When I was growing up on our Greenland Community farm, our next-door neighbor was a tall lanky old gentleman by the name of Mr. Joe. He lived just down the road on a hill overlooking Willoughby Crossing. I guess you could say that he was the Mayor of Willoughby Crossing since he and his wife Miss Lillie were the only residences there. The old farmer probably never traveled outside Newton County over a half dozen times in his life. Mr. Joe’s farming had been reduced to a small garden by the time I came along. My brother Bernard used to take our tractor and break up his garden and pea-patch in the spring. From then on, the old timer worked the garden with an old horse that was about the same shape as he was. Mr. Joe never failed to tell my brother “much obliged ‘till you’re better paid.” OJ Gordon would not have allowed my brother to accept money from Mr. Joe, even if he had any. That was the way my daddy was.
He used to walk to our house almost every day…weather permitting. His old hound Spot never failed to be at his side. I was more excited to see Mr. Joe than Daddy was. He got on Daddy’s nerves at times, but Daddy was never unkind to the old man, Mr. Joe did have his qualities.
The illiterate son of the Reconstructions Era in Mississippi was not without his talents. He had a flair for giving unsolicited advice and extracting ticks from dogs. If there had been an Olympic competition for tick picking, he would have surely brought home the gold. He could spot a tick on a hound halfway from his house to railroad tracks at Willoughby Crossing, and it was too bad for the tick. It didn’t matter whose dog it was, Mr. Joe was bound and determined to catch the dog and get rid of the tick. As soon as he extracted the nasty little critter from the animal Mr. Joe would put it on the ground and mash it with his foot, twisting his foot three or four times to make sure the tick was good and dead. Then he would spit a big wad of his Tube Rose snuff juice on him. I suppose this was some sort of ritual he performed to add insult to injury, or maybe it was to ensure that the tick would stay dead. I don’t think Mr. Joe really believed in tick reincarnation but he took no chances, nevertheless. You could say that Mr. Joe was the tick’s worse nightmare.
Sometimes Mr. Joe’s free advice really got on my daddy’s nerves, but Daddy tolerated him and tried to make the best of it when he became a little obnoxious. I think Daddy had more fun from Mr. Joe’s advice than he admitted. When Daddy and Otho Matlock were nailing up knotty-pine designed sheetrock in our living room, Mr. Joe showed up for his daily inspection. Sure enough he saw a serious problem with the sheetrock. He was concerned that the knots would eventually dry and fall out of the wall and leave an ugly wall full of cavities. But Otho Matlock was a very persuasive and convincing sort of chap. He put Mr. Joe’s fears to rest by showing him that they were driving a nail in the middle of each knot to prevent that from happening. Mr. Joe accepted that and was impressed at how hard the nails must have been to penetrate a pine-knot without bending. Otho told Mr. Joe that was just “good carpentering”.
Mr. Joe’s most celebrated advice came when daddy was building his third chicken house on our place in nineteen fifty-five. My cousin Rabbit was digging postholes for the frame of the house when Mr. Joe noticed that they might not be deep enough. That concerned to old gentleman.
I’m sure Rabbit was digging them according to Daddy’s specifications and ignored Mr. Joe’s advice. Mr. Joe told Rabbit that he needed to dig the holes a little deeper, he said a good puff of wind could flip that whole chicken house over. As it turned out Mr. Joe was vindicated, in his own mind anyway.
About two years later a tornado struck in the wee hours of the morning and sure enough Mr. Joe’s prophecy was fulfilled. The storm wrecked our chicken house and we lost about three fourths of the birds. There were chickens, two-by-fours, feed scoops and tin scattered from Greenland to Pleasant Grove. The only things left of our chicken house were the postholes and they were obviously too shallow.
Before the morning was half gone, word got around that our chicken house was destroyed and the neighbors did what neighbors did back in those days, they stopped what they were doing and came to offer their assistance, Mr. Joe included.
I’m sure Mr. Joe meant well when he reminded Daddy that his the postholes weren’t deep enough. That was not the happiest day of my daddy’s life, and the last thing he wanted to hear was Mr. Joe’s advice, or his “I told you so”, no matter how well intended. Daddy spoke rather short to Mr. Joe that day, something I had never heard him do, telling him that he did not need his advice or commentary. Mr. Joe’s feelings were a little hurt, but he took it well.
Still determined to do something for his neighbor, the kindhearted old gentleman made his way to our house and sat down on the edge of the porch. He took a big dip of Tube Rose, called up daddy’s deer-dogs, squirrel-dogs, and bird-dogs and spent the remainder of the morning doing what he did best.
Ralph Gordon is a Past President Mississippi Writers Guild and a recipient of the William Faulkner Literary Award.You may contact Ralph Gordon at rgordon512@hotmail.com.
