OT: A Man Called Burp
Burp like to carve wood...well, tree trunks...big ones.
August, 97 degrees and dead still in the North Carolina piedmont. We finally found burp's "shack" about three miles into a tobacco field. Nothing but tobacco as far as the eye could see...and burp's shack.
Paw-Paw wouldn't give up the farm to RJR, so generations later here was burp--scratching out a living from tobacco allotments.
The man could barely walk, but he could heave a chainsaw. We walked behind his shack, and hidden in some corn and tobacco were his treasures. Twenty years of his life...150 carved tree trunks. Three feet, five feet, eight feet high. Every biblical character I could remember, politicians, silent movie stars. Detailed, weathered...incredible.
Burp said God told him to carve them. It's in the water in the deep south with naive's..."God told me to"...and then they just do it. Sixty year old black sharecropper, barely existing...and God told him to carve tree trunks...so he did.
We offered him a nice bit of money for several of the carvings and he just laughed and rolled a joint the size of my wrist. Shortly, we saw a dust cloud coming up the road...police. Bobby got out of the car, with his gut hanging over, mirrored shades blazing and looked us up and down while sniffing the air. Southern cracker cop straight ou of the movies. Burp said "hey", and Bobby gave him his warm six-pack of Bud (it was a dry county), and drove away without a word.
We listened to the Pirates game on the front stoop on AM radio, sun blazing.
Best warm Bud in a can I ever had.
Burp died a few months ago. Don't think he had any relatives...RJR is probably squatting his land. I wonder if his tree trunks are still there.
I love the south.
-dave |
