THE GARDEN

                  
                       Kentucky is a garden. We waited for something to ripen then ate it. We waited for a reptile, bird, fish or mammal to get careless and it went in the skillet, too. We literally lived off the bounty of the land. We ate almost anything with flesh and protein. Raccoons, 'possums, groundhogs, turtles, frogs, game birds, fish, you name it. We trapped the fur, fished the rivers and hunted the fields and forests. We sold crawfish, minnows and nightcrawlers to bass fishermen. In the winter we sold rabbit fur by the washtub, and other fur, too. And, of course, moonshine sold itself. We did okay.

                      Since we had no electricity, and no refrigerator, we had to forage almost every day. We had to come up with just enough food, no more, no less, that could be eaten fresh within a day or two. But it gave a certain urgency to our hunting. We were not sportsmen, we were subsistence hunters. If we fucked up somebody might go hungry.

                       We were a clan of dirt poor Kentuckians in the early 1950s in the lush bluegrass region, bubbling with Cartesian limestone springs and natural salt licks, which made this an historic and treasured hunting ground fought over by the natives for thousands of years. And when the pioneers came the Indians struggled desperately to keep it. To the Indians it was "the dark and bloody ground", a sacred battlefield full of legend and myth at the foot of the ancient Appalachians. The oldest settled region of Kentucky. When Daniel Boone discovered this Eden the settlers flocked to it. The Bluegrass is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

                      Yes, we were poor, technically, but we weren't much worse off than most people around us. We didn't have much but not much was enough for us. I was just a kid and had no notion of poverty, so I was oblivious to our lot. But ours was a poverty without despair. We lived by wits, luck and audacity. We were never despondent over boll weevils or the health of a mule. We had no allusions about our prospects or fate. We were a rambling clan tangled in cousin marriages and unforgettable characters.

                    My grandfather was the patriarch. And he was proud that he never worked for another man for wages in his whole life. He was shot through with flaws and sin, but he made me feel safe and loved, and that's all a kid needs, really. My sister and I were raised by him and my grandmother most of the time in our early years. My dad, who I never met til years later, was an itinerant jazz musician always on the road, and my mom liked to travel with the bands. She had no maternal instincts whatsoever. My mom divorced my dad when I was 5 and married a vicious idiot in Minnesota, and that's when the brutality and "domestic violence" began. Not spankings, but beatings. I was constantly being sent back and forth between Minnesota and Kentucky on the whims of our mom. I was bewildered and without a steady home. And I was always the new kid in a school full of strange kids I didn't know. By sixth grade I could count 20 changes of grades and schools. Sixth was the first year I spent in the same school, although I was yanked out of school in April and sent to Kentucky, close enough.

                        I always looked forward to returning to Kentucky to be with my grandfather where we hunted, fished and foraged to provide food for the family. I chopped coal, cut kindling, carried water and contributed. I was appreciated, I had value, and it felt good. My grandfather was an alcoholic moonshiner, gambler, poacher, cockfighter and all around rogue. Stories about him usually start, " You ain't gonna b'lieve this shit, but...."  He was also a lifelong morphine and heroin addict. Nobody's perfect. His friend, and fellow addict, was the doctor who birthed me. The good doctor kept the old man supplied with dope and Grandpa guided him on hunting and fishing trips and trained his hunting dogs and fighting cocks. Grandpa went armed at all times. He put on his Smith and Wesson when he put on his pants. And he had no regard for most laws, especially fish and game laws, which he considered applied only to sportsmen. And the other laws were probably meant for other people, too. But he was handsome and charming and the women loved him. So did I. He was kind and loving and very protective. I knew for someone to get to me he'd have to kill the old man first, and that wasn't gonna happen. He was both wild and brilliant. A brawler with a soft heart, and nerves of steel.