From the Desk of The DBeazy One-Man-Think-Tank

I had a conversation the other day with someone who has been a follower of my site almost from the start.  I apologized for not posting as frequently as I need to and gave the excuse that COVID-19 had kind of hindered efforts on my part.  Then she told me something very revealing. She said, “I’ve noticed that your stories have taken on a more serious tone lately. I could tell.” I listened, I heard, and I believed her on that point. Immediately I knew that the next two stories I had planned were exactly as she had noted, only darker and more solemn. These will have to wait for now. We need a lift. So I’ll push the darkness back down to its place and lighten up this site a bit.

So DBeazy the blogger took a moment to consider ideas. I thought something quick, uplifting; yet, thought-provoking might be the ticket. DBeazy the writer never writes about himself, though elements of his style slip through. But DBeazy the writer sparked the idea for this trio of stories since by themselves, couldn’t stand, but as triplets, the story flies. Or at least I think so.

So here are three stories. A sampling of experiences that my twin brother and I lived you might say. I hope you enjoy.

 

 

Blow Outs and Missed Opportunity

 

The time would have been sometimes in the early spring of our sophomore year.  Johnny, my twin brother and I were on the high school basketball team but didn’t make the playoff traveling team when District Tournament time rolled around. That year, the District Tournament was held in Tylertown, Ms.  West Marion High school was in Foxworth, Ms.  We lived almost dead center between the two schools. And in the late ’70s, gas was expensive, period.

Johnny and I would not be riding the bus as a part of the team but we were certainly going to the game. I’ll not call names, but Johnny arranged for two of the junior cheerleaders to ride with us. The problem was our mother didn’t think it necessary for us to ride to Foxworth, then to Tylertown, and back. When Mama spoke, she meant it, sort of. Johnny and I hatched a plan to wait until the last moment so that Mama wouldn’t realize that we were going to Foxworth first, and then to the game.

So we waited until late and jumped into our 1977 Ford LTD and hauled ass toward Foxworth. The LTD was our first car and notable for its two large bench seats, and for its, DBeazy installed under dash 8-track tape player.  We barreled down Highway 586, Johnny behind the wheel and me on the floorboard trying to re-tape some of the wires so that the speakers wouldn’t distort with every bump in the road. We were making about 85 in the straight-a-way leading up past old Shep Taylor’s store when we had a blowout, and I almost jumped into the backseat because I thought the 8-track had blown up.

By the time we changed the tire with a spare, that was suspect at best and made Foxworth, the bus had left, our cheerleaders on board. Sadly the potential of showing up at the game with cheerleaders on our arm had vanished; we drove the speed limit all the way to Tylertown.

Our spirits gave over to defeat, the score at the end of the night was Trojan basketball with a win and a huge “what might have been” for the twins.

 

Riding a Bicycle Late

 

Johnny and I decided that a campout was in order. But at 15 or 16 years old, a campout was NOT a campout in the traditional sense. It was a chance to do stuff after curfew, which was the entire point of the matter. We’d pack up our camping gear and go do all of the stuff we weren’t allowed to do, or to be able to do stuff that we were allowed to do later.

We informed our Mom of our plan and began loading the truck with everything that made our story credible, and then I distracted Mama while Johnny loaded an old 10-speed bicycle on the truck. We told her a general location of our “campsite” and we fired up the truck and took off.

The plan was already made, and we felt good about it. In order to make the campout story plausible, we had to leave before dark, giving us an hour to go over everything again. Filled with the knowledge that we had considered every contingency, we waited. Then just before dark, we set out.

We drove about 12 miles in a westward direction and made a couple of passes looking for a place to hide the bicycle. With the bike safely hidden, I dropped Johnny off. Yep, you guessed it.  He was sneaking in to see a girl.

I headed about 28 miles in the other direction past the area where we would camp. Yes, that’s right. I was also going to see a girl. The plan was that he would ride the bike about four or five miles back to a school and I would pick him up there just after midnight.

So I sat up with my girl on the front porch for hours. We had covered everything in our plan we were so sure of it. Except for one crucial little detail, that really set me up and so totally derailed the plan. It was so simple. How did I not think of this one tiny detail? And to this day, in my mind, I can remember sitting on that porch and hearing the National Anthem play when the TV station went off the air at midnight. I heard it but it didn’t register, the detail in question was that I had forgotten to wear a watch.

Sometime later, I bolted upright, said my goodbyes, and peeled out and hauled ass. I passed the turnoff to go the camping spot and kept going, thinking I would catch Johnny along the way. I made it to the pick-up spot, no sign of Johnny; I kept going, frantically hoping that I would see him on the road.  I knew that the only way to be sure that he hadn’t done the same thing I had done was to go to the spot where we had hidden the bike. The bike was gone.  I reversed direction and flew back toward the campsite. My mind began to spin, almost in a panic. Before reaching the road leading to the campsite, the thought occurred to me that he might have ridden on home, throwing me under the bus in the process. I barely slowed enough to make the turn, and then found the field. About 300 yards in I saw the reflectors of the bike. There stood Johnny and to say that he was angry would be an understatement, to say the least.

Back at home, I had to get a shower and get dressed because I had been invited to go with my girl to a family reunion and she and her parents were picking me up.  I walked out, got in the car, and said my hellos. The girl’s father put the car into reverse, and I caught his eye in the rearview mirror looking at me. He was a serious man. He said, “I wouldn’t have said that I would pick you up if I had known that you were going to camp out on my front porch until 2 O’clock in the morning.”

 

The Runaway Bean Truck

 

My Dad was a school teacher and a part-time farmer. Not so much part-time though. We planted several hundred acres in soybeans, corn, and winter wheat. The fact meant that Avon Earl Bracey had two full-time employees in my brother Johnny and I. We worked weekends and after school when we weren’t playing sports.

One Autumn Saturday evening, Johnny and I were getting dressed to go to town to hang out with friends or whatever we had planned for the evening. Daddy had left the combine, (a large piece of farming equipment); in a field with its hopper filled with soybeans that he had harvested that day. Fearing that it might rain, he instructed us to take the old soybean dump truck to the field and move the soybeans from the combine to the truck and bring it home and cover it.

We were pissed off about it but didn’t argue. We just set out to do the task. I’ve thought about this many times over the years and for the life of me, I can’t remember why, but Johnny jumped in the driver’s seat. This is odd to me because he normally drove our other truck and wasn’t familiar with the truck we were in. At any rate, he fired up the old truck and we left. Upon leaving our driveway, the road runs downhill for maybe a quarter of a mile and comes to a three-way intersection where there is a stop sign. Johnny was livid about our task and tried to see just how fast he could get the truck in that quarter of a mile. I reminded him that it was hit or miss as to whether the brakes would work on the truck to which he informed me exactly what I should go do to myself. And in a rather harsh way, I might add. Luckily the brakes worked, we made the turn and I began to instruct him of the need to pump the brakes prior to a stop. Again, his profanity towards me was superlative.

With the task complete, we started for home. In a bigger hurry than ever, Johnny drove the old truck like Godzilla was behind us. The road came to a three-way junction ahead, but instead of a “T” shape, there was a curve to the right immediately preceding the stop. We had not spoken a word since the cuss out, and I was just along for the ride. As we approached the curve, I knew that we were going too fast, but refused to say anything. But as we came closer, I saw movement from the corner of my eye. I thought Johnny was just being an ass by pretending to pump the brakes. I looked his way and he was staring at me with eyes as big as saucers. No brakes! We rounded the curve way too fast and immediately saw the stop sign. Johnny began to attempt a left-hand turn, which was a bad decision, given that the curve had the road banked upward a little to the left. I was screaming for him to attempt a turn to the right as I looked for oncoming traffic and tried to find something to hold onto. To make matters worse, the highway we were turning onto was banked away from us. We made the turn, tires squalling and instead of a skid, the rear end was bouncing, I guess from the weight of the soybeans. Then the right side came off the ground some as the truck was about to roll over. Fortunately, as the left rear tires slid off of the highway, there was a little ridge caused by erosion, and when the tires hit the ridge, it slammed the truck back down on all ten wheels and we had survived the turn. We continued up the hill, found a level place to turn around, and eased the old truck home with no brakes.

As our nerves calmed, we agreed that it would be better if we didn’t mention the incident to Daddy. We only informed him that the truck had no brakes. Telling of the incident would have upset Mom so it remained our secret until now.

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