"Friends"

DATELINE: 7/01/2012
RE: "Friends"
When I was twelve years old the principal at my school give me a whippin for something I didn't do, and I told my daddy that I was never goin to go back to that school ever again. Daddy says "Son if you ain't goin to school, then you are goin to work on the farm like a grown man", and right then I began what was to become sixty years of bein a farmer. It was also then that me and Albert began workin together.

Albert was the grandson of a slave that had worked on my grandpa's farm, and he was the same age as me, and wasn't goin to school no more, since in those days the black folks didn't go to school past seventh grade. Me and Albert already knew each other, and was friends who went fishin and swimmin together. Workin together for fifteen hours a day like men taught us some new lessons about life, like dependin on other folks to get the job done.

One day me and Albert was hoein out in the cotton field when I turned around and saw Mr. Rattlesnake all curled up and gettin ready to bite me. Before I could even blink, Albert had cut that snake's head clean off with his hoe, and sent Mr. Rattlesnake on down the road to glory, and snake heaven, if there is such a place. From then on me and Albert wern't just fishin buddies, we was brothers.

I worked with Albert for more than forty years, and I have never known a better man. He was honest and hard workin, and me and him sweated through some mighty hot summers on the farm down in Nankipooh. One night late, when Albert was comin home from his job as night watchman at the old spinnin mill down in Columbus, he was run over by the train only a mile or so from his home. He was only fifty seven years old. I ain't got over it yet.

One thing I learned from Albert, was how to tell a good man from a bad one, and how to trust a good man and call him your friend, when you do find one. In this world we are livin in today, it is gettin harder to find good men, so you better hold on to any you do find. It is even harder to find a good man among politicians, so if you do find one, you better send him up to DC. Most of the time we have to choose between two bad ones, and send the better of the two up there, and hope they won't steal as much of our money as the other one would have.

"Now, That's the way I see it, and you can tell'em I said so."
Bascomb Biggers