The Tuskaloosa Independent Monitor

snag boats

How America Pulled Ten Thousand Sunken Trees Out of the Mississippi

2014 on Wednesday, September 16, 2026

GIRAFF-EEEEEEE!!!!

Sidewalk Story

Tonight Buck's mind fastened upon his hometown street's timeless heritage which seemed to grasp him like a two century old time warp as he imagined how his present moments on a Tustenuggee sidewalk would impact his future. Buck quickened his pace as he walked toward the Wekiwahatchee as if to burn off some of his excess energy while he contemplated how the universe might be playing with his emotions.

Step by step, walking would help to smooth things out as Buck thought, "Today is the first day of the rest of my life and if that's all I got is one more day then I'm gonna live it like it's my last!"

Buck stopped to lean down and pluck a Bahia grass seed stalk. Seventy years of practice enabled Buck to expertly remove the blade of grass at the base of the stalk before sticking the succulent straw between his lips and resuming his journey down the Adams Avenue sidewalk. "I'm sure glad Bahia grass ain't toxic because this po' boy has chewed up a few bales of this stuff along the way." Crunching on his piece of greenery reminded Buck of how much Bahia grass was a big part of his life story due to his family's pioneering work in establishing Bahia grass as the preferred pasture cover in the Wekiwahatchee Valley and just like the name "Adams Avenue", it brought him back to the disturbing memories of tonight's Youtube video with Gene Rayburn talking about the 1939 formation of the Wekiwahatchee Cattlemen's Association in Tustenuggee's Indian Queen Hotel while his Grandma Lewis played the old hotel's piano. That video clip had bypassed all of his psyche's defenses and triggered an unprecedented emotional release that had both stunned and embarrassed Buck.

The typical flow state stream of consciousness Buck usually enjoyed had been interrupted by the emotional interference produced by the aftermath of his mysterious catharsis and he knew he had to do something about it. If ever Buck needed to practice his daily personal rebirth rituals on the riverbank, it was tonight.

"Another wonderful evening down by the riverside searching for what to think as I restore my uncluttered mind." Buck mused.

As Buck strolled north toward the river, he recalled a line from the 23rd Psalm, "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake." In a moment Buck experienced a sudden flash flood torrent of thought that produced such distress he was forced to dig deep within the long suppressed memory files of his inner reality in order to seek contact with the roots of his humanity.

Gazing up into the streetlight's streaming triangles of light and shadow, Buck leaned against the flaky outer bark of the trunk of a crepe myrtle and allowed his mind to seize upon some recent facts which fortunately gave him the comfort he needed.

"It's those flash drives," Buck exclaimed. "Damn, that's it! Those flash drives had a lot to do with turning on my waterworks over at Jake's house tonight!"

During the previous week, Buck had received a small carton in the mail containing a dozen flash drives, thumb-size personal electronic storage devices, that some guy found in a box of computer parts he bought at a Pensacola garage sale. One of the flash drives was labeled with Buck's address and when the guy in Pensacola saw that the drives contained family photos, he'd mailed them to Buck out of common courtesy. Buck figured that the drives ended up at the garage sale because they had been in his estranged late wife's possessions which had been disposed of after her death by her live-in boyfriend.

Many years before her death, during the conflict that preceded their permanent separation, Buck thought the flash drives had been destroyed when his late wife piled all of Buck's photos, color slides and personal documents into the backyard barbecue pit and burned it all. Since their unexpected arrival in the mail during the week before, Buck had had little time to process the challenging task of now preserving all the documentation of his own 76 years of life since the distinct possibility certainly existed that Buck himself would soon be exiting the life he had lived these many years.

"Maybe all these recent coincidences are part of some cosmic electronic dress rehearsal preparing me for my life review which will be triggered at the time of my death by the massive release of neurotransmitters from my dying brain cells and maybe, just maybe, something out there has taken pity on my ignorance and decided to share some secrets to help me on my unending quest for the salvation of the eternal everlasting afterlife of Perhaps."