I JUST DROVE BY

Have you ever driven by the old place where you grew up. I lived in a little red three room house my first seven years near the saw mill and the meat packing plant. Up across the cinders was Edcock's feed and flour store across from the tin barn. My dad had a bicycle and he and my brother and mom , all four of us, would go to the movies every friday night on the bike. I rode in the basket. At age four my dad got a used '38 ford. No keys, just a button to start it. No door locks. Nobody stole cars those days. My brother and I would use my uncle Bill's push mower to mow the grass. When I was eight we moved to the country to a five room house on crooked bayou. We had to walk through the woods going toward town. We had a Five and Dime and a Ben Franklin and a Woolworth store. It was a railroad town. Had a stop light too. My job at home was to feed the livestock every morning before breakfast. Used to put Brer Rabbit "surp" on my hot cakes. You could patch the asphalt drive way with Brer Rabbit "surp". Brer Rabbit "surp" gives you the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. It was Brer Rabbit "surp" that convinced me to leave home at an early age, 12. In 1972 Judy and I drove by that little red three room house. After my mother died I never returned to that small town. The little red house where I lived is long gone. Cokes were a nickel then and movies cost 14 cents. I had a paper route. Papers cost me a nickel, and I sold them for a dime. After I sold enough papers I was able to buy me that cap pistol at the Five and Dime and I was able to buy me three tamales from the tamale man. And that cap pistol; it's now a 1873 cattlemen's colt 45, single action, seven and half inch barrel. You've seen pictures of Judy wearing it. So in some ways things have changed and in some ways things are still the same. Loved ones pass on, friends come and go, home is not like it used to be, but Used to Be's are never like they used to be. You know how it goes, you win some, you lose some, and sometimes it rains.

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Tags: jack nicholson, judy, rainydog, shirley maclain, terms of endearment
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Location: 32176 (Show Map)

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