Bulls and Laughter
Upon the untimely, early death of my father, we moved from Seattle to the tiny burg of Kilmichael, MS, population 300, on Saturday night. But when we first arrived, we stayed at our Uncle Doyle’s house out in Poplar Creek, MS, an even small community gifted with a small general store with a gas pump. We lay have well have been on another planet. Behind Uncle Doyle’s house, there was a smelly ditch with a big plank over it leading to the barnyard. In the late afternoons, we were allowed to cross the ditch to feed the chickens a few ears of corn that we would carefully scrub off. While this was fun, we were amazed to learn where eggs came from, we were warned to watch out for the “old King snake” that lived in the corn crib, so we never went very far into the dark corn crib. I can still smell the musty odor of the corn and the barnyard. But there was also a big bull that we were warned to stay far away from. Every evening the cows would come up for feeding and milking, and one of us wa