Dad looked at his prize dog, at his sniffling son, at his wife, at his cotton pickers and tractors sitting idle, and shaking his head in total disgust, all he could think to say was: “Boy, boy, boy, boy, boy!”
Newman was old, cantankerous, and deaf as a doorknob, but mighty handy around Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm. When hauling off garbage, he let me sit on his knees and steer the old flat bed truck as we drove to the dump.
Once, when cotton harvesting was in full progress and rain was in the forecast, Dad was running in ten different directions at once, supervising cotton pickers and stalk cutters, delivering lunches to drivers, and handling Newman’s job of weighing up sacks for the hand pickers.
