Panhandle State

Hello ya’ll, my name is Rebbie Steely. I am an independent journalist and my nickname is Baxter. I couldn’t land a paying job with a newspaper or a magazine that would pay me some sort of an even measly salary after I graduated from Mid-South University. I was feeling very down and in the dumps for a long time, but I managed to turn my ship around and I am feeling pretty awesome today.

I feel both alive and terrified all at the same time. Presently I am driving through the great state of Arkansas and I am pulling over toward the side of a country highway in my old rusty cream- colored dodge truck. This truck used to belong to my daddy.

He gave it to me after I graduated from Mid-South. I am feeling sort of anxious at the moment and I decide to pull into the parking lot of a Wigwam (convenience store).

I wasn’t very hungry but I grabbed a bag of spearmint leaf gumdrops, a moon pie, and a diet mountain dew. I also snagged a tin of Vienna sausages and a pack of black and mild cigars for my buddy Malty. Peg did not want anything from the Wigwam. She’s a bit austere. This is the last stop before you hit the Hog Trail.

The Hog Trail is a dangerous and winding roadway that snakes through the Ozark Mountains and across the top of northern Arkansas.

The counter clerk at the Wigwam offered me chit-chat and she asked me where I was born. I told her that I was from, “Green River” Florida. She was very skinny. She had soft kind eyes surrounded by deep wrinkles. She warned me to be careful while driving along the Hog Trail. She gave me her phone number just in case I got into any trouble along the highway. These were shockingly nice and trusting people out here deep in the Ozark Mountains.

I hopped back into my truck, twisted the cap off of the top of my mountain dew and I hit the pedal to the metal. The three of us sat in the front seat packed in like sardines. Malty offered to open up my Moonpie. The Moonpie tasted like a combination of sand and glue and I spit it out after my second bite. Malty commented, “The Moonpie always tricks me too.”

Remember that song by the Talking Heads, “Once in a lifetime.” David Byrne sings about these moments in life when you wake up and you say to yourself, “How the hell did I get here?” That is how I am feeling at this very moment. My life up until this moment had been a wild odyssey.

My epic journey has led me to this very moment and I had a feeling that it was about to get even more interesting. This is my story and this is my big scoop as a journalist. Let me start my story from the very very beginning.

I grew up in a small town called Green River, Florida as I mentioned before. The Green River ran right through my backyard and the water is actually a very bright green. I spent a lot of my childhood fishing in this river, which rolls just a few steps outside of my backdoor.

This small but wonderful convenience made, “going fishing” as easy as buttered toast. I would just walk out into the backyard and lower my pole into the green water. My folks called our fishing area the, “bone-yard.” There was a cemetery located just north of our property and around the river bend.

The river water slowly cuts into the bluffs of the cemetery over time and the bones of our departed, our Scotch Irish ancestry, would break loose from the soil and roll down river and eventually roll into the great Atlantic Ocean. My momma worked for the social security administration in Stone Mountain Georgia. She commuted one hour and forty minutes every single day, each way. She loved people and she was full of energy, so I do not believe that it wore her out any. My daddy was more of a homebody, a sort of slowpoke. He ran a small cafe in town called, “The Brass Ring.”

He and my momma met in college back in 1969. They attended Panhandle State University, which is located in Pensacola Florida. My daddy ended up at the Panhandle because he had bad grades and because he wanted to play football. The Panhandle football coach offered my daddy the opportunity to walk on to the team. He made the roster, but he also sat on the bench for his first two years.

He saw some playing time on special teams in his junior season. My momma went to Panhandle State for other reasons. Her family was hill folk from Georgia. Hill folk are always broke and Panhandle State was real cheap back in the mid to late sixties.

The story of how my parents fell in love and then produced me is a sweet and charming tale. It was the annual homecoming day parade, which runs through downtown Pensacola. My daddy was a junior on the football team and he was walking in the parade alongside his fellow players.

They paraded along the main roadway. My daddy and the team strolled side by side with the freshman float. The float was coined the “Frosted Freshmen.” The float was decorated in fake icicles and snow made out of white construction paper and cotton ball.

My momma was throwing candy out of the float and she hit my daddy straight in the right eye with a yellow butterscotch candy. She watched helplessly as he hit the ground and he started blubbering like a bitty baby. She says that she jumped off of the moving float and tried to help pick him up.

My daddy pushed her away. His best friend and his teammate Jared had to rush him off to Pensacola Baptist. My mother showed up at the hospital later that night and she begged him for his forgiveness. She wanted to know what she could do to make it up to him.

She says that she felt so bad, seeing him lying there with this large gauze plastered over his right eye. He told her that she could start her redemption by giving him her name and her phone number and by going out to dinner with him sometime after he had time to recover.

He wore an eye patch for a good three weeks after he was released from the hospital. His teammates started to refer to him as Long John Silver. My mama thought he’d forgotten about her since she hadn’t heard nothing from him for a good time. He showed up in her dorm one day with a big plastic bag full of yellow butterscotch candies. They went on their first date to a famous restaurant in Pensacola called, “George’s,” and the rest is history.

I was an only child, but I was never lonely. Saturdays were a special day for me growing up. My momma made me wear dresses during the week going to school and all, but on Saturday I wore my play clothes, jeans, and an old football t-shirt. My momma was off work on Saturdays and she always wanted the home to be empty so she could cook and clean properly without disruption.

I had tried to help her out cleaning house on Saturdays in the past but one time I left the teapot on the stovetop on high heat without filling it with water and the teapot melted. Another time I tried to help her do the wash but I threw bleach into the wash instead of washing machine liquid and it turned all her good work clothes all white and spotty.
Her favorite green pants suit had yellow spots all over it. She put it on and she looked in the mirror.

She resembled a cheetah from outer space. So when I wanted to stay home with her to help with the cooking and the cleaning one particular afternoon, she yelled and protested, “Please, go, go, get outta here and play, please, I need to clean.” So I ended up going with my daddy every Saturday to help him at The Brass Ring.

It was a moderately successful and busy cafe by Green River standards. The interior was decorated in old wooden paneled walls and the air was filled with weird and old smells. My daddy also ran a small convenience store, which was connected to The Brass Ring called the “Right Quick.” The “Right Quick” sold ice and engine oil and newspapers and candy bars and delicious cheese/cherry Danishes.

My Aunt Jackie was our short order chef. Jackie
 cooked hamburgers and hotdogs and grilled cheeses and such in the back of The Brass Ring. It was a lot of work helping my Aunt and my Daddy getting ready for the lunch crowd. I followed my daddy through the restaurant as he ran around the dining room filling up ketchup bottles and defrosting burger meat and making sweet tea.

The Brass Ring had its regulars. There was Stevie. Stevie sat at the counter smoking cigarettes and reading the Jacksonville Register. He was real skinny and his white button down shirts always looked dirty and oily. Then there was Nick. My daddy hated Nick; he was real oversized with chubby chipmunk cheeks and squinty eyes. My daddy called him a blowhard. He spouted on and on about politics and the government all afternoon and no one really listened to him.

There was Mandy and George. George was tall, tan, and skinny. His face was full of brown freckles and his long dark brown hair was cut into a mullet. Mandy was short and fat and very polite. She had a pale white complexion and bright long hair.

Sometimes Jackie’d send me over to the Right Quick to help out. That is where Lena worked. Lena was short and angry. She didn’t like me. She didn’t like anyone. Then there was Fred. Fred was a townie who spent too much time in the Right Quick. Fred had some screws loose. His momma was old and frail but she looked after him all the same for many years. He musta been close to fifty.

I am sure he was something of a burden to her throughout her lifetime. Fred’s momma followed him in to the Right Quick just about every other day round noon.

Fred would buy every newspaper there was for purchase. These included the Pensacola Press, the Miami Herald, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.

He was a conspiracy guy and he was obsessed with the economic well being of the United States as well as the global economy. Fred would talk Lena’s ear off. He went on and on about the Federal Reserve, interest rates, and the Nasdaq. Lena never yelled at him nor told him to screw off for some reason. I guess she felt bad for him.

The best part of Saturdays and helping my daddy and Jackie at The Brass Ring was Cheeseburgers for breakfast and afternoon football. A large television set sat up high up on a shelf in the corner of the cafe and the volume was always blaring.

I can remember my Aunt facing the grill with her back facing the counter as smoke and delicious smells filled the cafe and I can remember my daddy rushing about cleaning tables and filling ketchup bottles. Those were warm and fuzzy days.

My daddy played for the Panhandle State Pine Devils, so if they happened to be on television my daddy always had a little extra pep in his step. The Panhandle lost a lot of games, but my daddy rooted for them with all of his heart. My daddy told me that they were considered the “Punching Bags” of the south and college football. They were always considered an underdog and they had a difficult time competing with the big time programs like Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee. Sometimes these punching bag schools like the Panhandle or say for example the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles or the Houston Cougars would rise up and upset these powerhouse programs every now and then, but it was rare.