If you pay any attention to the news today, you are getting a belly full of stories of how divided we are. It is as if everyone is bound and determine to take the “united” out of United States.
Well, friends, I am here to offer you a ray of hope.
My cousin Benny.
Now Benny doesn’t talk politics much. He once observed, “I’m not what you call a liberal,” but that was as far as he went.
Benny spent his life in law enforcement, and he tends to see issues in that context. Break the law and you go down. Not much gray area there.
If you have an urge to go someplace you shouldn’t, and want to come out alive, take Benny. Well over six feet tall and carrying 250-plus pounds, he is much a man. Curly blond hair going gray, matching mustache and goatee, he has an affinity for black t-shirts embossed with slogans like “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” and “careful, contents under pressure.”
Like me, he is getting up in years, but in his younger days, when he got home from work, he’d go out riding on his bicycle. Helped him unwind.
Now Benny likes snakes. Well, actually, he likes to kill snakes, skin them, and cure the hides. Don’t ask why, just keep up with me.
One day, late summer, Benny was pedaling along when he saw a rattlesnake in the road. Naturally Benny took out his derringer (if Benny has on clothes he has a gun) and shoots at the snake. He misses. So, he tries to run over it. The snake takes this none too kindly and bites the tire, hangs a fang, and is caught fast.
Picture the scene (visuals are important here). A massive man who looks like a fugitive from rednecks-R-us rolling a bike back and forth over a snake with its fangs hung on the tire.
Up drives this black couple. They see the situation and the man, like any good Southerner would, asks Benny, “You need any help?”
“Got a gun?” Benny asked. (Not a dumb question, down in Dixie. ‘Course he does.)
The black man pulls out a .40-caliber automatic, hands it to good ‘ol boy personified, who takes it and shoots the snake — a head shot. Impressed, the black man asks the white man if he’d like a drink.
‘Course he would.
Snake killing is hot work.
So, the black man reaches in his cooler, and pulls out a “Big Orange” for each of them. Then the black man, the black woman, and the white man kick back, cool off, and talk about snakes and guns and stuff.
Now that, dear hearts, is how to get along.
Find a common ground, celebrate, enjoy.
We need more of that.
Harvey H. (Hardy) Jackson is Professor Emeritus at Jacksonville State University and a regular contributor to Alabama Living. He can be reached at [email protected].
