Velociworld

ANIMAL NOSTALGIA

My father moved us from the city to a farm when I was nine. Life truly imitated art, as this was 1966, the year after Green Acres premiered, and here was a city lawyer with lovely wife moving to the bucolic hinterlands, there to be abused by all manner of redneck jackanapes with cruel streaks of barbaric cunning. There was a Mr. Haney in the form of Old Man Butler, who had a tiny store on the banks of Griffin Lake Number 3. Old Man Butler also had an ancient bus filled with moldy foodstuffs and sweetcakes, which he would peddle from hamlet to hamlet.

The character of Jeb was played by James Sowell, our gap-toothed "foreman", three wings short of a bucket and with an eye for my sisters. I think he was looking at my sisters. With that cast in one eye you really couldn't tell what the hell he was looking at.

Greeley Finley filled the dual roles of Ralph and Alf, the handyman brother and sister. If it was fixed, Greeley could break it for you.

For comic relief in those un-PC days we had Peter and Floyd, two black guys who spent twice as much effort avoiding work as the actual task would have entailed. Every enterprise they attempted invariably ended with Floyd dropping something bone-crushing on Peter's foot. You could set the atomic clock by it.

My father persevered with those 300 acres for six years before giving up and selling it. His successes were mixed. Crops of soybeans and corn did well, and he cleared a lot of land and sold a lot of timber. His greatest failure, by far, was in the field of animal husbandry.

I firmly believe animals of all stripes can sense uncertainty in a human, and will exploit that fact for pleasure, and as brilliant as my father was in the courtroom he could not win with animals. Let me peel back the onion a bit:

Goats

The first critters Dad got were goats. Six or seven of them. He fenced them in before we even moved to the farm, and they escaped with regularity. A goat will eat through anything. Fencing is merely the sorbet to cleanse their palates before they tackle the really tasty stuff, like old tires. So these goats would eat through the fence, and escape down the old Central of Georgia train tracks. My father would take the Ranchero and chase them down. Corralling goats is no mean feat, and my dad would return from these round ups angry and, often, drunk. It takes a little fire in the belly to wrestle these things into a truck and hogtie them. The goats finally escaped for the last time. My father threw his shotgun into the Ranchero and set off down the shoulder of the train tracks. As he came upon a goat instead of catching it he would shoot it, and go after the next one. He killed them all, and the word goat was never spoken of again in that household.

Mules

We had one mule, named Myrtle, a birthday present for my mother. Laugh if you will. She got a tractor for Christmas that year. Myrtle's favorite food was my mother's Chesterfield cigarettes. She ate them by the pack. This beast was lazy and sullen, good for naught. We tried getting her to pull a wagon for us, but she only farted and grazed. I'm actually not sure what happened to Myrtle. She just sort of disappeared one day. I suspect my father took her into the woods and shot her. It was apparently his only way of winning an argument with an animal.

Horses

My horse was actually a Shetland pony, a black, mean fucker who would bite you for no reason. My father insisted I learn to ride him, and tame him, but that vicious fiend would buck like a bull, and throw you every time. I would rather have smacked my toe with a ball peen hammer than get on that bastard, but I tried. And tried. Spooky eventually disappeared as well, no doubt the loser in a heated debate in the woods with my father.

My older brother had a real horse, named Dan. Well-tempered and kindly. Snakebitten to death. Such was our luck.

Steer

The Senator got my brothers and I two baby calves once. We loved them, and would arise at five am to mix up their milk formula and feed them from giant bottles. My older brother mixed the powdered formula too thickly for his steer one day, and it set like Sakrete in its stomach. Ever buried a calf? That's a big hole.

My little brother and I raised our calf right. I forget his name, but it was something stupid like Bucky. When Bucky reached a certain weight, my father loaded him on a truck and told my brothers we were taking him for a ride. We thought that was cool, until the truck stopped at Sweatt's Abbatoir, and a blood-bespattered man shot Bucky in the head with a bolt gun. I cried for days, but in retrospect I have to admit Bucky was tasty, and well-marbled.

Bulls

The Old Man got a bull once, with the intention of renting him out for stud. He bought a 12-volt electric fence kit from Sears, and we corralled the bull. 12 volts isn't shit to a bull. He'd just walk through it. 12 volts IS a big deal to a little brother, if you can get him to piss on the wire. That joke only works once, though. So dad ran some heavy gauge wire along the fenceposts, and hooked up 220 to it. Knocked the bull into Screven County, and smoked his nose. My father loved that, and tried to get the bull to do it again. No way. I think that bull eventually swam across the lake and escaped. He was a three month project at best.

Pigs

If you've never raised hogs you have no idea how foul those things smell. You can smell them literally a mile away, and the hogpen was 200 feet from the house. Watching a sow give birth is disgusting, fascinating stuff. We used to let the week-old piglets run through the house, until the Old Man found out, and threatened to take them to the woods for an argument. The smell eventually forced us to give up hog farming, but if you've never gigged a pig with an electric cattle prod, well, you haven't lived, my friend.

Ducks

My father's idea of fun was to have a hundred chicks or baby ducks delivered to a friend on Easter. This was also his friends' idea of fun, so we ended up with two ducks once. The idea was they would swim in the lake, and look pretty, but they just hung around the back porch and ate the dogs' food, and swelled up mightily. We still loved them, and treated them like pets, until the day The Senator made my older brother get his shotgun, and they slaughtered those two ducks right outside my bedroom window. Shock and awe, indeed. My older brother was crying so hard he couldn't shoot straight, and only wounded his prey, so Father had to finish him off. Brutal business, and I don't eat duck to this day, especially since I had to help wax the boys to get their feathers off for cookin'. I also have paraffin issues now.

I think that's all the beasts of the field we had. Never had much luck with them, but they certainly provided an education.