No Shirt, No Shoes...No Problem!

by Jeff Foxworthy

  Another time, we caught a bunch of fish and brought them back to the house in a bucket. I’m not sure why, but for some reason we forgot about them. We should have cleaned the fish because real sportsmen never keep anything they’re not going to eat. But something more important came up—probably a car wreck we had to see, or maybe somebody’s field was on fire—and we forgot our catch.

  The next day we discovered our bucket of really dead fish. That was the first and only time we played fishball. One guy batted, another pitched, the third narrated.

  “Here’s the windup, the stretch and…fish on the way. Ohhh! He was looking for a catfish, threw him a bream.”

  When the batter connected it was really disgusting. There’s nothing like the way a fish disintegrates when it meets a Louisville Slugger going the other way.

  “Oh! He got all of that fish!”

  The pitcher got covered with scales from head to foot. I think that’s why fishball never really caught on. Plus, it’s hard to turn a double play when the fin is between first and second, and the head’s just tripled down the right field line. However, you do get a truer fish bounce on AstroTurf than on grass.

  We made important discoveries while fishing. For instance, you can pee off the side of a boat and still catch a fish. Whereas, if you pee out of your deer stand, your day is pretty much over. Also, with fishing you pretty much eliminate the possibility of dying every time out. You’re not going to get shot. No hunter will mistake you for game. Even if you’re a kid wearing a moose costume to school on Halloween, it’s a good bet that carrying your lunch box where it can easily be seen will keep even the most aggressive sportsmen—like those waiting for a deer to wander near the elementary school—from firing spontaneously. But if it’s safety you’re after, I’d stick to fishing, where the worst injury is a fish-hook in the ear.

  Trout fishing involved a practice called “looping.” It’s not about tying lures but about getting the best position in the river. The idea is to always be upstream of everyone else. So if you saw one of your buddies going around you, you’d cut up through the woods and go around him. Not only did you then get first crack at the fish but you also totally screwed up the catch for anyone downstream. The problem is that fishing spaces you out. So it’s pretty disheartening to see a guy upstream, loop him, and discover that you’ve been looped by everybody.

  Should nature call when you’re out in the wild, you have to use whatever accommodations are handy. Especially at night. On one fishing trip we all had a big argument with Buddy Hammond about how far away from the tent we should be to use the “restroom.” It was a matter of honor. You were supposed to take your toilet paper and go out in the woods somewhere. We knew that if you could still touch a tent flap, you weren’t far enough away. But not Buddy.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Buddy! We gotta sleep here, you dumbass.”

  Other than that, Buddy was the Marlon Perkins of outdoor hygiene. I’ve always admired Buddy for that, and for sharing his wisdom. If you forgot your toilet tissue, he knew which leaves made the best substitutes, which had a nice texture, and which wouldn’t just crinkle and disintegrate. He also knew which leaves were poisonous. The stories of how he acquired that knowledge would make your skin crawl.

  Burns never listened to Buddy, or learned from him. Before I left the house, the last thing I always did was grab a roll of paper and stick it in my coverall pocket. Burns, for some reason, never grasped this concept. When we were deer hunting, we could put Burns on his stand before dawn and come back four hours later and he’d be wearing a shirt with only one sleeve.

  We knew the answer even before we asked the question.

  “Oh, man, I had to go bad.”

  “But that shirt cost twenty bucks! Toilet paper is eight cents, you idiot.”

  You know the cut-off sleeve look that Bruce Springsteen made popular? I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d found a shirt Burns had worn hunting twice, at a garage sale.

  My father always used to fish with my grandfather, and both of them used to fish with me. Now that I’m a father I sometimes fish with my two young daughters. Just carrying on the tradition, I guess. Last month I learned you can get goldfish out of an aquarium using a Dustbuster. That’s the most efficient fish-catching device I’ve ever seen. Next time we go to the lake, I’m taking a Sears ShopVac. Not only will we catch our limit, but we’ll leave the outdoors just a little cleaner than we found it.

  Hunting and fishing are fine, but to really be a man you had to chew tobacco. I first tried it in the ninth grade. Everybody else on the baseball team did it so I figured I might as well. I adapted pretty well, although it’s never been the most charming taste in the world.

  For those of you not familiar with the wonderful world of chewing, here’s a few facts you ought to know:

  1. Chewing tobacco is not pipe tobacco. It’s more like wet, sticky leaves. Okay, mulch.

  2. A real chewer will open his pouch with a screwdriver, stick his face in it, and just pull out the tobacco with his teeth. Most of us aren’t that sophisticated, or willing to answer impertinent questions if someone sees us trying this in public.

  3. Most people can only chew on one side of their mouth or the other. It’s a lot like masturbation: There’s not a lot of swapping off. You pick your side and you stick with it.

  4. To get a chew going you pull out a handful and pretty much eat it. You put it all into your mouth and you work it around with your tongue and your teeth, until you get it into a little ball. Then you take the ball and stick it outside your teeth, but you leave a wedge of tobacco that goes between your teeth. You chew and suck on that, and spit out the juice until it gets down to nothing.

  5. Chewing doesn’t get you high, but if you get a good chew working, you may suddenly start hearing Hank Williams songs go through your head. Don’t panic. Sing along.

  Dip is a little different. It’s fine-grained, more like cigarette tobacco. Walt Garrison said it so well: “A little pinch between your cheek and your gum.” But when it comes to the quality of spit, dip spit’s not very good. It almost looks like spit, whereas chew spit can ruin somebody’s brand new boots. We learned that pretty quick. Just for fun we’d wait until we saw somebody with new hunting boots or tennis shoes. Then we’d walk by, never say a word, and PFFT! land a gob on their leather uppers. Took the new right out of their footwear.

  “You bastard! I paid eighty bucks for these!”

  Chew spit will also take out the hurt and the poison of a bee-sting. And it’s great for making an exclamation point at the end of a sentence.

  “So what’d you do after you spit on his boots, Jeff?”

  “I told him to kiss my butt.” PFFT! “But only if he could catch me.” PFFT!

  There’s a fine art to spitting, and we were its masters. If a guy wasn’t listening while we talked to him, we could easily spit on his shirt without him even knowing it. You just had to make the spit as silent as possible. To do that, put your fingers up to your lips, like you’re holding an invisible cigarette, spread them a bit, and PFFT. Spit on a guy’s shirt is not a pretty sight, particularly in church.

  When we played baseball we would take Bubble Yum chewing gum and loosely wrap a string around the chew to hold it. But you had to be careful if you ever slid into a base. You did not want to swallow the chew. You’d spend the rest of the day vomiting. Even swallowing only a little juice can make you turn green, and your buddies red with laughter.

  My favorite use for chew was to make Larry Burns sick. Knowing the secret ways to gross out your friends to the point of hurling was powerful knowledge when growing up. Forcing a friend to dry heave could make you happy for a long time. Larry was immune to so many things, but once, when Burns, Chastain, and I were building a fence down at my dad’s farm, Chastain and I discovered Larry’s weak spot.

  We took a break and I said, “Burns, would it make you sick if Chastain and I exchanged chews?”

  “Don’t do that!” he said. Right then I knew I ha
d him. I immediately pulled out my chew. Chastain did the same. We traded and stuck them in our mouths. Larry ran off and dry heaved into the creek bed. Chastain and I gave each other high five after high five. By the way, Burns deserved it. Just to make someone sick he’d do things like walk through the cow pasture and pick up a big handful of cowshit and go, “Anybody wanna eat this?” and stick it right up to your face. You’d go, “Oh my God!” and try to control the vomit impulse.

  Years later I learned that Burns’s real kryptonite was snot. The best I ever got to him was one morning while deer hunting. We were walking through the pitch-black woods, and all I could think about was how Burns had lately done horrible things to me. I had a bad cold, and so I did one of the grossest things I’d ever done. We’ve all done it as little boys: Hold one side of your nose and blow out the other.

  I followed Burns through the woods, slowly blowing my nose into my mustache. Snot and a mustache are a lethal combination. When we got to his deer stand Burns said, “Will you hold my gun while I climb the tree?” and I said, “Fine.” It was dark. We couldn’t see each other. Then I said, “But before you climb the tree, do me one favor and look at this.” I turned my flashlight on my face. He fell to his knees at the bottom of his own deer stand, dry heaving. I didn’t care if I saw a deer that morning. I had dropped him.

  As with hunting, chewing tobacco has never been a big hit with women. The gals we dated knew we chewed, but we also knew better than to load up around them. I’ve never heard a woman say, “You know what I really like about Jeff? It’s when he chews that tobacco and it makes his breath stinky and his teeth yellow. And we have little cups full of spit all over the house. That’s such an endearing quality.”

  Instead, we’d hear, “I’m not kissing you, you’ve been chewing.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Well, you’ve got spit all over your shirt.”

  “That’s not my spit. Burns got me.”

  “Oh, in that case, kiss me, you fool.”

  We never tried to get the girls to chew, either, unless for some reason we also wanted to make them puke. Besides, any woman who could get the hang of chewing wasn’t on our “must date” list. In fact, any woman who chewed tobacco (a) didn’t prefer men or (b) men didn’t prefer her. Any day now, just to make my life miserable, I’ll expect a picture of a gorgeous woman I could never get to first base with chewing tobacco.

  Of course, these are just fond memories. It’s been a while since I’ve chewed. It’s not easy to do with a wife, kids, and job.

  “You might be a Redneck if…PFFT!…”

  Not much of a career in that.

  Masculine habits and the sporting life all prepare a young man for joining the adult world and for that most human of pursuits, the biological mating imperative. When we succeed with the opposite sex we like to think it’s something we’ve done on purpose, a move we’ve practiced, or an element of our personal style that turned the trick. But as any hunter knows, achievement is really more a matter of patience, persistence, and luck. The last, more than anything else, was the rationale behind Big Jim’s reminder to always ride out a streak no matter what the cost. I’ve always considered that sage advice from a versatile hunter.

  I once had a lucky streak that’s never been repeated. Even if I tried to mess things up, I couldn’t.

  I’d spent a week hunting and was driving back to Atlanta from the farm, down I-20, in a beat-up green pickup truck. I had a mounted deer head in the front seat beside me. I hadn’t showered for four days, so it was probably hard to tell me from my passenger.

  Suddenly three young women in a car pulled alongside and motioned for me to roll down the window. Of course, I did. For a moment no one said anything. I looked horrible, they were laughing, and I figured it was at me because I was the only one in my car with a stupid smile. Then the prettiest girl said, “What kind of guy would ride around the interstate with a deer in the car?”

  I said, “What kind of girl would talk to a guy who’s riding down the interstate with a deer in the car?”

  She laughed. I said, “You should call me later, we’ll talk about it.” Remember, we were hollering and going seventy miles an hour. I said, “Here’s my phone number.” I didn’t even ask for hers. When I got home, she called. She said, “Come over. I want to talk about the deer.”

  I said, “Let me take a shower. Where do you live?” An hour later I was at her place. I had one drink. She said, “Excuse me a minute,” disappeared into her bedroom, and came out in a bathrobe.

  As I sat there in shock, I thought of all those times I’d prayed for the biggest deer to walk within range, or for my cast to hook the fish of a lifetime. This wasn’t quite that, but it was close enough. I looked up at the apartment’s cottage cheese acoustic ceiling, imagined I could see through it to the blue sky above, and thought, “God, I didn’t even try for this. Thanks.”

  Clearly, men also delight in pursuits that please a woman.

  With any luck it’s sometimes even her idea.

  It’s Nice Work, If You Can Avoid It

  Finally, the day your folks warned, promised, and usually threatened would come has arrived. For better or for worse your whole life changes.

  I’m not talking about holy matrimony. This is worse.

  No more allowance.

  Out of gas and oil for the old Plymouth Duster? Need cash for dates? Want shells for the .22 and tobacco to chew? Bowling ball need repair? Forced to pay your own bail on a drunk and disorderly warrant?

  What’s a twenty-one-year-old to do?

  Time to get a job. Time to see if Vern down at the garage thinks your talent for hot-wiring luxury vehicles can be bent to fixing them as well. There’s lots of good jobs available. Besides, things could be worse. Just remember that somewhere, someone else is doing something with hot tar for five dollars an hour.

  Thanks to Big Jim, I have a strong work ethic. I’ve always wanted to pay my own way and support my family. I like the freedom money in my pocket affords. Yet the conventional wisdom is that when the subject is work, Rednecks want to change the subject. People think we’re lazy. The truth is that we’re salt-of-the-earth working men and working women, even if the salt gets a little soggy in the humidity.

  Then to what may we assign the blame for our slothful reputation? Once again: our accents. It’s understandable. When it takes someone three times as long to make an excuse about why he’s late for work—for the fifteenth time—it just sounds shiftless. But is that really fair? I don’t think so.

  It’s hard work to come up with a believable lie.

  By the way, I’ll be a bit late coming in for this chapter. I slept in, but if anyone asks, I’m saying my pet goat got ahold of my alarm clock and ate it. I don’t want to waste your time, so while you’re waiting for me to shower, dress, have coffee and breakfast, read the paper, run a few errands, and maybe catch a matinee, I’ll be happy to pass along some wisdom I’ve gathered about the art of lying to get out of work. I know I’m getting ahead of myself. I should probably talk about working before I get to the lying, but a good lie is like a good joke, and I can’t resist a good joke. Both require forethought, timing, and a surprise ending.

  Let’s say you hit the snooze button fourteen times and you’re running fifteen minutes late for the job. First, if you actually show up only fifteen minutes late, you’re going to look like you kept hitting the snooze button. So relax. Sit, read the paper, drink a couple of cups of coffee.

  I’m sorry. I can’t go anywhere without my day-of-the-week undershorts, and I can’t find Monday. (Musta been a great weekend.)

  Now, for the lie. Don’t use the standard, “I got stuck in traffic.” They’ll know you’re lying. Think of something that is so bizarre that your boss will honestly feel sorry for you.

  I don’t recommend the dead relative lie for two reasons. First, it’s hard to keep up with whom you’ve killed off and who’s still living. Grandma can only pass away so often, although in some famili
es like mine—remember, between Big Jim and Carole, they’ve been married nine times—there can be plenty of Grandmas to go around. But then up crops the second problem: guilt. If you’re like me, saying, “Uncle Fred got hit by a train,” will make you worry that Uncle Fred will get plowed by a locomotive. Then you’ll be up on a murder rap for knowing way too much. So if you use a relative, don’t kill them. A serious illness is just fine, and it could keep you out of prison.

  I’ll be out of the bathroom in a minute. I’ve still got to brush my tooth.

  You can always claim that you’re sick, but be sure to name an illness about which no one would dare ask questions. Projectile vomiting is acceptable, but explosive diarrhea is my personal favorite. That should end all discussion on the matter. If pushed, mumble something about “bad sausage,” then say, “Oh-oh, here it comes aga…”

  If you decide to feign personal injury, I recommend wearing an Ace bandage. Stuff an old T-shirt under it to simulate swelling, and moan constantly for effect. Make sure it’s a believable injury. Falling in a corn reaper is too much if you only plan on being out for a day or two. Plus, strapping your arm to your side so your empty shirt sleeve can flap in the breeze will eventually become a big pain in the ass, possibly tear a rotator cuff, and ruin your fly-fishing cast.

  I swear, I think the dog ran off again with my car keys.

  What you really need is a story that will not only excuse tardiness but encourage your boss to give you the entire day off. With pay. How about this: “The sewer backed up into my house, the furniture is floating, and I can’t find the kids.” Who would expect you to work while your couch is drifting away. It’s just bizarre enough to possibly be true. That’s all you’re shooting for anyway: possibility. Once you create a reasonable doubt for yourself, you are home free. So to speak.