September 9, 2005
FEAR OF FLYING
Here's one from the Mouldy Archives Formerly Known As My Brain (MAFKAMB, to you androgynous Twin Citiers):
The Senator owned a few single engine planes when I was little, and engaged in some recreational flying. Around 1961 or so he flew one to Texas, I believe to eyeball a 1957 Thunderbird he later bought from a cash-strapped college boy (he was never one to fail to take advantage of another's misfortune. He would have rocked in the Superdome).
Not wanting to be bored on the flight he took his good friend, whom I shall call Josef K. They experienced some turbulence around the Alabama-Mississippi border, serious turbulence, and damned if Josef K didn't actually shit his trousers.
Now, the old man didn't really care what happened in those trou, however the stench became unbearable in such a confined space, and so the Senator was forced to land in Tupelo, Mississippi, so that K could buy new britches, and dad could hose out the plane.
And obviously thence and forevermore Josef K became The Tupelo Kid, of course. A brazen beat down by the old man, comparing this feces-besodden fellow to Elvis. And knowing the old man I'm sure the story got plenty of mileage across the land.
The story actually continues, apace. Two years later the Senator was running for what became his last political contest, this for the Georgia General Assembly, he having hung the Senate spurs a coupla terms back. He put the Tupelo Kid in charge of his campaign finances, as a goodwill gesture.
My grandmother died during this election cycle, though, and dad, disconsolate, took my mother on a Mediterranean cruise, refusing even to campaign (and, yes, that's how I like to purge my disconsolation, too).
When he returned he got whupped, of course, but glory of glories: every fucking dime of that campaign warchest had been spent. Somehow. Somwhere.
There was never a reckoning that I was aware of, but I think, over the course of a few bourbons, that a peace pipe was smoked, and Josef K was never again referred to in polite company as the Tupelo Kid.