Old Josh, in: Remembering Lick’Idy Luke Slim

(1903, Josh telling a story to Silas that took place just after the Civil War)



Old Josh, 100-years old, sat on his porch, laughing, and Silas comes up and stares at his old papa, wondering what the heck in going on, it is the spring of 1903, and because it’s spring, he remembers a girl down in shantytown, named Spring, says Josh,
“Sit on down son, be-fer the day gits on to bein’ sunset, eyes goin’ to tell yaw bout Lick’Idy Luke Sim (and in my better English, I shall tell it as Josh told it to Silas :)

●

It was back in ’46, Lick’Idy, as he was called, came up from the Florida swamps, those marshes you call the Everglades, he rode in on a mare to Ozark, then onto shantytown, I was there with Amos at the time, both of us fixing to sell our homemade moonshine, and here comes this stranger into our Alabama shantytown, I tell you I laughed a mile high when I saw him, he wore a rainbow colored weskit and pigeon-tailed coat and a fox-tailed hat that shined as if he were Davy Crockett himself, on his way to congress, oh we all thought he was mad for the moment, but he was more cleaver than mad.
He was white man in his lat 30s, had long wavy hair, a long picked nose, a big smile, and his teeth were large and white, a thin neck, and a tone to his muscles.
He looked pretty an a Christmas tree all let up on Christmas Day, or even prettier than a steamboat coming down the Mississippi, all decked out, tooting its horn.
He was looking for a wife to take back to the Everglades, down in Florida.
When he had stopped it the township of Ozark, it was just to freshen up a bit, before heading on to Shantytown. They say he blew into his harmonica all the way to Shantytown, some three miles outside the township.
Amos was standing there along side the dirt road, with his friend Josh, with four jugs of moonshine, they had been trying to sell for Granny Mae, and would keep half the profit. When Josh and Amos first caught sight of the stranger, they didn’t know if they should laugh, cry or ask how was business, thinking he was selling something also.
The tall thin white man, pulled out a horn from behind his saddle, said to Josh, “Fill it up with that corn whiskey, and let me know how much,” Josh pulled the cork off the jug, filled the horn up, and said, “Two bits stranger,” and he threw Josh a silver coin, said, “My name’s Lick’Idy Luke Slim, I’m aiming to find me a wife, if youall don’t mind?”
Josh and Amos were so stunned at the man, they just stood there mouth open, and silent, Josh putting the coin in his pocket. Then all of a sudden there was a crowd around him.


“Im goin’ to make youall a suggestion” said Lick’Idy Luke Slim, to the crowd about him, looking at a particular lovely Negress, I see a woman I wants for me wife…”
Said Josh before he could finish his sentence,
“You in the wrong place stranger, you best be headed back to Ozark—that away,” Josh pointed his arm and hand behind him.
There was twenty or more town’s folks standing about, said Lick’Idy with a happy grin,
“Im a bit, white, black and Cherokee Indian, and I wants a woman that is as brown as a dark mushroom, soft as a rabbit, and who was taught to cook well, from the day she waz born, and I give $200-dollars in gold fer her, and challenge anyone here to a cockfight over her…” and he pulled out a wild looking cock from his saddle bag, and he saw who he wanted, a young black girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, with a tall black man, twice her age…!
“I reckon I’ll take that one there, she looks like a pretty fox,” pointing at Asbury, but the tall bulky back man said,
“She’s my wife,” and someone behind him said, “And she is his second cousin, and they aint married, jes’ he like her so he support her, her mamma done left her long go,” the bulky man turned about, said, “Shut your mouth, put a lip-lock on that mouth, ole lady, you is nothin’ to her!”
“A cockfight you say, haw mister?” said Burly Sam.
“Well,” said Lick’Idy, “´We all can disburse that idea if these here coins will satisfy youall?” and he threw a pouch of gold coins on the ground near his feet, some fell out of the pouch.


“Whut den happened Pa!” said Silas to Old Josh,
“Whut you think happened?” said Josh, adding “he done grabbed the money up so fast, that he never noticed that little girl jumping up on Lick’Idy’s horse faster than a cat after a mouse and said,
“Git on a-goin’ be-fer he changes his mind,” and they were gone out of shantytown faster than a hundred bees after a bear.”


Note: written in the morning of 12-9-2008 “Old Josh, in: Lick’Idy Luke Slim” in my apartment in Huancayo, Peru.
(Episode 77, written the morning of December 9, 2008)

Old Josh, in: Nelly’s Fine

(Ozark, Alabama, 1867…s/episode No: 78)


“You got old Nelly the cow, en you aren’t satisfied yet?”
Mrs. Ella Hightower told Josh, standing by his shanty.
“Whut does you want,” exclaimed Josh, looking as if he was puzzled at Ella’s guessing she might have Nelly, but she knew Josh had taken Nelly hidden the cow someplace; Old Josh had taken a liking for the cow, and she for him.
“For the last time Josh, are you, or are you now going to tell me where Nelly is? Because you best be bringing that cow back before the sheriff comes!” Asked Ella.
“Give whut back?” questioned Josh, as if he didn’t know what the heck she was talking about, “…cuz I aint git no cow anyhow, dey think I do but I dont!”


Old Josh had hid Nelly the cow down by Goose Creek, and now Josh as he looked towards the main road, parallel the mansion, he could see the Deputy Sheriff dismount his steed, his silhouette showed, he was framed in-between the mansion on one side and a thick old tree to he others side of him, about twenty feet from the house fence.
Ella turned to see whereabouts the sheriff was, knowing it must be the sheriff Josh was looking at, when she turned back to say something to Josh, he was gone, he had disappeared into the fields quicker than a clap of an eye.

Old Josh was stumbling across the fields, his knees giving in as he tried to rush his getaway, his pace, towards Goose Creek; to Ella and the Sheriff, he was just a dark shadow, like the blackened smoke coming from the Hightower chimney.
Against the receding west, they, Ella and the Deputy, followed Josh, flinging voice gestures for him to stop.
Josh kept his tempo, with clinched fists, saying several times, “Nelly’s fine…Nelly’s fine…!”
Then the Deputy Sheriff pulled out his revolver, shot a round in the air, and Josh halted, waited for his demise, “Josh,” said Ella, before he Sheriff could say a word, knowing if he did, he might say something he could not retract, and thus, have to take Josh into jail, and who knows what would follow, to him, Josh was just another ignorant nigger, who got too good of treatment for an Alabama black. Said, Ella,
“What did you take Nelly for?”
Old Josh leaned forward, whispered to Ella, “They shot her!” he said.
“Josh,” said Ella.
Then the Deputy Sheriff said, in passing, “It’s a damn cow that is all it is…a cow, what in tar-nation is wrong with this nigger Ella?”
“Dat’s whut youall call jestice, that there cow he as old as me,” –said Old Josh.
“Is the cow down by the Creek Josh?” asked Ella.

A tear came from Old Josh’s eye, said chokingly,
“Yessum, Mrs. Ella, dat where she is alright! —she a sleepin’ like a baby, under a willow tree, snorin’ away, I done fixed her wound, she on a bed of green grass she is, she done feels like the queen-bee of cows!”
Ella turned to the Sheriff, said with a half smile, hoping she’d let her handle it,
“I’ll go fetch Nelly, and bring her back to her owners, if you don’t mind, and if you just hush this matter up, I think Granny Mae, she got a quart of her good moonshine in the kitchen she’ll be willing to part with for yaw?”
Said the sheriff, nodding his head up and down, “Aint this been a day!”


Written 12-11-2008, during lunch at the La Mia Mamma, in El Tambo, Huancayo, Peru

Old Josh, in: Corncob-pipe and Matches

((or, Cold Twilight)(1881))

Josh was looking for his corncob-pipe, he was tiptoeing around his shanty, and it resided in back of the barn on the Hightower Plantation, in Ozark, Alabama. Silas, his oldest son was sleeping, they both slept in the same one room shack, Josh on a cot by the side window, Silas, on the opposite side, more over towards the back, where the small pantry was, which was added onto the shanty back who knows when. He found his pipe alright; it was under his cot, with a small pouch of tobacco. He sat on the cot, put the tobacco in—tightly, and felt for the matches, there were none, so he got on his hands and knees to look closer, the moon gave some light into the shanty, not much but enough to see that there wasn’t any. So he started tiptoeing around the shanty looking for some—checking in every corner, his trouser pockets, on shelves, on the table, none to be found, he stared at Silas, he was sleeping soundly, snoring like a whale blowing air out a mile high from its spout.
“Well, where is it,” he asked himself, in a wild kind of frustration.
“Where are you,” he said in a personification tone of voice, addressing the matches as if they were capable of answering him back.
Josh often in the night, would walk out to the porch and have a smoke, sometimes with a cold cup of three day old coffee, he got from Granny Mae, in the Hightower kitchen, he poured himself a cup, made a little noise doing it, looked at Silas, he was still sawing logs with his snoring, sleeping like a dead man.
He now fumbled his fingers through Silas’ cloths looking for matches, but that didn’t help any, he didn’t find what he was looking for; thus, Silas, like his father, liked a good smoke now and then.
Then he just couldn’t stand it any longer, and he walked over to Silas, nudged him a speck, whispered,
“Im sorry son but I gots to interrupt your dreams cuz I cant find them darn matches!”
Silas moved about, and scratched his back, “Silas!” said Josh, waking him up more, they now exchanged a tense look (Silas still half asleep, but wanting to return to his in-depth, whatever…); and he knew, the longer his father bothered him, the more awake he’d become, so he hid his head under the pillow.
“I apologize son” Josh said, with an encore and demanding voice “but I need some matches for a smoke—now!”
When Silas was in this mode of sleep, the slightest thing, action that is, irritated him, but his father he knew could be unrelenting,
“When youall gits time to listen…” said Josh crossly, not finishing his sentence…


Silas now sat up, quiet as a mouse…, then after a moment’s thoughts, said,
“Pa, you jes’ wants attention day and night, ef-in I don’t answer you, this here is goin’ to go on fer-ever…you gits bored all the time, and gits alarmed over small things, with those big black eyes of yours, I got no chance now of gitten’ back to sleep.”
Josh still annoyed because he had no matches, got even more annoyed at his son for taking the situation lightly, hesitated to answer, then after thinking of what he was going to do, he smiled at Silas, said,
“Since you anit goin’ to look for matches—an’ help your old pa out, I is going to bed, Im all right son, but you is goin’ to be bored to death sitting up all alone all night, cuz Im goin’ to be sleepin’.”
And old Josh fell back in his bed like a log hitting another long going down a river, and fell sound to sleep, smiling.

For Enrique H.


Written on 11-24-2008, at the café, “La Mia Mamma” during lunch.

Old Josh, on Marriage

Old Josh never married, and there are reasons for that, and I think at this point, we need to look at them; it is an issue that came up throughout his life, for example, with Sweet-Chili (mother of his two children, and to my knowledge, married by common-law), and Sweet Bessie, and Bessie Ann, and Molly, he even had an eye for Lula the Cook, and Granny Mae.
Perhaps he knew better than anyone, why he never married, the only thing I can do is go back throughout his life and come up with guesses, I mean he did have opportunities: even when he went to New Orleans with Mr. Hightower he had the urge, perhaps not the edge to seek out a wife and got into some trouble—and that ended that episode.
But women were not his main concern, although he liked them. Perchance he felt a simple life, less emotional depression was more important, along with raising his boys. I mean he had a bad experience with Sweet-Chili, and the word marriage seemed never to quite develop thereafter.
But let’s look a little deeper into the head of Josh, his heart, soul, the prospect of bring a wife into his life of poverty and struggling more than he had been, or would have to if acquiring a new wife. Would this not put too much strain on a woman’s love? And although he might have found a good woman, his boys may have not appreciated it, it could have been a thankless job, perhaps a conflict arising, such as one or the other demanding he take sides, and once he did, he would lose the other.
Simplify plays an important part here I think. He was being fed and had shelter, like in the Army—they take care of you, and he and his boys were being cared for.
Each time he set out to marry, he hesitated having a wild moment and so breathlessly, with a glare in his eyes like winter windows, simplicity came first, just like when he acquired his freedom, in 1865, he never left the Hightower Plantation, and he could have with his brother. Why did he not? that is a question that comes up in my head—and may have come up in your head, and it seems to be a relevant element in his life, again but why put so much on simplicity (or call it ease): I think when you have an uncertain childhood, taken out of your environment, lose all you have, if you get things worked out later on, perhaps you want to leave well enough alone.
As I stated in the beginning, conjecture plays a big part in this narration on Josh Jefferson on my part.
He always had this exalted look, as if he had a feeling of being free, even when he wasn’t, maybe because he was unmarried—I call them tears of gratitude: furthermore, his eyes were warm, old eyes but refrain, if he had gotten married, then what? I would not be making this “Interlude II” that is for sure.
Josh never put his boys in the background of his life, they were always up front, if they were behind him, he became disturbed, this in itself required him to be unmarried. And once the boys became men, well, they were much like him, in many ways, as we see Silas being a little on the pale, but romantic side, and wanting thinks simple also. Jordan, whose character is never fully developed in these episodes—perhaps unfairly so—liked staying in the background, working at the store in Ozark, matter of fact, as one can see by reading all of the Episodes on Old Josh, he rarely goes to the Hightower Plantation, and he likes his freedom away from it all, not to say he doesn’t like being with his brother or Josh, he does, he in his own way, likes things simple. And throughout his life he works there, neither one getting married.

I hope this little brief helps you understand Josh, it helps me just to write it.

Written 11-24-2008