Every now and then people should confess their sins. Recently at a family gathering, I made such a confession. It was after the funeral of a family member and everyone was gathered back at Aunt Rosa's house. Everyone was sitting around the table. We were all pretty sad and I decided to tell this story to make the ones gathered around that table and in the room smile. The telling of this story started something. Most everyone in the room followed it with a funny but true story of their own. Mostly involving family members. This was what the family needed and that night, as sad as that day was, is probably one of my favorite times with my family in recent memory.
First of all I think I should clear the air about a few things. First, no possums were hurt in the actual event (yes it actually happened) or the retelling of the story. Second, I will use no names because even after all these years, I'm not going to be the one to rat anyone out. Third, the actual truth may have been fractured just a little in the retelling, but my memory isn't what it used to be.
When teenage boys in a small town get bored, they tend to do stupid things. Some of those things can get you into big trouble, but some things are just dumb things that boys do. This story is about one of those dumb things.
The teenagers I grew up with in Tar Heel NC were not a bad group. Sure we did our share of dumb things, but all teenagers do. There was not a lot going on in that small town back then, and to my knowledge there is not a lot going on there now. We did most things that "normal" teens do in the rural South. We spent our time going to a couple of the bigger towns "cruising" up and down the same street over and over just to meet up with and hang out with friends, meet folks and maybe meet a few girls. We had dates with our girlfriends if we had one at the time, but the main thing we did when we were bored is just sit and talk. We would all park in the parking lot of a store that was closed for the evening and just hang out. Sometimes it was after we would drop our girlfriends off at home, or after a ballgame. Right in the middle of our little town there was a gas station that everyone knew and that is where we would meet. We were out in the open where everyone could see us and we didn't have anything to hide. A good many of us drove pickup trucks so we would park with the back of the trucks facing the main drag through town and sit on the tailgates and just hang out. I would guess that a good many folks would pass by and think "those kids are up to no good," but to be perfectly honest 98% of the time.... we were not up to anything at all, good or not. Many times local law enforcement officers would pull up and chat for a bit and see what we were up to and since everyone knew everyone in Bladen County, (and me having cops in my family) if we were "up to no good" our parents would surely know before we could even get home.
This story is about one Fall, Friday night, after the High School football game, when we were haning out doing nothing. There were a group of guys just hanging out at the old Field's Shell station in Tar Heel. I remember it was fall because a few of the local farmers had harvested their corn for the year and we had decided to do something else that we did back then when we were bored, and that was spotlighting deer. Another thing I probably need to explain is back then, spotlighting deer was perfectly legal in certain counties under certain conditions. You could not have a firearm in the vehicle, it had to be before 11 pm, and you could not shine the light in a residence. The common practice was for a bunch of us to pile into one pickup truck. One of us would drive, of course, one would operate the spotlight and the rest would ride in the back of the truck and hang on. This particular night we were in my truck. I drove a blue 1986 GMC short bed 4 wheel drive truck. It was nothing fancy but not a bad truck at all and more than adequate for such an adventure.
We had not been up to much that night, I remember I was between girlfriends, so I had nothing to do, and didn't feel much like riding all the way to town to cruise town. Around 8pm or so, there were quite a few of us in the parking lot of that old store, and we decided to all pile into my pickup and go see if we could spot a few deer in our local area. We were pretty successful that night having seen possibly around 60 deer that night and it was getting close to 11pm and we were making our way back to the store when we noticed in a cut corn field there were about 3 possums pretty close to the dirt road we were on. One of the fellas jumped out of the back of the truck yelling, "Shine The LIGHT!" I brought the old truck to a stop and my friend with the spotlight held it steady while the "jumper" ran down the possum. I swear, it seemed like his legs were already running before his feet hit the ground. He then picked up a corn stalk and tapped one of the possums on the back. Well, the stories you have heard about opossums playing dead is absolutely true. The critter rolled over with all four feet straight up in the air. My friend then picked it up by the tail and had the look on his face as if to say, "ok, now what?" One of the other guys noticed that I had two or three corn sacks in the back of my truck that had been shoved under diamond tread tool box. It was deer season, and I had been putting corn in the deer feeders. My observant friend took one the sacks to the possum runner and they now had a slightly angry possum in the sack.
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| This is not the actual possum from the story, but a pic if found on the net, but you get the idea. |
The story only gets more redneck from here folks. The question is what do you do with a very much alive possum that your friend has run down and placed in a corn sack? After pondering the idea for a short time, one of us in the crowd had an idea (most likely the one who ran him down). I honestly don't remember who's idea it was... but, I guess that part is not really important. We all loaded up in my truck and headed back to the store and at this point it was well after 11pm. It was back at the store that we carried out our evil plan.
The store we hung out at had news paper vending machines out front. You know the kind, you put in your money and the machine will let you open the door and retrieve the newspaper you have just paid for. I do distinctly remember digging in the door pocket of my truck to find a quarter for the machine. After opening the door (and retrieving my paper), my athletic friend who ran down the critter opened the bag and put the possum in the machine. If you think about it, it was perfect, the door to those machines had a slot to put a paper in so the front page would be on display. This meant the animal could not see out, and the prey who would open the door could not see what they were getting themselves into.
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| Your average paper machine. Again, not the one from the actual story, but one I found on the net. |
The idea was to hide our vehicles and hide close by and watch as the "paperman" loaded the box. It just so happened the paperman was running his route at around midnight. So there we were when the car pulled up, trying not to laugh out loud and draw attention to ourselves. The unsuspecting paperman walked up to the paper machine with an arm load of freshly printed Saturday morning papers. He then opened the door with his key and propped it open with his leg. It was at this point the possum woke up and the paperman was eyeball to eyeball with one very angry possum. We were not close enough to hear it, but I would imagine it was hissing at him. As the papers flew up in the air we could not contain our laughter. I don't know who that fella was, but I'm pretty sure the names he was calling us were not learned in Sunday School at the local Baptist Church. He then got in his car and sped away. What happened to the possum you ask? As best as I can recall, it was last seen after it had escaped it's temporary jail running into the patch of woods behind the store never to been seen or bothered by dumb teenage boys again.
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