Posts
My sister's birthday was yesterday. I went up to visit her in Union City, not so much to commemorate the event of her birth as to just get away. One of the main reasons I wanted to get up there, the urgency, if you will, was the puppies. Her dog Betsy had 5 little Bischons. I love puppies, and the older I've gotten the more I realize how rare in life they are. When I was a kid, it seemed like someone always had a new puppy, or someone's dog was having new puppies, but now that I'm an old dog, I know that puppyhood if fleeting. My neighbor down the street adopted a puppy from the pound this past summer. Her name is Lola. She was the proverbial speckled pup that I used to be as cute as. I saw her walking her mom, Jennifer, on Central Avenue the other day. All ready her legs were spindly and her little round belly transformed into a sleek shiny body. It happens so fast.
I've been envious listening to Susan talk about Betsy cuddling up with them on a blanket as they nursed, about the rowdy boys rolling and tumbling constantly in the grass, the females with the soft curious eyes. I took 50 pictures, but it's like trying to do a still life of marbles being let out of a bag. But after we came home from going out to dinner I happened to get this shot. This is the one Susan and David are going to keep. She seemed to genuinely want to please me, or is that a "let me out of here," look?
This is the only shot I could get of all 4 of them. I have to say, my jaws hurt from all the laughing I did watching these guys. Susan and her husband David live on a small farm outside of Union City and these guys have the run of it.
Susan takes them all out in the mornings and they run and run and run and run and chase each other and roll in the grass and run and run.
What is it about a puppy face? What is that look? It's almost sad, confused, poor pitiful me or is it, I've got to look coy and cute for the camera. I don't know, I just know I had to take it quick to the point of anticipating that this puppy was going to look my way and give me that million dollar
whatever-it-is.
This is taken standing on an overlook. Is this an October morning in its fullness? The river is there winding somewhere far away and we are viewing its lush, verdant backwaters.
I wish we'd stayed 2 nights. I slept until almost 9 o'clock and by the time we ate breakfast and played with the puppies and rode on the 4 wheeler out into the cornfield and played with the puppies some more it was pushing noon. We didn't have time to drive up to Paducah, which is what I wanted to do. Do you ever do that? You make your plans to go somewhere and you think awh one night's enough then you wake up the next morning and it feels right being where you are and you wish you could stay, relax, plan supper, take a day trip, sit around, do a little shopping.
We got in the car and drove over to Hickman KY. an old, once thriving, wealthy rivertown built on the bluffs of the Mississippi where steamboats, barges and tugs put in. It's about 15 miles from where Susan lives.
There was no losing on this day, the sky, the rolling hills, the crops of soy beans and cotton, the acres of corn, dried stalks cut to the ground, quaint little farm houses back off the road, a well kept turn of the century cemetery on a distant hill enclosed with ornate wrought iron harkened a past of river wealth.
We kept the windows down and steeped ourselves in the day, its air, its color, its smells.
Hickman is a town that was. It has a taste of the west to it even though it's on the east side of the river. Carved out of the bluff that from time to time over the years lets itself slide down in chunks toward the water, its houses are perched as if some child was placing them creating a "pretend" village. There was whimsey here according to the shape of this door, and you can almost imagine the crowded streets with drinkers and gambler, farmers and merchants on a Saturday night. From the stories Susan told me as we moseyed through the deserted streets, climbing hills that looked like they were going to disappear into thin air, Hickman was a wild rivertown; alive with riverrats, backwoods, lawlessness and criminals.
She told a story that took place in the 1930's.
I'll use fictional names. Bobby Ray Wilson was a bully who owned about half the land in the county, plus barges and tugboats that went up and down the river. Over 6 feet tall and built like an ox, he threw his weight around as much as he threw around the influence and power of his money. There was in town a poor farmer, a humble man named Eugene. Eugene who worked hard. He'd never married. He was terribly shy. People thought he was stupid. He wasn't stupid, he just couldn't talk plain. He stuttered and sputtered whenever he opened his mouth, so mainly he just kept quiet, he watched and listened. Now Eugene wasn't about to miss anything that went on in Hickman County. He hung out around at the courthouse with all the other men, and the general store, and the riverbank when the tugs came in. But he didn't like Bobby Ray cause whenever Bobby Ray saw him coming he'd start making fun of him. "H–H–H–H–Heeeeeyyyy EU–EU-EU-EU-GENE! Come on over here and t-t-t-teeeeellllll us somethin'!" He'd carry on and on. If anybody ever said something dumb, Bobby Ray would say things like, "Well that was so stupid. Even Eugene over there knows better than that. And he ain't right in the head."One afternoon, Bobby Ray saw Eugene sitting in his truck under a tree not far outside of town. He pulled up, rolled down his window and started talking when Eugene pulled a gun out of the glove compartment and shot ole Bobby Ray right then and there. Killed him.
They asked him at the trial why he did it.
"I got tired of him making fun of me," was all he said.
He went to jail for a few years then they let him out on parole. Nobody messed with Eugene after that. They just let him be.
And there in lies the tale, one of many from this rivertown of old.
