I was a young man when I first met Doocy, our big, scary-looking friend with webbed fingers on his right hand and missing teeth right in the middle – along with an “occasional” attitude problem.  If you’ve ever seen him, you know why I was fortunate to have him as my unofficial bodyguard out on that bricklaying job back in the summer of 1973.

I have been thinking about Doocy a bit more than usual lately because of what you and I have seen and heard in the last year; so we feel we should say a word on this, even though we’ve told you before that politics isn’t what we’re here to do. But today’s little Doocy story will shed light on far more than politics. It will bleed right over into child raising, proper human behavior, and – more importantly – improper behavior!  It will even apply to college football coaches who have never talked to another school about a new job during the season, ever.

I should warn you right off that while you may read about Doocy here on the “front porch” with us, you don’t really know him. I understand that you might walk up to Coca-cola Mike, and say, “I KNOW you. I’ve read about you in the paper” (as many of you have done); but I wouldn’t advise the same with Doocy Dew. Coca-cola has an attitude, all right, but nothing like Doocy’s! I told him that I knew him once – and I actually did know him – and he glared at me with the whites of his eyes showing and said to me in his backwoods, ungrammatical style: “No sir, you don’t know me atall.  You jus’ know ‘bout me.  That’s all.  You jus’ know ‘bout me.” I didn’t ask what he meant, but I suspected even back at 17 that it had something to do with being wet behind the ears. I was way too young to know the man who refers to himself as the Cool Breeze.

But having worked a long time with the “Breeze” on the bricklaying job, I’d gotten to know “‘bout” him pretty well.  In fact, it was after some thorough and diligent study of him and his mysterious past that I determined that he should go into politics.  He had many of the necessary credentials, as this one simple story will attest.

Doocy found himself in a tight for money back when we were working together – or, more accurately, back when he was “bossin’ me around” – so our friend and boss Joe Clyde helped him out and paid him to come over to his house after work to cut grass. Joe Clyde told him that if he needed to put gas in the mower to be sure to use the red can because it was straight gas and not to use the blue can because it had oil mixed in with it.  Joe Clyde left him alone with the job – something you just don’t do with a slightly shady public servant – and he came back half an hour later and found Doocy out in the yard with the front end of the lawn mower sticking in the air.  The Breeze was just pulling and yanking on the rope like a farmer with a stubborn mule.

“What’s wrong with it, Doocy?” Joe Clyde hollered out to him.

“Can’t figger it out,” said the Breeze, “the crazy thang jus’ quit on me.”

Joe Clyde went out there, opened the gas cap, stuck his finger in and smelled of it, as Doocy eyed him suspiciously. Finally Joe Clyde said, “You didn’t put that gas in the blue can in it, did you?”

Doocy had guilt written all over his face, and Joe Clyde knew good and well what he had done; but he never owned up to it, just denied it, as you would expect.

“Naw, I didn’t put none of that gas in it.  Like I said, it jus’ up and quit on me.” Then he looked at Joe Clyde as if Clyde were crazy!

From the first time Joe Clyde told me that story years ago, we both knew Doocy’s future in politics was promising. Aren’t a good many people in charge just like Doocy?  They use the blue can when we tell them clearly to use the red one. Then they look at you funny when you want to know why the country won’t run.

 

Steve Bowen, once a Granger, lives and works in Read Oak, Texas.