When a man is 96 years young, he tends to have a lot of stories to tell. Sunday night, I called my sweet Prampa and spent about twenty minutes on the phone, listening to him do just that. . . tell me stories!
Normally, you can't carry on a very good phone conversation with Prampa because he's so hard of hearing and you find yourself either yelling into the phone or having to repeat yourself over and over. But for some reason, this particular Sunday night he could hear me just fine and he was in a good mood and ready to reminisce. We made small talk at first, me asking him how he was feeling, him telling me about his various aches and pains but how overall he felt pretty good for an old fella. He asked about the donkeys, and wondered what kind of trouble they'd been getting into, and asked about Hubby and our slobbery-jowled dog Tubs. We talked about the weather and then about the deer and turkey I'd seen around the house the past few days and then one question led to a story that he remembered and so I sat back and listened as he told one right after another.
The telling of the story is what Prampa does best, but words on paper or typewritten across a computer screen don't do the stories justice. Hearing it first hand, directly from a southern Prampa's mouth is the best way to hear it. His sayings and pronunciation of certain words, his slang and colorful language and the mischief in his laugh, all make the stories come to life and you can just picture it all happening as if you were there witnessing it for yourself. I'll do my best to recount them for the reader though.
His first story came about as I reminded him of a skunk he'd spotted in the garage a few weeks earlier. I had asked him if he'd seen it lately and he laughed and told me no, he hadn't happened upon it again since that first sighting when he quietly closed the door and stepped away. He said he'd had his share of run-ins with skunks in the past and proceeded to tell me about one particular time when he went night hunting with his old dog years ago, when Grandma was still living. He said he'd gone hunting in the woods, trying to tree a possum or coon, when all of a sudden his old dog came upon a big, fat skunk. The dog scared the skunk and the skunk turned tail and sprayed them both. He said they were covered from head to toe with stink and when he got back to the house, he didn't know what he was going to do. It was after midnight when he got up to the front door, and knowing he couldn't go inside smelling like he did, he figured he'd just strip down right then and there and get rid of those smelly clothes. Once he got "nekkid" he realized he was locked out, so he rang the doorbell. Here came Grandma to the front door and wouldn't you know, she turned the "dad-blamed" porch light on! There he stood in his birthday suit for all the world to see with the porch light shining down on him like a beacon! I'm sure he gave poor Grandma quite a shock! Luckily, since it was so late, he says none of the neighbors saw him before he got safely into the house. I could just picture it all as he told me.
The next story he told me was one of his many fishing stories. Prampa has always been an avid fisherman. To this day, he goes fishing with his buddies as often as he can. This particular story was about a time when he and his friends decided to do a little night fishing at a lake north of their home town. He said they stopped at a creek along the way to catch some crawdads to use as bait. When they got to the lake, it was pitch dark and they grabbed their poles and buckets and headed down the bank. Prampa picked himself out a spot, pulled out two poles and baited his hooks and threw the lines out in the water. He sat down and looked to his right and there down the bank aways sat an old black woman looking back at him. She had her pole in the water with her tackle box on one side and her fish bucket on the other. Prampa said they all fished awhile, pulling in carp here and there and filling up their buckets. All of a sudden, one of Prampa's poles bent way down toward the water and he knew he'd hooked a big one! He said he stood up and grabbed the pole and the fish just fought and fought. The old woman came over to watch and Prampa said she yelled out "My lands! You got a biggun on there, you shore do!" After what seemed like forever, Prampa finally got that fish reeled in and when he pulled it up onto the bank and they both looked down to see what he'd caught, there was a big, black, slimy, three-foot long eel! He said that old woman's eyes got round as saucers and she hollered out "Laws a mercy!" and ran straight up the bank as fast as she could with her arms above her head, screaming the whole way! He said they fished for three more hours that night and that old woman never did come back for her stuff. She just left it there on the bank! He laughed and laughed.
I asked him what in the world he did with that eel and he said he put it in the bucket and took it home! When he got home, he said he put a little water in the bathtub and put the eel inside. The next day when he went to check on it, it was gone! I asked him where it went and he said it had slithered out of the tub and onto the floor so he had to pick it up and put it back in. He said it was too slippery for him to grab hold of, so he had to run outside and get some dirt on his hands so he could get a better grip. "Ewwww!" I said, "Did you end up eating it?" and Prampa proceeded to tell me no, he himself didn't but his father-in-law did. He said you can't really ever "cook an eel done" and I asked him what he meant and he said no matter how long you cook an eel, you'll always have blood on the plate. Yuck!
After a few more stories about his days trapping coyotes and other furry varmints, I was tuckered out from all the laughing and I could tell he was too. We said our "I love you's" and "good-byes" and the rest of the night I thought about Prampa in his striped overalls that he always wears and what a character he is and how lucky I am to have him in my life!
