Nine inches of rain one day, eleven the next. Gutters, ditches, creeks, bayous, rivers running riot nearly out of their banks with chocolate water.
Ti-beau and his little sister Evangeline are about to go out of their minds with cabin fever. The floor of the bayou house on stilts rings with their running footsteps.
Outdoors, for the fortieth time of the day, they stomp in the ditch, Ti-beau in little white shrimpers' rubber boots. The Cajun mother, virago, her hair in curlers, leans out the door and bellows, "Y'all muddafucka bet' get y'all muddafuckin' ass out dat muddafuckin waw-tuh!"
Jim Parks is a native of the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, son of a merchant and a bank teller from the black lands where they grow the cotton. Raised in Houston, he did his time in the Navy, college in California, newspapers there, Texas and Florida. Truck driver, deckhand on tugs, tuna clippers, oyster barges and shrimpers; a railroad bum and laborer, he can't remember ever not trying to work hard to tell his stories of sudden death, love, lust and life in print. Tagged as The Legendary Jim Parks by a less than complimentary police captain in Houston, he uses that moniker still to find out who among us has a sense of humor and who does not.
Copyright © 2008 Jim Parks
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