Uncle Jim was a character. Born and raised on a farm, farming was in his blood. He also had a finely tuned sense of right and wrong.
I visited him often, enjoying the summer sunshine of the farm as we sat on his front porch sipping RC Colas — occasionally accompanied by a Moon Pie — him in his old wooden rocking chair, me sitting on the porch with my back against a front post.
Morning was rapidly slipping away and the RC’s dark-colored liquid was easing toward the bottom of the bottles as a dark sedan entered the gravel driveway to the house and pulled up near the front.
From the driver’s side door emerged a small, wiry, dark-haired man sporting a dark mustache and a dark blue baseball cap with “SHERIFF” embroidered above the bill.
“Good morning,” he beamed as he approached the porch. “My name’s Willis Harper and I’m running for sheriff.”
As he passed me, he reached out and we shared a brief handshake. He continued on to Uncle Jim who remained seated in his rocker as they too shared a handshake. Uncle Jim bade him sit on the porch rail to take a load off.
“Ain’t you the feller who used to operate the draw bridge down on Lowdown Creek?” inquired Jim.
(Lowdown Creek was a very sizeable waterway, deep enough for small barges and sometimes over a hundred yards wide.)
“Yes, sir but that was several years. . .”
“I can’t vote for you, Mr. Harper,” injected Uncle.
Harper was quite stunned. “I hope I haven’t done any misdeed to you, sir.”
“Well,” began Uncle Jim, “Several years ago I had an old bull who was feeling miserable. He was all stove up. Couldn’t poop.”
“I’m not sure how this affects anything that might have transpired between us,” interrupted Harper.
Uncle Jim continued as though no interruption had even taken place.
“I called the vet to come look at olé Titus – that was the bull’s name, he was my favorite bull – and he was tied up with delivering a colt and couldn’t get her in less than a couple of hours, if that.
“The vet told me that I could probably try to give the bull an enema which is what he would be doing when he came anyway. He said I could use a funnel and some warm water and that would probably loosen him up enough.
“Well, I put a kettle of water on the stove and went to look for a funnel in the barn but couldn’t find one. The only thing I could find that might come even close to working was an old bugle hanging on the wall.
“So I figured ‘What the heck, might as well try it.’
“I went back to the house, got the kettle off the stove and went back to the barn. I stuck that bugle in Titus’s butt, and I might add he weren’t too happy ‘bout it, but I started pouring the water in and I guess it must have been a mite too hot ‘cause olé Titus let out a roar and kicked out the back of the stall. He bulled his way through the side of the barn and took off down toward the creek. I guess he was smart enough to figure that the cool water there might give him some relief.
“I could hear him all the way down the hill. Every time he took a step that old bugle let out a toot and ‘bout the time he got to the bridge, you opened it, olé Titus ran right into the creek and drowned.
“But I don’t see how you can. . .” stammered Harper.
“Hold you responsible?” Jim completed the question.
“Well, Mr. Harper, the way I figure it is that somebody who’s too damn dumb to not know the difference between a barge horn and a bull with a bugle in his butt is too damn dumb to get my vote!”
I don’t think Uncle Jim even voted for sheriff that year because of his heightened respect for right and wrong and that Harper’s opponent was an ex-felon.
Chuck has other humorous stories about “Uncle Jim.” Watch this video from the 2022 Voices of Winchester storytelling event to hear more!
