01/13/01

I wasn’t open about my courtship with Phebe --- Phebe Reynolds Noonan— named in honor of the local Revolutionary War heroine--- my second cousin through the Noonan Family—--until after Dad was in the ground. He most certainly would have objected in some murderous manner or another.

The Noonans were supposed to be the influx of outside blood that our old-time Huguenot and Dutch asses needed, and here I ended up dipping twice in it.

Dad read a story in a supermarket tabloid once about a family who been fucking around with cousins so often that all their children were being born with monkey tails due to all the messed up genes from the in-breeding (or, if you wanted to be polite, the endogamy). He’d always warn me to find a woman who wasn’t related to avoid having monkey children, as he apparently believed our luck had been pushed as far as it could go genetically within our tribe. I’m quite certain he believed we were on the verge of slipping backward to the point that we would again wear fur and hang by our asses in the forests. . .

When I was about 16, Dad caught me with Phebe’s sister Vera in the hay mow and he beat the living shit out of me with a rake handle. Phebe was just over the next stack of hay at the time messing around with Stash Skimington. We were all pretty drunk at the time, but that wasn’t so much Dad‘s concern.

We have the automobile now! I remember Dad yelling, drive down the road for a few more fucking miles, will ya! There’s no need for anyone in this age of locomotion to be fucking around with kinfolk!

Dad made his point and I gave up on Vera. Well in reality I was just one of several guys, er, men, I should say, she was running wild with. Both Phebe and I found ourselves jilted in common by our respective de-blossomers, as Stash Skim was no more serious about Phebe at the time than Vera was in me.

Like Swami Hard Salami says in his delightful Indian accent, proximity is the biggest force to be contemplated when it comes to settling on a partner for fornication. He said you either have to gain proximity with a compatible person to gain sex or avoid proximity to avoid sex--- say with a second cousin who grew up next door--- but you have to deal with the proximity issue either way. He said people are like bodies in space at risk of falling into the gravitational pull of others that may near. I don’t know if those girls ever realized they needed to close their curtains at night to keep from going on display in the pasture out back. I certainly wasn’t prepared to say anything, and I don’t think my father was either.

Vera ended up marrying Richard Palfrey, younger brother to Porch Rot. They married in ‘68 after we graduated high school. Vera was already knocked up by then, but then she lost that baby. Filthy Rich---so named jokingly because he was a farm kid who didn’t like to get dirty--- was on his way to the skies over Vietnam. Was shot down somewhere in the jungles. His body was never recovered. Vera was devastated. She never seemed the same again. One day it became apparent Vera had taken it up with Hiram. I don’t think she ever married him though because she could never bring herself to have a judge declare his brother dead. I think she was always holding out hope Richard was a prisoner of war somewhere and that he would be freed and one day would be returned home. More likely his body rotted away somewhere in the jungle. Vera went on to have twin boys with Hiram. Actually their provenance was a rich source of local gossip. Of course I refused to be a part of that shit. I’m always quick to say I wasn’t released from the Army until she was halfway along. Stash Skim has always been incredulous and is fond of saying that a turkey baster had to have been involved if the boys were truly Porch Rot’s. A blow to the groin by a vicious heifer had Hiram in the hospital years earlier in the summer of ‘69. Word has been that he suffered some permanent damage that prevents him from fully launching his Apollo 11, if you know what I‘m saying. I’m not sure if Viagra can be of any help to him these years later. Summer of love it was not though. Hemingway could have made a classic out of it. There’s been a lot of horrible things said as to why that heifer got so angry. Porch Rot always accepted the boys as his own though. I understand he was listed as the father on their birth certificates. He had a couple of boys to help run the places when he got older, what could be better? Dumb fuck. Yeah, it was hard for some to see how Vera and Hiram were compatible. Maybe Porch Rot looked a bit like his brother, but there the similarities between them ended. Porch Rot has always been a dumb fuck and Filthy Rich was always like, well, a bright star. As I’m fond of saying for some reason: Porch Rot is surely no Filthy Rich, never was, never will be.

I guess grief can make you make some strange decisions. . .not unlike love, I guess.