Native Son Returns to Sneezeville

The Sneezeville Sentinel would like to welcome Lo Quasious back to town. Native residents will remember that Lo disappeared following a tent revival thirty years ago. It was assumed by those who didn’t know him that he had joined the company and moved on with them. His friends suspected accident or foul play. Lo granted us an exclusive (until someone else asks) interview. Lo informed us that he attended the revival to see what was happening. He remembers Maude Linnne singing and warning the young in town about the evils of idle hands. He says that until Brother Love spoke he had never thought of leaving town. He said, “Brother Love spoke about the evils of singing, dancing and gambling. He warned about painted women who lure unsuspecting country boys into a life of sin.” He explained his decision to leave.

“I looked around town and thought a touch of paint here and there would certainly help. There I was, 18 years old, a fifth grade graduate and I’d never been lured anywhere. For that matter, there was only one fishing lure in town.”

I wasn’t really interested in a life of sin, but I thought the opportunity for a few indiscretions might be fun. I went home, got that clean pair of underwear my Ma told me to take on a trip and was on the road to Richcity that night.

Boy, was I in for a surprise. I had traveled before, once all the way to Farmtown. I’d been to two hog callins and a chittlin strut and thought I’d seen it all. I saw my first painted woman before I’d been in town an hour. Let me tell you, some of the women in Sneezeville could use a coat of paint but these had so many coats on you had to wonder if there was anyone behind it.

I found out Brother Love was wrong on one thing. Them city women don’t lure you into a life of sin; they just bonk you over the head with it. Sorta like fishing with dynamite.

I traveled all over the state for the past thirty years and I tell you I’ve seen things you won’t believe. People in the city have their outhouses inside their houses. They call that progress but in all of my travels I never saw one that could compete with Clem Breedalot’s three-holer. But then again them city people don’t have 19 kids. They may brag but everyone knows even a dog don’t go in his own house. I’d forgotten all about little ole Sneezeville until one day I realized I could come home and spend the rest of my life telling stories about my travels. You got to remember that what they call failure in the city is success in Sneezeville.

I made a little money in the stock market, and some more at the slaughterhouse; ain’t nobody in Richcity what can muck out a stall like me. You can tell all of my old friends to stop by the Yak-n-Snack Restaurant and they’ll find me on the front porch. I purely love to tell about my travels and what’s wrong with Sneezeville and what they need to do to fix it.

Them city folks don’t believe in dumping stuff in cricks. They call it Poloushun. I ain’t got it quite figured out. They say it is wrong to perch your outhouse over a crick where everything washes away. Everything from their inside outhouses goes to one place. They take the lumps out, dump the liquid in a crick, send the lumps down South and dump it on farmland where it washes into the cricks. Then the cricks run to the lake where they get their water.

Just don’t make sense to me. Seems like a lot of trouble, it ends up in the cricks anyway.

Stinks, too.