Stand for the Right; Don't Back Down

You’d Better be Prepared to Use It

I never saw my father drunk. When I was young he would keep some beer in the refrigerator; he gave me a sip once and I have never wanted another. For medicinal purposes, he kept a fifth of whiskey hidden above the door inside the pantry closet. The same bottle was there for a decade taken out only when he had the croup. But when he was young he was known to go out on week-ends with his brother Woodrow and get drunk and get into fights. Apparently it was the thing to do in southern Georgia in the first half of the twentieth century.

I asked my father about his reputation in these matters. He said it was true but he usually didn’t get too drunk. Woodrow liked to fight and somebody had to get him out of them.

One Friday night he found Woodrow at Cebe Mixon’s joint in Hickox. The very drunk Woodrow had been in a fight and broken up some of the furniture. Somebody had called the police from nearby Nahunta and a deputy arrived as my Dad was helping Woodrow out the door. The local Barney Fife told my Dad to put his brother in the squad car because he had come to arrest him.

Dad responded, “No you ain’t. I’m taking him home. You don’t have any jurisdiction here.”

At that point the deputy pulled his revolver and said, “I told you to put him in my car and I meant it.”

Dad looked at him and said, “You had better put that thing away. And the next time you pull it on me you had better be prepared to use it, because one of us won’t leave there alive.”

He put Woodrow in his old car and drove him home.

I know this story sounds a little hyperbolic, but I believe it is true because I witnessed first hand a similar situation. I won’t share the details but I was with my father one time when he was told that a drunk man with a gun was near by threatening to kill him when he saw him. My father and the inebriated man had had a minor altercation a few years earlier; Dad had stopped him from striking an elderly man. On that later day we had my Dad’s single-shot Remington 22 rifle in the car because we were on our way to butcher some hogs.

My Dad responded “Tell him I have my gun with me so he had better shoot straight cause one of us won’t leave here alive if he shoots at all.” Some family members escorted the man off in a different direction before we arrived. I never saw my Dad fight anyone, but I never doubted he was willing to do so. Apparently most people had the same opinion.