7th Grade at Nankipooh School

"7th grade at Nankipooh School"

 

Well after a long hot Nankipooh summer, we were looking forward to getting back to school and starting the seventh grade, which at Nankipooh was like being seniors at high school, and we were looking forward to the beginning of football season, since we figured we had a pretty good team.  Well right off the bat three unusual things happened.  First we found out that the new seventh grade teacher was a man, and there had not been a man teaching at Nankipooh before.  The second unusual thing was that this new teacher did not drive a regular car like everybody else.  He did not drive a Ford or a Chevy, but instead he had a funny looking little foreign car called a Simca, and the only foreign car any of us had ever seen was a Volkswagon.  So right off the bat we were a little suspicious of this "new guy".  Finally, there was a new kid in our class, and he rode a motorcycle to school.  We never knew his name, but he was three years older than the rest of us, and when he said "just call me Rocky", we did just that because we were all pretty scared of him.

It seems also, that Mr. Richardson, the new seventh grade teacher, as well as Nellie Smith, the principal were kinda scared of him as well.  It seems that Rocky was just going to school for a few months until he turned sixteen, so that he could drop out of school, and get a job down at the textile mill.  Mr. Richardson never said much to him at all.  Rocky would just sit at his desk and stare down at the floor, and pretend that he was the commentator at a stock car race, and he was pretty good at it to, cause I would listen to him a lot when he would be saying things like, "Its Fireball Roberts in the lead coming down the back straightaway, with Junior Johnson and Richard Petty racing for second right behind him".  I enjoyed it so much, that I am still a stock car fan today.  After about four months Rocky was gone, and we never saw him or heard from him again.

We also learned pretty quick that Mr. Richardson, who we liked to call "Doberman" from the character on the "Sergeant Bilko" TV show, in addition to not disciplining Rocky,  wasn't much of a teacher either.  It seems that he liked history and geography, but wasn't much on math and English.  In fact we studied English so little, that when I got to junior high school, the teachers could not understand why I knew so little about grammar and sentence structure, until I told them that we really didn't have English class at Nankipooh.  The truth is I was not a very good student either.

As a matter of fact, I got into so much trouble, that by the middle of the year "Doberman" had me pull my desk right up against his desk in the middle row, where he could whack me with a yardstick whenever he thought I needed it. The front desk in the middle row used to belong to Carolyn, who was the best student in our class, but after he made me take the front desk, she had to sit in the one behind me.  One day when he got really mad with me, he picked up a blackboard eraser from where he was standing up at the blackboard, and threw it at me as hard as he could.  Well I ducked and that eraser hit Carolyn right in the eye.  I believe "Doberman" got in a lot of trouble over that one.

I wasn't the only one who got into trouble, it seems like most of the boys in the seventh grade class got into trouble.  One time when "Doberman' left the room for a while most of us went and hid in the closet at the back of the room, so that when he came back, it looked like half the class was gone.  It was so difficult for them to figure out who was to blame for these things, that toward the end of the year it got to be pretty routine to hear Nellie Smith get on the PA system and say, "all of the seventh grade boys come down to the Principal's office. One time when we were all crowded into her office she told us that we all were going to get a whipping unless someone confessed to being the ring leader on that particular day.  I don't remember if anyone confessed, but I do remember the feel of that yardstick on my backside.  While I was at Nankipooh, I don't remember those big old heavy yardsticks being used for anything but whippings.

On the bright side of things, we had a pretty good football team and softball team that year, in fact we won the league championship for football that year. Our little touch football league included Double Churches, Britt David, and a few our schools in the surrounding area.  At the end of the regular season we were tied with Double Churches for first place, and it was decided that there would be a playoff game.  For some reason or other, that game kept getting postponed, and was finally scheduled for a week in January after we got back to school from the Christmas Holiday.  We played the game at Nankipooh, and as I remember it was about thirty degrees that day.  Well us Southern Boys always played in our canvass sneakers, but we believed we could run faster bare-footed, so we played the game without shoes.  We won the game, and the championship, but my feet were so cold that I thought my toes were gonna fall off!  The bad thing was that we were supposed to get a trophy, but we were told that because the game was played so long after the season that there would be no trophy, but we were still mighty proud, cause after all, Double Churches was sorta our arch rival, and they knew that we had whipped them.

Funny, but that football game was one of the few fond memories that I have of Mr. Richardson, who was a better coach than he was a teacher.  Six months later we would be leaving Nankipooh School and moving out into a bigger world, but we took a lot of fond memories with us.  Of course one of my favorite memories was the look on Doberman's faced when I ducked, and that eraser hit Carolyn right in the eye.

NBB

6th Grade at Nankipooh School

"6th grade at Nankipooh School"

After a wonderful year with Miss Ledford in the fifth grade, things took a real turn for the worse when I started the sixth grade, with the strictest teacher at Nankipooh, Mrs. Leonora Powell, who was in some ways more scarey than Nellie Smith the Principal.  I don't recall Mrs. Powell ever whipping anybody, but she sure sent a bunch of kids down to Mrs. Smith's office to get their whipping. A lot of the boys in our class called her "Old Lady Powell".

I was a member of the School Safety Patrol back then, and as we called it back then, I was a Patrol Boy.  Me and Carney were in charge of the street crossing in front of the school, which was the Fortson Road, a Muscogee County main thoroughfare headed north out of Columbus on its way past Nankipooh toward Fortson, Georgia.

 

One day when I was "on patrol" by myself, two boys crossed the road north of my crossing, where there was no cross-walk, which was strictly against the rules.  I raced up to them, and after a brief struggle, I was able to "collar" them and haul them back to the school. There I brought them before the Vice Principal, "Old Lady" Powell, who was in charge since the principal had gone home for the day.  After learning that I had used un-due force in apprehending the two suspects, she released them and took my Patrol Boy's badge from me.  The next day I was arraigned before Mrs. Smith who told me that she was going to return my badge, but that I had been up for promotion to sergeant, and under the circumstances, and also to appease "Old Lady" Powell, the promotion would be given to someone else.

 

Now when she heard that my badge had been returned, "Old Lady" Powell was outraged, and declared that as extra punishment, I would not be allowed to appear on the local TV station the following week, where our sixth grade class was scheduled to preform a demonstration of square dancing.  Now this was quite a blow to me, since the class had been rehearsing for this big event for more than six months.  After that, my career in law enforcement was never the same.  I was bitter because everyone in the sixth grade was on TV except me, and I never made officer in the Safety Patrol either.  Who knows, if I had made sergeant in the sixth grade, I might have been promoted to lieutenant, or maybe even captain in the seventh grade.

I can tell you one thing for sure, I was sure glad to get out of the sixth grade at the end of the school year, and I was hoping that maybe Mrs. Powell would be gone before the next year started, but of course, she was still there, so I had to spend a lot of time trying to stay out of her way.  Looking back on it after all of these years, I suppose Mrs. Powell was really a pretty good teacher, but I don't think anybody would think that she was kind-hearted, especially the boys.  I know one thing though, I ain't never cared much for square dancing ever since the sixth grade.

NBB

5th Grade at Nankipooh School

"5th grade at Nankipooh School" The summer between the 4th and 5th grades was great.  I had some new friends to play with, and we spent countless hours running through the woods around Nankipooh,  playing Cowboys and Indians, or Army.  Just about every Wednesday Grandpa took me fishing with him.  He had a man come in on Wednesday and run his store for him in the afternoon, and we went fishing at The Blackmon's place out on the Whitesville Road. The Blackmons were cousins of ours, and they had a fabulous place.  It was a fishing paradise, because they had three lakes, and the fish were always biting in at least one of them.  So when it came time to go back to school, I was not that thrilled about the idea. That all changed after I started school in the 5th grade.  First I learned that I had a chance to play softball on the Nankipooh Softball Team, but even more important than that, I met my first true love.  She was a goddess, just about the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  It was her first year at Nankipooh, and she was straight out of college from Tennessee, and she was the new 5th grade teacher at Nankipooh, Linda Ledford.  I still am in love with her, even though I was only ten years old at the time. I had never bothered to comb my hair except when I went to church on Sunday, and most of the time my mother combed it for me, cause after all, who cares about your hair when you are ten years old.  Well after that first week in Miss Ledford's class, I asked my mother to get me some hair tonic, and she brought home a bottle of Vasoline Hair Oil.  The next morning I put about half that bottle on my head, and was slicked down better than a greased pig, except for a cowlick in the back, which stood straight up no matter how much oil I poured on it. I guess I looked a lot like Alphalfa from the old Spanky and Our Gang TV show.  When I showed up at school, I didn't think the kids would ever stop laughing.  I'm not sure what effect it had on Miss Ledford, but she didn't laugh, and was always kind to me, even though I don't think she ever knew what a crush I had on her. The good thing about all this, was that because I didn't want to disappoint her, I got all A's for the whole year, even one for good conduct and behavior, which never happened again, ever.  In fact for the rest of my life as a student, I rarely ever got any A's at all, but I got lots of bad marks for behavior.  The other really good thing about the fifth grade was that I started playing softball, football, and basketball for Nankipooh School, which continued for the whole time I was there.  When I look back on things, I guess that 1957 was just about the best year ever.  On top of meeting Miss Ledford, I got to take an airplane flight to St. Louis, where we went to the baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Braves, which featured Stan Musial and Hank Aaron playing against each other  I got an autographed picture o "Stan the Man" when we had dinner at his restaurant, and Hank and the Braves went on to win the world series that year.  While at the airport, I had a chance to meet my favorite TV cowboy, James Arness , who played Matt Dillion on "Gunsmoke".  To cap off that wonderful year, I got to go to the Georgia - Auburn football game, which was played in Columbus in those days.  Auburn won the game, and went on to become the 1957 National Champions.  I became a n Auburn fan right then, much to the dismay of my mother who went to Georgia. I also fell in love with automobiles that year, because the folks at Chevrolet produced the 1957 Belair Convertible, one of the prettiest cars ever made and still in great demand today.  But, despite all of these terrific things happening to me in 1957, the best of all was going to school at Nankipooh in the fifth grade with Linda Ledford as my teacher!  NBB

The Nankipooh School Series: 4th Grade at Nankipooh

"4th grade at Nankipooh School" By the time I started the fourth grade at Nankipooh School, I had become a shore enough "Southern Boy" who knew how to fish the small creeks around Nankipooh and run barefooted through the woods all summer long.  When we started school that first day in 1956, I had a pleasant surprise when I found out that Mrs. Revelle, my friend from the third grade, had also been promoted, and was now the teacher of the fourth grade, so things were really looking up for this "Napa Cowboy" turned "Nankipooh Southern Boy".   It looked like it was going to be a great year for me at Nankipooh, and, I wasn't the new kid at school anymore either, since there were a couple of new boys in my class. Then things took a turn for the worse, when I discovered two things which I did not know about.  One was the trouble little girls can get little boys into, and the second was Elvis Presley. Mrs. Revelle had a morning devotional in her class every morning, and the kids took turns being in charge.  When it was my turn, I brought to school a 45rpm record which had the Lord's Prayer on one side and the 23rd Psalm on the other side.  Mrs. Revelle was really pleased, and asked me to put the record on for the kids to hear, and meanwhile she ducked out to go down to the cafeteria to get an apple for her morning snack  That's when the trouble started.  We had a red-haired, freckle-faced little girl in our class, and she was as cute as a brand new puppy, so when she asked me to put on a record she had brought from home, I could not say no. Turned out that the record was Elvis Presley singing "You ain't nothing but a hound-dog" and the kids loved it.  In fact they all went a little crazy, and before you could say "swivel hips", they were up and dancing, and I was like the disc jockey on WDAK "Big Johnny Reb" radio playing rock and roll, and rocking the house down.  That's about when Mrs. Revelle stepped back into the room with a look of total disappointment for me on her face.  I was sent to sit in the hall by myself, and I never told her that the record was not mine, so I knew I had messed things up with my favorite teacher, not to mention the little red haired girl, after she discovered that I had put a big old scratch down the middle of that record which made it jump every time, right between hound and dog. To make matters worse, about the time I sat down out there in the hallway, along comes Ms. Nellie Smith, the school principal, who looked at me in disgust and asked what I was doing sitting out there in the hall.  When I told her, she told me I might as well come on down to her office and get my whipping, which she was really good at, I might add.  She used a one quarter inch thick, hardwood yardstick, and when she swung it, it made a cracking sound on your behind, that sounded like Mighty Casey at the bat. Now I learned three important things from all of this.  One you can trust cute little girls to get you into trouble, but you can't trust them to get you out of it.  The second thing I learned, is that it is probably best to not mix religion with rock and roll.  And, the third thing I learned, was that I didn't want Nellie Smith hitting anymore homeruns off of me.  NBB

Thanksgiving and the Old Hen

The Nankipooh Enquirer

"Thanksgiving and the Old Hen" When you grow up on a farm, there is a lot you learn about growing crops and taking care of live stock.  Most any farmer, no matter what kind of crop he raises, has a milk cow or two, and usually a few hogs, and of course a henhouse full of chickens.  That's kinda the way it was down at the old farm in Nankipooh when I was a young-un.  Part of my job was milking the cow, and gathering the eggs.  Course most of the time Grandma Biggers took care of those things, but I was the backup, when I wasn't totin in firewood, and totin out the ashes. We had a couple of dozen chickens, but the queen of the henhouse was Old Hen, who was pretty much past her egg laying days, but was still the queen of the roost.  Old Hen took her status pretty seriously too, and she didn't take nothing off nobody, or no critter neither.  Even our dog and our cat was scared of her, cause she'd come right for you, if you crossed her path with the wrong look in your eyes.  I am reminded of one winter during this time that it got so cold in Nankipooh that almost everything froze over during the night, when it went down to about seven or eight degrees, which was about the coldest morning I can remember in Nankipooh. Well, I got up that morning and was worried about my dog cause he was outside, and even though he had a dog house full of pine straw, it was mighty cold.  I went outside to check on him when the sun came up, and there he was all snuggled up in the pine straw, and right next to him was our cat, and I'll be darned, but in between the two of them, warm as toast, was Old Hen.  Now, I ain't seen nothing like that before or since.  Imagine that, a dog, a cat, and a chicken all huddled up together trying to stay warm.  It seems to me that if the three of them could get through a cold winter night together, then them Skunks and Polecats up in DC could get along together a little better than they do, just to get the country through some of these cold winter nights. A couple of years later, we were all sitting down together at the Biggers farm for our big Thanksgiving dinner, and as usual I could hardly wait, because I always did love Grandma's turkey and dressing, along with all the trimmings.  Well this year the turkey seemed a might small, and I said something about it, and Grandpa said, "Well times have been a little hard lately, so this year we are having chicken instead of turkey."  Well it was a little disappointing, but I understood, and besides, I like roasted chicken too.  About then Grandpa starts to carve up the bird, and he seems to be having some trouble, and then he says, "I'm afraid this old bird is going to be pretty tough!"  And then it hit me! "You ain't fixing to eat Old Hen are You?", I said.  Grandpa says, "You just be quite and eat your dinner."  "I ain't eating Old Hen", I said, and I got up and run out of the dining room without eating a bite of that Thanksgiving Dinner. When I look back on it, that was about the worst Thanksgiving that I can remember, but it taught me something about life.  You see, Old Hen wasn't much good at being a chicken anymore.  She couldn't lay eggs anymore, and she was too mean to be a good friend, and she was too tough to eat, but I still loved her.  Sometimes the best things in life ain't all young and pretty, or bright and shinny, but Old Hen had character, and I not only loved her, but I had a lot of respect for her too.  You know, I have lived long enough on this old earth, to have found a few people like that along the way, and I am a richer man for seeing them for what they are, and I like to call them my friend. "Now that's the way I see it, and you can tell'em I said so."         Bascomb Biggers

Living in Nankipooh

"Living in Nankipooh"

 Everybody has got to be from somewhere, and I am proud to say that I grew up in Nankipooh, Georgia.  Now I wasn't born there, but my Mama was, and her Mama and Daddy was, and their Mama and Daddy was.  I came to Nankipooh in 1952, when I was a little more that five years old, and me and Mama lived with Grandma and Grandpa Biggers on the old Biggers farm, which had been in the family for more than a hundred years, and at one time it had belonged to Grandma's Daddy whose name was Livingston.  He had a big farm on the east side of the Hamilton Road about five miles north of Columbus, Georgia, and on the west side of the road Grandpa's daddy had a big farm.  In fact, back in the 1880's Nankipooh was mostly made up of five farms, which in addition to the Biggers and the Livingstons, there was also the Moons, Weems, and the Adams farms.  There were lots of houses belonging to kinfolk and there were shotgun shacks where the field hands lived who helped work the land.  Most of those field hands were the descendants of slaves who grew up right there in Nankipooh.

Right in the middle of Nankipooh was a crossroads where the Fortson Road and the Double Churches Road branched off of the Hamilton Road, and the railroad tracks belonging to the Central of Georgia ran right up through that intersection.  When I was a boy, the train called "The Man of War" went up and down those tracks two times a day between Columbus and Atlanta.  Some times the train even made a short stop in front of the old general store that was right there at the crossroads.  After Grandpa quit farming he ran the store for awhile and it was called "Biggers Grocery".

I asked Grandpa one time where the name Nankipooh came from, and he told me that at one time a branch of the Cherokees called the Muscogee had lived there, and the place was named for their most famous chief who was called Nankipooh.  I have heard other stories about the name, but I believe this one to be true, since Grandpa was born there in 1885..

When I got to Nankipooh in 1952, it was a pretty little place, and everything was in walking distance.  It was about two miles from Grandpa's store up to the Hog's store and in between was Nankipooh Elementery school with thirty or forty houses near it.  Around our old farm house was eleven other houses filled with kinfolk either from the Biggers or the Livingston families who were living on land that used to be the two farms.  There were also four or five of those old shotgun shacks still occupied by the descendants of those slaves who had worked the fields so long ago.  It was like one big family where everybody knew everybody, since their grandparents and great grandparents had all known each other also.  Almost every Sunday afternoon me and the grandparents took a little five or six mile "Sunday Drive" around Nankipooh so they could see if anybody new had moved into the neighborhood.

It was pretty country with good land and many branches of the two main creeks running through it everywhere.  Those two main creeks were the "Standing Boy" and the "Mulberry" which eventually found their way into the Chattahoochee River.  Nankipooh also had many large outcroppings of granite, mostly near the creeks and branches, and the old farms were dotted with small ponds where Nankipooh's kids could go "skinny dipping".  On the backside of the old Biggers farm was a large branch of the Standing Boy about ten feet wide which had a small water fall going down some of that granite into a small pond, where Great-grandpa Livingston had once had a small grist mill.  I believe Grandma and Grandpa did some "sparking" down by the old mill pond back in the early 1900's before they got married.  They were sweethearts for life, and it was only natural that Grandpa would marry a girl from the farm across the road.

When I lived in Nankipooh as a young boy, the center of my life was Nankipooh Elementary School , where I learned to read and write and do math and geography, and also where I learned how to play baseball, softball, football and basketball.  When we weren't playing ball we were out exploring the woods or walking up and down the train tracks, or headed to one of the many swimming holes.  The school was small with grades one through seven and probably about one hundred and fifty kids from as far as seven or eight miles away.  When I was in the fourth grade they added a kindergarten and a cafeteria.  Nankipooh school was the meeting place for the whole community, even though there were also several churches nearby.

After school everyday I would walk about a mile down to Grandpa's store and get my daily treat, which was a dime's worth of whatever I wanted.  In those days you could get a coke for a nickel and a big candy bar for a nickel, so that was the usual.  I had a real dilemma on my hands when cokes went to six cents.  In Nankipooh all sodas were called "cokes", so if someone asked you what kind of coke you wanted, you might say a Pepsi or a Nehi.  I was partial to Nehi Orange.

Nankipooh was so safe and peaceful that we either walked or rode our bikes everywhere, sometimes for miles and our parents never worried about where we were or if we were safe.  In the summers we might be gone from our house for ten hours, and they didn't worry unless we were late getting home for supper, and then you were in big trouble.  If we were at a friend's house their mama treated us just like we were one of her kids, and if we got in big enough trouble they might give us a whipping and send us home to get another one for being bad at somebody else's house.  That didn't happen very often.

In the afternoons, after school, we played in the school yard or out on the ball fields, and were supervised by someone who worked for the county parks and recreation department.  It was usually one of the mothers from the neighborhood, and we called them all the "Playground Teacher".  She was in charge of the playground equipment and supervised our pickup ball games, dodge ball  games, and monopoly tournaments.  The county had organized leagues which include other schools in our area, like Double Churches and Britt David Elementary schools.  We played against the other schools in football, softball, basketball, soccer, and volleyball.  In the summer we had track and field events.  One year when I was 12, we were tied with Double Churches at the end of the touch football season for first place, and played a playoff game in January for the championship.  It was about forty degrees, but we still played barefooted so we could run faster, and we won, but it was so cold, that I thought my toes would fall off.

In the summer, we went barefooted wherever we went, except to church on Sundays, and we were always covered in a shade of reddish brown, from a mixture of sweat and dust, from all of the Georgia red clay that Nankipooh sat on.  By the start of school in the fall, we could hardly stand wearing our shoes every day.  In those days school was from Labor Day until Memorial Day so we had three full months of summer to be ball players, cowboys, indians, pirates, or army men, on the playground, or in the woods which covered most of the Nankipooh area.  It seemed like summer lasted forever, but it always came to a close.

In 1960, I graduated from Nankipooh and moved on to see what the rest of the Columbus area was like, and by the time I was twenty years old, I left Nnakipooh and Columbus to go up to Atlanta, "The Big A", to go to college and see what the big city was like.  I always wanted to get away from the little country village and see what the great big world outside of Nankipooh was like.  I never lived in Nankipooh again, and when I look back, I wish I had never left.  Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer never had it as good as we did living in Nankipooh in the 1950s and 1960s, and I know that old friends like Carney and Mickey know what I am talking about.

Norman Biggers Bentley

Fishing with no Bait

"Fishing with no Bait"   Here in Georgia, we got quite an election going on, and of course all of us folks down here in Nankipooh are mighty excited, just like folks from all over the state.  The two big races are for Governor of Georgia and United States Senator, and there has been a lot of money pouring in from out of state by both the Republicans (Skunks) and the Democrats (Polecats).  I call them Skunks and Polecats since they both stink, and this just might be the most odorous election ever in the Peach State. The governor's race has come down to a choice between an old political hack who is now a Skunk, but was once a Polecat, and his opponent, a young whippersnapper who ain't never done nothing, and don't appear to know nothing, other than his granddaddy was once a President, whose record speaks for itself (Stinks).  In the senate race we got a choice between two folks who don't seem to stand for much, other than they are trying to paint their opponent as worse than a case of scarlet fever.  What makes it worse is that neither one has ever been elected to anything, but they both got famous political relatives.  It is like they are fishing with no bait!  The real important thing here is that the outcome in the senate race might determine who gets control of the United States Senate, either the Skunks or the Polecats.  As I said it don't make much difference to Old Bascomb since I think they both stink!  I'm kinda sorry that I ain't running for either of these offices, since it looks like Georgia is in a lot of trouble no matter what the outcome is.  On the bright side, Old Bascomb is running for President of the Good Old USA in the next election two years from now.  The way things look the country is going to need a good Watchdog to guard the Congress from messing up the country anymore that it already is.  A good Watchdog can at least keep the Skunks and Polecats from stealing all of the eggs out of the henhouse. So in 2016, be sure you vote for Bascomb Biggers for President.  Here is the Platform: BASCOMB’S CAMPAIGN PLATFORM 1.   REDUCE ALL FEDERAL TAXES BY 20% 2.   REDUCE ALL FEDERAL SPENDING BY 40% 3.   MAKE A BALANCED FEDERAL BUDGET THE LAW 4.   PLACE TERM LIMITATATIONS ON ALL CONGRESSMEN 5.   REDUCE PRESIDENTIAL AND CONGRESSIONAL SALARIES BY 50% 6.   SEAL ALL U.S. BORDERS (NORTH, SOUTH, EAST AND WEST) 7.   DEPORT ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS 8.   MAKE ENGLISH THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF THE U.S. 9.   MAKE FRIED CATFISH THE OFFICIAL NATIONAL DINNER "Now that's the way I see it, and you can tell'em I said so."        Bascomb Biggers BASCOMB BIGGERS FOR PRESIDENT ! PLATFORM PLANK #9-Make Fried Catfish the National Dinner MAKE "REAL VALUE" THE NATIONAL OBJECTIVE !

"Snakes in the Grass"

"Snakes in the Grass" When I was a kid growing up on the farm down in Nankipooh, there were a few things you had to know about farming and living close with Mother Nature.  One thing all farmers know is that Mother Nature can be your enemy sometimes, as well as your friend.  The good Lord has provided us with quite a lot of bounty by making us the Shepard's of his garden, but as you might recall, the garden also has snakes.  When you get old enough to be out wandering around on the farm, one of the first things you learn is to watch out for snakes.  Now, down in Nankipooh we had quite a few different kinds of snakes, including a few that were downright dangerous.  We even came across a Coral Snake once when I was a boy, and after having heard about how quick death comes to those who get bit by one, and then seeing one, it just about scared me to death.  Grandpa always said, "If you see a snake, and you ain't sure what kind he is, go ahead and kill him to be on the safe side". One of my chores was to haul out the ashes from the fireplace and tote in fresh firewood, which was an everyday task.  We had a woodshed built onto the back side of the chicken house where we stored the dry cured wood for the fireplace.  One day when I was about twelve, I went into the woodshed to get an armload of firewood and I happened to look up at the rafters a few feet above my head, and there was Mr. Rattlesnake staring down at me.  Well I dropped that firewood and ran to the house and got Grandpa's 12 gauge double barrel shotgun and ran back to the woodshed and let old Mr. Rattlesnake have both barrels at once. I blew that snake straight to the Promised Land, but in the course of things, I also sent about half of the roof to the woodshed along with him.  When Grandpa came in from the field for dinnertime, he wasn't real pleased with me having shot away the roof to the wood shed, but I told him, "Grandpa you always told me to kill the snake first, and then investigate afterwards", and there wasn't much else he could say after that. Maybe you didn't know, but Georgia has more snakes per square mile than any other state, at more than fifteen snakes per square mile, and a lot of them ain't your friend.  Now farmers know that the good snakes are the ones that kill the bad snakes. Farmers don't kill black snakes because the Black King Snake is the best there is at taking care of the bad ones.  Of course he looks a lot like the Black Racer, who is mean, but not poisonous, so they let all of the black snakes alone. Also a friend, is the Georgia Banded King Snake, but he has a problem, in that he looks a lot like a Coral Snake, so a lot of them get killed by mistake. Our country today is facing a lot of these same problems, just like that old Georgia farmer.  There are a lot of snakes out there, especially in one particular part of the world, where some of those snakes want to kill our country.  A lot of the bad ones look a lot like the good ones, and you better have somebody in charge who can tell the difference, which we don't seem to have right now. Well, Old Bascomb is a farmer who can tell a weed from a bean sprout, and a King Snake from a Coral Snake, and right about now that seems to be pretty important when it comes to protecting our country and keeping it safe.  That's why Old Bascomb is running for President of the Good Old USA, because he can tell the bad ones from the good ones, besides the crops are all in, and the woodshed is full of firewood for the winter. "Now, that's the way I see it, and you can tell'um I said so!"         Bascomb Biggers BASCOMB BIGGERS FOR PRESIDENT ! PLATFORM PLANK #9-Make Fried Catfish the National Dinner