| Josephine Rainey was born and raised in the mountains of Arkansas and after marriage she settled in the town of Green Forest where she saw her family grow along with her age. Eventually it ended up just her and her husband Clyde. They retired in a house not terribly far from where they raised their family. This house was smaller and cost much less to heat which was good since there were only the two of them now. Clyde was a bit eccentric but all in all a nice man with good values. Having been born and raised in Arkansas, probably his worst trait was that he followed the rules from the old ways they had in the mountains. I remember this being a proving point one evening as we were going out to dinner. Usually we would go in my father’s car because it was bigger and we could pile everyone in it. This night however an extra couple were joining us. So we took two cars, one of which was Clyde’s. I rode with Clyde because he was a lot more fun than being in the car with my mom and dad. We had been on a road which is on one of the mountains. Suddenly a police car is coming at us so Clyde gets over to the left side of the road which is the side that hugs the mountain. I recognized right away there was going to be a problem and mentioned it to Clyde who explained to me there was no problem. So when we got close to the cop he turned on his lights and siren and motioned at us as he came to a stop on the same side of the road as our car. When the officer got out he looked at Clyde’s license and returned it. Next he asked why we were on the wrong side of the road? Clyde explained we were not on the wrong side, because we were there first. Made me smile too and I was just a kid. You had to love that reply, I don’t care who you are. So the cop says the same thing I thought then, you’re thinking now. What the hell? Clyde went on to explain he was following the rules of the mountain. Clearly he had been on the stretch of the road longer than the cop because he was just coming around the curve where he could just now have been able to see us. Where as we could clearly be seen FROM EITHER DIRECTION much longer than could have his car therefore we had the right of choice as to which side of the road we wanted. Since we were on the left side, clearly we wanted the left side. To the high office of judge, the good people of Arkansas, and you good folks just watchin’: I rest my case for simple reason there is no reason to pursue the matter further. Don’t anybody worry, no real harm done. Just have the officer apologize to me and allow me and my extended party, whom you can see are right behind me, to go on our way. Don’t you worry son. Everybody makes mistakes. That conversation went on for about another ninety minutes. And then things started to get heated. About two hours into the discussion, after the officer had offered to let him off with a warning, which Clyde said thank you for just the warning but that the officer, who was clearly younger and perhaps had more schoolin’ just wasn’t understanding how an older man who was a lifetime native to the Arkansas mountain life would know better than anybody, what the rules were for driving in the mountains. This cop just wasn’t getting it! Clyde mentioned out of the side of his mouth he was starting to lose patience with this kid! So after making out the ticket and making sure that Clyde signed it, we had to wait for that idiot kid cop to move his damn car so we could be on our way! Which is exactly how that played out. Now I told you that story so I could tell you this story. To just say these were Arkansas mountain folk who were in their seventies back in 1970, would not have conveyed what sort of folk you were actually dealing with until you heard that story. These were down-to-the-earth, unflappable Arkansas mountain folk. They claimed to have seen ghosts, spirits, all that mountain-born myth stuff and were not bothered nor scared of any of it. You wanna live in the mountains then you best buck up. There’s no telling what is gonna come around that bend next but it will be met with the same stubbornness that has kept these folks since they arrived. Well my family, father, mother, younger brother and myself rolled into Green Forest ready for another great visit with “Aunt Joe and Uncle Clyde” as they were affectionately called, even though we were not blood kin. They were however best friends with my real aunt and uncle who by the way, were that extra couple who caused us to take two cars that night of the first story. By the way, if you have any doubt to the rules for mountain driving you will probably have to ask an old-timer . I have doubts they are listed on the internet. Then again I never looked. We spent a few days with them and it was great as always. Then as I am coming out of our bedroom to get a drink of water on the last night of our visit I overhear the adults speaking about how Joe(sephine) wanted to make ’em wear some damn clothes because they were completely shameless. She was glad they only came out at night because it was damn embarrassing when they’d come around with their private’s all floppin’ around out there to be seen by who ever couldn’t get their eyes adverted in time or if you was a kid you could get sex-educated all at once! Some of them are more than ten foot tall you know! (Which to that statement I was very interested in getting sex-educated all at once) and I had no clue what being ten feet tall had to do with anything? They stopped talking about that time and took notice of me. I was quickly given the ten-cent version of a shrink’s quick fix for when a kid over hears something he wasn’t suppose to hear. You know. It is usually a three question quiz. Hey there, how much did you hear? How much did you understand? Do you want to stop at the toy store tomorrow? Then forget what you heard, get your drink and go to sleep! To which I go back to bed with a whole new puzzle to solve. And what can possibly be juicier than a puzzle which you picked up by overhearing a discussion which was important enough to get a quiz on how much you heard and how much you retained? You know that’s going to be some good stuff. It involved apes! I had picked up enough to been able to figure that much out. I remembered hearing my folks talking with some friends one night a few weeks back. They kept saying something about taking their hands off because they were damn dirty apes! Or something like that. I wondered if these apes were the same ones? I went to sleep that night dreaming of apes but they were not a threat or angry or anything of the like. We danced in meadows and they picked me up and raised me way up into the air. Then to throw sugar on top of the ice cream and cake they would throw me up into the air, a long ways, and catch me when I came down. It was such fun! I woke up thirsty again so I quietly went into the living and then kitchen area. Everyone had gone to sleep and morning was likely not far off. I pulled a chair over to the kitchen sink and climbed up onto the counter where the same glass I had drank from earlier in the night, was right there within reach. Well not quite within reach. If I were a grown up it would have been easy to reach. For me I had to lean onto the middle ridge of the sink and reach across and get the glass. As I did I happened to look out their kitchen window. To my complete surprise I was seeing two big apes! They seemed to be messing around a little table Aunt Joe had in their back yard where I had seen her place pies and other baked goods to cool off so they didn’t stay in the kitchen making the house warmer causing the air conditioning costs to go up. I didn’t know if Aunt Joe had left anything out there but if she did it was gone now! The two apes left something. It looked like a few small pebbles. What an odd thing to leave on the table. I went back to bed intending to tell my Aunt Joe about it in the morning. When I woke up I realized there was no reason to tell about the visitors from the night because it was all anybody could talk about. Aunt Joe was busy fixing pies while she already had breakfast cooked up and ready for eating, Which I was quick to do because that lady could cook. Anyways as I wolfed down my third and then fourth fried egg, I found out what was so special about those pebbles which the apes left. I also found out that apparently I was the only one who had ever seen them visit the “table”. Turns out the table wasn’t for cooling baking goods. Well it was, but it had also become a place for trading between parties that over an extended amount of years had come to trust each other though they never talked between each other. They never looked each other in the eye and broke bread together. One side almost never saw the other yet they were always aware of each other. It started one rather cold, misty, almost rainy day way back when they were a young couple just starting out. Aunt Joe was in a hurry to get her pies to cool enough to serve for dessert. Uncle Clyde was bringing home his boss for dinner, (they did that back then) and so naturally she wanted to make a good impression. She had cooked up two pies, a cherry and a peach. Things ran a little late however and she wanted the pies to be cool enough to serve and it looked like she was going to run out of time. So she put them out on the table even though it was misty-raining. While they were eating the dinner she had made, there was a ruckus which was coming from the back yard. Clyde’s boss got more than he ever dreamed of getting for dessert that night because when they all got up from the table to go see what had made all the noise, everyone was shocked when Clyde turned on the lights to the back yard. There stood two extremely tall hairy creatures which had the appearance of an ape complete with that conical-shaped head. The only thing separating these apes from the ones you see on television was that these were much, much larger and they were standing on two-legs like a human being would stand on two legs. Not that squatted at the knees and then again slightly at the hips look which is classic to the point of being a cliche’ for the known big apes. These creatures looked completely comfortable standing there on two legs. They were fighting over the pies. One had both pies and the other clearly wanted one. Which obviously the first one did not feel obligated to share. When Clyde turned on the lights so everyone could see better, what had happened out on the back patio, the creatures of course, stopped their fighting with each other and they looked around obviously surprised and uncomfortable with the sudden illumination. They were the original fox caught in the hen house cliche’, because they were caught so red-handed. Seeing them caused all three of the human beings in the house to audibly gasp which then gained the attention of the two apes. They went from looking around to see who or what had turned on the lights to looking into the back door window. Aunt Joe turned her head that weird way she does, where she can almost lay her ear on her shoulder. When she did that the ape closest to them surprised everyone by attempting to do the same. Of course the big hairy beast didn’t have any kind of neck to speak of; so he ended up basically bending at the hips and leaning in the same direction that way. Then Aunt Joes raised her head back into a normal position and pointed at the bigfoot and started yelling how those were her pies! If they wanted them then let them pay for them or they could go straight to hell! Of course nobody in the house expected them to reach into their fur and whip out a twenty and say here, keep the change! The apes did however do what everyone in the house expected them to do, and they ran off into the woods with Aunt Joe’s pies. While they didn’t get to have dessert that night it was still quite an evening for Clyde’s boss who went on to favor him throughout their time together at the office. I don’t think things went quite so well for Uncle Clyde after that boss retired. Anyways to get back to the story, back at the home front Aunt Joe eventually came to notice her pie pans were back on the table. Each pan had a pebble sitting in the middle of it. A clear, hard pebble which she absent-mindedly placed in a tea cup which is where she would put all the ones she collected from the apes those first years. They weren’t even especially pretty rocks but Aunt Joe kept them because they were a token of appreciation for the treats that she came to leave out for them. Then one day there was an article in the newspaper about this place there in Arkansas where diamonds had been found. They had a picture of the uncut diamond in the newspaper and Aunt Joe thought how it looked a lot like the pebbles she had been keeping in her tea cup. It couldn’t be! But they were! The couple was shocked and thrilled! They had been given gifts of diamonds! All those times she thought she was doing the apes such a favor and they were in fact making her rich. Or richer anyway. They didn’t get enough diamonds to buy a mansion or anything like that but it was a huge help to them. Helped put their kids through college. They had collected fourteen of them before ever finding out they were worth anything. They continued over the years to enjoy the same trade. When they got to the age of needing a smaller house they bought the one they were living in currently because it was close to their other house so they could move the trading table without it being effected by the move. Which it was not. They continued to enjoy their trades with the big apes throughout their lives. Obviously the apes had at least an idea the “pebbles” had value. I doubt that Aunt Joe ever got any really sizeable diamond from them or I can’t imagine not having heard about it. Still even the smallest of diamonds is worth a lot of cherry or peach pies. So no, they certainly never came out on the short side of those deals. |