the sparkplug still works
The male elders of my mother's side of the family are a somewhat odd bunch. They all live in a little country town deep in the south, where the streets are lined with massive live oaks with spanish moss hanging like smoke form their limbs.Dad has told me that when he was just married to my mom and spending holidays with her family as a relative, he was sort of initiated into the group of males. When the whole family got together, the women would stay inside and putter around the house, and the men would go outside and do manly things, like pee in the bushes.
"We peed." Dad told me, shrugging. "What was I going to do? This was my new wife's family. They all stood there and peed together."
My great aunt used to tell a story about how she once saw my grandfather mowing the lawn in a pair of khaki shorts and no shirt and thought he was naked. She apparently caused quite a stir for grandpa before it was discovered that he was wearing shorts, upon closer inspection. Apparently shorts weren't that common back in those days.
My great grandfather was known to all in the family as Papaw, and he was well known for his colloquialisms, as well as for earning a purple heart in WWI by being shot in the ass. Poor fella.
When he would shave, he would call it "Climbing out from under the brush heap". I have extended this phrase to refer to finishing oral relations with a mountain goat, but the less you know about that the better.
At any rate, some series of bizarre circumstances found the male elders of my mother's side of the family taking my great grandfather to a strip club. I assume this is the root of my abiding love for strip clubs. It was something like Papaw's 90th birthday, so the boys got him a lapdance. As the young girl writhed naked on his lap he turned to my grandfather.
"Well," he said, "At least I know my sparkplug still works."
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