Velociworld

UNTITLED

When we lived on the farm in the '60's our nearest neighbors were the F---s. I won't print their name for fear of further degradation. They lived about 200 yards down the dirt road from us, at the intersection of our road and the Hogpen Road. They were poor white trash in every sense of the term.

They lived in a clapboard cabin that had never seen paint, their yard was dirt, too poor for chickens even. They were always barefooted, not being able to buy shoes. Even the 16 year old daughter only had one pair of undersized shoes for school (she was kind of hot, too, in a dirt under the toenails kind of way).

Welfare allowed them to hoard certain staples in a kind of abundance: coffee, tobacco, sugar. The rest apparently went to moonshine. Here is how dinner was prepared: Maw would make coffee in the morning, Luzianne or some such shit as I recall, because I think they were addicted to chickory. Then she would open the kitchen window and dump the grinds into a worm bed outside the window. When Paw would finally rouse from his booze-addled slumbers he would dig up some worms from the bed, and take his cane pole to Lake Number One and fish among the roots and stumps for bream and perch. There were better fish in Lake Number Two, but he was too fucking lazy to walk the extra 100 yards.

Then he would get drunk again, and they would feast that evening on three or four bony little bream, and grits. Maybe cornbread of a Saturday.

I miss those people. They made me feel like a goddamned prince, and I lording it over them.