Jimmy Reed

The Yoke Of Bondage

When I was a kid, boys played a game called “king on the mountain” — a wrestling match in which the guy still standing was taken down and replaced by others, also taken down. In today’s world, America still stands, but sinister forces — within her shores and abroad — are determined to take her down.

Old Glory Will Forever Fly

I’ve had my share of wins and losses, but one thing I can never lose — one thing that grows stronger with time — is my love for America.

Fine Day For Fire Ants

Ask farm-raised folks of my vintage what extreme cold is, and they’ll tell you it’s a swipe across the face by a cow’s cocklebur-clogged tail when you’re milking her on a freezing winter morning with nothing between you and howling winds but a barn’s tin siding. Ask what extreme heat is, and they’ll say: loading hay in summer.

Fabianism In Education

“Press one for English” infuriates me, as does driving up to an ATM machine and having to choose Spanish or English. While staring directly into the big-brother camera staring back at me, I always curse the machine, hoping my vitriol is recorded.

All-Day Sucker

Folks who believe that money can do anything don’t have any. One day, many years ago, on Uptown Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Pace, Mississippi, a friend of mine didn’t have a cent, and was certain money could do anything … especially buy him an All-Day Sucker at Peach-Eye’s Grocery.

He Was An Eagle

In America, the birth rate among unmarried mothers now exceeds forty percent, meaning almost one out of two children are raised in homes without fathers. Many of my female college students have illegitimate children, and in most cases, get no financial support from the worthless slobs who sired their children. In some cases, they don’t even know who the father is. What a tragedy.

Confetti Flyboy

My Piper Cub was due for an airworthiness inspection at a large airport, but since it had no radio equipment, I had to call the control tower and get permission to fly from a crop duster’s strip to the airport.

Buying A Penny Whistle

When one of my composition students noticed a large X scrawled over writing on the back of classroom exercise forms, she said, “You must be a tightwad.”

Ole Lunker Jaws

Ole Lunker Jaws … how I hated that bass. Ever since Miz Thornton gave me permission to fish her cattle ponds, I had been angling for that bucket-mouthed brute, only to go home frustrated, fishless, and often lureless. Mean … he was just plain mean.

Watch Out!

Deep in the Amazonian rainforest, Xucuru heard the loud territorial call of a howler monkey. When in range, he dipped a dart in curare, a potent poison that paralyzes muscles and kills by asphyxiation. The monkey failed to see the man, whose inimitable skills with a blowgun were sure to bring him down. Xucuru expanded his powerful chest, filled his lungs, took careful aim, and … it happened again.

Teaching Chickens To Write

Cotton was my old man’s whole life. He grew it for fifty years, and from the time he plowed with mules until the day he shipped his last bale from his own gin, he devoted every waking minute to his crops.

Big SOB

Ichthyology, the branch of zoology that deals with fishes, lists many unusual names — most of them known only to ichthyologists, but perhaps the name that arouses the most curiosity belongs to a fish known as the SOB.

Pebble In His Shoe

In a classroom discussion following a tour of William Faulkner’s home, I asked my college freshmen how the great writer felt about mankind’s capacity for endurance.

You Shall Receive

You’d think a man almost seventy years old would quit pestering God to give him a Harley-Davidson, but I haven’t. I give up occasionally and ask for a motor scooter instead, but as soon I see a Harley “hog” and hear that deep-throated, guts and glory macho roar, I forget the scooter and start praying again for the Harley … along with a bass boat, split-bamboo fly rod, hemi-6.2 liter engine for my pickup, and a Browning over-under shotgun. After all, in the book of Matthew, the Lord promises “…all things, whatsoever you ask in prayer … you shall receive.”

Message From Miss Lena

It all happened so fast. The fields I tended for two decades were no longer mine to tend. The cotton gin I worked in as a boy and managed as an adult was now a cold, tin building I would never enter again. We had endured yet another disastrous year. Worms devastated the crop, and the weather had never been crueler to cotton. My farming days were over.

Thanks, Mama

Even though my mother has been in the Lord’s eternal embrace for fifteen years, I look at her picture daily and say: “Thanks, Mama.”

Little Mama’s Found

I was thinking about Little Mama the other day … about the time she got lost. It was a Sunday morning in May, and my three daughters wanted to play for a while before getting ready for church. They headed straight to the chicken yard to visit Little Mama.

Ignunt

I watched my grandson sneeze into his elbow, and a word my boyhood mentor, Jaybird, used often came to mind: ignunt — ignorant, in Mississippi Delta vernacular. He would have been dumbfounded by such a stupid, ineffective act. Who in his right mind can be so ignorant as to think that crooking one’s arm and sneezing into it — coating skin and clothing with a slathering of mucous and saliva to be displayed the rest of the day — protects others who might be nearby?

Female Crickets Catch More Fish

My friend Mark Fratesi runs a country store in the Mississippi Delta. He’s a pleasant, unassuming businessman, faithful husband and loving father. He’s also a world-class practical joker.

Job’s Job

Braggarts are brought low. Recently, I boasted to my students, many of whom had missed class several days due to illness, that I’d made it through winter without even so much as a head cold. Bam! The next morning I awoke feeling terrible.