There was something about Freddie, and the written word is useless as a method of explanation. Freddie* was an extraordinary storyteller. I believe that everyone is a storyteller. You may take issue with that statement, but let me explain. We humans communicate primarily with words. We talk. Words form sentences, and sentences are the way we communicate our thoughts. These thoughts are stories. If you are giving instructions  or a description, or a verbal reprimand,  all are  stories. 

Freddie spoke with a midwestern accent, the kind newscasters have. His diction was neither fast or slow, and I’m sure that if we measured his rate of speech it would have been one hundred sixty words per minute. That’s the same rate of speech as Walter Cronkite. Freddie was animated when he spoke. Being slightly less than six feet tall and with what Barney Fife called a sinewy body/   His movements were quick and cat-like. A  tattoo of the word “Screech” was on his left arm. We thought it was probably a nickname regarding his appearance. His hair was jet black and he could grow a five o’clock shadow by ten in the morning. He wore heavy looking black rimmed glasses with  lenses that made his eyes appear larger. We surmised that it made his face look like that of an owl. A screech owl! 

The stories Freddie would tell were not extremely unusual. Many concerned growing up in a small town or nautical stories from his time in the U.S. Navy. But his delivery surely was unusual. He produced sounds to illustrate his words. If he described someone leaving hurriedly, the statement would be followed by a “whoosh”!  The sounds of “whish, whoosh, bang, pow, gr-r-r, boing, whew, tick-tick,” and others would accent his words. To say his stories were entertaining was quite an understatement!

The effect is not one that can be reproduced in print.

We recently met Freddie for lunch and sadly noticed the lack of “whooshes, pows, and bangs”  in his speech. The years had rendered Jerry’s colorful language  black and white.

*not

I Wanna Drive a Race Car

The Francis Marion Memorial Service

The Second Question

Not long ago I was having coffee with some friends when one of the ladies at the table made an interesting comment. I was returning from the men’s room and was not in on the current conversation. It was our usual Friday morning gathering at the gym. After exercise we would gather for coffee. Janet was saying, “ and they never invited me to another meeting.” I did not hear the beginning of the discussion. 

Of course we wanted to know why. She said in a curt New England accent, “I think it was because I said we didn’t go to church.” 

“H-m-m,”  I thought to myself.  I could envision what had happened. A group of local ladies enjoying afternoon tea with my friend as the new kid on the block. She was probably the only one in the group that did not use the contraction ”y’all”. Janet was experiencing a clash of cultures. She couldn’t understand what had happened. I said, “I don’t know why, but in conversation with new members of the community, usually the second question asked is ''What church do you go to?’. But I don't think it is as common as it used to be.”

Rob wanted to know, “What is the first question?”

“Where do you live?” I responded. 

Janet asked me, “ You’ve lived here a long time.  What do you think about this obsession with church? These girls didn’t seem very religious to me.”

“You are right, Janet. I have lived here all my life. Admittedly, we Southerners are perceived of being a bit different. But about the church thing, let me say I don’t know. I remember my momma  usually knew what churches people went to. We were Baptists. But we knew some folks that were Methodists. Daddy’s folks were all ARPs.  I guess church was a big part of our lives. Daddy became a teetotaller after he had a fight with a State Trooper. And after that Daddy said that if you put your feet under his table, you went to church on Sunday morning. So I did. I don’t think most people are as religious as they used to be, though.  But I don’t have an answer to your question, Janet. Maybe the professor has an answer.”

The professor was retired from the University of South Carolina. Although he was not a native South Carolinian, he was respected in his field of early American history. He looked up from his coffee over the rimless glasses while stroking the imaginary hair of his bald head. He spoke in a rumbling baritone voice which probably evoked fear in college freshmen. “I believe such action is just another facet of Southern culture.”

 

John Bryson spoke up. “ Just what do you mean by another facet of Southern culture?”  John, with that slow drawl of someone conceived under a magnolia, could recount the heroic exploits of his ancestors in the War Between the States at a moment’s notice. And he exhibited a basic distrust of anyone from north of the Mason-Dixon line. John readily accepted deposits at his family's bank from our recent emigres but wouldn’t accept them into his foursome at the oceanfront links of his country club. 

“I think it has to do with the agrarian nature of the South. You see the South has always had an agricultural economy. At least up until the late nineteenth century. Until then there had been very little manufacturing in the South.”

Bryson spoke up. “I don’t see what farming had to do with it!”

“Let me tell you what I think,” Professor Bob said. “Back in the old days when everybody farmed, people didn’t see much of each other. They didn’t see each other often like people in the northern cities did. The only time they met others was at church. So it was very important to know what church people attended. There might be acquaintances in common.”

“That may very well be, Professor, but I still think they were just rude!” Janet said. 

Butt First

“You gotta get in butt first,” he said as he entered the automobile.  

“ Okay,” says I as I maneuvered  my seventy-eight-year-old body into the sleek machine. Flexibility is one of those things that fades away with age. 

I settled into the body hugging comfortable seats. It was a four passenger vehicle and I was riding shotgun. Tiny colored icons appeared on the glossy sections of the instrument panel bathing interior with another worldly light. Patrick touched some of these hieroglyphics as the Porsche moved into the street. There was a slight whine and motor sound from the engine. He maneuvered the machine through light traffic in the onset of evening. I felt the gear change which surprised me. He noticed my surprise and said unlike most vehicles of this type the Tayman had a transmission. There was also the sound of an internal combustion engine which I was told was included in the design primarily as a warning device for pedestrians. (Electric vehicles are silent.) The automobile accelerated quietly and moved deftly through light traffic until we turned into a wide street (I think all streets are wide in Phoenix.) and he stopped the car. I looked through the windshield over a slightly sloping hood of which Porsches are famous for a view of the desert sky. It was lit with fiery orange accented with streaks of purple against an advancing darkness. Patrick was tapping icons on the touch screen  putting the car into which I would learn was “launch mode”. “Are you ready?” he asked and added, “I always ask everyone this. They say they are, but usually aren’t. Are you ready?”  I answered in the affirmative and had a mental flashback to an event of nearly sixty years ago. The car seemed to be attempting to move but was being held back. In my youth I would watch Torqueflite equipped Dodges and Plymouths on the starting line at the local drag strip rev up their wedge head and hemi engines. The entire cars would twist due to the tremendous torque of their engines. But I wasn’t at a drag strip in the 1960s, I was on a street in Phoenix, Arizona. And then it happened. I was slammed into my seat as the low profile tires on twenty-one inch rims grabbed the asphalt like a bulldog grabbing a bone. I was one with a projectile shot from the cannon.  It has to do with eight hundred volts of electricity delivered from a battery to an electric motor driving the rear wheels. A perfect system developed and produced by the German company created by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche many years ago. I’m sure this launch had Dr. Porsche turning over in his grave.  Indeed the epitome of German automotive technology. Patrick continued to extol the features of  his electric four door sports car as we drove along. However, no other features compared to what I would call the “blinding acceleration” demonstrated. Patrick’s smile was bathed in the light of the instrument panel .

It was a  sho nuff electric hot rod.