Birth of an Urban Legend
When I was about 10 years old we all were expected to work on the farm. So, for as long as I can remember all of us kids and adults too would work to the best of our ability and as age would allow. So, when I was 5 my first real job was as a gleaner in the cotton fields. I was too small to carry a full size tote bag so I toted a smaller version and myself and brothers and sisters would follow the adults and pluck the cotton from the boles that were too small for the adults fingers and we were expected to get the remaining cotton from the boles that had already been picked by the adults. It really wasn’t all that bad and it had to be done. The one job that I absolutely despised was suckering tobacco. Anything on a tobacco plant that could not be sold had to be picked off so all of the growing could produce more and bigger leaves. That’s where us kids came in. Our job was to break off the yellow flower from the top of the tobacco plant and to remove the suckers which grew just on top of the point where the leaf branched off from the main stalk. They were called suckers because if you allowed them to remain they would get as large as the main leaf and stunt it’s growth. All of this doesn’t sound very bad, but consider chewing tobacco. Most people wouldn’t put that stuff in their mouth, but when you suckered tobacco you ended up smeared from head to toe with that nicotine tar. We would get so sick from the nicotine that it would be nearly impossible to eat and keep it down. To this day if I walk into a tobacco warehouse I get queasy and I cannot abide to smell tobacco smoke. This tar would be as black as coal dust and nearly as difficult to remove.
All of the above is just to lay the ground work for the next part :)
Us kids had worn the same clothes 3 days running so we wouldn’t mess up any more clothes than we had to. And on the final day Grandma Estelle just looked at us and shook her head and told us to shuck the clothes and grab the lye soap and head for the pond. If she said anything else no one could hear her over the yipping and yelling and we woopped and screamed down to the pond and commenced to lathering up and scrubbing at that nicotine tar. It would take about 3 good scrubbings to get most of the tar off and then the rest would have to wear off. That lye soap would pert near burn your eyes out so we didn’t get too particular about our hair. Grandma would take care of that when we next washed on Saturday night and, unfortunately, she wasn’t quite so particular about our eyes and lye soap.
Well, while we were down in the pond washing, Grandma Estelle piled our clothes into the small black kettle and poured a couple of gallons of benzene in after them and started to work them around until she figured they were about as clean as they would get. Along about that time I was the first to come back up from the pond and Grandma told me to get dressed and then come get rid of the benzene. When I came back to get the benzene she told me to be sure not to dump it out on the ground because it would end up killing half the plants in the area. So, there I was, lugging that benzene around and trying to figure out what to do with it. I finally figured out that about the only place I could put it where it wouldn’t do any harm was to dump it in the privy. For those of you from the city a privy is sometimes called a library...you know a place where you can read while you contemplate life.
That night we had a big ole feed of Grandma’s barbecue with plenty of hot sauce, cole slaw, boiled new potatoes, sweet potato pie and iced tea. Fine food.
Grandpa Kader out ate all of us. Let me tell you just a bit about Grandpa Kader. He won’t no ways small and always wore coveralls and a straw hat. His hair was as white as snow and he had as fine a beard as I’ve ever seen on a man. Just cause he had a bit of age didn’t show him down none and he would be the first to start and the last to quit. A hard working, God fearing, church going man. He didn’t mistreat his coon dogs and he nearly always had a plug in his jaw or a corn cob pipe gripped in his teeth. When he spoke, other men listened. When his advise was asked for it was generally followed. I dearly loved my Grandpa and still fondly think of our fishing and hunting trips. After that hard days work we all went to bed about the time it got dark because we would have to begin another days work tomorrow.
The following morning Grandma had been up since 4am heating up the old wood stove and getting breakfast ready. We got up about 5am and got our chores done. Milking the cows, slopping the hogs, feeding the chickens, chopping more kindling for the cookstove. Feeding the mules and getting their harness ready. Today we would be splitting the rows in the cotton field to keep down the weeds. The older kids would run the plow and us younger kids would chop weeds between the cotton plants. If I did have a favorite job on the farm it would have been trucking the tobacco from the fields after the older people cropped the tobacco. It was always fun to ride on the skids and let the mules do most of the work for a change.
We all got back into the house just about 6am and had finished breakfast in about 15 minutes. Back then a normal breakfast for us would be a platter of eggs, a platter of bacon and sausage or often as not cured ham. A huge mound of biscuits, butter, molasses and to wash it down coffee for the adults and buttermilk for us kids. Fine eating. Sigh... sure wish it was still considered healthy eating.
After breakfast Grandpa Kader allowed as how he was going out to the "library" and the rest of us began hooking up the mules and breaking out the hoes and shovels. Grandpa Kader settled himself on his particular hole and commenced to packing his corncob pipe. He struck one of his lucifers and took his first deep drag of the day. Then he casually tossed the match into the adjoining hole.
Us kids had finished hooking up and were just coming out of the barn when we heard the most gosh awful BOOOOOMMMMM and watched as the privy took off almost straight up on a pillar of fire and smoke. As it started to disentigrate a figure trailing smoke peeled off and ended up making a huge splash in the pond. Meanwhile smoke and blue flame was a bellering up out of the spot where the privy sat and here came Grandma on a dead run toward the pond. We were follering right behind and got to the edge of the pond just as Grandpa staggered out wearing a toilet seat around his neck. His beard and a good part of his hair was singed off and still smoking a bit. He looked mostly stunned but finally got his senses back and just glared at Grandma. "Dagburn it Woman, I done told you not to use so much chili pepper in that dern barbecue"!!!
Anyway, that is the way I remember the really true start of the urban legend about a toilet blowing up.
