One of my most unforgetable characters was Uncle Shug. He was resplendent the first time I saw him in his WWII uniform. Uncle Shug It was hot. The southern Alabama sun seared the soil. It beat unmercifully down on the the tender green cotton plants. Their leaves drooped as the ground temperature soared. There was no cooling breeze to break the unbearable oppressive heat. The milk cow down in the pasture had sought out the shade of a tree and lay down. She was too tired to stand any longer and tried to get her belly next to the cooler grass of the shade. The birds disappeared into the thickets along the creek bottoms and silence grew over the land until it was almost as oppressive as the smothering heat. In this heat hell the only sound was the occasional hateful buzz of a green Blowfly. A movement over on a distant hillside revealed the slow moving figures of a man in faded overalls, walking behind a old brown mule, plodding slowly along between the handles of a plow. The plow was turning up the earth between the rows of cotton plants that painted the dark hills with green horizontal stripes. The green rows appeared to shimmer as the rays of heat rose from the ground and danced in the still air. The man was trying to plow up the thirsty moisture-robbing wiregrass from around the suffering cotton plants. His success could mean financial success or failure to his family this year. It would mean the difference whether his children got new shoes and clothes for school in September or went without. In the middle of a nearer green cotton field sat a small, old, unpainted, gray, two-room tenant farm house. It was his family’s house for this season. If he was able to make any money this season it might be their house for another season. If not, then his family would have to move on to another farm in the hopes of doing better there. The house, like all over houses in that area of the South had been built two feet off the ground, by standing logs vertically under it to keep the abundant smaller critters like bugs, spiders, snakes and an occasional coon or possum out. It also kept it from being flooded during the frequent heavy thunderstorms which blew through during the rainy season. It made a great shady place for dogs and small boys to loiter and dream. The boy was almost five years old that day in 1945. The dog and he had crawled under the house to escape the heat and flies and to play as only boys and their dogs can do. The dog lay and watched as the boy lay on his stomach in the fine gray dust, twirling a broom straw into a tiny cone that was sunk in that fine dark dust. He sang softly; “doodlebug, doodlebug, come out come out, yore house on fire, doodlebug, doodlebug, yore children are crying, you better come out of there.” As he gently stirred the sides of the dust cone, a tiny ugly dust-covered insect emerged from the bottom of the pit and looked around to see what was trapped in his hole and making motion. It was an antlion, ounce for ounce, one of the most powerful predators on earth. It was a killer that made the hole to trap ants and other tiny insects to devour. When an ant or anything fell in, it would try to climb back up the soft slippery slope of the sides of the pit and the walls would slide back down. The critter would then grab the thing and tear it limb from limb. The boy poked him with the straw. The aggressive little creature grabbed the straw with all six legs and pinchers. The child raised the straw vertically above his head. He bent the straw into a bow and released it and catapulted the ugly little beast out into the hot sandy front yard. The boy liked ants better than antlions. He looked at the shadow of the house and noticed that the sun wasn’t shining under the porch. That meant it was noon and he wondered if his daddy had quit work and started home for dinner. He crawled out from under the house and dusted off his torn and faded overalls so his mama wouldn’t scold him. He had reached the front doorsteps and was going to go inside to see if she was finished cooking dinner when he saw a small red dust cloud rising from the green cotton fields far in the distance. Although he could not yet see it, he knew that a car was making the cloud, because he could hear it’s motor roar as it’s wheels hit the deep sandy parts in the ruts on the road. So it wasn’t a dust devil, which sometimes made a red dust cloud like that. The dust cloud grew larger and the motor noise grew louder until suddenly an car emerged from the red dust cloud. It looked black, but the covering of red dust on it made it a bit unsure. He jumped up on the porch, as he always did, so he could see a car as it sped by. It was an not a common sight to see a car go by every day. He didn’t want to miss it. As the car approached the old farm house it slowed somewhat and he began to wave with both arms, as he usually did when anyone came down the dirt road. To his amazement the car turned into the clean-swept dirt front yard of his house. It turned so quickly that one side raised up until the tires on one side almost left the ground. It slid to a stop in front of the doorsteps and a man stepped out. The first thing the boy noticed was that the man wasn’t dressed in the overalls most of the men he knew always wore. He wore a brown suit with shiny brass buttons. On his chest were many little colored bars. On his head he wore a pretty brown cap with a big brass button on the front sat on the red hair that was showing beneath it. Around his waist he wore a big brown belt. To the boy the suit looked like it had toys on it. “Wella wella, and who’s boy are you?” the stranger asked with a grin. “My daddy is Bill,” the boy said bashfully. “Wella wella, you Wilburn?” he said smiling. “Yes Sir” replied the boy, surprised the stranger knew his name, “who are you?” the boy was becoming bolder. “Wella wella, I’m your uncle Shug,” he said and grabbed the boy and raised him high over his head, then gave him a big hug and put him down on the doorsteps. The boy’s momma came out of the door onto the porch. She had biscuit dough on her hands. The boy yelled, “Momma this is uncle Shug.” “It shore is, How you doing Shug?” She walked into the outstretched arms of the man and they embraced. He kissed her on the cheek. “Wella wella I been doing real good Ola Pearl, how have y’all been?” he asked “ We been pretty good, Shug,” she replied. “ Wella wella where’s Bill at?” he asked. “He’s plowing cotton over yonder on the hill,” she replied, pointing toward the figure of her husband and the mule in the distance. Shug turned on the doorstep and saw his oldest brother, Bill, who had now stopped plowing and was staring across the field toward the car parked in his yard trying to determine who was there and what was going on. Shug cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone and called with a holler, as folks did in those days to communicate across great distances in that place, “WHOEE WHOEE, HEY OH HEY OH, WAHOOOOO!” He stopped as he saw the man wave and unhitch his mule from the plow and mount it for the ride home. Uncle “Shug’s” real name was James Lewis. He was called Shug as short for sugar. It was usual with that family and in that place and time, almost everyone had a nickname or love name. Many people didn’t know their own relative’s given names until they saw them on their gravestones when they had died and were buried. He was five foot eight inches tall, of medium build, and had red hair and green eyes. This red hair, and a propensity to fight at the slightest provocation, led to him being called; “ Little Rooster” by his friends. His daddy was also red-haired and green-eyed was called Rooster. He had a stutter that would manifest itself when he began a new thought. He would begin by saying “wella wella.” If there were no women around, he broke the stutter by saying, “wella wella by God,” then he would speak as well as anyone. As with many of his fellow farm folk, he was drafted into the army during the second world war. He was sent to far off Santa Ana, California to learn to be a cook. He wondered why he was sent to California to learn that because he said folks in Alabama knew how to cook and cooked better food also. In Santa Ana, he met the second strange foreign culture he had encountered, after the Yankees, in the strange talking Mexicans. His first intercultural experience had been when a fast talking haughty New York couple had stopped by the local country store on their way through Alabama to Florida. Their language was almost as unintelligible as the Mexicans. The Mexican food was good though. It was much like simple Southern food in it’s use of corn, beans, peppers and lard. He was in California for a few months and was then sent to New Mexico to be trained as a tail gunner on a B-17 fighter-bomber. He was there for a few weeks before he was sent overseas. Then he was sent to the war in Italy. In the mysterious military manner, after all his training, he was put to work right away painting aircraft. That please him mightily since it was relatively safe work. It only lasted a few weeks. One day he was called in and given the keys to a very large gasoline truck. He was told that driving gasoline to the battlefront for tanks and other vehicles would be his permanent assignment. His safe job had been replaced with a slightly more dangerous one. He remained in Italy until transferred to the war in the Pacific against Japan. He was in flight to that area when the Japanese surrendered. He was released a few months later and lost no time in boarding a bus for home. Life during the war was not much changed in south Alabama. It’s people were used to shortages and doing without. The South had never recovered from the devastation of the “War for Southern Independence” and the depression that followed. The depression of the nineteen twenties was just another hard time to live through. For seventy years they to survive without luxuries, and to make do with whatever they had. During those years they had learned to make a form of coffee by roasting the husks that were left over after sifting their corn meal. Some folks roasted peanut shells, but they were not favored. They had small gardens where they raised corn, peas, beans, collards, sweet potatoes, okra, squash, cucumbers, watermelons, turnips, mustard, cantaloupes, cabbage, and some potatoes and onions. They killed hogs for meat, when they had one, and ate most of the pork fresh, but smoked the shoulders and hams. Chickens were kept for eggs and meat. Sometimes they had a cow that gave milk and butter. Few people had cars or tractors so they didn’t need the government gasoline stamps. Mules didn’t need gas to pull a plow or wagon. The shortage that hurt the most was the lack of wheat flour for biscuits and fried chicken. Only five pounds were allowed per month. This was not enough for the large families that farm families had. They could grow corn though and they stored as much as possible for the lean times. The only luxury that was missed badly was sugar. Sugar cane grew in the low lying areas around creeks and swamps, but people found it more economical to make syrup from the cane. Sorghum was used, too, but it’s flavor wasn’t preferred and it was used to feed the mules. Salt was a necessity that had to be bought. During the war German prisoners of war were brought to that wiregrass area. They were held at Elba and at Camp Rucker, a military installation near Enterprise, Alabama. The farmers of that area were short on manpower to harvest the crops and all their men being overseas fighting the Germans. So a deal was struck with the army to rent these P.O.W.s to the farmer for twenty cents an hour to help gather the crops. The prisoners were guarded by two U.S. Army soldiers and kept away from the locals. No one was afraid they would escape because they only spoke German and most were blond. They would not blend well with the local populace. The Germans seem to enjoy the manual labor and laughed and sang loudly while they worked. The locals didn’t dislike nor fear them though their personal habits embarrassed the modest Southerners as the men would relieve themselves in public without concern for any onlookers. The Southerner’s natural hospitality did not allow them to fear Germans who had never seemed threatening. Bill rode up into the yard on the mule and stopped in front of the small old ramshackle barn. He dismounted and led the mule into the dark interior of the barn and filled the water and feed troughs. When he finished he closed the gate and walked slowly to the house. He was not a large man, but was immensely strong. His blue overalls were streaked with salt crusts caused by his sweat evaporating in the hot sun. His neck and face were red from going without his shirt in the heat of summer. His hair was light brown with red sun-bleached highlights. He met Uncle Shug on the doorstep, grabbed him in a bear hug, and lifted his smaller brother off the doorstep. Tears were in his eyes. He held back a sob of joy as he held his brother to his chest and could not speak. Both men sat down on the porch. One sat in the porch swing and one in the old rocker and were silent for awhile. Shug looked out over the green fields until Bill had regained his composure. Finally, Bill said, “Are you done with the army now?” “Wella wella, yeah, By God I am,” his brother replied, I’m glad to be home.” To be continued………. The end
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 09:16:56 +0000
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