I wudn't want anyone to misunderstand me...
See, I almost always tell the gospel truth and nuthin’ but…I mean, at least most of the time, all the time. I’m a great believer in the truth ’n I just wudn’t tell a lie, nosirreeBob….telling a lie just goes clean ag’in the grain, I’m telling you ’n besides my Momma learned me better when I wuz just a boy...
Now, that said, I don’t see anything wrong with putting your best foot forward, if you know what I mean…a body gets all dressed up in his Sunday go to meeting clothes to go to church, now don’t he? And when he gets to church and praises the Lord, you just know that’s the gospel coming out, ever’ word of it ’n you could just bet the farm on it, or you could if you wuz a mind to…
The stories I tell, ’n I don’t mind sharing with you, ain’t my own personal adventures…no sir, they happened to other folk for the most part ’n I wuz told them ’n I just like to pass ‘em on…’course, I have it on the very best authority that they’re the gospel truth ‘cuz I wuz told that by the people their own selves…
Like the story about the mule that got stuck in the mud for three days…the old boy that told me that tale wuz my very own cousin…well, my daddys first cousin which ‘ud make him my second cousin, I think, though he may have been a third cousin…no matter, he wuz sure and certain a cousin ’n he had no reason that I could ascertain to lie to me about such an improbable thing as a mule getting stuck in that clay mud out there on Beauty Ridge…
I happened to tell that very story to an old friend of mine out here in California…now that may sound like he’s been a friend of mine forever ’n a day or so but that ain’t quite the truth…fact is, he’s a friend and he’s old, older ’n me, so that’s why I call him an old friend…he use’ta be a policeman back in the day down there in the Peoples Republic of Berkeley ’n when he retired from that, he went to teaching a class in criminology ’n he’s a little on the suspicious side…when I told him about Cousin Ballard and the mule being stuck in that clay mud for three days ’n having to be dug out by Grandpa John Sam Smith ’n my Daddy, he had to think on it for a bit ’n he says to me, he says, “It sounds like the truth but three days is a long time. Are you sure about your facts.”
Well, I tho’t about Bill Clinton ’n what he might reply to a question like that, so I just said “it all depends on what you mean by facts.”….
After that, y’know, I had to show him proof that I wuz a registered republican…I swear, some people are just born suspicious….Justin Other Smith
~30~
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