Teasers from Skinny-Dipping with Alligators: A Redneck Odyssey. A satire in couplets and in the East Texas vernacular of my youth.
Homer is a recluse who lives alone in the Piney Woods with a bunch of pythons and a wildcat. On the run, Johnny (the narrator), Virg(il) and Bea(trice) have holed up in his retreat after contretemps which will be revealed sooner or later..
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Nowadays Noose was no longer the zoo
It was. It’d become a fine place to raise
Big families. S’how come Swamp Carnival stays
So long and comes twice t’a year. Young’uns
Got nothing else to do. Sure, it’s tons
of sport to frolic in the bayous with gators,
Snapping turtles, whatever the Creator’s
Put swimmin’ in there — cottonmouth water
Moccasins! — things you don’t want your daughter
Or son to play with. But Swamp Carnival
Was good, clean family fun. Nothing carnal.
No kootch shows. Though I’d bet on this:
A road show that don’t smell of puke and piss
Ain’t much fun either….
*
Homer liked his meat, though he cared which kind.
He preferred his squirrel to birds, didn’t mind
Armadillo or things fishy. I learned
That like me when a boy, he yearned
For crawdad gumbo, victuals we caught
By knowing how to tease them out
Of the ditches from their holes behind
Mud clump mounds with bacon bits on twine.
Bat was Homer’s meat of choice. “Can’t stand
To shoot them, and they’re hard to catch by hand.
I make do with nutria, a tasty swamp
Delight.” It was pretty good the stew he whomped
Up with those water rats, not as good as cow.
Between the two of Bea and ‘im, we had good chow.
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More to come….