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By Tom Boggs

Thinking back about Moose and me getting ready after school to go over in the woods, and play army, but by the time we got dressed and ready, we were either out of the mood or out of time, but we did spend some time sitting around peeling and eating sugar cane while we discussed the day’s events.

Laughing as I think of Frank Aydelott and me walking late night streets of New York on our class trip.  Went into a foreign operated hole in the wall coffee shop to get a cup of coffee.  The owner, in a heavy accent, gave us a hard look, and said, “We are getting ready to close.  If you are a mind to give me a tip, I’d appreciate you doing it now,”  (a tip for two 5 cent cups of coffee).  We threw some change on the counter, and skedaddled out of there. Just two Alabama country boys who were someplace we didn’t need to be. 

Chuckling as I think about a football game over in Orville.  My classmate and teammate, Billy Kirkham, was our quarterback, and his voice was changing about that time.  Both sides of the ball got tickled when he called the signals of “Six Down” with the “down” ending up real high pitched. I was the center, and I can’t remember whether I snapped the ball on the right count or not on that play. 

Remembering a little earlier, I can just picture my first grade class lining up in front of the old school in 1946 to get typhoid shots.  George Braswell was tough, but he was not on the same page with Mrs. Quiggle, the shot giver.  When George got up close to his time, saw that needle, and got a whiff of the alcohol, he fainted dead away on the porch.  Don’t recall if Mrs. Quiggle administered the shot while he was supine, or whether she revived him. 

I was reluctant to call down the street neighbor, Jane Drinkard, to invite her to the Sweetheart Ball in the mid-fifties.  When I rang up the central operator, I considered asking Sollie to ask Jane for me, but as I stammered, Jane just finally asked me if I was calling to invite her to the dance, to which I replied in the affirmative with a sigh of relief. 

Now, the rest of this story is going to be about funny times with dear friend, Gaines Vick.  Seems like anytime a teacher needed an errand run, they would call on Gaines with his Ford truck, and me as his sidekick to get it done.  Chick, as was Gaines’ nickname, was the world’s best at turning around words in a song.  An example was “Come along and be my party girl.”

When Chick sang that it would turn out to be “Come apart and be my longdee girl.”  Just stuff like that all the time, including renaming teachers such as “Cottinpatch” for Bedingfield, “Squashroll” for Mashburn, and “Murderhigh” for Killough.  

One humid Saturday night, Gaines almost ran out of funny lines.  We were running non stop from Linden to Demopolis on a dollar bet Paul Whitcomb made with me.  We laughed a while on that trip, but going up Spring Hill hill, Gaines huffed out, “Dang, Thomas, I don’t why I’m putting myself through this.  You didn’t even offer to split that dollar with me.”

We made it to Demopolis city limits, fell out right across the line, and with our last remaining good breath … laughed. 

Tom Boggs is a columnist for the Demopolis Times and a native of Marengo County. His column, “Days Gone Bye,” appears weekly.