I was a young child. I know this because we lived in one of Jessie Buckner’s rental houses on Academy Street in the “Chinatown” section of downtown Maynardville. We lived there from approximately 1968/1969 to 1971, so I was between three and five years old, most likely four.
My mother made some homemade fried onion rings. I remember still how good they tasted. I just couldn’t seem to get enough.
But, alas, I did get enough. As a matter of fact, I ate too much and got quite sick. All you have to do to prove that some things are not better the second time around is to eat too much and get sick. It was many years before I could eat another onion ring.
Nobody loved to tell someone “I told you so” more than my mother. Any time I make a mistake in life I halfway expect for Mother’s form to rise from the grave just to tell me, “I told you so!” Perhaps the reason this doesn’t happen is because the visual image comes into my mind each and every time this occurs.
My experience with the onion rings did not phase Mother’s appetite for her newfound delicacy. Much to my stomach’s discomfort Mother cooked up another batch a short time later. This time she was the one to overeat and get sick.
I am my mother’s child. I took the greatest satisfaction in telling her, “I told you so!”
I don’t remember my mother ever making homemade onion rings again.
Mother and I shared and told that tale for the remainder of her life. June 26 of this year will be the twentieth anniversary of Mother’s passing into the afterworld. I think of her daily.
Mother had her own special way of working a guilt trip on me. Anytime I displeased her she would say something to the effect, “Someday when I’m gone you’ll think about this and wish you hadn’t done it.”
The reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of In the Heat of the Night, “King’s Ransom”. A good high school friend of mine not too long ago told me, “That was a d--- good show!” I agree with the sentiment.
Conrad “King” Baylor, a former boxing champ who has suffered financial difficulty after his stint as a champion has withered, seeks to renew his fortune by informing on a mobster for whom he worked. At the end of the episode, as King is trying to escape with the “hush money” he extorted from the mob to buy his silence, a mobster shoots King several times as he tries to escape inside the church his deceased mother attended. King staggers up the aisle and kneels at the end of the pew in which the viewer assumes his mother used to sit. King talks to his mother, seen only to him, for the last few minutes of his life, then collapses dead onto the church floor.
An FBI agent asked Chief Gillespie, “Who was he talking to?” Gillespie replies something to the effect, “Someone men usually think about at the end of their lives.” The FBI agent replies, “Didn’t seem important. Didn’t even make sense.”
A saying familiar to some of the older generation is “In a Pig’s Eye”. In the case of the FBI agent, we might amend that to say “In an Ostrich’s Eye”, as an ostrich’s eye is bigger than it’s brain.
In Matthew 13:11-17 (KJV), the disciples have a talk with Jesus. Interpreted into Mincey’s Modern Day Version (MMDV), the disciples are saying, “Why don’t you just tell these people straight up what you mean? Why do you talk to them in parables [riddles] they don’t understand?

11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
15 For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.
17 For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.
If you are like me, Dear Reader, your mother said and showed you a lot of things about life that you didn’t quite understand or hear. We were young—we thought we had it all figured out. Now, years later, we know every day how little we really knew then, and sometimes how much less we know now.
Is my eye bigger than my brain? In a pig’s eye!

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 15
If FedEx and its competitor UPS merged into one company, what would the new company be named? It would be called FEDUP.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 16
If Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers merged into one company, what would the new company be named? (See next week’s article in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)

EMAIL WISDOM

One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.

After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.