Circular Tides

Visit with Sander Van Okra

   I was out Swamp Road the other day to see my old friend, Sander Van Okra. Sander’s lived on the edge of the Okefenokee all his life and has collected a wheelbarrow full of wisdom which he is usually willing to dispense to all who will listen. Now, May felt like July and it looked like an early summer if thermometers on porches were to be believed. I turned off the pavement and jounced along until I saw the wooden mail box that stood at the end of Sander’s driveway. I slowed and pulled in and headed up the drive.
   I went through the usual drill on approaching Sander’s ramshackle old house with the wide, shaded veranda. Even though I could see Sander in his favorite rocking chair, I honked the horn and stood by the truck so he could see who it was. All this in the spirit of preventing a load of buckshot being sent my way. He peered in my direction, then gave me the come on up to the porch wave.
   Sander’s dogs came out to greet me and I was ready with some treats I’d brought with me. I reached the porch amidst a flurry of barks, yips, and tail lashings. I sat down on one of the comfortable porch chairs and waited for Sander to speak. He sipped from a mason jar and seemed in no hurry to talk. Finally, he shifted in his rocking chair and told me, “You know boy, all this new fangled electronic stuff, just beats all. It’s makin’ folks downright unsociable.”
   He still calls me ‘boy’ even though I’ve had cataract surgery and go to more funerals than weddings.
   “These days, folks don’t want to visit or have a nice Sunday drive, they’d rather sit on their butts and fiddle with their phones. They call ’em ’smart,’ but I think they’re a menace. Folks don’t even know how to wave anymore.”
   Sander paused for a breath and a sip of whatever was in the mason jar he had in his hand. “You still got some couth, boy. You didn’t come bargin‘ up here like a revenuer huntin‘ shine. If you had, you’d a gotten some buckshot sent your way.”
   I let Sander continue, as I could feel a rant coming. I wasn’t wrong.
   “People don’t even know your basic waves these days. They’ve forgotten the standard, howdy do wave you used to see when you drove by folks’ houses. They don’t use the I see you, but I don’t have time to talk wave anymore. The old half-salute wave, given to old friends, has been shelved for these dang emoticon things.”

   For an old swamper Sander is surprisingly computer literate. He went on to say, “The don’t bother me wave, the three-fingered wave, and the subtle finger flex wave have been lost in the headlong dash towards what, I don’t know. Most folks just ain’t as sociable as they used to be. Seems like a lot of finger pointin’ and name callin’ these days instead of friendly conversation. It’s wearisome, I tell you.”
   Sander paused to give one of the dogs a neck scratch while I enjoyed the pleasant breeze. I told him, “I couldn’t agree more, Sander. We’re not as civilized as we used to be, at least it seems that way.”
   “I’ll tell you what else is not very civilized lately, it’s the weather. Now, its never been what I’d call cooperative, ask any farmer you know. But we had a hurricane last September, then a foot-and-a-half of snow in January. Folks best be prepared. Truth be told, most Southerners are ‘good scouts’ when it comes to being prepared. We’re not prone to needin’ other folk’s help, but we’re always willing to lend a hand to a neighbor or a friend if they need it.”
   “I agree.”
   “Boy, I’ll tell you something else, when the chips are down like during that hurricane, Southerners rise to the occasion. People lookin’ out for others, not just themselves.”
   “It does restore your faith in humanity,” I said.
   “You know boy, I’m old enough to tell you that things change. And I can tell you that the weather has changed since I was a young’un. That old baseball feller said it right, ‘you can observe a lot by watching,’ and I agree. What I’ve observed is a change. Some crops don’t grow as well as they did thirty years ago. Some crops grow better. Things change, it’s as simple as that. Trying to ignore change is like trying to deter a determined woman. You might as well try to stop a hundred-car freight train on a dime. It ain’t gonna happen.”
   “Change does seem to be a part of life, sometimes good, sometimes bad,” I said, trying to stay in the middle of the road.
Sander continued, “You know boy, it’s the politicians that give politics a bad name. Why I remember back in ’56, ol’ I.M. Lyon was runnin’ for office not to mention from some bill collectors and he went down to Ft. Mudge to campaign. Now word had passed through the swamp that a bona fide politician was a comin’, and all the critters turned out for the speech.

   Now those critters tended to be a splinter group of Democrats leaning farther left, than right. They were concerned with issues such as equality for minority groups, pollution, conservation, and animal rights way before they became trendy causes.”
   Sander paused for a sip from the mason jar, then he continued, “Now, originally the campaign stop was scheduled for Ft. Stewart but somebody spilled coffee on the schedule and somebody else said it’s a smudge, which somebody else thought was Ft. Mudge. And so, as fate would have it, ol’ I.M. found himself addressing a curious group of ‘native Americans’ that memorable day.
   Sander reached for his corncob pipe and packed a bowl with Blended Georgia Goodleaf. As he puffed on his pipe, he continued the lesson.
   “At least ol’ Jimmy admitted that he was just one of the boys when it came to ‘lusting.’ This new fangled bunch has sold us all out. Why old Machiavelli couldn’t tell these boys nuthin.”
I sat quietly in the hand-hewn cypress chair, unprepared for the educational outburst. Sander took a sip and continued,      “Boy, government is of and by the people and if you let politicians run things, then you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself. Harry Truman had it right, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’.”

   Who could argue with that kind of logic? Sander plowed on like a mule that just spotted a Molly at the end of the row.
   “There are a whole lotta ways to sell it and politicians have just about exhausted all of them. It’s clear as a jug of moonshine, everybody wants somethin’ fer nothing. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, boy.”
    I could only nod in mute agreement as I tried to remember my last free lunch. Failing to do so, I silently gazed at the late-Spring wildflowers that provided a colorful carpet to the front yard.
   “I’ll tell you something else, boy. It’s getting harder to find good grits.”
   I felt like I needed my jar topped off at this apocryphal news. I felt a tremor run through me at the thought of a scarcity of good grits.
   “Boy, I was raised on the three major breakfast foods, grits, bourbon, and red-eye gravy. It’s a Northern conspiracy, all this talk of how bad Southern cookin’ is for you. I’ve yet to see an SEC football team that looked puny. And as far as that co-lester stuff clogging’ up your veins, my Uncle Jim-Rob-Bob told me that a plate of grits could keep you going in the backer field all day. The only thing that was gonna build up in you was another appetite. The only case of grits being harmful that I recall was when Eula Mae Teetotaler, the widow down the road, passed out at breakfast one morning and went face-down in a big bowl of grits she’d just fixed and suffocated.”
   I noticed the dogs had crept under the porch; thick, dark cumulus clouds were beginning to pile up in the western sky. You could feel in the air that rain wasn’t far away.
   “I reckon we’re fixin’ to get some weather,” Sander said. “I better get you a batch of my latest nerve bracer to take back with you.”
   While I waited I reflected on our conversation and marveled at Sander’s ability as a raconteur, a teller of tales carrying on the time-honored tradition of Southern story-telling with a hint of the Socratic method mixed in with the grits. Sander returned with a paper shopping bag and gave it to me.
   “Medicinal libation, boy. Use it sparingly.”
   I thanked him for the rheumatism medicine, shook hands, and headed for the truck. The first large drops of rain began to splatter the windshield as I turned on the blacktop and drove toward Traintown.