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13 Oct 02 - 01:54 AM (#802093) Subject: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: khandu -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back in the good ole days, the Spring of 66 I think it was, my old buddy, Dave, and I drove over to Holmes County to visit Old Tunk. Tunk was a black man who had a black honky tonk out in the Holmes County country. Dave and me, well, we were white boys, but that didn't make no difference. Hell, hard times in Mississippi put us poor folks, black and white, in a class of our own...poor. Anyway, when me and Dave got to Old Tunk's place, the joint was jumping. We went in and sat down at a table and Tunk brought us a beer. There was a fellow standing on the bar, playing guitar. His name was Little Jim Henry. Boy, he could play that thing! Me and Dave, both being guitar pickers, were really enjoying the fellow. After a few numbers (played and smoked!), Little Jim took a break and came over to our table. We bought him a beer and had a good conversation. Little Jim said he was gonna be big someday. He said he had written a song that was gonna put him over the top if he could just find a good drummer and bass man. We asked him to play the song for us, and he jumped on the chance. It was a 4/4 thing with a strange intro. He would hit a single note on each beat beginning with the open big E, followed by the octave E, then Bflat, back to octave E...Odd sounding. Then he sang...good voice but strange words. When he finished, he wanted our opinion. Me and Dave, being the honest type, told him. "First", I said, "That opening is weird. Sounds like something you'd hear on a black sabbath or some other kind of devilment. Why not drop the Bflat and just have the open E followed by the octave E? He tried it and liked it. Dave said, "Well, Jim. Gathering from the lyrics, I assume the name of the song is 'Purple Flurp'". Little Jim nodded. "That don't even make sense! What in the hell is a 'flurp'?" Dave said. "Hell, there's gotta be something better than "Purple Flurp" to name it." As we thought about it, my eyes began to burn from all the smoke in the place. I said,"Man! This damned smokey haze is gettin' to me!" "That's it!" Dave shouted, "Purple Haze!" "Yeah, Purple Haze...I like that!" said Little Jim. "One more thing", I said, rubbing my burning eyes, "Ever thought about changing your name? Little Jim Henry sounds...well, it don't sound good." "Any suggestions as to what?" Little Jim asked. "How 'bout Jimmy Henry?" Dave asked. "Well Jimmy is better but Henry ain't exactly right." I said. "Maybe Henson...Henley...Jimmy Henlicks...something like that. Hey, Dave, we gotta go. This smoke is getting to me." We left. Sometimes I think about Little Jim Henry and wonder what ever happened to him. Hell, for all we know, he may even be dead by now. khandu |
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13 Oct 02 - 05:52 PM (#802472) Subject: RE: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: catspaw49 ...awfergawdsakes............. Lemmee ask you a question? Do you fish? I'd bet you caught a Blue Gill that metamorphed into a Northern Pike after a few tellings.............I mean like I've had few nibbles when I was pissing off a bridge that wasn't but about 35 feet above the water but I get the impression that you must be a fisherman of some note.....Mainly when you're sitting around the bait store. Hendrix my ass.......... Spaw |
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13 Oct 02 - 06:13 PM (#802484) Subject: RE: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: Bobert Well, danged, Spawzer, I was pssin' off a 35' bridge on cold winter's day. Might a fact it was so cold that my pea starting freezing on the way down and after a few seconds there was nuthin' but a frozen stream of pee from me down to the river below. Well, that ain't nuthin' except that pee musta woke up a 135 pound Mud Tom who himself was rather p.o.'d at being woke up in the midddle of a Mud Tom dream with warm pee. Well, he got so mad, he climbed that frozen stream of pee right up at me. Fortunately, I got finished up and got the "Bait" back in my pants just in time for him to come clashing over the railing on the bridge and landed right there in the middle of the bridge where he flopped around fir a good two hours. When he finished floppin, me and my cousin Rufus, threw him big ol' Mud Tom self in the trunk of the car and stpped at a phone booth to call the women folk to tell em' to call up everyone for a big old winter catfish dinner. Well, as things will happen, we got a flat tire on my couzin Rufus's Biscayne ( the Chevette wouldn't start that morning cause of the cold...)and pulled over to the side of the road, opened the trunk to discover that not only was the tire and jack gone but there was a big ol' catfish chewed hole in the trunk about 2 feet a 'round, and no Tom! Man, had to drive 4 miles on the metal rim to Rufus's half a double woide back in the holler. Worst partr about it, when we got there, there were about 25 people waiting for dinner... Yeah, they was mad and thought we made it up but Rufus was smart and took a picture of that Mud Tom before we threw him in the trunk. Yeah, that Tom was so big... (Ahhhhh, how big, Bobert?) that the photograph weighed in at just under 3 pounds... And that's the truth... Bobert |
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13 Oct 02 - 06:31 PM (#802490) Subject: RE: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: khandu Well, hell. This started off as a "music" thread, but, thanks to Spaw's superlative sense of perversion, it has become a fishing thread! Good tale, there, Bobert, old Bud. Hell. I bleevit! khandu |
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13 Oct 02 - 10:15 PM (#802571) Subject: RE: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: Tweed Me and my buddy Al wuz fishin' oncet and he hooked a big ol' carp on six pound line. That fish sucked in the dough ball and just took off down the crick with it. "Goddamit Al, loosen that drag, er you'll lose him!" I hollered and wuz jumpin' up and down on the bank, about to piss down bof my legs in all the excitement and the eight pak of Stroh's we'd finished just before all this took place. "I got him now....Jeeezus, thet's a bigass fish!" Al was gainin' on the leviathan an' I went out in the stream to scoop him up before he broke loose. "Now bring him on over....O SON that's a monster! O Goddam let's scoop him now for he breaks free. Let's git him in da net Al, GIT HIM IN DA NET!" Al stopped reeling and the fish (a forty pounder at least) gave a shake and the line popped and we stood there lookin' at the water. "Whut the hail iz wrong wif you! Why'd you stop playin thet trophy size carp!" I asked him as I waded back to the shore and threw down on the bank. "In da net...internet!...That's IT Tweed! That's what I'll call it." And he run outta there like a crazy person, got in the Buick and down the road he flew. I figgered he'd lost his mind. Pore ol' Al Gore...allus thinkin' big stuff all the time...lost a perfekly good sixty pounder on account of that. An THAT's the troof! |
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14 Oct 02 - 07:24 PM (#803107) Subject: RE: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: khandu I bleeve it! |
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15 Oct 02 - 02:03 AM (#803312) Subject: RE: BS: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: Kaleea My Grandad was Jim Henry, and he had an auto salvage in a small town in Oklahoma. My other Grandad was not Jim Henry, but when he went fishin' at the local fishin' hole, there were often a couple of "colored" (please! this is a quote! it was the politically correct word back then!) gentlemen down there fishin' too. My Grandad was always a gentleman, and taught me to be respectful & polite to all persons, and would get out his harmonica & play some of the Irish tunes he knew while wating for the fish to bite. The other gentlemen would often join in, as one of them commonly brought his guitar. I was fascinated & often mesmerized by the wonderful music which spontaneously sprang from these afternoons down at the fishin' hole. I loved the way that the gentlemen would play tunes with what Grandad called "ragged rhythm" and make Grandad's jigs & reels sound like jazz, especially when the pop bottle neck on his finger would make the sliding sound on the guitar strings. When I was about 7 or 8, Mother didn't want me to go down to the fishin' hole with Grandad anymore, since she didn't think it was appropriate for a little girl to be fishing. But I went with Grandad when I could slip away, just to hear the wonderful music! I heard some of the best music in my life down at that fishin' hole--how I wish I could go back in time & hear that music again! |
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15 Oct 02 - 08:14 AM (#803442) Subject: RE: BS: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: alanabit Typewriter Timmy had done it. He had secured an interview with a BBC production executive to sell him his script for a brilliant new soap opera, "Ophelia O'Reilly", the tale of a brilliant authoress achieving fame and fortune. "You see it's like this," said Timmy, leaning forward in his chair,"The family is poor in terms of money, but uses rich language, full of metaphor, with wit and subtlety. The husband is a would be rock singer and they have beautiful, articulate, energetic teenage children." "And who's going to identify with that?" asked Graham Grabbit, as politely as he could under the circumstances. His eyes strayed to the football results in the folded newspaper as he waited for an answer. "Well...er...um..." Graham rose and walked to a window, turning his back to Timmy to hide his yawn. He opened the window, waiting for Timmy to make his comeback. At that moment, a jackdaw came in through the window, picked up the package and flew out again. The jackdaw could not hold the weight for long. It fell into a UPS skip seventeen floors below. Typewriter Timmy never saw his script again. Some weeks later, the package turned up on the desk of Dan DuEmall, the high powered Hollywood producer. During a rare five minute break, he glimpsed through the first twenty pages and muttered, "Damned Brits. Don't know how to write anything." He called his secretary on the intercom,"Here, Betty, take this crap down to the synopsis department to see if they can do anything with it." Johnny Jerkov returned with the revised synopsis the next day. "This is what I reckon chief. Look,this Ophelia woman, all she's good at is writing. That don't interest no one. Let's make her a businesswoman, so she's good at something which interests everyone -money." "I'm listening," said DuEmall. "Now, let's make the husband a middle aged arthritic halfwit, who used to be a rock star..." "And the kids are complete dorks, right?" "Right boss." "I'm starting to like this, Jerkov. Now about the brave struggle against poverty and the rich quality of language..." "No,no, no boss. What we do is give them too much money, but make them share one adjective." "Man, you've sold me on this. Now we've done Irish names before. I say they should come from some hick little backwater of Britain - got it?" "What about Birmingham?" "What that place where they talk like a cat with chewing gum stuck between its teeth?" "That's the one boss." "This is class. Now what are were gonna call them...Oswald, Osbert, Osbald, Osbore...." |
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15 Oct 02 - 01:19 PM (#803685) Subject: RE: BS: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: EBarnacle1 One of the things I learned when I was writing a folklore column in Messing About in Boats is that no matter how you try to lie, sooner or later, even great improbablities will reveal themselves to you as truth. Many years ago, when I was down in the Amazon, I was told never to relieve myself over the side of the boat. There are very small, very hungry fish there who will swim rapidly up your urine stream into you and make themselves at home in your bladder. As I considered this too improbable to be true, I ignored the advice and ended up at the doctor's having that son of a fish cut out of me. Both the problem and the cure were very painful. |
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15 Oct 02 - 04:19 PM (#803815) Subject: RE: BS: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: khandu Hell yes! I bleeve every word of it! k |
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15 Oct 02 - 06:45 PM (#803907) Subject: RE: BS: Tall Tales-Little Jim Henry From: Tweed As Charlie Patton would have sed... "Aaaahhhh.....pshaw!" |