HE JUST TOOK DRUNK

Every now and then Tom Jones (I called him Uncle Tom) would take a notion that he wanted to drink something, and he was going to drink it if it hairlipped Hell.

I wasn't old enough to drive. Uncle Tom would have somebody else drive, and we'd stop at Bookie Poole's Service Station for Ruppert beer. He'd go in there and he'd tell the man, "I want six bottles of Ruppert beer." They had it on ice then. It was buried in icy water and it was really cold.

The first time it happened, the man behind the counter said, "Are you going to carry it with you?" He says, "No, I'm going to drink it right here." And he took the first bottle out of the box and popped the top on it and set it up on the counter. Uncle Tom drank that bottle of beer before the man could get the next bottle out of the box and take the top off of it and set it up there.

We'd go on down to the farm and do what we had to do - tend to the livestock, whatever was down there. And we'd head back. He wanted six more. He'd drink twelve beers in one afternoon. By the time he got home, he was lit. And just as soon as we drove in the yard and parked and the driver got out, Annie, his wife, she'd stick her head out the back door. She knew just as good what had happened. Uncle Tom would go out to the barn or somewhere.

"You devil!" she'd say to me. "You done took him off and got him drunk again, ain't you?" I'd say, "No, Aunt Annie, I ain't done nothing to him. He just took drunk somehow or another."

"I know damn well you did. You took him by Bookie's."  I'd say, "No, I didn't. I've been riding." She'd say, "Well, you'd better stay here until he goes to bed."

After I was grown and married and moved back to the area, Annie would call me sometimes to come up there and see if I couldn't do something with him.

He was an amazing man in this world. He went through the worst part of World War I. He told me some hair-rising things. He respected me tremendously, and I thought the world of all of them.