Jimmy Reed

Jay’s Gar Ponds (Part Six Of Six)

From his office on the university lyceum building’s top floor, Junior gazed at the hustle and bustle below. It warmed his heart to see bright-eyed, energetic students in “Gar U” sweaters rushing to classes, and from every car waved the school flag, bearing the university mascot, a toothy, evil-eyed gar. When brisk fall weather overcame summer’s hot days and football was in the air, Junior, Jaybird, their wives and children — sons Garland, Garfield, Garner, Gartley, and daughters Garcinda, Garsilla, Gardenia, and Garlissa — sat in box seats in Gar Stadium and watched their team, the Gar Giants, slaughter young warriors from opposing universities.

Jay’s Gar Ponds (Part Five of Six)

Jaybird and Junior were atop a world of gar mania and were soon as wealthy as Johnny D. Rockefeller and Andy Carnegie. But still, they were just good, honest ole country boys at heart, and agreed that they should share their great fortune in some way. So, they decided to establish a university. After choosing an ideal location, Good Grief, Mississippi, a sleepy, dusty Delta town, the population of which never numbered more than a few hundred folks, they met with the municipality’s mayor and other prominent citizens. Junior laid the proposal on the table and explained that because Good Grief was a quiet, secluded, picturesque village, it would offer an ideal environment for a center of learning.

Jay’s Gar Ponds (Part Four Of Six)

One day, a wealthy gar pond patron asked the gar men which lures gars preferred above all others. Since Junior was an expert whittler and carved lures to catch any kind of fish, he opened a huge tackle box, and said, “I’ve got quite an array of jigs, crank baits, spoons, spinners, and top-water lures that I’ve whittled to perfection over the years to catch whatever kind of fish for which I was angling.”

Jay’s Gar Ponds (Part Three Of Six)

Jaybird needed help maneuvering his way through the onslaught of capitalistic opportunities coming his way, so he turned to the man who always did his heavy thinking for him. Holding up a giant gar he just fought and landed, Junior had the answer: “Simple. Banks and other commercial lending institutions will jump at the chance to finance this enterprise, so we need to borrow whatever amount is necessary to build more ponds.

Jay’s Gar Ponds Part 2

Near each pond, a holding tank would be stocked with the gar’s primary food source — minnows. Knowing gars prefer injured minnows because they are easier to catch, Junior’s blueprint included submerged, multi-bladed industrial fans through which the hapless minnows would have to pass. With culverts attached to their inlet and exit sides, the fans would blast a minnow-filled torrent across the ponds’ surfaces when activated. Most of the hapless little fishes passing through the fan blades would be injured, turning them into gar haute cuisine.

Jay’s Gar Ponds Part 1

Like a fierce-eyed fowl, the brutal sun that torrid July day glared down on Jaybird and Junior, and the Mississippi Delta humidity was so high that breathing would have been easier with gills. After loading their boat on Loretta, Junior’s beloved old pickup, they opened two soda pops, crawled into the cab, and headed down the road back to their farm. They were content. In addition to a nice mess of bluegills, crappie and bass, Jaybird caught a fine specimen of his favorite fish: the speckled blue catfish. With the wind blowing in his face as they rolled along, the old black man gazed wistfully across the neat, rectangular catfish ponds along the roadside.

Satan's Surest Subjugator

When I told my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird that I no longer wanted to play football, the old black man, knowing how much I loved the game, knew I was lying. After each preseason practice when we drove home, I described to him everything the team did. When I confessed that my attitude toward the game changed when Coach Ruscoe assigned me to the third team, he said, "Son, Satan has many tools that he uses to prevent the Lord's children from maintaining positive attitudes, but the one he uses the most is discouragement." 

Gee Gee

The group of people waiting anxiously in the hospital room that day years ago could not see the angel among them, but her presence was certain, almost palpable. She was mother to three of those in the group, wife to one, mother-in-law to a nervous husband holding the hand of her daughter, and was soon to be grandmother to a baby girl about to depart her home in the womb for nine months and go to an earthly home filled with loving care and tenderness.

Serving The Right Master

Shortly after we tractor drivers finished cultivating Dad’s cotton fields, which spread across a remote corner of the Mississippi Delta, a long, steady, soaking rain set in — just what the cotton plants needed to finish filling bolls with fiber. As we waited for our paychecks and watched the thirsty earth drink its fill, we knew it wasn’t just a “sharrain” (Dad’s way of saying “shower of rain”) or a mere dust settler, but what he called a “sho-nuff chunk floater.”

Just A Dude Choppin’ Cotton

Often during boyhood, whenever Dad warned that stubbornness would prevent me from succeeding in life, I protested that he was confusing stubbornness with persistence, to which he replied one day, “Since you work with Jaybird, I’ll ask him about all this persistence you profess to have.”

Calvin Saw Catamounts A-Comin’

After heavy rains gave Dad’s cotton crop a much-needed soaking and halted fieldwork on his Mississippi Delta farm, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird offered to take my cousin Calvin and me fishing. The night before, we pitched a tent in Jaybird’s yard, knowing the old black man, a master storyteller, would entertain us with terrifying, hair-raising tales as we sat around the campfire.

All Mother — All The Time

Even though my mother has been in the Lord’s eternal embrace twenty-five years, daily I say to her picture, “Thanks, Mama.” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Men are what their mothers made them.” Pondering his words, I ask myself, “If I am what Mama made me, how did she make me?” She did it by being all mother — all the time. To honor her on Mother’s Day, I offer a few of the many thanks, too numerous to number.

A Cherry Cracker Catastrophe

My boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird agreed with Miss Lena about the motor scooter. “Yo’ mama is right,” he said. “Paying two hundred dollars for a scooter is foolish.” Then, after thinking a bit, he said, “However, if you justify needing it instead of just wanting it, she might feel differently, and I will, too. Find a job, repay the money she loans you, and prove that you know the value of a hard-earned dollar.”

A Marriage Made In Heaven

When my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird lost his wife, I saw him cry for the first time. As the casket was lowered into the ground, he could hold back the tears no longer. After a while, with dry eyes, he put his arm on my shoulders, and said, “Let’s go home, boy.” Inwardly, he would continue to suffer; outwardly, he expressed the same courage and tranquility that had sustained him through so many periods of suffering and grief in his long life.

Big Black Bull Bream — Bite!

One warm, sunny April morning, while my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird and I were lounging on his front porch, enjoying cornbread chunks in cold buttermilk, and gazing across my father’s Mississippi Delta farm, he said, “No work is going on, planting time is a few weeks off, and we’ve got nothing to do. Let’s try those big black bull bream in Blue Bottom Bayou.” When I opined that bream, so delicious when fried and eaten with hush puppies, probably weren’t bedding up yet, he said, “Maybe, maybe not. Some years bream bed early, fixing to spawn, and that’s when they are scrappier than ever.”

Job Had A Job To Do

Always, braggarts are brought low, as I learned after boasting one fine spring day to my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird that I had survived winter without so much as a head cold. Bam! The next morning I awoke feeling terrible. Absolutely miserable, I developed another symptom: the woe-is-me syndrome. In my morning prayers, I ask God to protect me, especially from sickness, as I go about each day’s affairs. Now, wallowing in the depths of self-pity, I was disappointed in God because He didn’t answer my prayers.

Living The Lord’s Will

“Well, son, we have no choice but to accept what the Lord gives,” my mentor and lifelong best friend said, as we sat on his front porch that late fall day, staring forlornly at un-harvested, rain-soaked cotton fields. Mississippi Delta folks could not recall such heavy rainfall when it was more devastating. The old black man and I nurtured that crop from spring planting throughout the growing season, but now those long sunup-to-sundown days of toil seemed all for naught.

A Cat-Scratched Hero

From a bridge near Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, my three daughters used BB guns to improve their marksmanship. Standing on the bridge’s downstream side, they stood, locked and loaded, waiting to shoot balloons attached to small weights that I tossed from the bridge’s upstream side. As the targets floated beneath them, the balloon killers fired away, making chalk marks on the railing for each hit. Sodas and snacks at a nearby country store were their reward for bursting nine out of ten.

The Hand On My Shoulder

The fishing pole bent double as Jaybird struggled to hold it. Then, a monster crappie fighting fiercely broke the surface in a watery explosion. When he reached out to grab his catch, the hook dislodged and flew straight into his hand. Terrified, I shrieked, “Jaybird — we’ve got to get to the hospital right away!” As calmly as if he had merely nicked a finger, he replied, “No, the fish are biting. We’ll catch the limit before leaving this lake. You’ll remove the hook from my hand.”

Yes, My Son

For most folks, New Year’s resolutions are futile. At each year’s end, I jot down several for the coming twelve months, but usually abandon them before January ends. This year, I talked to someone I could always count on for sound advice — Jaybird, one of the most virtuous men I have ever known. The old black man, who always called me his white son, now resides in my heart and in Heaven. “Jaybird, how can I overcome lack of self-discipline?” “Son, all things, whatsoever you ask in prayer, believe, and you shall receive.”