The Hills Are Alive With the Essence of HICKery

One thing about living in the country...you're exposed to HICKiness on a daily basis. And I'm not just talking about my own personal Hick. Oh, he leads the pack right now, of course.

This morning (and by morning, I mean at noon:15) I opened the front door to look over towards Hick's Shackytown and see what he was up to. He had mentioned putting a roof on his new freight car shack, but I know it already had a roof, so maybe he was just waterproofing it. Anyhoo...that requires Hick on a ladder, which is for sure a marriage made in not-heaven. He gets dizzy when he tilts his head, even though he (and by he, I mean our insurance provider) paid a fortune for that revolutionary treatment several years ago of hanging him upside down and vibrating his skull. Yep. I know you're as shocked as I was that it didn't work.

Anyhoo...I looked out and saw nary a Hick in sight. Just his car parked on Shackytown Road, and Puppy Jack over by the BARn field, looking my way, trying to sniff on the breeze whether I was holding a paper plate stocked with treats for him and my SWEET, SWEET Juno. Of course he didn't come running, because the air was filled with the scent of HICKory smoke. So I called Hick on his cell phone.

"Where are you? Do you want anything from town?"

"Burning my brush pile. No. I ate those two legs and two wings in the refrigerator."

"When? I didn't see any evidence of that."

"You must have been in the shower. Just now. I brought it over here."

"WHAT? What did you do with the bones?"

"I gave them to Juno. You said Jack could'nt have any."

"How fair is THAT? Jack didn't get anything?"

"I tore off a little piece of meat and gave it to him."

"What are you doing today?"

"I have a little more work to do on my shed. Then I might drain part of the water out of the pool. I might take a ride. Why?"

"Because I'm sure you stink like smoke. I don't want you sitting on the furniture watching football, or driving my new car while you stink."

"I'll probably take the Oldsmobile."

"Okay. I'm going to town."

The thing about HICKory smoke is that it smells great on grilled meat, but not so much on upholstery.

On the way to town, I was almost head-onned by a jacked-up white Ford F350 with those side mirrors that telescope out. I had just crested a little hill in front of the house [FLASHBACK ALERT: where I saw a big bag of dogfood and stopped to make not-driving-yet Genius go pick it up. I knew Hick would be proud of us for finding free stuff along the road. Obviously, this giant bag of dry dogfood had bounced off the back of somebody's truck, and was laying there by the ditch, free for the scavenging. Genius trotted up the road to grab it while I sat with T-Hoe backed into the last turnaround driveway before the low water bridge in flood stage. WHOOPSIE! Genius grabbed the obviously empty bag, and the hounds of not-heaven shot baying from two houses. I've never seen that boy move so fast. He hauled his nearly-nipped butt back into T-Hoe with a sarcastic, "Thanks, Mom."

Anyhoo...I had just crested that little hill, and saw the Death Truck bearing down on me. It was a short straight stretch of unmarked blacktop. He still had time to move from the center of the road back to his side. But NO! Death Truck continued onto MY side of the pavement. That's dirty pool. I should be entitled to half the road! The half on my side. There was nowhere to pull off. Even the ditch wouldn't get me off the road completely. So I honked. That's what horns are for on automobiles, right? To warn other drivers?

Death Truck finally got the message, and whipped back over out of my unmarked territory just in the nick of time. Head-on crash averted. Sideswipe narrowly avoided. Whew!

But THEN do you know what happened? There I was, past that demon Death Truck, counting my blessings that I still had my life and my wheels and a 44 oz Diet Coke in my future...when Death Truck HONKED!

That's right! Already past me. Nothing in his way. Death Truck HONKED! Just to be a butthole, I imagine. Like I was in the wrong for getting him back on his own side of the road to escape a manslaughter charge.

You know what? EFF that EFFING EFFER!

Thank goodness Louis Armstrong came on the radio with "Wonderful World" to sooth the savage Val.