DAYLIGHT DANIELS

From the Chapter "The Stuff Of Legends"

The family bought their incidentals from two or three small mom-and-pop general stores located up and down the road from the farmhouse.  One of these general stores was called, “Fat Monroe’s Store.”  It was owned by a man named Fat Monroe.  He was so large he drove a tractor to get around; he also owned a Ford pickup truck that had the driver’s door removed so he could get in and out of it.  Legend has it he needed ten pallbearers instead of the normal six when he went to his rewards. 

Saturday was the day most of the family would go into Leslie to buy needed supplies, and hang out and visit with other families in town on similar missions.  They were buying groceries one Saturday at the grocery store in Leslie when Mr. Cleve struck up a conversation with a neighboring farmer.

The farmer told Mr. Cleve, “Cleve, I’ve got five girls and you’ve got six boys.  What I want more than anything in the world is a boy.  What do you think I should do?”

Mr. Cleve was not a man to miss an opportunity to put a beard on one of his friends.  He replied to the farmer friend, “You must be fooling around with your wife after dark.  To have boys you have to fool around with her while the sun’s still up.” 

This got a big laugh from everybody in the grocery store, except Miz Lula Belle.  As soon as they got out of the store she jumped on him like a duck on a June bug. The six mile wagon drive back home that afternoon must have seemed like six hundred miles to Mr. Cleve.  Miz Lula Belle gave him pure hell all the way home.  She admonished him for embarrassing her in front of the people in the store, and informed him that as far as fooling around with her was concerned he could forget daytime, nighttime, or any time in between.

She refused to fix him any supper and made him get down on his knees and pray for forgiveness for his vile and crass behavior.  After his prayer time she made him read the bible verses that commanded men to love and honor their wives. 

As they were getting ready for bed she informed Mr. Cleve that, since he thought acting like a jackass was so funny, he could go and make  his bed in the barn with his cousins, Jack and Raymond, the two mules.  She finally relented and told him he could stay in the house if he would just stop the crying and caterwauling.  He wound up sleeping in the house, although it was in the boys’ back bedroom for quite a spell.

Almost ten months later the farmer friend saw Mr. Cleve at the grocery store again and told Mr. Cleve, in a very loud voice, that his advice about messing around with his wife in the daytime worked, because his wife had just given birth to a baby boy the night before.  Mr. Cleve almost fainted from relief that Miz Lula Belle was not in the grocery store right then.  He didn’t want to go through that hell all over again.  The news of the new baby boy brought a big guffaw from everyone at the store.   The farmer never got over his embarrassment and was thereafter known as “Daylight Daniels.”

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