Urban Legends

                            

   Its been around sixty years since I first heard the story, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

 I was at my cousins home in Houston. Going to Houston was always a exciting treat for me, the country boy. My cousins were "street wise" and when we got in an argument, they called me a country hick. On that particular day, a friend named Brown was visiting them. This guy was a few years older and big talker and knew everything.   At least at the time I thought he did. Over the years as I grew up I found out that most of what he had said was total crap.

On this particular day he was talking his head off to his attentive audience.  We were all ears and I marveled at his extended wisdom .  Then he said something that made all of us gasp. It went like this, "My brother works with a guy whose neighbors cousin,  just bought a Corvette with only 300 miles on it for Two-hundred dollars." . We were all flabbergasted . In the 1950's, when the Corvette came out, you would have been hard pressed to find any young man that hadn't dreamed about owning one. We all held our breaths, waiting for an explanation as to how someone had bought a $5000. car for Two-Hundred Dollars! Brown took a deep breath and continued.

  The story was that some guy had gone down to the Chevy dealer and paid cash for a new Corvette. He had taken off a day of work and he wanted to surprise his girlfriend by driving to her place and giving her a ride in his new Vett. He didn't even knock at the door ( In those days, people didn't have to lock their doors) and went right in. Searched the house till he found her in the bedroom with another man. He rushed out of the house infuriated. He didn't show up for work the next day and it was three weeks till someone found the Corvette on a dead end road in the middle of nowhere. His decomposed body with a pistol still clenched in his fist was sprawled across the seats. The buyer had got the car for $200. because (and the story teller paused and  rolled his eyes back ) "they couldn't get the smell out".  We were speechless.

The BS secession was finished for the day, as that story could not have been topped with anything.

I believed the story and over the years retold it several times. I perfected the part where I would roll my eyes and say " And they just couldn't get the smell out".  It was a story that never failed to please the audience.

I quit telling the story, however, when I got  to college. The first and last time I told it,  it got disputed with "I heard it was a T-bird" and another , " No, It was a new Cadillac!".

I became suspicious.

A year later I was working on a Merchant ship on its way to Africa, when one evening as the crew gathered around a tub of iced down beer, a similar story came out, only the guy had done it  in a new Thirty-Two foot cabin cruiser.

I couldn't count how many time I heard the story in many variations while in the Navy.  I became amused and the most interesting thing was how the story tellers would always roll their eyes as they said " and they just couldn't get the smell out".

It wasn't till many years later that I heard the term "Urban legend" and figured out that the story was only that. 

However, I remember that that day that I first heard the story, I secretly thought that I could have "gotten the smell out". If only I could have come up with another $199.

©2013

My Grandma's Figs

As I was harvesting this years abundant supply of figs, I couldn't help remembering my Grandmother.
We lived in the country and Grandma lived in town, so right off the bat it was exciting just to go to town to visit. I spent a good portion of my first ten years there. For someone growing up in the pre television days it was some kind of an exciting place.
She had a corner lot and at the time , it seemed huge. She had a large garden and allowed me to help at pulling weeds and picking what ever was ready to be eaten. She always had a lot of cucumbers that graced salads or ended up as the best pickles in the world. Mustang grapes grew on the fence that lined the alley so she always had a good supply of grape jelly that went so well on her homemade bread. There were always at least a dozen fat hens that roamed the yard and if the table scraps didn't satisfy them, they had to supplement their diet with bugs. She never had to call an exterminator.
I couldn't have had anymore fun looking for gold than the eggs that the fat hens would hide all over the place. On numerous occasions, I got chased by a hen half my size, when she caught me stealing her eggs. Next to the old wash house was a cast iron boiler that sat up on one end. My Grandfather had procured it when one of the old cotton seed oil mills had closed down. In my memory it was at least fifty feet tall. It actually was probably about fifteen. The gutter from the house drained into it and it stored Grandma's prized rain water .
My sisters used to go to town to wash their hair in the miraculous water.
The wash house held a wood fired kettle where she made her own lye soap, and boiled water for her wringer washer. I loved it when she let me run the clothes through the ringer.
Her most prized plants in her garden were her figs. Over they years, the fig trees had slowly advanced to cover a good portion of her yard. She waged a never end war against the uninvited birds and squirrels that were hell bent on plundering figs. I helped her many times tie tin can lids on the branches. It was supposed to ward off uninvited guest.
I grew up and moved away. Grandma's health deteriorated to the point that she could no longer tend to her yard. Six foot weeds took over the area that her hens had once kept clean. The birds and squirrels had their way with the figs. When she passed away, her house was sold and moved away. A bull dozer came in and cleared off the lot and removed everything that had defined her life. A new home was built on the lot. I drove by years later and Mustang grapes were still growing on the alley fence.
©2013