An Excerpt from 'Hot Coffee & Cold Beer: a Journal
July 2, 1983
Last night I was out for my run after being lazy for about a week -- it's easy to get that way and ennui ( weariness and boredom resulting from inactivity or lack of interest) is easy to contract in this weather.
I came running up the lane dodging the water-filled ruts along the way and turned north onto the county road. West of the schoolhouse in the nearing distance came an old Chevy pickup, a blue rusty vision with round cylindrical on-the-fender-turn signals and its front bumper hanging from one corner with wire.
I walked on, occasionally turning to see who it was and ready to motion him on if he slowed 'to help me.'
The bed of the truck was filled with greasy oil cans, chicken wire, broken glass and rocks. The man driving it never looked at me as he tried to force it into low gear but instead looked determined -- "raw concentration to the duty at hand,"-- etched in dirty wrinkles across his forehead.
The truck continued to roll ahead and its engine died. The man just sat behind the wheel, still. I walked to the driver's side, cautious, but still curious. The man got up and opened the the door to stand one foot on the ground and the other still on the floor boards.
"So you want a ride?" he asked.
I never gave it a thought that it looked to him like I was the one that needed help...
"I'm on my way to the 'old soaks' place," he said smiling through gaps in his yellowed teeth, motioning toward Curtis Johnson's place on the west side of the road, a quarter mile north of where we stood in the intersection of County Roads 8 and 125."They're good old boys. I've known them for years and years."
I agreed, "The Johnsons are good neighbors."
I'm tryin'..." He paused to let a long brown drool of spit laced heavily with tobacco gravy fall out of his mouth which he pinched off with two fingers and wiped his lips with the back of his hands. "... tryin' this old pickup here out. I like to work on these old trucks."
He was dressed in dirty oily bib overalls with two pencils in the front pockets. He had on a yellow-- now grayed shirt with brown embroidered flying birds on it scattered in covey-like disarray.
His salt & pepper colored hair was covered with a black cap whose front most insignia was greased into unintelligible oblivion. "Aint you livin' here alone?" he asked as he motioned towards the farm with a sweeping long arm. "Married one of the Palms, didn't you?"
I got around a direct answer by sayin', "No my mother is a Palm. I own this quarter. I'm out for some exercise," I told him. "I try to make at least 3 miles a night."
"There ain't nothin' wrong with exercise ..." he said, glancing sideways at my ankle weights boldly red against my white socks and gray running shoes.
"Well, my name is Birden (Birdeen) Thompson. I live three or four miles west of here." [NW corner Sec 8 Poplar Grove]
I figured he knew my name. I didn't think to mention it actually.
"Well, I've got to go. We'll be seein' you," he said as he climbed back into his '50 Chevrolet ' and 'prepared to zoom off down the road,' (meaning that I was already a quarter-mile beyond Johnson's driveway before he got it started and gear clashed his way north again.
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