The Story of Bayou Bait

 

Dateline: July 30, 2010
"The Story of Bayou Bait"

Many of you know that I like a good glass of wine with a good meal, but probably few of you know that I am also an avid fisherman.

On a recent trip to Louisiana to visit my Cajun buddy Boudreaux and get in a little bayou fishing, I learned a new lesson in catching fish. Boudreaux and I were in his jon boat back in the swamp fishing for bayou catfish. We were using chicken livers and also balls of cheese as bait.

We had also taken along the required cooler of cold beer, but since Boudreaux and I both like to eat and drink wine, we had also packed some oyster and shrimp Po-Boy sandwiches, and a bota-bag full of a good seven-year-old California Cabernet Sauvignon.

Well into the day and after a great shore lunch and a few cold brews during the heat of the day, I began to notice that Boudreaux was pulling in some pretty nice big Bayou Catfish while I was mostly catching small mud cats. So I asked Boudreaux what he was using for bait, the chicken livers, or the balls of cheese. He told me that he was using the cheese balls. so I immediately switched over to the cheese myself. Well another hour passes and my luck still hasn't changed, but old Boudreaux, was still hauling them in, so I began to watch. After a nice big six pounder, I watched him re-bait his hook with another cheese ball and then take the bota-bag and soak the cheese with the Cabernet.

I said "Wow Boudreaux, you are using wine and cheese to catch those big cats!" He replied, "Man these are Cajun catfish and they got a lot of French Blood in them, like all us Cajuns!" "But you should see the size of the ones I catch when I bring along a bottle of ten year old Lafite Rothschild!

The morale of this story is that you have to use the right bait to catch the really big ones!  When a politician uses a lot of really big promises to get your vote, he may just be baiting you, so don't believe what they say, just look at what they have done.
 
Bascomb Biggers

The Georgia Governor's Race

 

DATELINE JULY 20, 2010:
"The Georgia Governor's Race"


We are having quite a run here in Georgia for the office of Governor of this grand old state. It makes me remember the first time I asked my Daddy how you could tell if a politician was telling the truth or not. He said "Son, they never tell the truth, they start to lie as soon as they open their mouth!"

Now that was then, and this is now, so I looked up the definition of politician in the Websters Dictionary, and one of the definitions was " a person primarily interested in political office for selfish or other narrow, usually short-sighted reasons."

The election for Governor we are having is quite entertaining. One candidate wants to solve the state's problems with a state run bingo game. Another wants to re-fit all of the state government buildings with low-flow toilets to provide employment. Another claims to be able to take on the federal government on health care and immigration issues, and so on, and so on. We took on the federal government in reconstruction days, and all we got out of it was the Klan!

It reminds me of one of the silliest gubernatorial elections, the one in 1966 between Maddox, Calloway, and Arnold. (Say doesn't gubernatorial remind you of Goobers, which is what most of them are?) Well in the 1966 election, there was a runoff between Lestor Maddox, a Democrat who had never held office, and a Republican, from my home of Harris County, and the son of a wealthy family, Bo Calloway. Both of these men were conservative and segregationists, and not popular with all of the public. So there was a write in vote for former Governor Ellis Arnold, which caused the election to be thrown into the General Assembly even though Calloway got a plurality of the votes, but no majority.

During the general election one candidate confessed to being a thief, but defended himself by saying, "Yes I stole money from the state, but only a little bit. You don't have any idea how much these other candidates might steal from you!" Well the outcome was never in doubt since the Democratic Legislature voted 182 to 66 for Maddox, who had never held office before, and had not even captured the most votes.

So who should you vote for? In some cases it doesn't seem to even matter. You might say that finding an honest politician, or even an honest political party, is about the same odds as a blind hog finding an acorn. Don't forget we voted for a man for President who promised change, and the only change we got, was which pocket our money went into. I say tar and feather them all, and ride them out of town on a rail!

You can always write my name in, Bascomb Biggers. I promise not to steal near as much from you as some of these other candidates!

Bascomb Biggers

The Nankipooh Enquirer

Nankipooh, Georgia

Editor in Chief: Colonel Bascomb Biggers

Ace Reporter : Scoop Biggers

RE: "History"

My Great, Great Grandfather’s name was James Joseph Walton Biggers.  In 1828, when he was just a small boy of four years, his family moved from South Carolina to a small frontier town on the Chattahoochee River called Columbus, Georgia.  He spent the next sixteen years of his life growing up near the river and watching his father plow the hard, red Georgia clay in an effort to feed his family.  At the age of twenty, JJW Biggers struck out on his own, and started his own farm in Harris County, Georgia, near what is now Calloway Gardens, but in those days there was just Mulberry Grove, and a small village called Hamilton, Georgia.

During the period leading up to the Civil War his farming efforts prospered, and by the time of his death, he owned about two thousand acres in Harris County and about three hundred more in a little village north of Columbus called Nankipooh. After his death, his heirs received shares, but the farming continued under the direction of his son, Bascomb Biggers who was born a few years prior to the Civil War. During Bascomb's time Nankipooh consisted of five or six farms run by the families named Livingston, Walton, Moon, Adams, and Biggers.

Bascomb remained on the land until his death, at which time the properties were divided among his eight children. Three of those children spent their lives in Atlanta, while four remained on the land in Nankipooh, while the youngest, James Walton Biggers moved into Columbus and became a successful architect and designed many of the citiy’s most prominent buildings, including the Public Library.

The oldest son, James Norman Biggers continued the farming and married one of the Livingston girls from the farm across the road, whose name was Bessie Lee Livingston, and thus those two farms were united. By the 1950's James Norman Biggers also ran a store called Biggers Grocery at the intersection of Hamilton Road and Fortson Road which also intersected the Central of Georgia rail line connecting Columbus and Atlanta.

The Biggers family played a prominent role in settling Nankipooh and were part of the building of Nankipooh School and the Pierce Chapel Methodist Church a few miles north of the school. There are many stories concerning the origins of the name Nankipooh, The version which Norman Biggers (born 1885) believed to be true was that Nankipooh was a great chief of the Muscogee Indians who were a branch of the Cherokee living in the Chattahoochee Valley when the first white settlers arrived in the area and founded Columbus and later Nankipooh.

Norman Biggers Bentley

DATELINE JULY 4, 2010:
"Bascomb Biggers"

My name is Bascomb Biggers.

During my lifetime I saw quite a lot of history as I watched our country grow up. That included the Civil War, which is about as bad as it has ever got in this country. It looks like now though, that we are in some pretty hard times again, and I just can't hold my say any longer.

Here are a few things that remind me that no matter how hard times get, we are still lucky, and mighty beholden to the good Lord for looking out for us. When people ask me how I am, I say, "Better than I deserve, but not as good as I wanna be!" Which is a reminder to me that we all owe everything to the good Lord! But, here are a few of those things that I mentioned.

1. Hearing the bell rung to come in for dinner, after being in the field since sun up.
2. A cold dipper full of well water, after six hours out in the hot July Georgia sun.
3.The sound of caddie-dids up in the trees at sundown.
4.Watching the lightning bugs after dark.
5. Hearing that old bull frog down by the mill pond late in the evening.
6. Waking up in the morning to the rooster crow, and knowing there are fresh eggs, and homemade biscuits for breakfast.
7. Walking out to the fields with the fresh scent of Georgia Pine in my nostrils.

Something I ain't never liked: A politician standing on a tree stump making promises for votes, that you know he ain't never gonna keep!
"Now that's just the way I see it, and you can tell-em I said so".

Bascomb Biggers
07-04-2010