Slim Randles' Home Country

“Memorates me of the summer of ’67...."

[August 16, 2014]  Every hunter knows places to look for in the woods ... places where game is more likely to be approached or surprised. It’s that way with Windy Wilson, too.

Windy is a hunter, but he just hunts audiences, and he does believe in the catch-and-release system. Only with Windy the release comes only after he’s had his say. One of those places is a waist-high brick wall just outside the doors to the post office. It’s one of Windy’s favorite ambush spots. The game traffic gets heavy there around lunch hour, too. Windy waited until he had three people coming out at the same time.

“Hot enough for ya?” he said, jovially. Not content to wait for an answer, he just dove right in.

“Memorates me of the summer of ’67. Hot? I’ll say! Why, you know ol’ Miller … had the dairy? Sure you do. It got so hot the cows decided not to give milk. Hard to get more than a quart apiece from them old girls and it tasted more like sour cream.

“Business liked to shut down comprehensively, too. Ever’body was down at Lewis Creek cooling off. Back then we didn’t have the air conditioneering we enjoy today. Nossir. It was Lewis Creek or sweat, that’s what it was … and the danged chickens quit laying, too.

"You see, when it gets real hot like that, nobody wants to work. Couldn’t get the dogs out of the shade with dynamite and a crowbar! One mornin’ there, I went out to get in the truck and fricasseed myself a fourth-degree burn on my hand when I grabbed the door handle!”

Windy saw they were getting ready to bolt.

“So when someone asks you about a hot summer. Sixty-seven. You just memorialize that, will ya. Sixty-seven. And you can tell ‘em I said so.”

[Text from file received from Slim Randles]

Windy’s Words of Wisdom is an important part of the “Home Country Hour” podcast at www.slimrandles.com.