Beech Tree News Network

Combinets and Coal buckets:
    This scene is still vivid in my mind after some seventy five years.  The characters there were my daddy, Luther: my seventeen year old brother Julian; local good ole boy named Hezzie Full; our wire fox terrier, named Chum, and me.  I was somewhere between six and seven.  At the back of our country stove, across a breezeway, was an attached ware house above the main floor in the rear was a balcony.  On this particular occasion the story is centered around several, rolls of linoleum rugs on the balcony, at the end of which was my daddy, Luther; at the other end was my brother, Julian, both of whom held new ax handles.
    At the back of the stack of rugs was our dog Chum, pacing back and forth, barking furiously; water dripping off his tongue- beside himself, quivering all over.  Somewhere in the middle of all that was a rat.  Watching from down on the floor were Hezzie and me- Hezzie standing slack jawed, a chaw of Brown Mule Twist between his cheek and gum.  Directly behind him were a stack of shiny- new coal buckets and a shelf of white enameled newly-minted, combinets.  To the younger generation, a combinet is a round vessel with a handle and lid, next to one’s bed at night… sort of like a vintage bedroom.  You get the drift.  And Julian whipping each end of the rug pile with ax handles, the rat decided his options had run out and over the balcony rail he went, taking Hezzie in the chest somewhere about the middle pocket button of his overalls.
    Hezzie staggered backwards into that sea of new coal bucket.  This caused the shelf to turn over and dump all the combinents into the fray evidently one or more of the combinents struck the lip of a coal bucket and flipped it over on top of Hezzie’s head.  By this the rat was hunting new territory.
    When we got to Hezzie we pulled the bucket off his head and asked him if he was hurt.  “No”, he said, “but somebody go in the store and pull me a big orange drink.  I think I’ve swallowed my cud.”
                            Kindest regards…