I have some things I want to write down because I know I am the only one who can. So if you have something you need to do, go ahead… it’s just some memories of me and a guy I looked up to. Of coarse I had too he was 6′ 1′ I was about 5’9″. He was the one with the dark wavy hair, dark eye’s and slim as a rail, smart as a whip but tough as he needed to be to get the job done. To say I wanted to be like him is an understatement. I could go way back to when he showed me how to roll my own out behind the barn on the Hobart Bean farm in Bois’ Darc MO. or just a couple years ago when he’d call about twice a week with a new joke ( he wouldn’t even say who it was just “this guy walks in a bar”) he knew I knew who it was. There’s two many memories to tell them all…….like when me and him decided to catch the biggest ground hog in Green County alive. There was an old shed South of the house on the Nicholson farm that had a ground hog hole inside on the dirt floor, we knew it was well used and that he was big and fat cause no one knew it was there. J.D. found the back entrance and blocked it off with big rocks …..put a loop of bailing wire around the hole …. got a milk bucket full of water poured it down the hole and stood back with the wire wrapped around his hand. 10 seconds later the fight was on . That old gray backed Woodchuck stuck his head out just a little too far and J.D. pulled the loop of wire tight around his neck…. dust started flyin’ and we started runnin’ around tryin’ not to get bit because he (the chuck) was more than upset, seems like he was always between us and the door…..he broke the wire and went back in the hole and we were more than happy he did.
He had to sleep with me his little brother ’cause there was never enough room in the old farm houses my Dad rented, and my earliest memories was me wetting the bed and J.D. yelling for mom to do something. He made sure I didn’t drink water and went outside to pee every night for a long time after that. He had to get up with Dad every morning at 4:30 to help milk the 20 head of cows for about three years while we lived on the Nicholson place, while I snoozed away in that warm bed,, and he never let me forget it. Maybe that’s how he got in the habit of getting up early……..he loved to tell jokes or better yet hear a good joke and I couldn’t wait to try a new one on him, If he had heard it before he’d say I want to hear you tell it ‘sides I’m not sure I got it right, then he’d laugh till he had to brace himself on the wall. Sometimes I’d call him with a new one and I wouldn’t hear nothing on the other end for a few seconds and I’d think ah shoot he didn’t
get it……but he was just out of breath…..and he’d come back laughin’…. oh he would laugh….. he loved goose berry pie, fast cars, airplanes, shooting a gun, telling stories, outdoors, tractors, making it work, and I know he loved me…… but did he know I loved him?…. I hope he did… I was the one that was heavy, but ….he was my brother.