Terry Dickson couldn’t come up with a column idea this week, he said, because of exposure to excessive heat. But nobody ever described Mr. Dickson as cool-headed. We offer instead this insightful and timely column from Bubba Gene Hightower, mayor of Pond Scoggin, Ga.
I hope this find you and yours fine and otherwise dandy. As for me and Guynell and Bubba Guy, our onliest son, we are doin’ fine as well except we are quarantined and it ain’t got nothing to do with no COVID.
We just can’t afford to go nowhere gas prices bein’ what they are. We ain’t exactly isolated because we can walk over to Ralph’s Barbecue Trough or down to the general store or down by the river, but they ain’t much close to Pond Scoggin.
That’s why we ain’t been to see y’all as of late because we figure it would cost about $50 for a trip to St. Simons and back to the house. As you know, it’s seldom we’ve caught y’all at home although it seems y’all always leave with some lights on and the TVs a playin’.
Anyways, I finally figured out what this transitory inflation is about. Gas costs so much can’t nobody afford to transit.
It’s put a little bit of a hurt on our local craftsmen who distill various tonics and elixirs a lot of which is sold in other places. Fuel for the process ain’t no problem cause most use wood like the good Lord intended, but delivery has always been free which wasn’t no problem when gas was under $3 a gallon and a quart of some of Pond Scoggin’s finest was goin’ for nigh unto $50. But if a feller was to drive down to the edge of Florida past St. George to deliver a couple of quarts the gas would about eat up his profits.
One of our most ambitious craftsmen that being Sam Alfred “Alfie” Snipes figured out a way to make it up on volume by deliverin’ 50 to a hunderd gallons at a time to a wholesaler who could jar it up in quarts hisself.
I asked Alfie how he was going to put a bunch of five-gallon buckets or 55-gallon drums on the back of his truck and not get blue-lighted and caught especially by one them Florida agriculture inspectors who is as nosy a bunch as you’ll ever find this side of the internal revenuers.
“Well, Bubba Gene,’’ he says. “I done got my conveyance outfitted, and I don’t ‘spect nobody’s gone mess with me.”
What he done was he bought him a “honey wagon,’’ one of them small tankers that cleans out septic tanks or hauls off chicken manure.
Now what they do in the country is they spray that chicken waste on hay fields as a natural fertilizer and that’s what give Alfie the idea.
What he done was, he got his torch and cut a sizable hole in the top. Then he climbed down inside the tank, flushed it out, bleached and disinfected it 40 different ways before he welded a metal wall from top to bottom. He welded him a rack to hold about 200 gallons worth of barrels and painted his bidness name as Alfie’s Awful Offal Haulers LLC. The barrels was up front of the tank with some hoses and valves underneath whilst the rear was the considerable fragrant business end.
“Alfie,’’ says I, “you gone fill up that back with chicken mess?”
He reckoned not, that 10 gallons of the stuff that comes out of chickens is right impressive on the nostrils especially if it’s fermented a little while on a Southeast Georgia summer day.
He says, “If anybody wants to know what I’m haulin’ I’ll tell ‘em to climb up and take a whiff,’’ although that weren’t necessary seein’ you could find the honey wagon with your eyes shut tight. In fact, if you didn’t keep ‘em shut they was likely to water.
Anyways, Alfie had a feller to which he was to deliver 80 gallons of his prime elixir at a dirt crossroads in the Osceola National Forest down by Moccasin Bay just into Florida. He had done checked out the honey wagon and figured ever thing worked and lit out with a half tank a gas accordin’ to the gauge. Somewheres between St. George and his rendezvous point it commenced to sputter’ and he couldn’t get it crunk back up and when he took off the gas cap he pulled out a dry dipstick like the one you pull to check the oil. He reckoned then the gas hand was stuck permanent on half full even when it was all empty so the previous owner installed the dipstick. So stuck on a dirt road with something growlin’ in the swamp that persuaded him the Florida panther weren’t all that endangered he done what he had to do. He opened up a valve on his elixir barrels and transferred alternative fuel into the gas tank until it eat the bottom out of a 32-ounce drink cup. It fired right up and he drove the rest of the way to the meetin’ point about five miles over the speed limit without puttin’ his foot on the gas, he said. The buyer weren’t happy about Alfie wasting three gallons of his order but he took delivery and give him directions to a one-pump general store where gas was near to $5 a gallon because it was on the backside of no wheres and also in Florida..
With cash from his sale, Alfie filled up the honey wagon and limped on back to Pond Scoggin with the motor missin’ and skippin’. He learnt that his V8 motor was down to a uneven V5 cause the elixir had melted the tips off two spark plugs on one side and one on t’other.
Alfie said he’d do it agin if he had to, but he wishes he’d a cut the octane with some ditch water to reduce the wear and tear on the motor.
That’s all I got Mr. Dickerson. I wish we could see you and the missus so y’all are welcome any time. After all, you the one with a Prius.
