Fried catfish, French fries, hushpuppies, potato salad, cold slaw, ham, deviled eggs, corn on the cob, black-eyed peas, homemade rolls, coconut pie, chocolate birthday cake complete with hunting scenes with deer and fish, homemade green tomato relish, homemade pear preserves, homemade peach jelly.  Yum, a trip to Crossett means, above all else, good food.

It was Chester's birthday on Thursday, his 74th.  So we celebrated all weekend.
He says he feels every bit as good as he did at 44, and furthermore, has absolutely no stress.  Life is good at 74.  I am jealous.

Saturday morning at 7:00 I took my ritual trip to the woods.  It's maybe a hundred yards from the house to the stock pond.  Then the woods are maybe 50 yards deep and 400 yards wide behind the pond, but woods they are.  And familiar friends of mine through the years.  "Right here," Andy says, "is where I killed my deer that time."  And he remembers the details of where he was and where the deer was and how I was walking toward him and he signaled for me to get down.  Then I saw him take careful aim and boom.  That mean old man-eating, crop-destroying, oversized rat with horns, bit the dust.  And Andy became a man.  That's what it takes in Crossett.  Rite of passage.  The woods were quiet this Labor Day weekend. No squirrels.  No deer.  Hardly any birds.  The crickets were chirping quite loudly though.  And the pine seedlings are trying to take over.  Daddy's is a mixed forest with lots of hardwoods and a good sprinkling of towering pines, pointing 100 feet in the air.  If he is not careful, the pines will take over.

Last night Gale and Sandy came out.  His daughter, Niki and her beau, Clay, came a little late.  Gale entertained everybody as usual in his best Jeff Foxworthy-esque way, telling tales of his dog who can't stand the heat, injuries at the mill, Sandy's escapades in trying to find something for him to eat one night, and the great BB gun war when he was 12 and I was 8.  He shot me in the earlobe and that put an end to our BB gun war.  He can make any story funny.  The boy oughta be on stage.

I regaled them with tales of woe and car repairs recounting to the penny every expenditure for the past four months.  When you tell the story and heap them up all at once, disaster piled upon disaster, it gets pretty funny.  Especially if you are not the one having to pay all the bills.

Late Saturday afternoon, we took our leisurely stroll down to the stock pond (yeah, the one where there is no stock) to feed the catfish.  Daddy throws several buckets of fish feed out on the calm water and directly the catfish start breaking the water and grabbing supper.  Pretty soon the water is rolling with catfish everywhere and the two huge carp whose real purpose in life is to keep the algae from the edge of the pond.

My task for the weekend was to put an end to the earthly life of several turtles which have invaded the pond.  They are great targets for 22 shooting.  Just perch on the bank quietly and soon they will pop their little target-heads up out of the water and wait for you to take pot shots at them.

Daddy is a convert to Round-up, just like me.  He has killed the weeds around the pond.  So late Saturday he set fire to the dried weeds and grass.

At the front edge of the stock pond stands (or stood) the remains of a gigantic white oak, probably 300 years old.  The tree died some 10 or 15 years ago and has slowly lost it's limbs until now it is just a bark-less trunk with a few bare limbs.  The grass fire made it's way to the bottom of the ancient oak and with a little coaxing from Daddy, the tree caught fire.  The hollow tree made a perfect chimney for the fire, and it quickly took over.  Everybody in the family came to watch into the night as the blaze flamed from a hole in the base, and another about 15 feet up and then blasted out the very top of the tree.  The most fascinating burning tree you ever saw.  After two or three hours, the tree toppled to the ground ending it's 300 year sentinel over the pond.  It burned through the night and was still smoking on Sunday when we pulled out of the driveway.

Andy had a big stockpile of fireworks left from the 4th of July, so he spent a couple hours after dark finishing up his Independence Day celebration.  I'll bet the neighbors were wondering if we knew that July 4th was past and Christmas is still a long way off.

While "up-town" (in Crossett you go up-town, not downtown), Will had money burning a hole in his pocket and since he couldn't find his favorite thing to waste money on (Magic the Gathering cards), he up-and-purchased the Star Wars Trilogy Revised Edition.  So the rest of the weekend was filled with Luke, Darth Vader, wookies, and ewoks.  Well, Andy came prepared too.  He brought Top Gun.  He envisions himself a fighter pilot.  So the idyllic pastoral farm scene was interspersed with galactic star fighters and F-16s.

Oooohh, you shudda seen us asinging in church on Sunday.  There we were in all our glory, up on the platform, microphone aimed at my guitar, microphone aimed at us, audio tape recorder agoing, video tape recorder agoing, and the crowd of fifty people waiting eagerly.  Mickey begins his picking pattern and there we go.  In fact, we did better than we did at my church.  Got at least 4 Amens.  How about that?   A four-amen song!  Well, my Mother and Daddy liked it, so that's what counts.   The song is the theme song from River Wild, so Sarah has rented the movie tonight.  Guess we'll hear how it was supposed to sound.

It was a typical weekend in Crossett with all it's gossip, good food, and down home entertainment.  Sometimes it just does a body good to go back and touch base with the soil from which you were sprung.  Home.  Home is a good place.