Then I got the heck outta there!

 

Jimmie turned away from Spoojack and looked down the street. His eyes were filling with tears. He would not believe what he was to see. But then again in this neighborhood it was often said;

“There’s no telling what you might see around here.”

Once we feel secure in our general understanding, to challenge that understanding is a step toward the unknown; a step away from our sense of self, our sense of security.

Jimmie began to see that our fear of this unknown may cause us to resist growth, acceptance and change.

The old southern man everyone called Spoojack had dark, deep set eyes. They looked upwards as he tossed the rest of his pickled pig’s feet in the usual spot under the great bur oak in his front yard.

Jimmie watched as the young family of small birds swooped down from the low hanging branches of the old shade tree. They began to take turns whittling away at the slow cooked, well-seasoned knuckles, cartilage and gristle.

The two men sat directly across the street from the lime washed tree of Jimmie’s child hood home. The river birch tree grew in front of a brightly colored house with neatly cropped bushes.

Jimmie’s stepfather had just finished brushing on a fresh coat of the lime solution. The young man with the light complexion and curly hair knew better than to offer him any help.

The man reached into the cooler and retrieved two beers; passing one to his lifelong friend and neighbor. “Hey Spoojack ever think about lime washing your tree?” 

“Down south we cover the trunks of young fruit trees with lime to protect them from sun scald until they are old enough for their own branches to protect their thin bark from the sun.”

"The white lime comes from the quarry same as limestone. It’s made from flakes of pure lime and water, the crystals reflect the sun.”

“Folks around here lime wash for different reasons all together. When you cover a tree with lime to feel better about yourself you end up in a world of suffering.”

“Once you put lime wash on a tree you have to keep on doing it, it takes more and more and it will never look as good as the first time. After a while you find yourself paint’n the darn thing and don’t even know why.”

“Now why would you want to do that to yourself?”

Jimmie opened his beer and pretended to be engrossed in the birds as they deliberately went about the task at hand.

He then looked to the branches of his lime painted tree.

He would grow up spending countless of hours in the tree imagining adventures and dreaming of the future. Amongst its branches he was free to be happy. It was there that he found peace.

The solitary tree with the twin white trunks had grown in the years during Jimmie’s absence.

Since his mother’s passing he noticed the gap between the lime covered trunks had grown too wide for foot placement and the lowest branch was too high to reach by hand.

The only way for a person to climb it now would be to wrap oneself completely around one of the wayward trunks and make their way using everything they had. Jimmy thought out loud;

“That ain’t happenin.”

Spoojack looked over at the young man he watched grow up. He remembered laying eyes on Jimmie for the first time and thinking to himself;

“There’s no telling what you might see around here.”  

He couldn’t figure out why in the world a white kid was climbing a tree in the middle of the hood. After watching the boy grow to beat the odds and accomplish his goals he knew why.

Although now when Spoojack looked into Jimmie’s eyes, he could see the man was without peace or happiness.

Under the shade of the great oak; Spoojack took a drink and tilted his head.

“Some of the other folks round here think lime is to keep the bugs from eatin at the tree. They think they can paint over the problem. It doesn’t work that way either.”

“The bugs end up being covered in lime. When you try to cover things over that’s where they stay. When the lime wears off, the same tree and the same bugs are still there.

Only now they’re just a little fatter from eat’n all that lime flavored tree!”

Spoojack slapped his knee and let out a big laugh.

“The bugs ain’t the problem anyhow; they ain’t going do nothing to that tree they ain’t supposed to. It’s the nature of things. Some things we just have to accept.”

“For instance, I was talking to your stepfather the other day; he knows a lot about the race feud of 1920. Old man Montgomery of Montgomery Groceries and shipping was the main figure behind the whole thing. His family still operates the business today.”

“The people with the most to gain or lose in a situation usually are behind the confusion that creates problems for other people.”

“It’s usually about money, and money means security. Security is what people really want, racism is just a byproduct.”

“When people form groups of peers, some feel more secure with the man standing next to him if he looks like him. He figures if he looks like him, he may have the same background, share the same goals and interest and therefore have his best interest at heart.”

“First and foremost it begins with the individual’s need for security.”

“Man has been operating the same way since we were hunters and gatherers, running around in groups fighting and defending ourselves from other groups that want nothing more than what any other group or individual would want.”

“From the time we leave the womb we want nothing more than the sense of security from which we just left and will never have again.”

“The only difference being, some people handle it better than others.”

“Do you think you’re sitting over there drinking that alcohol like water because you’re trying to feel more insecure about yourself?”

Jimmie looked into the branches of the bur oak. The small birds had taken turns dismantling the pork and had now begun flying pieces up to the nests of little ones. The difficult task seemed to have brought them together.

“As a boy down south working in the fruit trees I learned lots of things.”
 
“Mainly I learned how to make lemonade from lemons.” Spoojack slapped his knee and laughed out loud.

“Then I got the hick outta there!”

Spoojack laughed even louder.

“You see son, sometimes, acceptance also means knowing when it’s time to move on.”

Jimmie looked away, turning toward the birds. “I can’t believe those birds eat pig’s feet.”

The old southerner replied;
 
“There’s no telling what you might see around here.”
 
Spoojack spun around in the swivel lawn chair and went into the house.
 
Jimmie sipped the ice cold drink filled with lemons and cherries and washed it down with beer. The four different types of alcohol prevented the long island iced tea readymade mixture from completely freezing when he stored the gallon size bottle in Spoojack’s freezer.
 
During the visit to town, Jimmie was spending more time at Spoojack’s than at home with his stepfather Ray and his new wife.

Sitting out front in that neighborhood, the later it became the more you saw…….

The thin man was wearing snake skin cowboy boots, short shorts, and a muscle shirt with a matching cowboy hat. His partner in crime wore a pink cowboy hat of her own with matching boots. The two made their way down the street……