In 1974, I married Diane and settled down in Yanceyville, although by nature, pretty “settled” already. (I like to think I was a calm child, but definitely not a “sixty-four-year-old little boy!”)

An older couple lived across the street from my mother-in-law, Doris. After having just used the term “in-law,” I now tell you that the gentleman was a lawyer, referred to affectionately as “Mr. Pem.”

Doris was his secretary at one time and said he would “wax poetic” in court. Doris is blond, and Mr. Pem often called her: “The blond!” Although I don’t recall him telling a “blonde joke,” he often exclaimed, “The blonde’s got a brain!” And she does!

His compliment implies he may have come across other “blondes” whose minds were less impressive.

Mr. Pem also became a judge, one time taking his rental tenants’ children to a fair in an adjoining county where some “Jim Crow” still held sway. He was told “no” at the gate, but insisted, and all were accepted in. The next week, a cross was burned in his yard.

Mr. Pem enjoyed a couple of evening drinks (the manly “Sinatra” kind, not Bud-Lite). Too intelligent to drive then, he often called on a man by the name of “Satterfield” to transport him, driving Mr. Pem’s little white truck.

One evening, Mr. Satterfield was not available, so I “got the call” (not “that” kind, although I briefly considered becoming a Lutheran minister one time, but decided against it for fear of having to write something every week).

We pulled out just as a violent thunderstorm kicked up. Later, there was no point in trying to use that old rule-of-thumb, lightning-to-thunder calculation of a five-second gap equaling 1 mile distance, because both seemed simultaneous, directly above.

The din of sound and glare of lightning, comparable to the USS North Carolina’s “Sound and Light Show,” made it truly, “a dark and stormy night!” I wondered if some county areas had lost power, because the only light seemed to be that of the little truck’s headlights and flashes in the sky.

Such heavenly “rabble-rousing” would have made great sound effects for some of Wagner’s operas, except even the “healthiest” Wagnerian soprano would have found her “expansive” voice no match for it.

Well before each road turn, Mr. Pem gave directions in a clear, but more guttural baritone than usual.

When I inquired as to our destination, Mr. Pem said words to the effect that he was “going to see a man about a rooster.”

He then said something which spoke of the necessity of our trip being “dead of night” — this rooster was a “fighter.” I soon realized that he meant this not in the sense of an extremely positive, “giterdone” denizen of the chicken house (if a rooster can be such), but in relation to that old outlawed sport of both South and North: “cockfighting.”

After many road turns in the stormy dark, we traveled down a dirt road to what was basically a shack whose simple front porch lighting design consisted of a single, unadorned bulb on a dangling chord. An elderly, simply dressed couple sat on that porch, and it being summer, their feet were bare.

Mr. Pem got out and assisted the man in trying to “shoo” the rooster down from a point about 50 feet up in an old oak tree. They used a long cane pole to coax (scare) it, all the while, lightning serving as “lighting” for this strange scene.

They finally succeeded, and Mr. Pem put the rooster in a cage on the truck bed, paid the man, then covered the cage with a tarp to keep out the rain; but the rooster was already quite soaked from its time in the tree.

Arriving home, I felt as if I had truly been on a time journey to the Old South; but cockfighting still takes place in remote areas nowadays.

  Postscript: Thinking back, I remember the scene of the simple Southern couple on the “bulb-lit” porch that night. I’m tempted to make some wisecrack now about the possible topics of their summertime, “barefoot conversation,” but will resist.

I must ever refrain from making disparaging comment about my fellow Southerner, saving such for the Yankee (of whom, even at this late date, much can be said).