Don't order filet mignon or pasta primavera at Waffle House until you tried Granny's entrée.

It was on a Friday night, wringing the neck of a vampire chicken, with a mist of Aqua Net Super Hold, rising. Granny was serving Blackeye peas and jalapeno cornbread and finger-licking good. We were drinking from Mason jars. The liquid that is left behind after boiling greens or beans. Usually with a squeeze of crawdads wings to give it added zest.

I had just come in from skinny-dipping, and swan-diving off the Tallahatchie Bridge with nothing but my good humor on. Singing a mastication song in acapella, chewing Red Man tobacco.

Grandpa was sawing the chicken with a chainsaw and counted the teeth. My baby sister was polishing her tattoos of Merle Haggard and I was in between, beginning the string beans and dreams of being like Jethro Bodine.

It was all procrastination, but I blew into granny's corncob pipe checking the Richter scale for intoxication.