Roulette


Friday, February 22, 2013

'Real Humped Over, Real Quiet'

"Now I'll tell you about me getting drunk with Carl.
"My Grandma Jones -- Cora Ella Jones -- was a wonderful little lady. She was a little small woman, and real humped over, and real quiet. I don't believe I ever heard her getting boisterous. And of course we kids lived with her as long as she lived, after what happened with our parents in 1931. She could talk the loveliest things at times, and she could also say some of the harshest things I believe I ever heard anybody say - but still say it in a lovely, quiet way until, boy, it would sink in. It would really sink in.
"Well, when I got drunk with Carl one time, she learned about it. You'd see Carl carrying whiskey in his inside coat pocket. He said it helped him with his asthma. I'd ruined my new blue suit. She confronted me. That was the way she was.
"She said, 'Is it true, what I hear, that you are so dumb, that you don't know when to take a drink of whiskey and quit?'
"She looked at me right in the eye. I never took a drink again. Man, that just ground me into the dust." -- T.J. Latham

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