Roots.....

[Ray]

Roots.....

The fateful day arrived with about three-quarters of a gallon of amniotic fluid puddled on the kitchen floor and my beloved bride frankly informing me with violent oaths & ardent expletives that the time had come. In just over a half-hour I had her at the e.r.'s sliding doors and two & a half hours hence she squeezed out junior with yet more violent oaths & ardent expletives. A maternity r.n. told me not to take the personal abuse too personal. Seems they hear "you worthless bastard !" quite often during the throes of late labor in the maternity ward.

Imagine my suprise, with such harsh and pointed words still ringing in my ears, to find junior complexioned as brown as a gunstock, eyes of coal and topknot feathered like a crow !

True that most babies, regardless of race, come out, once the slime is removed, initially hued rather purpled and blue-eyed.....But both his mum and me were almost as fair as could be without actually being albino so we never imagined junior would be somewheres between walnut and mahogany in colouring.

You should have seen the looks of pity towards me on the faces of the maternity wing staff. If there ever was a case of infidelity and dubious paternity then this was it but I never for a second doubted my beloved. We first held hands on the schoolhouse playground in the fourth grade and have been together every since.

It was a r.n. of long acquaintance who went ahead on her own initiative then and there to fetch saliva samples from both me and junior for the DNA paternity test. Since we were in charlotte, that thriving metropolis and great center of commerce, banking, medicine & research, a suitable laboratory was just next door to our hospital.

We had just checked-out and were wheeling my beloved and junior down to my old pickup when the kind (but nosey) lady who had thought the paternity test prudent found us with the expedited results. The add-mixture result ciphered to junior being half me and half her with a 97% + scientific veracity !

You who remember the arrival of your own first born can identify with my elation. I was a proud papa to be sure. The differences in the shades of our complexions were never discussed amongst us, though the catty gossips outside the family no doubt made sport of it. The genealogical facts of distant indigenous aboriginal ancestry for us both.....muskogee for her, caloosa for me were thought to have somehow exponentially manifested themselves in junior.

And a wild red savage he proved to be. That boy simply loved the outdoors and taught himself to escape both the crib and playpen, yea even a locked-tray highchair and exit the domicile via crawling through flapping pet door long before he took his first upright steps. He further proved to be immune/resistant to the bites of mosquitoes and chiggers and the stings of things who were wont to sting.

Junior loved nature and began kenning its mysteries while quite young. He instinctively developed tracking skills and seemed to silently be able to communicate to animals both wild and domestic. Songbirds and mice gravitated to him and were his daytime playmates. Enough about our little brave for now and a bit of apropo expository info.

I mentioned above having caloosian tribal antecedents. There was an old family legend that my great grandmother, that is, my maternal grandfather's mother, big momma eulalie they called her, was of tri-racial pedigree. That is, english-scot-irish-viking crossed with indian maiden crossed with a white-impersonating miscegenationial plantation child here or there. Granddad was swarthy and in profile, greatly resembled the ubiquitous long-nosed visage on obsolete nickels. Combine that with my beloved's muskogeean contribution to junior's appearance and constitutional wildness and there followed little mystery as to just how he got to be the way he got to be.

Back to the future as they say....Junior, in age, was in preschool up at the first presbyterian church. One day we pulled into the driveway on a return trip from town to spy, or at least I spied it, an enormous groundhog going under the end of the house that lacked underpinning..... Whilst my beloved fetched-in the bags of comestibles I retrieved roscoe (.38) and a flashlight from the truck's dashboard and me and junior went on the hunt. I positioned him at the crawlspace opening and ordered, "junior, you stand right here. Think bigger than you are and act menacing thus keeping the groundhog from escaping this way and I'll crawl under the opposite end and try to slay the beast or at least scare it with a near miss!"

Now I knew, from the underfloor gloom, as long as I could see the silhouette of the brave lad in the light of the crawlspace entry opening, and providing I did not fire roscoe that way, I might safely get a shot at the giant rodent. I thoroughly shined the beam of the flashlight all around to no avail, the beast had simply vanished.

Out in the daylight and back around to junior's strategic post I said, "I saw hide nor hair of him underneath nor did I see any tunnel opening. He did not backtrack past me. I just don't understand it. He had to come out this way. Did you see anything ? Did the groundhog come out here past you ?"

Perhaps I was being self-conscious at my failure at manly pursuits but junior looked somewhat doubtful and perhaps a bit embarrassed at my hunting skills or lack thereof. He replied in stentorious fluency and scholarly diction far beyond his tender years, "dearest antecedent, no groundhog came past here, though, before he went on his way, I did have a pleasant chat with a cheerful brown furry fellow with a prominent overbite !"

[Bronco]

Wonderful tale

[JimT]

Wonderful tale

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[Ray]

Wonderful tale

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No great secret what popular character inspired junior's response at the end.....

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F1zKo8MSL ... ZCBzb24%3D