My friend Mark, owner of Fratesi’s Grocery, a famous Mississippi Delta country store, is a superb perpetrator of practical jokes, a skill shared by my boyhood best friend and mentor, the beloved old black man known by everyone as Jaybird. Mark sells a variety of baits, including crickets for bream fishermen. Before spending a day on the lake fishing for Chinquapins, the biggest, scrappiest, best-eating bream of all, Jaybird and I always bought crickets at the store.
A grouchy, mean-spirited, surly character named Grady also bought bait there for his fishing trips, and never failed to insult Mark, especially when he bought homemade sandwiches, the Delta’s tastiest.
“You make these sandwiches three days ago, or four?” the old reprobate would sneer. Although Mark prepared them daily, he ignored Grady’s insults, knowing that someday he would even the score with the cantankerous curmudgeonly coot.
The opportunity came one morning when Grady sauntered up while Jaybird and Mark were dressing a mess of large Chinquapins.
“I’ll swunnee! Where’d y’all catch all them monsters? Whud they hit?”
Jaybird winked at Mark. The luminous gleam in their eyes signaled that revenge time had come.
“We caught ’em at Percy Blue Hole,” Jaybird said. “Big schools of them are bedding up around cypress knees. We would have caught more but ran out of crickets.”
“Ran out? That can’t be true. Mark’s got aplenty rat here at the store. How could y’all run out?”
“We learned something about Chinquapins today,” Jaybird continued. “They prefer female crickets.”
Grady stared at the two men suspiciously, his grizzled jaw shifting a cud of tobacco from one side to the other. Then he bellowed, “Shoot! Sell me some of them female crickets — I gotta git to Percy rat now!”
“Too bad, ole buddy,” Jaybird said. “We used up all the females. But, best we can tell, the only difference in females and males is the black stripe down the female’s back.”
“I’ve got plenty of male crickets,” Mark chimed in. “If you draw a black line down their backs with a marking pen before you put them on the hook, the Chinquapins won’t know the difference, and will hit just the same.”
Three words describe Grady’s gullibility: hook, line, sinker. After Mark filled his bait box with “male” crickets and sold him a marking pencil, Grady dashed off to the lake.
“Let’s go to Percy, slip up close to where he’s fishing, and photograph him painting stripes down wriggling crickets’ backs,” Mark said.
“Great idea!” Jaybird snickered. “Then you can display those pictures in the store for everybody to see.”
Struggling to keep from laughing out loud, Mark and Jaybird managed to snap several pictures and sneak away, unseen by Grady. And, as Jaybird suggested, Mark displayed the photographs.
Not realizing he had been duped, Grady continued buying Mark’s crickets and painting stripes on them, convinced beyond a doubt of what all other fishermen knew was one of the best practical jokes ever: Female crickets really do catch more fish.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
