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Show Blue Run/64 muscadine vine grew up the side of an oak, twenty or thirty feet into the sky. The wild grapes ripened before fall, so that sparrows would light high up in the vines late of the afternoon. They'd suck juice from sun-fermented berries, get snockered as Cooter Brown. Those afternoons, me, Joey and Jimmy would sit out in the back pasture and watch sparrows suck muscadine wine until- -one at a time-they'd fall from the high spot clear to the ground. These little birds falling, they'd thud on the ground and lay knocked out for a while, then stand up, shake the dust from their silver wings and fly up again. The funniest thing So we lived in this gargantuan rent house nobody'd insure. A hundred years old, the place was wood frame with pine floors that shone if scrubbed. The fuse box hissed and popped and all the big white columns out front had wood rot. But the countryside was out of this world-we had room to breathe and the boys could grow up outside in the pastures where wild grapes grew up the sides of trees and even the birds seemed drunk on love We could have horses, chickens, maybe hay the back pasture. Everything seemed game. O.W. got on with Greyhound Bus Lines and we got free tickets for an actual vacation to sunny California. Some of Dee's people had moved West during the great migration of Arkies and Okies during dustbowl times, so we had relatives out there with orange trees and avacados growing in their yards O W. was a dashing Greyhound man, dressed in blue trousers and ironed shirt, the hat all jaunty like an airline captain. He'd say into the driver's microphone, "Next stop, Hot Springs. Famous for hot water and horses." His speaking voice would be sweet and deep. "Please visit McClard's Barbecue," he'd say. "Where you'll save ten-percent with your charter stub." Five days a week he ran to Oaklawn Downs, this big tour bus full of amateur gamblers in bright sweaters, people from the Heights and Cammack Village with money to burn. O.W.'s a good driver-he'd |