JOE BOB’S WISDOM ON PARADE

JOE BOB’S WISDOM ON PARADE

(A lil‘ throwback to one of JB’s classic columns, originally published December 9, 1988)

    Bobby Bohannon lived down at the end of 34th Street in Texarkana, Ark., where the road petered out and became gravel and then mud and then a soybean field. Bobby's was the last house before the soybean field, and it wasn't much of a house. Didn't even have a screen door on it, and his concrete porch had a crack three feet wide where we'd spray the water hose in the summer to try to make snakes come out so we could kill em. Bobby's father, Mr. Bohannon, would come out on the porch ever once in a while and threaten to whale the tar out of us if we didn't get off his lot. Mr. Bohannon had a rubber hand -- he lost it in Korea or something -- and we were afraid of that rubber hand, like if you touched it, grease would come off on your skin.

    Bobby Bohannon was the meanest kid on 34th Street. He could grab you around the neck from behind and push you face down in the dirt and plant both knees on your back before you knew what was happening, and it wasn't so much the pain of it as the fact that you knew you couldn't do a thing about it. You couldn't talk to Bobby Bohannon because he wouldn't talk back to you. You couldn't fight with him because you knew he could whip you. You could get so mad that you'd get three or four guys to help you, and maybe you could jump him when he wasn't looking, but he'd fight so hard that, even if you finally got him down on the ground and all four of you sat on him, you'd only just TECHNICALLY win, because he'd just keep spitting right back at you through his bloody mouth, and you'd end up feeling worse than he would. And so we all developed the theory that anybody that's been beat on all his life with a rubber hand is gonna be pure-dee mean and there's nothing you can do about it except stay out of his way.

    And then one day a deputy sheriff came to Bobby Bohannon's house and put an eviction notice on the door, and we thought everything was gonna get better since that meant Mr. Bohannon would have to move four blocks away to the concrete-block apartments where you'd have to move when you got a divorce or you lost your job or you didn't want people in Texarkana to know you were a homosexual. And that's sure enough what happened, only it wasn't the end of Bobby Bohannon.

    A new family moved into the Bohannon house, the Jacksons, and Bobby Bohannon found out about it and started beating up the Jackson brothers even though they were all at least three grades younger than him. And since Bobby had been held back at least two grades that we knew of, that meant five years. So he'd wait till he saw Danny Jackson walking home alone from Vacation Bible School and he'd grab him by the shoulder, rip up the Crayola drawings he was taking home to his mother, maybe throw his lunch box in the creek, and then beat him on the ears until he started to bleed. And then Danny Jackson would tell his mother, and if it was bad enough, Bobby Bohannon would have to go to the juvenile detention center for a while.

    Everybody agreed that Bobby Bohannon should go to the detention center for a while. It wasn't Danny Jackson's fault that Mr. Bohannon lost his house. It wasn't anybody else's fault that Bobby Bohannon got beat with a rubber hand every night of his life. We didn't have to let him beat up on our friends just because he had a hard life. Every one of us had SOMETHING hard happening in our life.

   And then one year, when Bobby Bohannon was about 20 years old, he came back to the neighborhood from getting out of Arkansas State Boys Home where he'd been sent for the last two years, and I happened to see him on the street and was surprised to see he wasn't much bigger than I was now that we were both pretty much grown-up. And Bobby didn't jump on me or nothing. He just said "I was thinking about playing some ball."

    We never did let Bobby Bohannon play baseball with us because the Jackson brothers played.

    "My daddy died," he told me.

    Somehow I knew he meant it. He would go ahead and let the Jackson brothers play if they wanted to. Bobby Bohannon didn't have to say much for you to know he wasn't talking about baseball.

    "I reckon we could get up a game," I told him.

    But, of course, the ball game never happened. No parent in his right mind was gonna let his kid play baseball with Bobby Bohannon or even spend time around that boy. Bobby was pure-dee mean. If he was coming around, acting nice, he must be up to something. If he wanted to be friends with everybody, he should have thought of that before he started beating up on little Danny Jackson. You can't just up and say "I'm sorry" and expect us to forget all those years. I guess you can pretty much imagine what all the grown-ups were saying.

    Myself, I would of enjoyed playing a little baseball with Bobby.