at the prosthetic leg


I was home on leave for Thanksgiving in the early eighties and hadn’t been home for a while. So my best buddy Harold called me at momma’s and daddy’s and asked me if I wanted to go deer hunting and said heck yeah. We were going to the camp in Bullock County that we hunted in high school so I was no stranger to where we were going. We finished up Thanksgiving meal and visiting with the family late that evening so I headed to camp around 10:00. About a hour and a half later I turn off of highway 29 on the county roads to our camp. It was foggy and misty rain so I was driving really slow. About thirty minutes later, I see this massive size fella with a perm in his hair and huge revolver on his hip hitch hiking. I speed up to get around him thinking what kind of crazy SOB would be hitch hiking on a dark foggy county road in Bullock County at midnight. Probably some crazy homo.

So I get to the camp and happy to see my buddies and I asked where Harold was since he got this hunt together. Woody said that they hadn’t seen him but he left a note saying he went to hang a tree lounger so he wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. Everybody had gone in different directions after high school and we hadn’t seen each other for over a year or so. Well about 45 minutes later we see this massive size fella with a perm in his hair and huge revolver on his hip walking up the road to our camp cussing at me. It was my buddy Harold that I hadn’t seen in over a year and had no idea that he got a permanent in his hair because his girlfriend at Louisiana Tech persuaded him to. He got stuck and had to walk back and was pissed that I didn’t stop. I said that you looked like a homo with the stiff curly hair toting a pistol and there was no way I was stopping to find out. We laughed all weekend at his hair even though he was a giant of a man but the kindest and most caring friend that I ever had. I sure do miss him.