Richard, the paperboy, from The Red Scarf, Sept. 1944, # 12
Okay, now, just from what I has been hearing, y’all thinks I’m making up some of that stuff about me and John Clayton. Huh? But you is wrong as a backward duck. Naw, that stuff ain’t no lie. It’s the God’s truth, I promise, cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye…if I’m a-lying. Course, the way I remember and the way I tell it might be just a little different than if you had seen it happen, but shoot, I shore ain’t no remembering genius, so what I’m a-telling you…let’s just say is kinda like it happened.
Oh, why did I write all that stuff, y’all knows I’m lyin’ like some old sorry yard dog. But this ain’t no lie…in everything I tell you some of it is exactly like it happened. Hey? What bout that? Don’t you wish everybody would tell you just a little truth instead of all lies? Course, you do.
Now I been thanking bout what to write today, and I figured you’d never believe the last part of the Bullet ride at the fair. Well, here goes…just like it happened. You see after them girls got off of the Bullet ride covered in throw-up, they kinda tied into me and John Clayton. Wow, you know you can’t hit girls so we just tried to dodge them swings, but Rosalie grabbed up one of them big furry dogs, which was just a-dripping with vomit, and took off after John Clayton. She finally whapped him in the back and then the girls said a few bad words and left. Well, me and John Clayton stood there while everybody in the long line waiting to get on the Bullet laughed their heads off, and then we went over to the livestock barn where they was a big watering trough. Well, if you ain’t never washed up with water that hogs and mules have been a-slobbing in you ain’t had the worst thing in the world happen. When we finished washing our hair, shirts, and the big furry dogs we headed for the gate to wait on Mr. Reed to pick up up. Shoot, on the way through that crowd of people on the midway, we was smelling so bad, it was like Moses parting the Red Sea. Well, Mr. Reed pulled up right at nine o’clock and we hopped in his car. After bout a minute he said, “What’s that I smell?”
“Uh, well, Mr. Reed, we was over at the livestock barn, and I guessed we stepped in something. Heck, that really weren’t no lie….was it?
