The Adventures of Junior

I first met Junior in 1971. About 8 years old at the time, I was amused by, and scared of this fella selling us a watermelon from his truck on the side of the road. Daddy said he really was kinda dodgy, but he wouldn’t hurt anybody. He was just a poor man of about 35, who was prone to wearing overalls every day of the week.

Eldon “Junior” Turnipseed came from a long line of human dirtdobbers, living off the land and enjoying life in their own curious way. Everyone around Tall, Mississippi, knew Junior whether they wanted to or not. He was always ready with a “howdy” while in town or selling watermelons and peanuts on the side of County Road 43. You just couldn’t miss Junior. Not only was he 6’3”, but he also usually wore a crust of the hard work he did on his little farm outside of town.

Junior had his own particular way about him, too. Raised by good, solid, redneck parents, he lived his life without much evolution. To him, the old ways were still the best ways for the most part. He was a dirt farmer that lived off the grid before there was living off the grid. Hell, up until about 1965, he still rode a wagon into town.

“Howdy, Mr. James, whatcha need today, watermelon, or are you gon’ parch some peanuts? Got some boiled ‘uns, too, if’n ya want ‘em.”

“Just a watermelon today, Junior. These younguns are about to have a fit for some!”

“Awright, one watermelon. You boys wanna pick one?” whereupon he commenced to showing us how to tap a watermelon to see if it was just the right kind of ripe.

“Gotta have kinda holler sound to it, y’know.”

He held his head close to two or three melons, tapping each with his finger, waiting for it to talk back to him.

‘This’n sounds about right. Here ya go, Mr. James!”

“Junior, you been struck by lightning lately?” Daddy asked, knowing that Junior had taken a direct hit about five years ago.

“Aw, naw, not since I was up in that tree that day. My ears still rang, and I swear it still gives me a case of the wind.” “Wind” being an uneducated man’s way of saying he had powerful gas now and again.

“Never was that bad before then. Been able to run the pigs out of the pen ever since.”

“That’s, uh, some kinda wind there, Junior. Tell you what, we gotta get on down the road. You have a good day. Sell a bunch!”

Junior’s encounter with the lightning was that of legend around Tall. He’d been out deer hunting and decided to climb a tree so he could get a better look. Well, he hadn’t noticed that it was coming up a cloud and before he knew it, he’d been launched about 30 feet out of the tree, hitting the ground and rolling about another 10 feet before coming to a stop against a stump.

“My hair caught fire, my lips was swole up, and danged if it didn’t blow a hole in my drawers.”

Ever since that day, Junior made sure to keep one gallus strap on his overalls twisted, something he forgot to do that day.

“Keep it like that and I won’t get struck again.”

Folks around town thought that event made him just a little more curious acting than he had been before. For a while afterward, he told folks that a squirrel kept talking to him. Junior thought he had a gift, kind of like Dr. Doolittle, who he’d never heard of. To this day, he’ll carry on an animated conversation with all kind of animals, thinking nothing of it.

“See that hog over yonder? He’s an Alabama fan. You’d think he’d like them Arkies, but he loves that Bear Bryant.”

Junior was a football fan, too, and Mississippi State was his favorite team. Thanks to a transistor radio someone gave him, he never missed Jack Cristil calling a game.

“Go Dogs,” he’d yell, his voice echoing down through the holler. “Run that ball, boy, run!”

Rumor has it that he actually danced nekkid on his front porch during that 1970 season when State beat cross state rival Ole Miss. He really hated Ole Miss, calling them Old Piss. The story got around that he flung his overalls down and danced up a storm.

“Dang buncha rednecks, them Rebels,” he said. Others might have said that was the pot calling the kettle black, but he didn’t care. That radio and MSU football was pretty much his only connection outside of Tall and the surrounding community.

Junior never saw any reason to go anywhere but into town, and it was sometimes unlikely his old truck would get him there and back. If it didn’t, he’d just walk home or hitch a ride until he could afford to go back to fix it. And he would leave it wherever it stopped, too. One afternoon a bald left front tire sagged flat to the ground. Junior just left it there, in the middle of town and right square in the middle of the road. He figured if somebody needed to move it, they could. Whenever they found his truck broke down the police never gave him a ticket. He couldn’t have paid it anyway, plus trying to explain it to him would have been damn nigh impossible. And hell, he didn’t have a driver’s license anyway.

Junior and the “PO-lice,” as he called them, didn’t have the best relationship. Not that there was any animosity between them, but just about every time something went missing somewhere, Junior was the first one they’d go see.

You see, Junior wasn’t above improving his lot in life by, as he put it, “borrying thangs”. Among other items, he borrowed a disc harrow, four clay jugs—for whiskey making—from Miss Lucy, a football helmet, which he wore on game days, a tire from a truck sitting in Clyde Patton’s front yard, and a semi-tame bear from Bert Pendley’s store. That’s right, a bear. You see, Bert’s place was kind of a roadside attraction for folks on their way to the river—beer, bait, and various critters to marvel at—and Junior thought that bear might attract people to his vegetable truck, so he went and got him one Sunday afternoon when the store was closed.

When Bert rolled up, Junior had that bear standing up on his hind legs eating cherry tomatoes that he was pitching to him. Seeing about twenty people watching, Bert capitalized on this newfound talent by letting visitors toss tomatoes in the cage behind the store. He only stopped after the bear knocked a fresh mayonnaise and tomato sandwich out of his hand, ruining Bert’s lunch.

About the only time Junior ever got in real trouble was the time his roof started leaking…