DRESS CODES

From the chapter "The Gentlest Decade"

SMOKING GUNS

That was the year several of us got .410 shotguns for Christmas.  Man, we loved those shotguns.  During the hot days of summer we would load up with our shotguns, shells, snake bite kit, and a supply of slim, small cigars called cigarillos, and head off to the woods to experience whatever adventures nature could throw our way. 

We usually ended up on a three mile long three-plank wide wooden walkway that was used by the natural gas company to inspect the condition of their pipeline.   The walkway ran right through the middle of a heavily wooded swamp-like area until it crossed over Muckalee Creek in the form of a hanging rope bridge.  We walked all the way to the creek, shooting snakes, squirrels, and anything else we saw that needed shooting, creating havoc and panic in the world of nature.

Three of us were walking back home on the dirt road that ran through a colored neighborhood late one hot summer afternoon, after a very pleasing foray in the swamp.  We had our shotguns slung over our shoulders.  As we puffed away on our small cigars, we regaled and congratulated each other with compliments on our great courage shown by jumping naked from the rope bridge into Muckalee Creek into a section of the creek said to be heavily populated by water moccasins.  Evidently, the owning of a shotgun and the smoking of small cigars did not automatically endow us with a great deal of intelligence or wisdom.  But, I digress.

We saw a Georgia State Patrol car heading toward us and knew we shouldn’t get caught smoking.  We had to get rid of the cigars, and fast.  We didn’t want to waste them so we slid them down the barrels of our shotguns and continued marching along the road as if nothing was out of the ordinary.  The trooper driving the car also lived in our subdivision; terrible luck for us.  He pulled his cruiser in front of us and turned on his flashing red overhead light.  He got out of the car, put on his Smokey-bear hat, adjusted his aviator sunglasses, and ambled over to where we were standing beside the road.  He looked like he was ten feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds.  He stared at us without speaking for several minutes, and finally said, “what the hell you boys think y’all is doin’?”

 I didn’t think he would appreciate my pointing out to him that we were probably out of his jurisdiction, and that he had said “is” when he should have said “are” so I replied with as much bravado as I could muster, “nothing, sir.  Why do you ask?”

“Well,” he said, “culuh me suspicious but the sight of three mynuh white boys strollin’ thoo the middle of culuhed town with shotguns tho’de over they shoulders and smoke po’in out of the barrels of them shotguns jest don’t look right.  What ’chall think ‘bout it?” 

We thought it was a great idea to shake the cigars out of the barrels of our shotguns before they set off the shells in the guns, acting in the grand tradition of non compos mentis.  The trooper made us grind the cigars into the ground, ruining our perfect day.  Furious, but mercifully brief, punishment ensued when I got home, and I got on with life.  I swore off cigars forever and meant it.  I slyly omitted cigarettes from this oath.

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