The Manly Art
Ever minding my own business, I nevertheless found myself drawn to the squabble. The two males of the ragamuffin species from up the road were walking back home from fishing in El Caballo Bayou. I knew this because only a few hours earlier I had seen them headed the other way down the road skipping and chattering away like a couple of chickadees at a bird feeder full of sunflower seeds. That and there stood the facts they were barefooted and carrying a couple of cane poles rigged with bobbers, lines and terminal hardware. The big difference in that scene and this latter one of which I write was they were now headed the opposite direction toting a couple of the most fattest white perch I’d seen in several seasons. The lads were deeply involved in a discussion that was shiningly disagreeable to the both of them.
I’d set aside this particular day for contemplation and observance of some past holiday that I may have slept once through. On these occasions I often outfit myself for the after-morning and wander down close to the road that passes in front of the Stonebroke Non-Profit Fireant and Rodent Ranch over here in New Monia, Texas. There stands an old outhouse that my identical third cousin Arthur, ‘Don’t Call Me Art’ Dekko long ago converted into what he references to as a gazebo. His conversion consisted of taking one of the old walls that had fallen off and covering the two-holer with it. By taking down two other walls he created a comfortable area to study nature and traffic on the road. Now the structure was vine covered and by sitting quietly I was treated to little life episodes without feeling compelled to intervene. Being invisible can be an amusement in itself. The boys never saw me. Regardless the cause of their discord I could tell it was leading to a more satisfying conclusion than could be dissolved in simple heated discussion. That fact fueled my pace of interest concerning the eventual outcome.
The boys’ walk had degenerated into a stiff-legged-goose step right where I was seated near the curve in the lane. As the two warriors squared off one to the other I poured myself another frozen something from my thermos. It had been a long while since I had seen two brothers go at it with the white hot temperance that only two brothers can share. To my slight surprise, the ganglier of the two suddenly shoved his sibling down and into the road bed as he dived for the ditch on my side of the road. With an equal display of agility the downed one rolled into the other side ala Audie Murphy in a low budget war movie.
The ditches offer good protection in a clod fight because they are dug out deep to avoid the chance of El Caballo Bayou flooding the bottoms during periods of high water. The fact is that a previous county commissioner once owned a commercial tract out this way and his road crews thought he deserved better drainage while he worked them overtime on the tax payers dime. Down in these ditches you can find some pretty good sized pieces of gravel ranging from ping pong to tennis ball diameters. I now saw the battlefield in perfect clarity as the scene unfolded. A clod fight was in the offing.
In my glory days, there were few clod fighters as respected as myself. I adhere to the fact that good clod chunkers are made, not born. It takes practice, practice, practice, from speed and accuracy to the heady feel of an actual knock down drag out battle for the title. Knowledge of particular projectile performance under any given circumstance along with the ability to select it with confidence and hurling it even while reaching for the next chunk takes some amount of experience and coolness of head. I was possessed of both.
Round or nearly round pieces of dirt or rock are limited in application as they can only be used in a frontal attack even if you attack from behind the lines. Sure, if you study trajectory you may be able to lob in a round mortar-like but the effect is minimal. There are no real ballistics involved with that approach; just gravity pulling the rock back to earth. Jagged pieces do in fact cause some degree of permanent damage but you can never count on them for any kind of high accuracy percentile due to the whiffle ball effect.
Clods is a word that I feel is sometimes too loosely . Rocks, shells and dried dirt are usually referred to as clods if they are employed in a fight or any game of combative skill. As I grew up on the gulf coast of Texas in the early ‘50s almost all the roads that were any kind of roads at all were paved with oyster shells dredged up from the ship channel over there by Houston. Most of the time these roads out close to the county line were not so exclusive as to just using the shell, they would use the whole oyster. This meant that a freshly paved road may possess a high odor for the length of time as is required to allow the oyster herself to erode. A clod fighter with experience in the art of oyster shell chunking dominated that decade.
Having all the aerodynamic capabilities of a Frisbee, a well formed 2 1/2 to 3 inch oyster shell could hunt down and, if not destroy, at least make your opponent very nervous indeed. If he tried to hide behind a pine tree all you had to do was throw a high hard curve and not unlike a down under boomerang you could pick him off with only the slightest loss of air speed. Using the afore mentioned “not quite ripe shells” you could just about count on some exotic infection attacking your adversary later in the week and if you were lucky word would get out that you had caused the kid to have brain damage and because of said damage failed the fifth grade twice. Just plain good credentials for a lad heading into Junior High.
One of my proudest moments was the day that my best friend and closest competitor to the throne of King of Clods had come by my house after school to pay homage and hit some rocks with a shaved down two by four. It was getting on about dark when Mother Stonebroke came out and called me to supper. I mention Mother Stonebroke because without her corroborating statement as a credible witness I could not in good conscience make this claim.
As my friend G---started out down the shell road he picked up an oyster shell and half-heartedly tossed it in my direction. I took careful aim and curved one into the temple on the opposite side of his head from where I stood no less than 75 yards away. He floated to the road surface as would a bag of feathers except there’s not usually blood squirting from a bag of feathers. As Mother Stonebroke and I stood over the twitching carcass there in the fading summer evening light…well, it just doesn’t get any better than that. G---eventually regained his senses as they were and we all had a good laugh except for G---.
These two knuckleheads were no where in the same league as I was once but like any clod fight it was worth watching and there was some blood and crying as the skinniest boy stood up when he should have stood down and caught a good whack on the nose which exploded into pulp. The bloodshed was followed up by a wailing of both boys as one was hurt and the other one knew he would be hurting someplace else when his mother found out what had happened; not to mention the fact that they had skipped school. They took off at a high scat for home.
I sat there for a little while and finished off the thermos contents as the dust settled. Stepping over the loose barbed wire I walked out to the road, picked up the two nice cane poles rigged with new bobbers and I had four fat filets for supper. Delicious.
Your Loving Cousin,
Rev. Dr. Buck Stonebroke
antranch.embarqmail.com
“If it doesn’t bark, meow, squeak or make some kind of noise or other, it doesn’t get fed around here.”
Princess Penny Duchess of Stonebroke defending her lack of gardening skills.
