DACKED OUT

Forgive me Uncle Buddy, but I just gotta tell something that you ain't never been proud of, but that is just too dang funny not to blog?

Bout 1964, the only place to gather, visit, get food, a cup of coffee, or listen to the "juke box" (nickel per 45 RPM record - MoTown was HOT!) was the HUT in Turnertown.

Don't know the original owners, but Janie and Truman Elliot owned it during my time (til it burned down).

(As a side note, me and my buddy Jay dated the Elliot sisters a time or two, but we were so dang scared of their Mom and Dad that we finally decided that there was other hens in the house that wouldn't come with such wrath as them parents promised to provide ever time we took their daughters for a "coke")

Dad liked to tell a story about one late night when he was at the HUT and Buddy showed up absolutely "dacked out" (Dad's phrase for as formally dressed as one could be?)(His other phrase for dressed kinda superior was, "like out of a band box!")(If you know what a "band box" is, please tell me as I ain't never figgered that one out?)

Don't know the occasion for Buddy's fashion extraordinaire (Dad said he was as drunk as one could be and still function), but Dad said he was wearing an off-white leisure suit, white shirt and white shoes with a white belt. I know from memory that he had his blond hair slicked down with some appropriate pomeade, including some rather imposing sideburns down to the edge of his jaw (eat your heart out Elvis). Never one to carry meat/fat on his bones, he was doubtless a rakish, if not blade-like, caricature of (well hell, Wright City bumpkin, sorry Buddy).

Dad and little brother were gabbing in the parking lot of the Hut that dark moonless night and Buddy announced he had to ease to the back of the cafe to "relieve" his bladder. Dad waited bout twice as long as the "chore" should have taken and then went to the back of the Hut in order to find his errant brother.

Just as Dad rounded the corner of the ancient wooden structure, ole Bud came walking out looking like a cross between a drowned rat and a greasy rendering plant reject. Dad said he had stinking slime hanging everwhere, stunk like nobody's business, and looked like a drowned rat.

Seems that the "dacked out" part of his wardrobe kinda lost some luster when he walked to the back of the cafe, failed to notice that the concrete lid had been pulled from the below ground grease trap for the cafe, and fell head first into the (I can't even begin to describe the Hell he soaked in?)

Yeah, if you know Dad, you know he laughed till he near bout foundered (and then cleaned his little brother up, with the coldest water hose he could find).

And I have a continuing feeling that the world ain't never been the same since Slim Waller's boys did their thing in the 30's, 40's, and 50's. and beyond?????????????