Mr. Maney
I was re-reading parts of my mother's memoir this week and came across her description of our closest neighbors when I was a youngster. The Maneys lived down from us on that little sandy gravel lane that led up from the blacktop. This family of five bought the place below us in 1960 or ’61 after the Hattens moved to town. I’ve occasionally thought of this family—I even recently jotted some notes about their youngest child for a potential story—but I don't guess I've considered much about the father in years.
Mr. Maney (rhymes with Mr. Haney of the Green Acres TV show) was a career military man, a staff sergeant in the Air Force. He was stationed at Keesler AFB in the latter part of his career and he and his family lived there in Biloxi before moving up to Big Level. He served tours in three wars. He was in Okinawa and in Korea and he did two stints in Viet Nam, his last one was during the time they lived next to us, when he spent a year and a half in Saigon just before his retirement.
About the same age as my parents, Jessie Maney was boisterous and full of bluster. I can see him now, sitting with Dad on our front porch sharing an evening cup of coffee and telling tales of his time overseas. This was a commonplace occurrence in those days, as he and his wife, Alene, would often walk up after supper for a brief visit and a bit of conversation. I was typically sitting with them, or playing near, keeping an ear on the conversation. Mr. Maney was never without a story and once he was settled in one of our rocking chairs they would pour forth. To my adolescent ears, they sounded wild and fantastic, full of adventure. Thinking back, though, given all the places he had been and all the people he met, I don't imagine he had to exaggerate much at all. However, I knew Dad had some good stories too, and I loved hearing them, especially when they involved my grandparents, my aunts and uncles and the olden days, but I knew that when Mr. Maney got cranked up, I wasn't going to hear any of Dad’s stories. This would have been in the early '60s. Around 1966, shortly after Mr. Maney retired from the military, he and Alene divorced, and he moved to town and joined the Wiggins police force. I didn't see much of him after that. Until that one night in the summer of 1970.
That summer I had a part-time job at a local country store that sold groceries, gasoline, and feed and fertilizer. I loved working there and had a number of different duties, one of which was driving the spreader truck. Not only did I get to drive this huge truck, I got to go all over the county applying fertilizer and lime to cow pastures. Since I was out of school, I had a good bit of free time, a lot of which was spent riding my motorcycle, swimming at the lake, dating occasionally, and hanging with my friends. It was generally one of most blissful times of my life. Not that any of this is pertinent to my story about Mr. Maney; it's just to set the scene.
My second motorcycle, a 1970 Honda CB175 that I purchased at the beginning of that summer.
One night that summer, I was tooling into town on my new bike, thinking I might head over to the Frosty Mug to see who was hanging out there. Just past the 3-way stop where Clubhouse Drive intersects with Pine Street, I noticed the lights of a car on my tail. Since I wasn't going very fast, I figured that whoever it was needed to get around me. My solution was to speed up and make a quick turn onto a side street. That was a mistake, one of several I made in short order. After I’d gone about a block, I realized that the car was again behind me. Thinking that maybe some of my running buddies had seen me coming into town and were joshing with me, I made another quick turn and gunned it. Mistake on top of mistake. Again, the car followed with me. It was only then that I became aware of the siren and the flashing blue light. My heart almost stopped. I promptly pulled over and turned to face the music.
This hopping-mad city police officer was out of the car in a flash and about to chew my face off, when I realized it was Mr. Maney. I was struggling to get my helmet off while he was doing a darn good impression of Sgt. Carter dressing down Gomer Pyle. Shouting up a blue streak, he wanted to know why I was trying to outrun him. I was stammering, trying to explain myself, and he wasn’t buying any of it. I thought he was about to put me in cuffs and haul me in. But when I finally got the helmet off and his light hit my face his mouth closed and he stood there speechless, as if he was completely confounded. But after that momentary hesitation, he confirmed his recognition of me, shook his head and changed his tone. No, he wasn’t going to give me a ticket, he said. Whew! However, he did lecture me sternly for a minute or two, recounting each of my infractions, starting with my rolling stop back at that 3-way stop. I was about one-foot tall when he finished. His parting words still ring in my ears: "You better slow that sickle down. I don't want to have to call your mama in the middle of the night and tell her that I found you laying up in a ditch." I certainly didn't want that, either.
A few years later I found out that Mr. Maney, new on the police force in 1967, was on duty the day that Daddy had his fateful automobile accident, receiving injuries from which he never recovered.
Paramount Cemetery, Big Level Community, Stone Co., Miss.
Woodlawn Cemetery, Wiggins, Stone Co., Miss.
A Word to Ponder
Tool around; tooling (idiom): To drive around in one's vehicle aimlessly or idly, doing nothing in particular, with no purpose, direction, or end point in mind.
thefreedictionary.com
Song of the Day
“Small Town” by John Mellencamp (Scarecrow, 1985)