped a can of sardines and ate a cheese pack with yaller crackers and a can of Vienna sausage and the blood from my wounds started to slow some.

Daddy ate some crackers and sausage and went over to a small stream and filled the sausage can with water a few times, reached in his back pocket, pulled out a pint of White Lightning and took a couple of swigs followed by a small sip of branch water and then handed me the whiskey and the Vienna sausage can. While branch water and sausage juice will never be my favorite drink, it went well with the 100 proof whiskey.

He took the whiskey back and said I’ll put this stuff in the truck. On the way over here I noticed another good batch of moss in the next holler. You haul it up here in the sun and I’ll be back soon. Well, you can guess the rest of the story. I came back up the mountain loaded with heavy wet moss and fresh briar scratches on top of the old scratches.

I happened to have a pen in my pocket and I jotted down a little verse to commemorate the day on the back of Thelma’s new business card. I had no junk mail envelope handy. When I got back home from my visit, I had a business card made. I think this is what gave the white girl the idea to have a business card still years later.

I mentioned earlier that I used to get a new wallet on birthdays. Several years ago I cleaned out and old wallet and put my $2.00 in my new wallet and sat Thelma’s business card aside along with the one for myself I had made. I recently tore down the mobile home we lived in for about seven years and in the process found a box of old junk mail envelopes and Thelma’s and my business card. I turned Thelma’s card over and saw the verse I wrote about mine and Daddy’s moss picking trip. It brought back a flood of old memories of times gone by. I’d give a lot to go picking moss with Daddy again.

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Burdens are a blessing!.