Hot Flashes, Swollen Ankles and Sore Breasts. And I'm a Man

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

For me, imagination has meant the difference between following an ill-tempered mule up and down red clay cotton rows in south Mississippi where I was born and raised, or filming pretty girls on Brazil's Copacabana beach with the benefit of a liberal expense account.

It has meant the difference between writing my stories in an air-conditioned office, or crawling out of bed before daylight to feed the chickens, slop the hogs and milk uncooperative cows that never enjoyed the feel of my cold hands.

Imagination has made it possible for me to travel throughout much of the world rather than simply reading about far-off places in newspapers and magazines.

More importantly, since I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004 and had to undergo radiation treatments every day for eight weeks, my imagination enabled me to survive in a fantasy world rather than dwelling on the reality of what was actually happening to my body.

Every day when I stretched out on a hard table and prepared myself for the "zapping" I knew was coming, I invented stories I knew were not true, but never-the-less stories that made the routine of my treatment far more bearable.

I pictured myself taking a twilight stroll in my nice middle-class neighborhood, enjoying the coolness of twilight, when suddenly garage doors started opening and closing with rapidity.

Microwave ovens turned on and off, porch lights blinked with the regularity of Christmas tree decorations, and irate neighbors screamed at me to go home and put on a protective lead overcoat so all the radiation in my body would not contaminate the neighborhood.

I imagined commercial and military jets cruising peacefully on auto-pilot at 38,000 feet until they passed directly over me and began performing uncontrollable barrel rolls, figure eights and loops.

I visualized the expressions of Shopping Mall security guards when anti-theft devices set off car horns all over the parking lot when I got out of my lead-lined vehicle to go inside to shop; and people wearing hearing aids grabbing their ears and screaming in agony when I moved within their range.

I'm sure many of you think a man of my age fantasizing about such things while undergoing a serious procedure like radiation for an even more serious disease like cancer is rather ridiculous - perhaps, even a bit silly.

But my imagination has been a salvation for me during hard and trying times since I was a small boy growing up on a 40-acre-and-a-mule farm during the Great Depression.

My fantasies were all I had to occupy my time.

I remember distinctly when I began creating the imaginary images that would later enable me to survive diversity when it would have been so easy to give in to the pressures and feel sorry for myself.

I sat cross-legged on the front porch of our faded, rough-lumber farm house and listened in total rapture as an old hobo reminisced about his life on the road.

Every gesture the tattered old man made with crusty, arthritic hands massaged my imagination. Each word he spoke nourished my dreams.

Fueled by his often exaggerated tales, my imagination took flight. It introduced me to a wondrous life that existed outside the red clay hills of south Mississippi.

While the old hobo sipped from a dipper of cool well water, I closed my eyes, trying to visualize all the exciting places he had talked about.

The old man patted me on the head. "You're alright, boy. You like hearing me talk about all the places I've been, don't you?"

"Yes, sir, and someday I'm gonna do the same thing."

"How old are you, boy?"

"Tomorrow's my birthday. I'll be ten-years-old."

"That's what I figured. Still, you're about the age I was when I caught my first freight out of Oklahoma." He paused a second. "I'll be leaving directly - if you want to tag along. We'll head down the road until we hit the big water. Then we'll flip a coin and put our trust in lady luck. Well, boy, you want to go with me?"

As young as I was, I knew the old man had no intentions of taking me with him. I also knew I wouldn't get ten feet from the house before my father grabbed me by the nape of the neck and turned me over his knee. But I wanted to go. I wanted to go so badly I could feel the bottoms of my bare feet tingling.

I envied the free-wheeling hobos. But I didn't envy them enough, or want to go badly enough, to accept the hunger, the deprivation or the loss of pride they endured to maintain their chosen lifestyle.

The Depression had taught me what doing without was like. It also taught me how to recognize God-given talents - my imagination, sense of humor and a positive attitude - that would in the future make my life bearable; both emotionally and financially.

When my parents decided to bring me into their world, they earned a respectable living teaching at eighth grade rural schools during the winter and working a 40-acre farm during the summer.

The three-room house, where we camped during the summer between school sessions, had no insulation in the walls or flooring. Where there should have been a ceiling, 2"x4" rafters spaced 24 inches apart crossed each room eight feet above the floor.

The last thing I saw every night before turning out the lamp, and the first thing I saw every morning when I opened my eyes, were those bare rafters above my head.

With one exception.

Early one spring morning during my sixth year, I awoke staring into the slitted eyes of a five-foot-long rattlesnake coiled around a rafter directly above my head.

Its triangular head hung down about six inches.

Its forked tongue flitted in and out so rapidly each movement blurred into the other.

I was hypnotized, unable to move.

Screams built inside my chest, but I heard no sound. When a mournful whimper finally broke through my terror, it led the way for screams that literally blasted my parents up from the breakfast table.

Seeing me sitting up in bed with my eyes locked on the rattlesnake slowly descending from the rafter, my father reacted without thinking.

He grabbed a single-barrel, .410 gauge shotgun he kept beside his bed, pointed at the snake and pulled the trigger.

The load of birdshot blasted a hole in the cedar-shingle roof the size of a basketball.

Wood splinters, accumulated dirt dauber nests and several bloody pieces of a still-writhing rattlesnake splattered the clean, sun-dried sheets mother had put on the bed the night before.

Pieces of the rattler's body barely touched me before she jerked me out of bed like a field worker handling a 100-pound sack of fertilizer.

The next morning, dad rewarded me with a rare 5-cent candy bar for my bravery by taking me to Mr. George's Store, the one-and-only shopping emporium in the tiny rural community of Lorena where we lived.

In fact, you might say the store was Lorena if you discounted the gristmill, a dilapidated wooden building slowly settling under its own weight, and my preacher grandfather's house, a six-room dogtrot structure located diagonally across the narrow dirt road from the...