Just when I think I'm about written out, a thought bubble from the bottom of my mind ascends, and here comes another person or situation that I haven't thought of in 50 or 60 years, or longer. Here's one about my friend Moses.
Back in the '50s, if you lived in the South, God, Elvis and Billy Graham were a big part of your life.
Elvis was on every jukebox and singing on the radio. Come Sunday mornings, those who couldn't or didn't want to get dressed up, gathered around their TV, tuned into Billy Graham, sipped their morning coffee and got saved in their PJs. And, of course, God was good and everywhere all the time.
I was 9 and, in my opinion, on my way to becoming the best fisherman in the little Middle Tennessee, country town in which I lived. I got so good that I began releasing the smaller fish. Not for the sake of conservation. Those little perch would have fried up quite nicely.
It was mostly about my pride. A champion angler just doesn't want a little thing on his stringer of good-size fish. Kinda makes you look silly. With status comes nobility.
I figured that I was on the Top 10 list of the best fishermen in that stretch of the woods. As a matter of fact, braggadocios as it may sound, I was pretty sure that I was at the No. 2 spot, just below my friend, Moses.
His real name may have been Charles, but most everyone called him Moses. They started calling him that when he was a boy. Almost every country kid had a nickname. I went to school with kids called June Bug, Grasshopper and Booger. When the teacher took roll call, she'd say, "Booger Johnson?" and he'd say, "Here." Then, "June Bug Larsen?" and she'd say, "Present."
Moses wasn't a boy. He was probably in his late 30s back then. They said that he had the mind of a 12-year-old and that was as far as he was gonna get. Everyone knew he was a little left of center, but he wasn't doing anything to anybody, so they just let him be.
Moses came from a devout Baptist family. His mama was closer to God than any other human being on Earth. While the other kids were reading geography books and learning math, Moses was memorizing the Ten Commandments. He really hadn't had any formal schooling, so he, as he would say, "got learnt by the Bible."
Every once in a while, the old-timers down at the drugstore would chuckle about Moses. When he was a small child, he stood on the creek bank with his hands in the air, hollering out for the creek to part. His mama said he kept it up for hours. From that time forward, his nickname was Moses.
All of us "great ones" bumped into one another at various deep spots up and down the creek.
There was my friend Ray Vaughn, whose nickname was Catfish. When he was a little boy, he hooked a big old catfish that pulled him in the water. Ray stayed with it and landed the fish. From then on, he was Catfish.
There was a fair-skinned, red-headed boy with freckles and a few other kids who hooked some pretty good-size keepers, but none of them could measure up to Moses and me.
Moses had a look. He was thin and of medium height, with big blue eyes, a handful of straggly hairs on the top of his sunburned head and long, wavy, sun-bleached, yellow hair on the sides. His nose, over the years, had been made wide and crooked from his mistakes and bad timing. His clothes always looked a couple of sizes too large. When the wind came up, he sorta flapped.
A couple of Moses' bottom teeth were gone, and his upper dentures were always falling out. Especially when he laughed too hard. He had a funny laugh. He'd start up slow, like a car motor trying to turn over on a cold morning. Then he'd go into his mule laugh.
Moses thought himself to be a comedian. He wasn't. I'm not sure that you could really call them jokes. He made them up as he went, oft times changing the ending. He laughed at his own jokes.
He'd get to telling one and, halfway through, he'd get tickled and start laughing that "har-dee-har" laugh. His upper dentures would fall out. In one swift swoop, he'd catch them in midair, stick them right back in his mouth and continue to tell his joke.
Everybody laughed at his laugh and body language. Not at his jokes. Moses misunderstood their laughter to mean that they thought he was hilarious. Their outbursts of laughter made Moses laugh harder. His false teeth would fall out, again, and the crowd would laugh some more. It went on and on.
Moses also considered himself to be quite a ladies' man. He wasn't. On the weekends, he'd get all cleaned up and smelling good, slick back his hair with a scoop of Royal Crown petroleum jelly, step into his dancing shoes and hitchhike to a juke joint up toward Columbia. He'd get out on the dance floor and shake his legs like Elvis.
Moses wasn't too terribly particular about what kind of woman he ended up with as long as she could dance and liked to laugh. Invariably, he'd try to chat up the wrong women - girlfriends and wives with boyfriends and husbands. Jealousy and hard whiskey are a combustible mix.
More than once, Moses found himself beat up and flying head first out the bar's side door. Apparently, he often landed on his nose. He'd pick himself up and walk to the road. With his thumb out, he'd pray to God for a ride back home and make plans to return the next weekend.
Many mornings, before school started, Moses and I would meet down at the fishing hole and talk about nothing in particular. Mostly fishing.
Sometimes, in his preacher voice, Moses recited the Bible stories he grew up on. Nine times out of 10, he wrapped up with "Jesus was the best fisher they ever wuz. Amen."
I remember telling him that, of course, Jesus was the best. He could simply walk across the water and drop his line in the deep end of the creek, where the big fish lived. I could tell a light bulb went on in Moses' head.
The next time we met up, he was standing knee-high in the creek. I asked him what he was doing. He told me, "I'm practicin' walkin' on water," and began to laugh. It was the first funny joke I'd ever heard him tell. I started laughing too. He laughed even harder. His dentures fell out and into the creek. It took us a good half-hour to find them.
I'm sure that Moses is in heaven. He's probably the life of every party, dancing with beautiful angels till daybreak. I'll bet he walks atop the waters of the Kingdom's deepest fishing holes, pulling in enough fish for the next, very much needed Sermon on the Mount.
May there be peace for us all. Amen.
Email Bill Stamps at bill_stamps@aol.com. His books "Miz Lena" and "Southern Folks" are available on Amazon.
Bill Stamps