Dwain Walden

At least three times this past week I have been asked how I come up with the stuff I write about. My answer has been expressed in a slightly different vein on a bumper sticker. “Stuff happens.”

And today I was asked if the stuff is true. This person cited the column I wrote about exploring caves. He didn’t believe there were caves in this area. So I told him he could ask Emmit, Travis, Carlton or Terrell — the guys who were with me.

And the one about the windmill … well, it’s still standing there on the farm, churning in the breeze on Wolf Creek Road. I won’t charge you to look at it.

You’ll have to take my word about being chased by a sow, but most farm boys of my generation can tell you that when a sow breaks out of the barn and goes to the woods to birth pigs, she generally has a severe attitude about her privacy, and she won’t give a rip if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. You can run left or right and she’ll be right behind you.

I told my friend Clem Weldon, who doubted me about the caves, that I would write about him some day so that he would know I wasn’t making stuff up.

So the next day Clem picked me up in front of my office in a purple dune buggy. We took a drive around town with ’50s music blaring from the CD player and a string of Mardi Gras beads hanging from the rearview mirror. Needless to say, people were staring at us. We pulled up to a traffic light with the Platters belting out “Great Pretender.” A group of boys were standing on the corner pointing at us. I told one of them to pull his pants up. But I waited until the light turned green. I didn’t want more stuff to happen than I could write about.

Since Clem and I differ greatly on politics and the election had just concluded, I thought it was fitting that we should ride around together in a purple dune buggy listening to the “oldies” — a reminder that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously.

Clem is retired military and I’ve been in the news business since Gutenberg. And our wives probably wonder what we’ll be when we grow up. Clem is exceptional. He’s the only guy I know with a purple dune buggy.

We rode over to Bill Smith’s house to see if he wanted to join us. He likes the “oldies” as well. Bill is a retired chiropractor, and since we were riding in a dune buggy, we thought his attendance might have practical as well as social application. His wife told us he wasn’t there. I think she was glad because Bill has a reputation to uphold.

There was a lot of stuff I observed along the way that I could have written about. It’s been a while since I have ridden in a convertible, and I realized that my hair wasn’t all messed up — neither one of them. So I suppose I could rationalize that going bald is a great rationale for buying a convertible, which I think is much better reasoning than when I went for my military physical and they told me if I joined the Marines I would get free haircuts. I think there’s a column in there somewhere.

As to the stuff being true, I quote the late Jerry Clower: “If I’m lying, I’m dying.” Well, maybe I shouldn’t say that riding around in a purple dune buggy with tractor-trailers whizzing by.

(Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer)