Stompin’ Dog Noses

I found myself at an art show last week thinking about my father’s side of the family that lives in Possum Trot, Alabama. Art is all about contrast and I think that may be what sparked the memory. I was surrounded by the educated and well mannered art crowd and here I was thinking about my not so pleasant childhood memories from PO-Dunk, Alabama. Thinking back, I had only been back to that old farm in Alabama a few times. My sisters never went. Each time left an indelible memory for me to ponder later. This time, I remember waiting in the living room for the women( my four aunts) to cook dinner in the kitchen area. (Same room separated by a big, old couch.) In the living area, every single place to sit had a red coffee can on the floor beside it. The can was about half full of sand and caught the snuff spit from the adjacent red-neck. Our family was more civil than our neighbors due to this slight but important social grace of having sand in our spit cans. Anyway, from the living room you could watch the crew in the kitchen carry out the sentence of whatever barn yard animal’s number had come up that day. This day, it was going to be “chicken and dumplings”. Oh boy! Fortunately, and I’m sure because of my presents, my aunts rung the chickens neck and plucked it outside. So, they bring in this chicken carcass and begin to chop it up with a cleaver. Then they chunk it in a pot with some vegetables and who knows what else. The pot was placed on an old gas stove which starting to get that caldron of goodies warm. This is when I started seeing these meat balls appearing from under the floor boards.(I was about 8 or 9 yrs old at the time.) Meatballs that were breathing! Everyplace where a knot had fallen out or a large crack had formed, had these things wedging themselves up from below the kitchen. My Aunt Tootsie saw them first and stomped down on one and I heard a dog yelp from underneath the house. Next, all four of my aunts were stomping around the kitchen trying to prevent this smelling voyeurism by the dogs to go on any longer. It became funny to me after the shock wore off. And, I don’t think they hurt the dogs……… much. I know the dogs were well fed after we had dinner. (Because no one ate that “Carcass and Dumplings.) Anyway, I can’t explain my thought processes and that “flash back” to my youth. After all, I am an artist not a psychiatrist. But, I can tell you this. ” Watching four women jump around in a kitchen trying to stomp dog noses is more interesting than most of the art talk that I am privy to hear. This I am certain of!!”

– Joe Thompson